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We are back with another episode in our Unschooling Stumbling Blocks series and we’re talking about transitional ages and seasons.

While there is definitely not one path through childhood, there are common transitional ages where major changes typically occur. In this episode, we talk about some shifts that happen from the toddler to child years, big kid to preteens, teenage years, and moving into young adulthood. Brain development, body growth, and personality changes can sometimes leave us feeling like we’re meeting a whole new person! We talked about how our unschooling lives help support these transitional times, too, with unconditional love, curiosity, and strong relationships.

It was a really fun conversation and we hope you find it helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

EU370: There’s Plenty of Time

EU360: What’s So Magical About Age 18?

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about supporting our children’s autonomy. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia. And today, we’re diving into another unschooling stumbling block, which is transitional ages and seasons. And I’m really excited for this conversation.

But before we begin, I wanted to give a quick plug to the Living Joyfully Network, which has really been life-changing for me in so many ways. On the Network, we have amazing discussions about so many topics, since our community has such a wide variety of experiences. And I just love the community so much, because everyone there is really learning and growing and being so intentional with their families. And I think it can just be such a wonderful support, especially during this back-to-school season, when questions and fears sometimes come up.

And so, if you’d like to learn more about the Network and check it out for yourself, you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on the community tab. We also have a link in the show notes. And we would love to meet you! So, Pam, would you like to get us started?

PAM: Sure. I absolutely would. And yeah, I am really looking forward to diving into these transitional ages and seasons. Because in our experience, we have really seen it play out in many, many different unschooling families over the years that there are patterns of these transitional seasons or ages as our children just move through these different stages of their lives. And these can be challenging times for our child and for us as things change. Because change is a constant, but also a challenge, because we’re figuring new things out. And I just want to mention, it’s less about actual ages. We’re not going to say, at this age or at this age, what your child should be doing. But it’s more about when the particular child experiences the shift. And that these shifts are part of life. So, that’s why we really wanted to dive into them. And we thought we’d start with the transition from toddler to child.

And now, thinking back, it’s been a while now, but with younger kids, a lot of our time and effort is taken up with hands-on care, from changing diapers to making food, to managing toys and games, and keeping them occupied. And their learning is quite transparent. We see them exploring their environment. We see them learning how to use their toys. We see them learning how to eat, learning how to talk, walk, like all those pieces.

So, as they start to get a little bit older, they typically need less hands-on care. And it becomes more about supporting them as they pursue their curiosity and their interests. And while it can still be busy for us, because we’re shifting from keeping them alive to being more engaged in the activities that they want to do day to day, it can be a bit of a challenge for us to notice that, to start giving them that space to make some more choices that they might be interested in. So, in the past, we’ve been able to help them and it’s just flowed. And now they might be more resistant. And we may start to recognize that they may think or want to do things differently than us.

It’s just really fascinating. And it can be tricky for us also, because they are still so much in the moment. They want to play this thing, they want to do this thing. They are right there. And we need to spend a lot of time learning about each other and just finding our rhythms, because it’s less about us when we bring the food out. Now they can be more actively saying, I’m hungry now. Just all those little pieces. Or, I’m not tired. Now that they’re more verbal, they have more ways to express their feelings and their thoughts and so, we learn to step back a little bit and work with them and learn more about them. And it’s a really fun time, but definitely can be a transition.

ANNA: Right. And I think, with the younger kids, with babies and toddlers, I mean, it’s such an intense time. Because we’re tired and we’re maybe not getting much sleep. And it is a lot about just keeping this little human alive. And there’s so much joy there and so much delight. And this transition happens and our days look a little bit different and we can start to recognize that pushback. So, I love the way you said that. Because I think especially for those of us who are doing a lot of the caretaking of the children, we’re just so connected to those babies and toddlers in many ways. And it’s such a dependent relationship. And then you start to see that independence and agency asserting itself and they do look at the world a little bit differently.

And then we start seeing that people are different. And honestly, I believe even babies and toddlers will assert themselves, but it does have a different feel to it. When getting a little bit older, and I think for those of us who we’re talking about in an unschooling environment, when it becomes that more typical school age or preschool age, we start to kind of go, wait. Should we be doing these things or should it look a different way?

I read John Holt really early on. He was influential in my journey with this. And I love just looking at that toddler and very young child and seeing how much they were learning and seeing how natural it was to learn a language and cultural expectations and understandings and all of these pieces and recognize that that’s just something as humans we can carry through. But I think it is important to watch in ourselves, are we bringing something to it?

Because it’s like, okay, now they would be meeting this milestone, or they should be doing this or this, looking externally versus looking at the child in front of you. So, I think there’s a lot of things that go on with this transition, both in our heads and for the actual child that’s growing and changing.

ERIKA: I definitely found that to be true. I have strong memories of my oldest turning 2, 3, 4, and just having these feelings of, I’m supposed to be doing something, that he needs to be really learning now.

Like, it’s time. And I mean, really that was just all because of the culture that I was surrounded by. When I started hearing that the friends are going to school or different things like that. And so, it was interesting to see that in myself and be like, on one hand I am seeing all the learning that he is doing, and our lives are great and fine. And then on the other hand, these fears are popping up of, but should he be doing this?

And so, I think that transition from toddlers to children for me felt like having kids on my body at all times to now being able to watch them. They’re not right on me, but I’m watching them do things. And I just remember having long days of sitting and watching them explore things and setting things out for them to explore and it’s a different phase of life. And you see all the changes that they’re going through in their brains and just in what they want to do and seeing their personalities come out and their voice, like you were saying, Pam. Now they’re able to really tell us about their feelings, tell us about their ideas.

And so, as that begins, it’s a big transition for us as parents, because we go from really just caretaking and responding to physical needs and things like that, to now it’s another person and it’s this relationship of like, what do they need and what do I need, what do they want to do, and what can I do? What do I have the capacity for? So, yeah, that was a big transition age for me, and I loved it.

ANNA: Yeah, all the different times and seasons are so fun and interesting and so much to learn for myself and for kids. And so, now we’ll move into the next phase which is a bit broad, but that older child to pre-teen, because so much is happening during that time as well.

And I found, and as Pam was talking about our experiences with probably thousands of families at this point, age eight and nine seemed to be a big transition age for kids in terms of, you went from that toddler to being engaged in the moment doing things and really just having fun and playing. And then there’s something about eight, nine where for some kids it’s the first hints that we’ll see other phases of this as they get older. But the first hint of, there’s this bigger world and am I safe? And what’s happening?

And I love the way you said it too, Erika, it’s like we’re tending to these physical needs and some emotional needs, too. But I think it starts getting more complex as we get to that eight to 10. It’s the beginning of that and then it amps up even more in terms of just how they relate to other people. They’re curious about that. They see other people. They’re not quite as focused in the moment in front of them as more understanding of social dynamics and other things that are happening. And so, this age is the start of that. And so, I think it’s interesting, because in so many ways it’s less hands on and then in other ways it actually gets more intense as they get older in terms of, the stakes seem a little bit higher or the conversations are a little bit more intense.

So, I’m interested about to talk about this stage, too, because this one also leads us into the start of hormones as well.

PAM: Yeah. I do remember that season as they do start to like, just notice there is more than like the family. And there’s this bigger world out there, and it is really interesting to put the focus on helping them as they figure it out. As we talk about so much, there is this way that our culture is, it’s almost like exposure therapy, as in, as they’re noticing these things, we want to help them get used to it. Because yes, you are going to be seeing people. Yes, you are going to be going out and doing these things. That is what life’s about. So, if you are struggling with that, let’s do that more so you get used to it. Versus helping them process and move through the transition at their speed.

We had times when somebody did not want to be going out. They wanted to be staying home. They felt much more comfortable there. And that outside world was looking a bit scary to be out and about, and even maybe fears of other people, people in their family being out and about. They’re starting to recognize, or they’ve had some experiences with people passing on or things like that, or accidents happening, that they’re becoming cognizant of some more of the risk as well, so it really was a time of change. And again, it differs per child.

But we have definitely seen that pattern where anxiety and stress comes with recognizing that bigger picture. So, to be able to quiet those outer voices and really focus on our child and help them through the experience and stages, to be there processing, too.

I remember that was a time when we were just pulling into our comfort zone. We were cocooning sometimes and really just making their space comfortable for them, because I didn’t want to put more anxiety and more stress on top of what they were already processing and trying to work through. The more I could get rid of all of that, then the more they could sit with what they were feeling about that new piece, the bigger world, bigger stuff happens out there, all those pieces. So, just to give them the space to sit with that without loading school on top of it, without loading all the stress of making them do these things. It was just so very helpful. And yes, a pretty darn common thing, I think.

ERIKA: Yeah. I feel like it comes up for some families as, I don’t know what’s going on with my kid. Something is different. Something has changed. They’re not having fun doing the same things they used to. There’s maybe an increased seriousness that can happen sometimes with kids in that age. But it makes sense. It’s just that increased awareness of everything, putting themselves into some kind of place in the world. And so, that’s big and it’s a lot of big thoughts that can come up.

And so, I feel like I want to mention now, though it applies to every stage, just the idea of meeting the child in front of you each day rather than coming to them with, I know who you are. Don’t write the story of who they are. Just see who you’re going to meet today. Because there are these transitional times where you don’t really know what to expect. And to give them this space to just be who they are each day is really amazing for them. That it’s okay. It’s okay that some days they wake up and they have a lot of fears and anxiety about things, or they wake up and they’re like, I don’t think I want to do the same game that I’ve been really having fun with. It doesn’t seem as fun to me right now, and I’m not sure what I want to do next.

Those kinds of feelings of, I’m not as interested in what I used to be interested in, can sometimes almost feel like a, “What’s wrong with me?” kind of moment for a child. And so, us being there with patience and understanding and validation of, this happens and it’s happened to me and it’s common and it’s normal and we have plenty of time, like we talked about in the last episode, to let new things bubble up. And as you grow, as we all grow and change, our interests will change. Our mind, our brains will change. We’ll get new ideas and new things, new feelings about our lives. And so, yeah, I found that time to be super interesting with my kids. But now we’re a little bit beyond that. So, are you ready for teenagers? Should I move on to teen?

ANNA: I think we can.

ERIKA: Okay, so, my youngest is now 13, my oldest is 15. So, this young teenager age, I feel like does seem to flow and make sense from that eight, nine, becoming aware of the bigger world. Then we come into this young teenager age. But there is something special about adolescence that is different than that preteen phase and a lot of new feelings come up. A lot of brain development happens. A ton of brain development happens. And so, it really can, in many cases, feel like, who is my child? Who is this person? It’s like meeting a new person. Not everyone is quite so dramatic, but for me, I do feel like there were huge things that were like, okay, I thought you were like that and now you’re like this. And so, I have been reading this book by Dr. Dan Siegel called Brainstorm, which is about the adolescent brain. And so, he says adolescence is from maybe 12 years old to 24. So, it’s really quite a long period of this really expanding brain, changing brain.

And a couple of the things that he mentions that are special about teenagers are this emotional spark. So that’s that moodiness that we talk about with the hormones and, just lots of strong emotions. Maybe we feel sometimes like we’re back in the toddler days of “tantrums” or feeling strong emotions, where they’re just overtaken with emotion. Social engagement becomes a lot more important to them. Novelty seeking and then creative exploration, which is what we see in teenagers.

And so, I don’t know. I really am loving this phase. I’ve heard a lot from other unschooling parents that the teenage years are just so, so much fun, because we are giving the kids space to really figure out who they are rather than trying to control and direct their path. And I think that that feels, so far to me, like the key to this phase.

ANNA: Yeah. The no expectations, because I actually loved having teens. I loved teens even before I had teens. So, I was kind of excited, because I just think teens are so amazing. They’re thinking all the time about all these different things and they have all these cool ideas and new perspectives. They haven’t been weighed down by time like the rest of us have. And so, it’s really fun to really get into that.

But I do want to say, I also probably did the most work on myself during that time, in that I had to separate myself in terms of recognizing that they’re on their own journey and I can’t control that journey.

When we have this baby that we can pop in the sling and go, we are their comfort because that’s all they want is to be close to us. And that’s it. It’s harder when there’s things we can’t comfort right away. We had some dark times during our teen years and that was okay, too, but it was a lot of work to go, this is okay, this is the human experience and I want to be here. And like you said, just meeting the person in front of me with unconditional love and acceptance along the way.

But there are a couple of broader things I just want to throw out. I have two girls. They’re old now. But I’ve seen a lot of girls in that age and that particular age can be really intense. And I think it can be for boys, too, but it seems to play out a little bit differently. And maybe it’s just personalities more than gender, but that kind of 12 to 15, 16 age can be intense, because they’re pulling away, they’re coming back, they’re pulling away, they’re mad, there’s all the hormones. Their bodies are changing dramatically. It’s a really intense and challenging time. And the moment I got caught up in myself about it was when we had trouble, like if I’m making it about me or I’m getting my feelings hurt or those kind of things. That’s where we would derail.

When I just recognize, this is really hard. What they’re experiencing and learning about themselves and about the world is really hard and if I could give space for that, it just made it so much easier. And again, easy is relative.

But what I also found is they do come out of the other side of it. Because I do feel like there were dramatic personality changes that I noticed during that time as they’re trying things on and figuring out who they are and getting a little bit more moody and dark, and then they come out of it and you’re like, oh, this is cool because it’s bits of the child that you knew and it’s bits of this younger teenager that you saw developing. And then it’s bits of this older person that will come. And it’s such a special experience. I think we get, as unschoolers and choosing to be together all of this time, to see that human development in that way and it’s just really special. And I think if we don’t get caught up in the expectations or trying to tunnel in, it can make a really big difference.

PAM: I loved your point of the different parts of it, the pulling away, the more out and about, and then the coming in, the out and in, knowing that there’s a safe space to come back to and recenter and reground.

But what was really interesting was, for me anyway, you can feel like, okay, they’re teens, they’re pretty self-sufficient now. They can get their own food, they can go to sleep and they can get dressed, all those pieces, and they’re going out and about more. And so you can kind of feel like, oh, okay, now I’m not needed so much and I can go out and do all the things. But what I learned was, and we’ve talked about this before, but I found I was actually needed just as much during this time, but it looked different because it wasn’t a day-to-day, ongoing need. It was more like not needed for a day, a week, a month, three months, and then needed every day for another period of time as they came back in and they were processing and they were figuring stuff out.

That’s why I think it’s so much about our work for ourselves at this time, because the questions aren’t, how do I do this? I want to go do this thing. Can you pick up this thing for me? So, it was less about interests and more about themselves and processing who they want to be and how they fit into the world, and how they engage with other people and the work to separate ourselves and to really be able to see it through their eyes and understand who they are and who they’re wanting to become, and not judging that.

As they’re trying on different, maybe different personality pieces, maybe just different lenses to see something and go, oh my gosh, I would never have that take on that situation, but they aren’t owning that. It’s not like, they’re looking at it this way, so therefore that’s the way they’re going to look at it forever. No, they are exploring, exploring. They’re learning. They’re trying things on, they’re figuring stuff out.

So, when we can separate feeling like we are being judged by them and we can just really see them for who they are and, like you’re saying, who is this person this morning? That’s okay, because they are just trying on so many things and putting things together. And as you were saying, as they come out the other side, they’re picking up what resonated. Like, I missed that part of me as a child. Because maybe they’re ignoring it for a while and they’re trying other pieces. But they might realize they miss that piece of and think, that’s something I want to bring with me as I move forward. And I found this new piece and I really like that. And right now I want to to mix that in.

So, yeah, you never know what mix you’re going to get each day, which was just so curious and fun. And it was just so interesting and fascinating to tag along and learn all the different things that they were pursuing, they were trying on. Also, absolutely not easy at times, but when it wasn’t easy, that felt like time for me to work on myself. It’s also not easy for them, so understanding that. Then I also not only work on myself, not bring me in it, but to be able to help them process and move through that, whether they’re internal processors or external processors.

For an internal processor, maybe it’s me giving them space, maybe it’s me just showing extra care during that time. And after they’ve processed it internally, being open and available for any conversation they want to have at that point. Or the external processor is talking about it again and again and over and over and over and over, so it’s so different for each child. It’s so different for a child at different points. It’s a beautiful, beautiful season. And I don’t like thinking about as hard, but it kept me on my toes. It kept me reminding myself who I wanted to be. It kept me just being open, being curious, being empathetic, and just seeing through another person’s eyes and that has never steered me wrong, child, teen, or adult.

ERIKA: I had something pop in my mind while I was thinking about that. I remember my mom recently talking about my teen years. All three of us, my brother, sister and I, are really close in age and so, she had a lot of the intensity of teenagehood all at once together. And she said that, at first, it was really shocking how much our emotions, our kind of emotional explosions had suddenly increased, and it just felt like it was all the time this heightened emotion. And so, at first, she was getting amped up with us, like we were angry, and so, then she’s trying to meet us there and she’d get angry and upset and we’d like have these fights, arguments, or whatever.

And then, she said, “But then I realized how quickly you would move through that emotional outburst and I would still be sitting here like, what just happened? And still feeling upset.” And she’s like, “So, I just stopped going on the emotional ride and I was just like, they’re okay.” And so, I think that’s like that not taking it personally, and letting them have their experience, but not getting worked up into it where it’s like I have to solve everything or I need to get myself all worked up and heightened. And so, being that calm presence, being there at the end of it, being there to support through it, those things are super important to me with my teens now.

ANNA: I like the rollercoaster analogy. It’s like we can be right there next watching and being there when they get off, but we don’t have to ride that, because honestly, I did do that at times and ended up feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. Then they’re off doing fine. And I’m like, wait a minute.

And so, then I had that recovery time, but it wasn’t my journey. It wasn’t mine to do. But I could still be there.

And that reminded me of something that came up as you all were talking is just the connection and supporting autonomy and agency we do when they’re younger really lends itself to this time, because that foundation is so helpful during the teen years. Because as they go off, they do come back and when something happens that doesn’t feel great or off or whatever, they know that there’s no judgment and that they can talk about it and that we’ll be there.

And I think that was such an important part for me, because I felt they were safer that way. Because some people worry about safety in this and I felt so good about our connection that I knew they would come back if they needed something and I was there with that unconditional, loving presence.

And so, that’s what I wanted to work on. I wanted to make sure I was doing the work for myself that I could show up in that way. And I thought it helped us through those times, because again, there’s a lot lability and the going off and coming back. It’s a really beautiful time though. And again, I learned so much about myself and I learned so much just about being in relationship with other humans.

PAM: I know. I think so. And I think it’s also just to point out, too, when we talk about it. Feeling good, et cetera, but it’s not about, oh, I’m feeling good and ultimately they’re gonna make choices that I’m comfortable with. No, and that’s what I think as you were, were talking there, Anna, I too felt like the relationship and the connection was the foundation that I needed and the nonjudgmental environment.

It doesn’t mean therefore I have to agree with every choice that they make. I can say, I would never make that choice. That choice like just fills me with discomfort. Yet, seeing through your eyes, I can see how they got there. Even if they wouldn’t make that choice again. It’s not about us being totally comfortable with every choice that they make or everything that they do, but knowing or feeling that they have a space that they can come back to, even when they’re like, holy crap, this did not go the way I was expecting.

Off they went towards something or this relationship that they thought would go one way and it went completely sideways. It’s not about them being totally happy with how things go and us being totally happy with how they’re moving through their days. But that foundation of the relationship, so that they know there’s a place they can come to, to process that, to talk about that, where they can get support and help and ideas for moving through for where they find themselves now.

I think that, foundationally, is what we found to be helpful so that they didn’t feel like, now, I’ve screwed up and I’m on my own. Which just means there’s a much greater chance that it’s just going to keep going more and more sideways. So, they find the spot where it’s like, oh, okay, I think I need some input. I think I would like some help, whatever. Whether it’s just conversation or like, come pick me up. Any of those moments that we have that relationship where they at least feel comfortable enough to do that.

Okay. So, are we ready? Oh, you want to add more?

ANNA: Okay. I think I’m going to do this here and I’m a little bit worried it may go sideways, but we’re going to try, because this is something I heard a really long time ago and there are parts of the language of it that I don’t love, but it actually was helpful to me. And that was, when we’re looking at the learning of unschooled children as they grow, I remember somebody saying, and this was 25 years ago probably, that in the beginning when they’re young and they’re toddlers and they’re young, they are ahead. You see them. They’re just learning machines. You see the learning. It’s so easy to see all the things that they’re learning and doing, and you just see like, wow. They’re not being pinned in by first grade that you have to do. They’re learning about bones and paleontology and all these things when they’re young.

And then there’s this middle age where they look more behind and basically it’s because there’s a lot of language at school, in terms of particular math functions or these kind of things that actually don’t apply to everyday life. They’re things that we aren’t even using now. And so, our kids, when they’re in that kind of middle age that we’re talking about now, this kind of preteen, early teen age, they’re just diving deep into their interests, which may or may not include the quadratic equation that the neighbors are talking about. And so, then it’s like, oh, okay, are they behind now?

And then this next phase that we’re about to go to, Pam, with this kind of older age. You see like, oh wow. What they know is how to learn, how to figure things out, how to be in the world, how to be in relationship, how to go and pursue the things that they’re interested in, because that’s what they’ve been fostering all along. And so, then they look ahead again, because then you’ve got these people that are struggling in college, because they were supposed to go there, but they don’t know what they want to do and they don’t really have a sense of who they are. And so, I don’t know. It was kind of helpful for me and I’ve seen it play out over the years.

And it’s part of what we talked about last time in the Plenty of Time episode. It’s a long game. And so, if you’re taking any slice along the way, whether it’s, oh, look how much they know, and how amazing, if you’re hanging on to those external pieces, you’re going to find yourself not in the best place. But if you look at it as a long game of like, what’s happening? Am I showing up for this person that’s showing up in front of me? Are we connected? Am I facilitating? Are we living our life? I just wanted to share it, because it was interesting and helpful to me at different times. So, I’m putting it out there and now we can go down to you.

ERIKA: Well, I was just going to say, it’s like a description of the outside messages that we’ll receive, The outside messages we’ll receive when they’re so little are like, oh my gosh, they’re so amazing. And then as they get bigger, but do they know the math? All these times tables or whatever. And then, the next one is like, wow, this young adult is so amazing. So, the outside messages that we receive at these different transition times are so strong and so particular and so cultural. And so, it’ll trigger those memories in us, of us at those different ages. And it just brings up so much. So, this is our internal work to do to put it all in perspective.

ANNA: It’s a long game to put it all in perspective. That’s what I wanted to get from it, because I think there’s value to understanding that those messages are rooted in something different and we’re looking at it in a very different way. This is a long game, this whole human experience.

PAM: Yes. And depending on when you start unschooling, you get all those early messages like, oh man, that’s amazing, and everything. And it can really throw you for a loop when it’s like, okay, now they’re talking about their science experiments and their more detailed math and all those pieces. The curriculum changes to what is apparently more advanced, et cetera. Our child is into whatever their interest is and maybe that interest looks schoolish, but maybe it doesn’t. So, it’s so helpful and fascinating for us to, again, do that personal work to see, are we using those external messages to validate ourselves and our choice to do this? Because that’ll eventually shoot you in the foot at some point one way or the other.

This last transition we are talking about is teen into young adult years. I loved your adolescence piece, Erika, up to the age of 24. I can totally see that. And I will put in the show notes a link to our podcast episode earlier about What’s So Magical About Age 18? because that is a whole other world of outside messages that come up during this transition.

Like, okay, but what about college? But what job are they getting? All those pieces that that can come up and it’s yet another stage of work for us to do. But also, back to supporting our kids. And the thing is now they’ve hit an age where they too hear all those messages.

So, there’s processing sometimes for them to do as well. But also, maybe they’ve found their thing, but also they’re still exploring. Again, it doesn’t need to be, oh, you’re 18 and now you need to look like this. It’s like, oh my gosh. You can keep being you because you are awesome and to be able to support them through that.

If you find yourself being buffeted around by outside messages, those are clues. It’s like, okay, I need to do some work and figure out why I’m being affected by all these outer messages and find that foundation. Because unschooling, from my blog posts to these hundreds of podcast episodes, it really is about being a human in the world. It really is. It eventually, quickly, becomes not really about school at all. School or not school isn’t really the fundamental question. So, just to help them and support them and engage with them as they make these transitions and it’s not really age-dependent. It really is to do with the person and what they want to explore next.

And the piece of personality is so interesting. We’ve got lots of years to look back on. And we can start to see the threads. When you were interested in that thing, I thought it was about that thing, but really it was just about this slice of that thing and now I can see how you grabbed these various slices and brought them together and now I can see how you’re wanting to move forward in this direction. It’s super interesting and fascinating. And also we’re not going to label you and say, now you are this for the rest of your life.

It is a really fun stage. But again, there’s just so much. There’s so much with moving out. There’s so much with college. Doors aren’t closed, either, as much because we don’t have that expectation that at 18 you do this and then you do this. It’s much more about them feeling it out and seeing what feels good for them, and I hesitate to say, feels good for them, because for people listening that might be like, oh, well they’re not going to do anything hard if they’re only going to do what feels good. But that’s not really what it is.

Because it can feel good to do really challenging things, because I want the thing on the other side. So, doing things that feel good doesn’t mean that they’re always easy, which I think people can equate with, especially in the young adult years. It’s easy maybe to make the culturally acceptable choices and there’s processing in making other kinds of choices. But man, sometimes those other choices just fit that person like a glove.

ERIKA: Yeah. I really do recommend that other episode for sure, because that was a really good in-depth conversation of this age period. But just what comes to mind for me is that learning is lifelong. There’s no finish line. I think I talked about on that one the idea of, how’s this child going to turn out when they’re an adult? That idea. It’s not about turning out, because we’re all still learning and growing and changing and so, I’m still turning out. I feel like that’s the thing to keep grounding in when we have the young adult children. It’s just like, you still have all the options. You still are allowed to grow and change and there’s no one right way.

ANNA: And that’s the piece for me, too. And I love that you mentioned the threads, Pam, because I even think about my own life and the different jobs and careers and interests that I’ve had over my 55 years. It’s like, oh, there are these interesting threads. And I think that can be really cool. But it didn’t always look traditional. It didn’t always look like what they sell you, that you’re going to go to college and get one job and you’ll have a job until you retire. This is not really how it works anymore, even for our generation, and much less so for the people behind us. And I think that is something that I really have enjoyed watching.

And when you were talking about it feels good, I mean, I will say there’s been times for both of my adult kids that hasn’t felt good. They’re trying to figure out like, I don’t know, this doesn’t feel good. What do I want to do? And that’s part of it, too, because I’ve been there as well. What do I want to do next? Does this make sense? Am I happy in in the choices that I’ve made? How do I want to do it?

And so, what I love and what I’m trying to just leave space for them to see is that yeah, that’s life. We have these opportunities and these times and we can figure things out. And if we don’t like it, we can switch and pivot.

In the work that I do now working with individuals and couples and families, I see so many older adults that are not so happy that really have gone along someone else’s path and it didn’t serve them. And so, I do think this time for our kids who are growing up into adulthood and figuring it out, it can be bumpy still. But there’s a connection piece that’s different and there’s just this understanding that there’s not one right way and that we can try different things and that that’s okay. There’s no judgment about that. And so, that piece I really love about what we can bring to everyone, because I think really everyone wants that unconditional love and acceptance.

And so, I love being able to offer that to these teens and young adults where it can feel so fraught. I have a client right now who is in college about to graduate and, oh my gosh. I just feel for her. She has a traditional mainstream upbringing, but it’s not even that. It’s just it’s such a big, weighty time. She’s putting so much weight on everything. And when I’m introducing to her the idea of, it’s okay for you to change your mind, like you could do that for a little while and then change your mind. She’s like, what? And so, I love just introducing that idea to all of us, that we don’t have to bring so much weight to everything.

I think my kids taught me that, too, when they were little, like, we don’t have to bring so much weight to all the decisions. We can learn and pivot no matter what happens.

ERIKA: I had one other thing pop into my mind, which is, for all these different transitional ages and these seasons that we go through, sometimes there could be something that feels really challenging, and so, we resist it or we want them to get through that phase, get through that season, or, “I just can’t wait till the next age, because this is so challenging.” You know what I mean? And we’ve talked about this on the Network so many times and probably on the podcast too, but just the idea that nothing lasts forever, but being okay with it lasting forever is often the key for it to be able to change.

So, the more we’re holding onto, I just hope they change, sometimes the less likely it is for them to move through that. And so, I think we can do that for ourselves as adults when our lives are challenging and we’re going through a hard time, but we can also do it when our kids are going through a hard time. Just coming to that acceptance of, even if this lasts forever, we’re going to make it through and sometimes, just that release can help bring a different mindset. You give yourself space to be more open and curious about what can happen.

ANNA: Yeah. We’re exactly where we need to be.

PAM: Exactly. And I love that you brought that up, because that has been my experience. When things would just get so like, oh my gosh, when is this going to be over? Not that I’m saying that to them, but I’m feeling it. When I can get to a place of, the world isn’t over even if it’s like this forever, then I can release the need for change and get back to that openness and see. All of a sudden, I see more possibilities with things being this way. And it might be magic, but that energy I have with them and my engagement with them obviously must be different somehow.

Even if I feel like I’m not really saying anything different, the energy that I’m bringing to it is, because so often, yes, that felt like it was the catalyst in them being able to release, too. We must have been energetically stuck with each other and now they could release anything they were feeling from me and just really feel into themselves and they would find like just a new baby step in a new direction. It’s fascinating to see an action, isn’t it?

All right, so I think we have covered this one enough. I want to thank everybody very much for joining us. I hope you found something interesting in this conversation. I really enjoyed talking about the different seasons alongside each other, because then we get to see the threads that are common to these different stages, even though they can look very, very different.

And please remember to check out the Living Joyfully Shop and the Living Joyfully Network, because I know Erika talked about how much she loved that, but I know Anna and I do, too. There are amazing families in there. And it is just like, our kids are long grown adults and we still find it just so fascinating to be engaging with parents who are intentional and who’ve had wide ranging different lives and experiences. So, it is a lovely place. And we definitely invite you to join us there and we wish everyone a lovely week. Talk to you soon. Bye bye!

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In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about one of Anna’s favorite sayings, “There’s plenty of time.” This mindset shift is so helpful in many different circumstances, making it a very useful tool!

We talk about using it in busy moments, when thinking about learning and child development, and even in more urgent situations. This mindset shift to “there’s plenty of time” can help can help bring clarity and calm and shift us out of fear-based tunnel vision.

We had a lot of fun talking about it and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Unschooling Wobbles, coaching calls, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and I am joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hello to you both!

ANNA AND ERIKA: Hello!

PAM: So, today we are going to dive into the mindset shift that has been invaluable to me over the years, and that’s that there’s plenty of time. It is something that I still regularly need to remind myself, particularly when challenging times arise. Because what it does is it helps me transition out of the tunnel vision that fear or challenge inspires in me. It’s like, oh my gosh, this thing happened. I’ve got to fix it. I’ve got to move as quick as possible. And it helps me get out of that mode and into more open and curious, so that I can lean more into the situation, into what’s actually going on, who’s involved. Because truly, even though so many things that go sideways feel like emergencies, they’re not. So, that is what we are going to be diving into.

But before we do that, we just want to invite you to check out the Living Joyfully online shop. There are courses, my books are there. There’s coaching options that are already all available. And this fall, we will be adding calendars as well as a new book, an audio book that I am putting together of all the talks that I’ve given over the years, and some audiobook editions of my existing books. I’ve got some more of those. Anyway, we are really enjoying creating a one-stop shop to support you as you navigate relationships with your loved ones and deep dive into your unschooling journey. And you can follow the link in the show notes or just go to livingjoyfullyshop.com.

And now, Anna, since I learned about this mindset shift from you many, many years ago, would you like to get us started?

ANNA: I would! Yeah, it is funny, because so many people associate this with me. Actually, a friend from the Network made me this card. So, if you’re on YouTube you’ll see this. Maybe we can post it. But it’s this really nice little embroidery on a card that says Plenty of Time, because I say it so often. And it’s just because of me, because I really need to.

We live in a culture that has a really strong sense of urgency and brings sense of urgency to everything from academics to when you’re in the medical system to when you’re just in your day to day, and with growth and development or anything. There’s just this imposed sense of urgency. And I think my personality just really gets caught up in that. I’m kind of a go go gal anyway. And so, I just get going and I just have this urgency. And what I’ve found is that in some arenas, it serves me. I get a lot of things done. But in relationships, it was really causing problems, because I was rolling over people and not really getting to know them or understand or take the pause that I needed to to really understand a situation. I was making assumptions. I was looking at it through my eyes only.

And a lot of times, it felt like things were so off or were having a big conflict and years ago, I was like, what’s happening? Why is this? Why is this feeling hard? And then I recognized, then I brought this mantra in for myself. It’s like, there’s plenty of time. I don’t have to solve everything right now. There really isn’t a sense of urgency. It’s so often just manufactured. And as soon as I say that to myself, okay, there’s plenty of time, I just feel my energy come down. I just feel so much calmer and then I’m really able to use the other tools that we talk about so often, just listening and validating and leaving space and all of those pieces.

And so, it comes into play in so many ways. So, it’s going to be fun to talk about it and see what it means to the two of you, but that’s really what it is for me. It’s about shedding that sense of urgency that I’ve been handed and can get caught up in, but especially bringing it into relationships and problem solving. Because everybody feels so much more comfortable and seen and calm. And what I’ve found is that when I can bring that calm to a situation, it just changes it.

ERIKA: Absolutely. Yeah. I love the phrase. I love using it. And one thing I really love about it is it applies to everything. Because it really is just about calming myself. And so, it doesn’t matter if I’m doing future tripping, scary things about, this is going to be terrible in five years or whatever, or if it’s just in this moment, we have to get to the meeting or we have to go to the restaurant, or whatever it is. So, it’s all those little day-to-day moments. And also it applies to, why aren’t they reading fluently yet? You know what I mean? How are they going to be able to do their laundry and stuff?

So, anytime those fears get in mind, there’s plenty of time, feels like taking a deep breath. It feels like giving myself space to get out of that tunnel vision and get out of that fear vision that I can get into just because of stress of life.

And so, I was thinking that part of why we have this urgency, or maybe it’s a symptom, but in school, right? So, you do a class and then the bell rings and you’d have another class, and then the bell rings and you have another class. And so, we get trained into this, onto the next thing, onto the next thing. Like we should always be moving forward with this quickness. And so, the plenty of time idea to me feels so good and healthy and it’s like giving a gift to my kids to give them space to not say, okay, onto the next thing. Onto the next. Like, that’s enough of that, let’s move on. There’s plenty of time. They can spend as much time as they need on what they want to do. And we don’t have to be in a rush and fall into that sense of urgency.

PAM: I love that you brought that school lens to it, too, because as you were talking there, it reminded me not just from class to class to class, but how much of our lives in school are timed. Tests are timed. Everything that you do is pointing towards, I need to do this quickly. The quicker I can fill out my test, the more of it I’ve done and the higher mark I get. Doing things quickly is held up as the goal, right? So, it is a surprisingly big shift to release that need, that urgency, to dig into why it feels urgent. Is it because I just want to do it fast so that I look like I did it successfully?

And then for me, another piece, or another layer as I pulled back that urgency thing, it was, I discovered more often than not, it was because I was feeling uncomfortable in the situation. So, there was discomfort and it was more about trying to make myself comfortable again in whatever the situation was. I wanted to solve it fast so that I looked good, but also I was uncomfortable with this nebulousness or this unsolved piece of our lives. And so, getting more comfortable with discomfort, not seeing discomfort as a bad thing, but seeing it as just like part of the process it, I came to see it was where I could get to that curious thing.

Now, if I just sat there and did nothing and just tried to pretend that it would go away, my discomfort was just extended. And then we just got more and more uncomfortable, because we weren’t really talking about it, and we weren’t really making any movement forward. I was going to say progress, but then that brings in judgment to it. But it’s that idea.

But it was so valuable to me to be able to take that step back, to be able to say, you know what? I can sit with this discomfort for a while. I can get curious, I can learn more things. Like you were saying, Anna, we learn so much when we actually start looking at the people involved and observing their reactions, actually hearing what they’re sharing. Actually processing enough for myself so I can share what I’m feeling or thinking in a way that isn’t judgmental about what other people are feeling, but just another thread through the situation.

Because the other valuable piece of that is then other people don’t feel so defensive, like they have to dig in and defend whatever their perspective is or whatever direction they are thinking they’d like it to unfold. And we can just release a lot of that tension so that we can have just more conversations around it.

But if we don’t think there’s plenty of time to have those conversations, we’re like, okay, like this is the best solution. This is our fastest way. You’ll like this. Trust me. And we hold onto that so tightly. Even if we don’t force people to do it, our energy comes with, this is the best solution. And in our conversations, we’re picking out the pieces that align with that. Oh yes, you said this, see that fits with this that I’m wanting to do. And what we’re trying to do is navigate everybody else to come to the conclusion that our path was the best versus actually working with each other. But that takes time, doesn’t it?

ANNA: Right. And I think it’s so helpful to just unpack that idea that faster is better and even an efficiency lens. Because I live with someone who has an efficiency lens about certain things and it’s really interesting to see the rub of that. It’s like, where’s it coming from? What is that idea that the straight path is better, it’s faster? Where does that come from? Because I think in a lot of situations, outside of ourselves, it’s serving someone else. In school, it’s serving just that we’ve got to keep moving and we’ve got to keep getting 30 kids turned out of this and getting them through the test.

And I was always that super fast test taker. I’m a super fast eater. I just really bought all into this fast is better and efficiency lens. And again, I think there are times when it serves me, but I really do think I missed a lot in those days. I think I didn’t retain that material, because I really was just quickly going through the test to spit it back out.

And what I loved about watching my kids when they were younger and as they grew up was just, it was a richer experience where they really took time with things and made mistakes. We talk about this where it’s like, “made mistakes” is kind of a school concept again, but for them, it was just like, ooh, try this and pivot here and do this.

And when you just really embody this sense that there’s plenty of time, there is no wrong way. And with each turn and with each choice that you make, you’re learning something about yourself, about the people that you’re with, even about the particular subject, do I like this? Do I not like this? Do I want to do it a different way? And I just feel like I short-circuited a lot of that learning for myself when I was younger. I feel like my kids gave me that back to just recognize, like, yeah, I just want to slow it down so that I can connect with the people so that I can learn more about myself.

I feel like that’s another piece of this is when we’re on that fast track, it can distract us a little bit from looking at ourselves and understanding our own pieces. And I’ve definitely been guilty of that. And so, I feel like as I’ve gotten older, and then as my kids kind of taught me this lesson, it was like, oh, okay. It goes back to what you’re saying, Pam, sitting with discomfort, because sometimes when we’re learning things about ourselves, it’s a little uncomfortable. But learning that, hey, I can sit with this and learn more about myself. And maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but it’s like, now I feel like that’s why we’re here. That’s what this human journey is all about. And so, I love this little quick reminder. Because, like you said, Erika, it’s like taking a deep breath and whew, here we are.

ERIKA: Yeah. As you both were talking, I was thinking about life with little kids. I feel like this is where this first came to mind was life with little kids. Because imagine when you go for a walk with a little kid, you take one step out the door and they are looking at something and it just feels like it’s going to take forever, and why are we stopped here? That kind of thing. And so, I feel like, a lot of us have had that experience of like, oh my gosh, my toddler just wants to do this same thing for hours and hours, and how can we get through it?

And so, I think that was the beginning of, deep breath. There’s no rush. We don’t have to move on to the next thing. But once you can get in that head space of, there’s plenty of time and let’s just see how things unfold, I don’t need to direct, I don’t need to point out the right way to do something or the thing that I think is important or whatever, and just kind of letting things unfold for our kids. They can learn so much more. They can learn more about themselves, they can learn more about the things that they’re interested in.

And so, I think that sense of urgency or that checklist that we might have in our mind of the next thing. Well, they learned how to do this, so then the next thing is this, having that mental checklist and that sense of urgency really gets in the way of them creating their own learning journey.

And I think the same thing applies to us. And we had many years of really not knowing that there’s plenty of time and not having the space to learn about ourselves. And so, that deep breath and that time and settling our brains down to be like, it doesn’t have to be the next thing. Just focusing on what’s in this moment and relaxing into this moment, it’s just so powerful.

PAM: It’s so powerful. And I just love how you can take this little nugget and apply it everywhere. We talked about relationships. We’ve talked about challenges, talked about learning. It’s just so vastly valuable in all of those spaces to be able to peel back that layer. For me, that’s part of the transition to like lifelong learning from school, curriculum-based learning. There’s plenty of time for that thing to bubble up and there’s plenty of time for them to stay stuck with this one thing that they’re really focused on right now.

It just applies everywhere and it’s a valuable little thing just to bring to our days and really explore just that push that we feel. Because we can feel it in so many ways. And as I just think back over my days, it’s just like, okay, this and then this and then this. But truly there is so little that is an emergency. We can take the time to actually engage with it, to sit with it for a little bit. And as you both said, we just learn so much when we do that. I learned so much from watching my kids and I really had to go back to that beginning place and not just figure it out myself, because when I looked to them, I could see it in action. I could see them taking the time and I’m like, oh. Why aren’t they wanting to do this and this?

Sometimes I tried offering things, but I was also cognizant enough to, when I got some pushback or just like completely ignored, not to have expectations around things, especially when we bring them to our kids. Because they may be in a place where even though that could be really cool and interesting to them, right now they’re still here. There’s plenty of time for them to notice that thing.

So, for me, it’s just like, I can plant a seed and then maybe the next day or the next month or two years down the road, it’s like, hey, remember when you mentioned this thing? I’d like to hear more about that.

So, there’s plenty of time just works in just about any situation. You can use it just about every day in our society.

ANNA: It does! And I know sometimes, people will ask, what do I do? I’m frustrated or I’m not showing up in the way I want to. Or, we’re having these conflicts. And they just want to know, what’s going on? What are some options? And I think this piece is really a great place to start. Because I think anytime we’re under time pressure, and I think it’s probably worse for some personalities, mine being one of them, but time pressure builds this feeling like, I want to do a good job, I want to get there on time. All these other outside messages that I’ve had.

What I found is, again, I wasn’t showing up as the person I wanted to when I was bringing that sense of urgency under that time pressure. And so, I think it’s a great place to start to just go, okay, so we’re having an interaction, like you were saying, Erika, we’re trying to get out the door or something, and I feel myself like getting a little energy about it, and what if I just change it?

And that’s the kind of situation I would use it, in like, you know what? There’s actually plenty of time. And my energy would come down. The kids’ energy would come down. David’s energy would come down. And we’d get out the door. And so, I think it’s just when you find yourself feeling that feeling, especially if there’s a tightness to it, just see how it feels to breathe into, there’s actually plenty of time.

Because, like you said, Pam, the amount of times that it’s an actual emergency, you’re not even going to be thinking. You’re going to act. You’re going to pull that kid out of the road. You’re going to do the thing that you need to do. You’re going to take care of the wound. Whatever the thing is happening, that’s an actual emergency. There won’t be time to be getting irritated with people or thinking about what’s happening in your head. So, that’s the clue to me that, wait a minute, this is about me. And what happens if I bring that different energy?

ERIKA: I was thinking about the emergencies, too, and honestly it helps then, too. If you feel like you’re freaking out and there are too many things. It’s like, there’s plenty of time. It’s my reminder, too, it’s just one step at a time. So, I know I have these moments, not emergencies, but say I’m hungry and then they’re also hungry. And then also the phone rings. And the dog needs to go out. All these things could pile up in a split second where it felt like everything was fine and now everything is busy. And so, if in that moment when I start to feel myself getting overwhelmed, I could just be like, there’s plenty of time, one thing at a time, one step at a time, it just helps in every situation.

PAM: Yeah, it’s true. It really does. And I think it’s just such a great reminder that we have agency, because so often when things like that are piling up on us, we feel like all we can do is react. But I think the shift that there’s plenty of time helps me. It helps me ground. It helps me center. It helps me process a little bit so that I feel more like I’m responding. Because like you’re both saying, when we react, we bring so much negative energy to the situation. And then people start reacting to us, and then it’s just like this ping pong ball of stress that goes back and forth and back and forth and back and forth till we’re all completely frustrated.

And somebody says, well then we’re not going. And too bad. But, oh my gosh, when I could remember to bring that energy of, there’s plenty of time, so that everybody’s energy is down, we would actually get out faster than if I was trying to prod everybody, like literally time-wise faster and feeling so much better, when I wasn’t constantly prodding people and prodding people and instead I was supporting, asking, do you need some help with this? Just not getting in people’s way, not constantly poking them. I think when I’m feeling an urgency, I’m poking people and then they’re just like, screw that. Or they’re poking back.

ANNA: Putting up a wall.

PAM: Exactly. The wall goes up and then we move slower.

ANNA: Right. I’m going to repeat something you said, Erika, just because I think it’s so important. I love this. We’re talking about how to use it in these moments, but it’s both, right? It’s using it in those intense moments, but it is also that there’s plenty of time to learn the things that they need to learn. There’s plenty of time for relationships and friendships to develop and grow later on. Because we can get stuck in our heads about, but do they have enough friends or are they doing enough this or this or that?

And so, that was another time I found it so valuable was just like, but actually this is a long game. If we’re lucky enough, we have a long life to figure all of these pieces out. And if it’s a short life, then even more I want to be just doing what we love and enjoying each other. So, it really helped calm me from both sides. And so, I love again that it’s useful in these moments and it’s also useful when we get in a spiral that’s a little more, out there, future worry, esoteric.

PAM: Yes. Me too. Well, thank you so much to everyone for joining us. We hope that you enjoyed our conversation and even picked up a nugget or two for your unschooling journey and, let’s face it, life and living, because this is just something fundamental, I think, to human beings, or at least to those of us who grew up in that more conventional school-based environment where the pressure came to do things fast and do things right, don’t make mistakes. All that stuff really plays into that fear and that urgency we feel. So, just reminding ourselves that we have plenty of time and playing with that throughout the day in all sorts of situations can really help us see some really fun layers where we can apply it and it can be useful.
And remember to check out The Living Joyfully Shop at, not surprisingly livingjoyfullyshop.com. And we wish everyone a lovely week. Thanks so much! Bye!

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We are back with another episode in our Unschooling Stumbling Blocks series and we’re talking about how people are different.

“People are different” has become a common refrain on the Exploring Unschooling Podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network and for good reason! Once we sink into the reality that people are truly so different—their priorities, their brains, their interests, the way they express themselves, their likes and dislikes, their bodies, their personalities, and so on—it becomes so much easier to assume positive intent and to meet people where they are. We can more easily see through their eyes and understand that there’s no one right way.

We’ve been really excited to dive more deeply into this idea. It was a very fun conversation and we hope you find it helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

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So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello, I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Hello to you both.

PAM AND ERIKA: Hello!

ANNA: Before we get started, I want to encourage you to check out our shop where you can find books, courses, coaching, and information about the Living Joyfully Network, including our new course Four Pillars of Unschooling, where we explore four foundational ideas and paradigm shifts that can help you along your journey. Especially if it’s new and really if not, but especially if it’s new, I think it’s a good framework to start to understand, oh, okay, these are some important paradigm shifts.

The shop has resources and support for really every stage of your journey and different levels, whether you want some personalized attention with coaching, or if you want to work through some courses, or again, join the Network, which gives you a community of people living all over the world. It’s so fun to see their lives and what’s happening with their families. You can find the link in the show notes, or you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com.

So, today I’m very excited. We’re going to be talking about the idea that people are different. And while it sounds simple, it is so layered and not understanding it can definitely be a stumbling block in our relationships. And once you really embrace it, I feel like it becomes so fun just noticing all the ways and finding ways to apply this lens.

So, we’re going to have a lot of fun talking about that today. I think it takes some of the mystery and frustration out of other people’s behavior when we recognize, oh, this is a people are different thing. We tend to think everyone sees and experiences the world in the same way, and so when they don’t, it can actually cause some friction. So, I’m very excited to dive into this very broad topic with both of you. Erika, do you want to get us started?

ERIKA: I would love to. This might be one of my most favorite topics to talk about these days, and I’m just really excited to see what we are able to touch on today, while also knowing that there will be so much more that we won’t even get to, because it is such a big, rich topic to explore once we start thinking about it.
And so, I really think that we started putting that “people are different” lens into words in the past few years because of some deep dives that we have all done individually and together, probably partly inspired by the deep conversations we have on the Network around personalities and learning about the different people there.

And I think we can, on a surface level, say, “People are different,” and everyone would agree like, “Well, yeah, of course.” But the deeper stuff, like, “No, people are really different,” can take a while to wrap our heads around.

And so, for example, the way our brains work is different and our personalities and temperaments are different. Of course, everyone has different past experiences and maybe past trauma that impacts what they do today, and so that contributes to our differences. Our go-to defense mechanisms and our reactions to things and all the beliefs we have about the world can just be so, so different.

That’s not even to mention fun things like our interests and what lights us up, and our bodies and what makes our bodies feel good, our curiosity and what our curiosity leads us to. So, if you just start to think about putting all these different aspects of ourselves together into one complex human, it’s no wonder that so many times we could feel like it’s so hard to communicate or it’s hard to understand why other people are making such different decisions from what we would do, but it’s just because we’re all so different.

PAM: We’re all so different. And for me, I just love to keep coming back to this idea, like you were saying, there’s just so many layers to it. Introvert, extrovert, just to grab something that’s pretty common for people to consider. “Oh yeah. They don’t like going out as much.” Or, “They like to be around people all the time.” When you just use that lens on its own, when you bring it to any moment, it can help you understand people a little bit more. It can help you understand that they don’t want to hang out in big crowds for long times, but also, when they’re at home with a small number of people, it’s so energizing. To see that lens in each moment helps you understand their reactions.

People are different. Even with an introversion, there are so many differences and layers. What helps them? What kinds of situations are worth it? All those pieces. So, when you just start digging into that a little bit, you find so many nuances.

When we first came to unschooling and I first started thinking about this stuff, when my kids made different choices than me, it would not make sense. Like, “But, A, B, C, like of course D!” Until I actually started to look at them as a human being, as a whole human being, understanding that they are truly different from me and understanding that me reaching D as a conclusion and them reaching E as a conclusion are both absolutely fundamentally true. D would work better for me and E would work better for them. So, now how can we work together and find an F that has enough of D and enough of E that we’re all pretty happy with this plan? And off we go down the F path.

And then, like you were talking, layer after layer after layer. There is just so much that makes up a human being that can be different from us, and it just helped me not be frustrated, not feeling like, oh, I need to explain this again, because they must not be getting it, because it makes utter and complete sense to me.

ANNA: Right. I think that’s what I love about it. And we get at it at different ways, but I feel like this is a really quick thing that comes to mind that pulls me to a place of curiosity, because if I find myself feeling frustrated or like, why are they making that choice? Or if I start taking something personally about the way somebody’s doing something, I can quickly go, wait a minute! Is this a “people are different” thing? And I can just pause a second and give a little bit of space to bring curiosity to it.

Because I think we really do so quickly go to thinking that everybody sees the world the same way that we do, and that, “Of course that would be the solution!” And so, yes, over the years we’ve kind of dabbled around these things. “Oh, well, but I’m an introvert and I have this friend that’s an extrovert and she does things differently than I do,” but it’s so much deeper than that. And I love that you touched on it, Erika, too, that we all bring our past traumas, our past history, our past learning. So, it doesn’t even have to be trauma, but a lot of us have some trauma that we’re bringing into the moment. But it’s just our experiences. What was our family like? Where did we grow up culturally? What did we learn?

And it’s so interesting when you start having these conversations with people, because it could be things that you wouldn’t even think would be at odds. I was talking to a Network member friend about this, and she really loves walkable cities. And she just said it to me, “But if everybody could live in a walkable city, they would see how amazing it is!” And I’m like, no. I’m like, “If everybody could live in the woods, they would see how amazing it is!” And so, we just laughed about it, because we both are so passionate about the things we’ve learned about ourselves.

And I think it ties in with our unschooling journey so well because that’s the environment we want to create, where our kids can learn these things about themselves, have this self-awareness that it took a lot of us a long time to figure out. Because I pushed through a lot of things about myself, because it didn’t maybe fit the mold. And so, then it takes time to realize what’s true for us. And so, I love that environment where we can learn what we like and don’t like, what works for us and doesn’t work for us. How we process something, what we need to be able to process something. Do we need quiet? Do we need noise? Do we need headphones? Pam wears headphones and thinks about things. That’s amazing to me. I cannot have multiple inputs like that as I’m trying to form a thought. I love music and headphones, but not for when I’m thinking or working.

So, you can go, “Oh, my kids are listening to music, but I see them doing something.” And for me, before this understanding, I might’ve gone, “They’re not doing anything productive. There’s no way they could be because they’ve got headphones on.” And then I meet Pam and she’s like, “I need to have music going, or other things happening.” And it’s like, oh my gosh, how cool. And so, in that little example that I gave, what I want to watch there is my judgment about it. I want to watch my judgment about someone else, because if I bring curiosity, then I can learn more. “Tell me about that. Do you love listening to the music when you’re doing it? What are you listening to? What feels the best?” And then we connect.

ERIKA: I love it so much. And I think we could come up with a million little tiny examples like that. I’m just thinking with the noise and having some sounds going on. Maya says that same thing. She’s like, “It’s too quiet in here. I just need some sounds going on.” And for me, it’s the opposite. But it’s the same thing in so many different areas. And so, one way to approach that with curiosity is to do that paradigm shift of “there’s no one right way.” Because we can get stuck there, like, “I figured out the right way.”

Here’s another, more hormonal example. At night, it’s cold. That’s my experience. In the morning, it is hot. That’s also my experience. Now, Josh, he has a completely opposite experience at night. He is dying of heat, but I could try to convince him that doesn’t make sense. It’s cold at night and it gets hot in the morning. And he’d be like, no, that makes no sense. And so, realizing that’s my experience, what I’ve learned from my own life is there is not the one right way.

It helps our relationships so much, because it helps us to assume positive intent about another person. It helps us to put our picture of them into greater clarity if we can be open and curious about what they’re telling us about their own experience, rather than going straight to shutting it down by saying, “But I have already figured it out and I already know what’s right.”

And so, anything from tiny things like, we’re going outside and they’re saying they’re not hot and I’m saying I am. I mean this temperature difference, it’s seems like a small thing, but it can cause fights in families. Because yeah, we think that our experience should be everyone’s experience, but you could see that could ripple out to what people should eat, the way that they should have their room organized, how they should be spending their time, what time they should wake up, what time they should eat, just every little thing. It’s like, what if we could just be curious about, how does it feel to you? What is your experience in this area?

PAM: Yes. I love that, because, for me, the hot/cold is a great example, because that almost feels like a fact. Somebody comes back to us, “I’m cold, people! How can you not be cold? There’s something wrong with you.” And I think that one of the shifts that helped me was, like you were saying, assuming positive intent. They’re not trying to judge me just because their answer’s different. It doesn’t make me wrong. I don’t have to defend myself. I don’t have to get defensive about it. I can be curious about it. It’s like, wow. This room feels so different to each of us. And that is something that we laugh a lot about here, because I run very hot and use no blankets, no nothing at night. And Rocco was all tucked in.

But the one I wanted to bring up, too, because examples are just so fun, this was one that was a really useful shift for me when I recognized it, and that was the internal processor and external processor. And that started even before I had kids. Coming to recognize, oh my gosh, how different is that? Somebody wants to talk through it and they’re not telling me what their answer is. They’re just telling me a whole bunch of ideas. It’s like, oh, I don’t need to go prep for that. Because for me, as an internal processor, for the vast majority of things, I’ll think about things, put on my headphones, have a good walk, have a good think. “Yeah, this makes sense, this makes sense, this makes sense.” So, by the time I mention it to somebody else, it’s like, let’s do this.

Whereas for other people, more external processors, they want to hear it. They want to maybe get some reaction. They want to talk about it with somebody else. Talk about the five different possibilities to eventually kind of land on the one. So, when they come out with something, I have to remember, it behooves me to save myself from future disappointment or frustration because I went off and did X, Y, Z to get everything ready for the thing. And they’re like, oh yeah, that was yesterday.

ANNA: What was that? Yeah. Right. I work with a lot of couples. And oddly enough, many internal processors marry or partner up with external processors. And this is a very new idea to a lot of people. They’re always so fascinated when I start to talk about it with them. But the key to this working is not taking it personally.

So, what can happen is the internal processor goes off to think about the idea that was presented and then the other person, whether this is a child or a partner that goes off, is thinking, “They don’t care about me. They don’t understand. They don’t think this is important. They’re not thinking about this.” Because to them, thinking about an idea and processing it and prioritizing, means talking about it. It means talking about all the iterations, all the different things.

For that internal processor when they’re being bombarded by that, they can feel like, you’re not giving me any time. Why are all these ideas coming out? You’re all over the board. And then they’re taking that personally. But as soon as we understand this about each other, and again, this is for kids and partners, it’s like, oh, okay. I need to give them a little bit of space. I presented them with this idea of, what we want to do this weekend? Or, what’s coming up? Or, do we want to try this as a family? Let’s give them some ideas. Because then they’ll come back. Then they’ll come back and want to have a conversation, but they need that time.

And when I talk to companies about this, it’s the same. For employers, you’re going to get the best out of your employees when you give them the time to process in the way that they need to process. If we push somebody to do it a different way, we’re not going to get their best, because that’s the whole point is that our brains work differently. And I think when we can celebrate that and not take it personally, it just really, really changes things. So, that piece of not taking it personally is so important.

ERIKA: Don’t take someone’s personality personally. Is that what people say? I love that so much. But that was reminding me about where some of this can come from. If you imagine someone creating a curriculum and they’re an external processor, they’re going to say, and then the students should externally process about this is the way that they’ll learn. You can see how that would totally happen, where it’s like., the way that you learn is by speaking your ideas out loud to someone and having them reflect back what they’ve heard. And it’s like, yeah, some people, for some people that works great. And then for others that will be so uncomfortable.

And so, I think the message that we can learn through mainstream culture can feel like, okay, we realize that there are differences in people sometimes, but we should try to fix that. Or we should figure out the best way and get people to fit into this mold of whoever is basically in power or in charge and what makes sense to them.

And so, we’ve had explorations about all these different personality things, like the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs test, the strengths finder, all these different things that give us more information about how our own brains work. And I feel like once we see, oh, people have come up with these different groupings and you can read them and be like, oh yeah, I’m not like that at all. But there are some people who are. Then it just expanded the possibilities in my mind of what is okay, what is possible, how people are, and it makes it feel like it’s easier to accept other people how they are and, like we were saying earlier, assuming positive intent about what they do.

PAM: Accept other people as they are. And also accept ourselves as we are. Because it’s like, oh, I keep trying to fix this, because everybody talks about how bubbly extroverts are just lovely, amazing. And I have bubbly extrovert friends. And also, it’s draining. And you absolutely want to do the thing, but you need the recovery time too. And you may feel bad about that sometimes. And so, seeing how different people can be helps me be like, oh, it’s okay for me to just be me. I don’t need to fix myself to be these different ways, because it’s just okay that we all are different.

And then one tool I wanted to bring up that I found really helpful, particularly with my kids is, there was always this phrase to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. And I would try to do that. And I found as I was doing that, as my kids left school, they were home more and I was trying to figure out all this, looking for the learning and the curiosity and what their interests were. And I would find myself putting myself in their shoes and I’m like, A, B, C, I would choose D. And I realized over time that it wasn’t so helpful for me to be in their shoes if I was trying to empathize with them and if I was trying to understand their choices. It wasn’t helping me understand their choices.

So, the little tool that worked for me was to see things through their eyes. And when I used that language for myself, it helped me remember to go into their brain and to remember what their interests were, to remember their personality pieces, to remember how their brain likes to immerse itself in things and how it processes, all these people that are different pieces. It reminded me to bring their pieces in, instead of my pieces. Because me stepping into their shoes was just me putting all my personality and brain into that situation, and of course I’m going to make different choices. But when I could look through their eyes and see what it looked like to them, I came to understand their choices so much better.

So, it didn’t seem like something out of the blue. It’s like, oh, of course that would look interesting. Of course, they would make this choice. It just really helped me better understand them. Then I could connect better. I could empathize with them. I could validate. I could support their choices with the understanding that me being a different person would make a different choice, but their choice makes complete sense for them. That was a really helpful to tool for me to kind of make that distinction.

ANNA: And I think part of that, and it’s kind of what you’re describing, but maybe a little bit different, is just it helps us communicate. So, we talk about narration a lot, but I think when we understand these differences, if I feel like I’m having trouble communicating with someone and maybe I can’t even pinpoint the difference, because I’m still locked into how I’m seeing the situation, I can step back and narrate a little bit to go, okay, so I’m not sure if this is how you’re seeing it, but here’s how it’s feeling to me and here’s what I’m thinking I need to do. It’s less threatening than me trying to direct us to do the thing. It’s opening up for them to say, “Oh wow, no, I don’t see it that way at all. I really think we need to do this,” and then we can have an interesting conversation. But I feel like we can’t even get to that place of communicating if we’re stuck in our story of, there’s one right way.

And I love that you mentioned that, Erika, because that’s the key, right? To know there is never one right way. And even with things that seem like, but what about this? Because, like you said, some of these things seem like facts, it’s cold. How is that not a fact? Well, bodies are different, you know? And so, it isn’t a fact. And so, I love that piece of just remembering there’s not one right way. We all are so different. So, I’m going to slow my communication down a little bit. I’m going to say a little bit more about what’s happening in my mind, especially with the people I want to be in close relationship with, because they’re going to learn more about me, I’m going to learn more about them, and we’re going to have a lot less headbutting as we’re trying to move towards something, because we’re slowing that down a little bit.

ERIKA: Yeah. I love that. And I think that slowing down is really key, because our go-tos are so automatic and so fast. It’s very easy to assume we’re all there, we’re all on the same page. We all got to the same conclusion. You know what I mean? And so, I was thinking that it can make you feel uneasy when you start to realize how different someone else who is close to you is from you. When we first have children, it might feel like they’re going to just be little me, they’re going to be like us. And as we start to learn how different they are, I think it can be a challenge at times.

But then, I can rewrite that story for myself, too. It’s not difficult. It’s fun and this is really what makes life interesting. It’s not about finding people who are exactly, precisely like me in every way in order to have met my match, or in order to get along. It’s more about having fun figuring people out and learning about each other and our differences. And just imagining that every person in the world is this complex, unique human being, it’s kind of exciting. But yeah, I can sometimes fall in that trap of like, I just want someone who understands everything about how I am. But it’s too complicated. There’s too much. But that’s okay. That’s just part of the richness of life, that everyone will bring all of their own things to every moment.

PAM: Like you said earlier, it’s that shift to getting curious. It’s giving ourselves that space for that shift, because yes, I think that can be so much about where we are in the moment, too, when things feel overwhelming. Oh my gosh, they just do this. Why this one? But we can take that moment to remember, people are different. And I think it helps, too, having worked through it. We’ve talked about this a lot before, like you said, how much fun it ends up being. How we end up in places that we, on our own, could never have imagined. And it’s super cool and fun, and my life is richer and my world is wider.

And yes, it took some energy and yes, maybe I don’t always have the capacity for it, but when I can do it, it is amazing and it’s worth the time to make that shift, to look through their eyes, to get curious about, why doesn’t that sound interesting? And knowing the personalities, that people are different. Because maybe you don’t ask your child, why is that interesting to you? Because it would feel judgmental just in the way that things are phrased like that. But last month in the Network, our topic was intentional language and that just reaches everywhere. Because people are different, words mean different things to them. There are so many layers to this.

ANNA: So many layers. And I’m going to bring the judgment piece back again, because I think it can be when we’re feeling judgmental about someone, we’re most likely here. We’re talking about our kids or our partner, but really anyone, it’s a really great time to pause and say, where’s that coming from? Because I would argue that probably a big chunk of the time, it’s coming from a belief that they’re not doing it the way we would do it. And then when we recognize, oh, there isn’t the one right way, people are just different. I mean, gosh, letting go of that judgment is so valuable to relationships because it really is so surprising to the person on the other end. Because their way of processing and working has been working for them all these years. And now you’re coming in saying it’s wrong and passing judgment. It’s surprising. And so it can be disconnecting.

And so, I think it’s just so important when those little red flags of, like, am I being frustrated by this conversation? Or am I not understanding something? Or am I passing judgment about something?That’s when I want to stop and change that lens. Bring this people are different lens, bring that curiosity, because it really just makes such a difference.

And when we think about our kids, if we’re judging how they’re spending their time or how they’re moving through their day, this came up with another person not too long ago where, I think they were judging the way the kids spent the day, because they were thinking, “What would I do if I had this free environment? This free environment where I didn’t have to go to school?” And they were putting their child self in this environment that they had created thinking these are all the things that I would do and it would be amazing. And the kids were not doing any of them. “They’re over there doing this thing that I don’t like at all.” But it’s like, oh, but this is what they’re doing with the freedom. This is what they are being drawn to in this moment.

And so again, when we see ourselves like bringing that judgment lens, it’s like, can we let that go and just go, huh, I’m curious about this? I want to understand and recognize that might be what I would do, but it’s not what they’re doing and there’s really good reason for that because we’re all so very different.

ERIKA: Yeah, it’s like when we’re thinking, “Well, you should,” just any “should,” like they should do this. He should do that. That’s a really good little red flag, because it pops into my head all the time. I think it’s a really natural thing to think, because I have good ideas about what I would do and so then it just feels like, and they should as well, but that would be a good red flag to catch.

And then I wanted to mention a little a-ha moment I had with Josh. So, my husband and I have different personalities. We have a lot in common, but there are a lot of big differences. And so, one of the things is, he was talking about his frustration with some people at work, and he’s just like, people just want to be happy. I don’t understand why they’re making these choices or whatever. And so, his big belief about the world is that all people, their main thing is that they want to be happy.

And I was like, okay, but that’s your belief about the world. Not everybody’s number one thing is to be happy people. Their number one thing may be to make an impact on the world. Some people, their number one thing is to be safe. There are so many possible different number one things, but from his perspective, it’s like, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone not that number one thing to be happy, have fun, and just be happy. And so, it sounds really good to him. That was an a-ha moment, I think, for both of us being like, okay, so that’s why some of these behaviors of other people just make no sense and can be so frustrating.

And it also goes a long way to explain why he would make the choices he makes in his life. And so, I think that if you’re a curious sort of person and interested in diving deeper into these personality things, like asking those questions of yourself, like what are those core, important things to me? And then just ask other people like, what are the things for you? Because I just think you’d be really surprised by how different even people who you get along really well with, even people who you have these close relationships with, just how different people are.

PAM: Yeah. And being a partner. Because it’s been forever and it’s very typical. Anyway, it is like the way you pack the dishwasher, it’s like there’s one way, there is one right way. It’s like, but this is the most efficient, and so, I think it’s super fun. That’s when we’ve been going back and forth. It’s there’s not just one way. And so, if you like it this way and that’s super important to you, I’ll keep my hands off it.

But the interesting piece, I think, for me, too, is just to open that up for ourselves, to recognize, does this feel like I’m doing this the one right way? It ties in with what you’re saying here. This is the one way for me. Why is that? What are those pieces that feel really good when I put this dish here and this dish here? And why do I put knives this way or this way, or whatever it is. What is it that’s feeling good about the thing that I’m doing that feels good for me?

Which then opens up that lens to, oh, like that really aligns with my personality, with who I am as a person, with the way I like to do things. And that helps me recognize through that people are different lens that other people, some people don’t have efficiency at the top of their list.

There are just so many different lenses. It doesn’t have to be the fastest way. It doesn’t have to be the shiniest way. And that gets us to recognizing the messages, too, that we’ve absorbed, the whole cultural productivity efficiency. That is a shining gold star that one must shoot for throughout anything that you’re doing during the day. And it’s just so fascinating. I think it can be helpful for us to observe that in ourselves. That helps us peel it back or knock away a little bit again so that we can recognize it’s not just one right way.

ANNA: And I think that speaks to what Erika said, where school is kind of trying to force us to that one place. And so, I think it’s really interesting to actually do some introspection about, okay, is that priority that I’ve set here really about how my brain works and how I work, or is it what I think I’m supposed to do? Because that’s a whole other layer of it. But, right, I love the dishwasher example, and it reminded me of a friend that, I mean, this is even hard for me to say these words. Okay. So, she would take the utensils from the dishwasher and just dump them in the drawer. Just dumped ’em all in the drawer. And so, you would just open the drawer and you’d fish around to get out a fork or whatever. This is very stressful for me and I don’t feel like I’m overly organized, but I’m like, I want the forks in the fork area, want the knives in the knife area. But it was so not a priority for her. She just was like, but why would you waste your time doing that when you could be doing fun things?

I’m guessing she probably has that Josh and David thing. Like why when you could be doing fun things? And I’m like, oh. But I don’t see it as a waste of like, it just doesn’t seem like it takes that much time. But again, this piece of people are different, we just prioritize things differently. There are just different things. And our priorities can change. There may be a time when there’s a lot going on in my life where I really do need some calm, clean surfaces, or I need a little bit less stimulation, and then other times where I’m fine. And so, that’s where, if we can keep that curiosity, we can keep that open communication going. We’re not taking it personally, we’re not getting frustrated. We’re just recognizing that we’re all so different.

ERIKA: Yeah. And just how fast is it to just dump the dump that silverware in there! That’s really the fastest way! It hadn’t even occurred to me, but that is incredibly much faster than what I do. So funny. But they’ve never had problems with it. But if you do have the partner who wants to be super organized, like I fall into the trap sometimes of being like, he’s doing that because he doesn’t like me, because he doesn’t care about my feelings, is why he does it that way. You know what I mean? So, that’s the taking it extremely personally. I could be like, oh my gosh, she’s dumping all that silverware in there, because she doesn’t care at all about how I feel about the drawer. But it’s like, no, it doesn’t even occur to her.

ANNA: Right! I think that is such a fun example to end on, and that it’s fun to think about all the different ways that we’re different and all the different ways that we prioritize things. And that it isn’t saying something about someone else, it’s only saying something about us. And so, when we can stay there, gosh, it just really revolutionizes all the relationships.

PAM: All the relationships. It really does. Because then you can embrace and celebrate somebody else’s way of doing things and choices that they make without like feeling like you are wrong or that it says something about you. It’s like, this is so you and that’s amazing and I’m so excited that you’re discovering this and exploring, expressing whatever it is, whether it’s through actions, choices, dress, everything. And then I go back to, we’re all human beings. And we’re each one of us different and just keep peeling back those layers because every time someone’s like, huh, why? Oh, people are different. Let’s tap that for a little bit and see. Where does that lead me? Because oh, it leads beautiful places, doesn’t it?

ANNA: It really does. So, I’m excited for people to take this lens and see what happens. So, leave us some comments, reach out, and I just appreciate the two of you so much. I love talking about these ideas with you and thinking about all the different ways that it is valuable in our lives. And if you all listening love these conversations, we really would love to have you at the Living Joyfully Network. We have a lot of fun conversations and so many a-ha moments and it just fills me up so much.

So, you can find a link for that under the community tab at livingjoyfullyshop.com. Thank you so much for joining us today!

PAM: Have a great day. See you all later. Bye!

ERIKA: Bye!

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In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about curiosity-led learning. We thought this would be a fun topic to dive into during this back-to-school season! Focusing on curiosity—our own and our kids’—can be so grounding.

In this episode, we explore the definition of learning, how school-based learning looks different than learning through unschooling, and how we’ve seen curiosity at play in our families.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Unschooling Wobbles, coaching calls, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia. Hello to you both.

ANNA AND PAM: Hello!

ERIKA: And before we get started, have you checked out LivingJoyfullyShop.com yet? Our online shop has Pam’s unschooling books, lots of helpful coaching options and online courses such as Four Pillars of Unschooling, which is great if you’re newer to unschooling and Navigating Unschooling Wobbles if you’re finding that back-to-school season has gotten you feeling unsure about things.

We also have courses on validation and on navigating conflict. You can also learn more about the Living Joyfully Network there. We’re so excited to be creating a one-stop shop to support you along your unschooling journey, and we hope you’ll check it out.

Pam, would you like to get us started with our topic for today, which is curiosity-led learning?

PAM: Yes, I would love to! Because I feel like this is one of the first big paradigm shifts that people encounter and that I encountered when I began exploring unschooling in earnest. But even if you’ve been unschooling for years, I would not be surprised of just listening in on this conversation reveals yet another layer that you can peel back around the value of curiosity-led learning.

Like, “Oh, it applies here, too.” I’m still getting those little layers. As you encounter it out in the wild in our lives, there’s always, always more layers.

But culturally, the message is that learning must be led by curricula, that there’s a step-by-step, linear process that needs to be followed for “real” learning to happen, and that learning is hard, that it’s challenging. Here’s the next step. Learn this. Here’s the next step.

And what unschooling does is encourage us to ask ourselves, is that the only way to learn? Because some people pick things up that way. We all went through school that way, and we learned what we did. And then it’s always fun to look back and think, how much did I remember? How do I define learning? Is that really learning? If really I can just do it on a worksheet, but I have no idea how to bring that into my days and into my life? It is just a beautiful, beautiful paradigm shift when you start looking, oh, are there other ways to learn? Is this other learning that I’m doing just because I love this thing, does it discount the learning I’m doing about it? If it’s not hard, is it learning? There are just so many ways to look at it.

And then when we give ourselves enough space to start questioning it and start looking at, okay, well, I know this was really fun, but I have been learning lots and it’s been useful learning for me, does that count? And just start looking at it through that lens and recognizing things like, oh my gosh, it doesn’t feel hard. Even though you may notice other people saying, “Oh my gosh. How did you learn all that? That depth of knowledge,” et cetera. And they’re talking about it being difficult, whereas it feels much easier to us because we were interested in it in the first place because our curiosity was guiding us and we’re like, oh, yes, I want more. I want more. I want more.

When we start to notice all those little different aspects of it and start to bring that all together, we start to play with, what does curiosity-led learning look like? And wow, it’s pretty darn amazing. It really is valuable. It’s like all the things. And we can start to replace what is curriculum-led, what somebody else thinks we should be learning with what we’re interested in learning. And it just opens up this whole box. It’s just removes the box on what learning can look like for us. Can’t it?

ANNA: Yeah. For me, I think what’s so interesting is I feel like this is actually the natural process, how we all, as adults learn. Like, “Okay, there’s something that I want to do and so what do I need to know in order to do that thing?” And so, then it’s the relevant pieces that maybe I want to take up this hobby and I need to learn this, or maybe I want to take this particular job and gosh, I better learn these things. But it’s so relevant. So, for me it’s about bringing that “relevant” piece to it.

And you kind of mentioned this, where the retaining comes in, because when it’s something that we’re using every day or is relevant to something that we’re interested in, we actually do retain it, because we’re practicing, we’re using, we’re tweaking all the time. And so, I think that piece is so interesting that school has kind of separated that and made it very irrelevant.

So, we’re learning and putting things on a piece of paper. We don’t really understand why. And so, what I learned in school was really how to do that, how to take and memorize information and give it to them in the form that they wanted. It’s interesting to me now as an adult, sometimes I’ll think about something that was covered in school and I’m like, that’s why they wanted that to be covered, but it meant nothing to me in the 30 years in between. But now I’m like, now that it’s relevant, I can go back and refresh. I don’t remember it from then, but I can go back and refresh. But I thought, oh, how interesting. Because somebody somewhere thought this was important in their life. And so, they wanted kids to know it. But I don’t feel like humans learn that way.

ERIKA: Right. It’s so interesting, isn’t it? I just feel like what has happened is that the way that schools do things has become the definition of what learning is, but if you really think about it, it doesn’t work. Our brains do not work that way. But if we think learning is, someone tells you what you need to know, it’s in this order, it’s these important things, these facts at this age, whatever, then the curiosity part, it never even gets looked at or considered. It’s not even a consideration at all.

But we know from ourselves, from watching our kids, just from looking at people, like you’ve seen the glazed-over eyes of kids in class. Certainly. I mean, certainly over the years I have seen that as a teacher and I’ve seen it as a student and information is not getting in there. So, as far as just choosing to teach someone something that they’re not interested in, that’s not causing learning to happen. And so, I really think we need to just change the definition. Don’t call it learning if all you’re doing is having someone lecture to someone else about something that they don’t want to know. That’s not learning.

And so, I feel like a lot of the “learning” that I did in school was that temporary, memorize it, cram it in my brain, get it out onto the paper for the test, and then it’s gone. And so, now I can look back and just be like, what was the use of that time for me, other than, like you said, learning to memorize, learning to take tests, that kind of thing?

Thankfully, when I was in school, I was so interested in doing well in school, that that itself kind of became my interest. And so, learning the things in class to do on the test, that process was more my interest, because I wanted to get the good grades. My kids do not have this personality. And so, with them, it just has to be curiosity-led. I can’t see another way. They don’t want to learn things that they’re not interested in. And so, then the fun part is then how fun, natural, easy, all the things, they will dive so deeply into things that they’re interested in. And so, now I see it as the only way for learning to happen is through curiosity.

PAM: Yeah. It’s really how you define learning, right? Is learning the regurgitation piece for the grades, is it the retention piece we’ll get to? And for those peeling back more layers, do we even need to look at learning? That’s a topic for another conversation. But there were two or three pieces that I really wanted to pull out, Erika, from what you said there. One was, let’s call it something else. And you know what popped to mind was, let’s call that teaching.

Just because teaching is done doesn’t mean learning is happening. Teaching is somebody else telling people, you’re going to know this and this is the process to get this answer, and this is a noun, etc. And so, the teaching happens whether or not the learning happens, like you’re saying, Erika, I love the distinction of, what came to be my interest was getting good grades, which is then again, another conversation. But that is what helped you move through the school process, exist in that environment, take stuff in from the teaching, and then spew it out on the test for the grades. Totally, totally fine.

And what is super interesting, and what I found, like you mentioned too, Anna, is that the retention just isn’t there when you’re not using it or interested in it. Because for me, one of the big shifts with this shift to curiosity-led learning was looking at learning from my child’s perspective. That helped me start to recognize when it was actually learning I was talking about and not teaching. And to make that distinction between the two. Sometimes my kids are interested in learning something and want some information, but the interest is there first and then they’re going to soak it in. They’re going to ask questions. They’re going to ask, but, but why, but how? And then you get into that conversation, they pick up what they’re interested in. That helps them make that next connection and that next connection and then they move on. And it doesn’t have to be a week’s worth of worksheets and repetition, because they were ready to soak that in.

And then the other piece that I really enjoy when I think about learning, because so much of the school as we were talking about, is that linear curricula. You learn this and then learn this and then learn this. Like, this is the best way to put this knowledge together. But my preference over the years has really become thinking of learning more as a web of connections of like, oh, there’s this piece and this piece and this piece. Because truly, when you break subjects down, there is really so much crossover in the real world. There is math all over the place. There’s math in poetry, in words, there’s math in geography. There’s just so much crossover. Once you start breaking them into the silos of subjects, you lose that richness, whereas when you’re following your curiosity and just seeing where it leads you, you may end up over in one subject for a couple of days and then back into another subject, but you are making connections between it all.

There’s just a much bigger, deeper richness to the learning that happens when you’re following the things that you’re curious about, the things that you’re interested in. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to do the hard things. I think that’s one of the little stumbling blocks that can come up when people are first learning about, well, if we are just going to follow our interests, we’re never going to do anything hard, because if something looks hard, I’m not going to be interested.

Well, look at your kids. And actually notice, so often, when they’re frustrated, that’s because they’re wanting to do something that’s hard for them right now, but they want to do it, so they’re going to keep going. Even if you wish, like, okay, let’s go do something else for a while because you’re uncomfortable with the frustration. But no, there’s beauty in that frustration as well. And of course, we want to support, give space, hold all those pieces for them. But it’s not wrong to be frustrated. It doesn’t mean they’re not a good learner, because they’re frustrated. It means none of those things. It means, oh they’re really determined in this moment. And how can I help them, if they’re looking for some help, to start putting something together? What’s that little connection they’re missing in their web, right?

ANNA: Yeah. Something you said, Erika, it was about the learning. I think it’s really helpful if people find themselves saying things like, I don’t think they’re learning anything, they’re playing games all the time, or they’re building forts all the time, they’re not learning. I think this is really important to really ask yourself, what do I think learning means? Am I only looking at it through this lens of, “Well, they’re not sitting down doing fractions or times tables,” because really, learning as humans is so much broader than that.

And so, I loved how you pointed out that we’ve taken this system that’s really a subset and hasn’t always been around to define this concept that is just really innate to humans. We are just learning machines. How do we survive the day? How do we get through this? That is what we do.

And so, I think when you hear yourself saying things like that go, oh wait a minute. What am I defining as learning and why? And this is important. There’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just a little examination. I think it’s important.

One of the things I also wanted to say was about the doing hard things, because we said it’s easier when it’s led by our curiosity. But it can be hard, right? It can be frustrating. It can take time. And that’s okay too, because what you’ll see is there’s this drive to figure out and sometimes walk away from it and then sometimes come back. But it’s just so much more natural and I love that.

And then another thing Pam reminded me of, so Pam is amazing at technology and systems and all of these things. I am not as much. I’m not terrible, but if you put me in that world, I’m not as good at it. And so, I really don’t retain all the, of all the different pieces, even about things I use pretty regularly, because it just isn’t a passion area for me. And so, I think it’s just knowing about ourselves and thinking, yeah, that’s kind of how it works. If I need to know, I can Google it. I can figure it out. I can ask Pam. She may be like, “She’s asking me again!” But it’s okay, you know?

So, I think just thinking about how we do things and then recognizing that our kids are human, too, doing things, it can really help when we get stuck in this place.

ERIKA: Right, exactly. I just feel like once we start thinking about ourselves and how we actually really learn, it becomes this different way that we can look at our kids. And I think sometimes when we first go into parenting, first go into the idea of how children learn, it’s just old tapes of what we’ve been told over the years of, school is the place you learn. You have to know these things. This is what it should look like. And so, I loved my unschooling journey for that process of questioning that and being like, wait a second. If I can learn things, anything I want, now, they can also learn anything they want at any time. And there’s just a lot of freedom in that.

And then I was also thinking, a lot of people have had the experience, too, in school of like, maybe they do hit on a topic that you might be interested in, and then they say, that’s enough of that, let’s move on to something else. And so, that’s a really huge benefit of unschooling is just like, oh my gosh. I found something I want to do. Can I do more of this? And the answer’s always yes. And they can just dive as deeply as they want. And so, then we meet really interesting children who have so much knowledge in this one super deep area that’s just incredible. And so, they may not have all of their whatever other skills that the school would be looking for at that age, but they have spent their time learning about something that’s so important and interesting to them. And from there, whatever they want to do in life, it becomes obvious what they might be curious about next.

And so, I find that so much with my kids who are now young teenagers. They used to be so focused on certain things and then now it’s different. It’s like they’re in a new phase. They’re finding new aspects of life that now they’re curious about and interested in. Like, how am I going to manage to do this in my life? I want to do this and I know that I need to learn more things to get there. You know? And so, it’s just a very different way. I felt very directed down a path, but it feels like for them, they’re making a path and seeing where they want to go, and then telling me, “I really want to work on my handwriting because that would really help me with this.” And I’m just like, yeah, that makes sense. It’s a completely different approach.

PAM: I want to jump in, because that’s what was bubbling in my head. Erika, you nailed it. There is one thing when you’re making the shift away from curriculum and into curiosity and interests is, it’s fascinating to note how much of the curriculum, certainly in the younger years is skill-based, like reading and math and handwriting, like those skills, whereas that’s not really what you’re going to see very often in unschooling lives, because they’re following their interests.

But what they’re doing instead of learning the skill, like, two plus two is four, and then now let’s take that into the world. Here’s how to read beginner books, now let’s take that into the world. Our kids are, like you said, they’re doing stuff and they’re like, oh, hey, like I’m playing this game and I’ve got these boss statistics I need to manage. I’m going to figure out how those numbers are working and what formulas back there. Or I really want to read this forum and yes, my parents, somebody’s helping me read it for a while and then I’m starting to pick it up, or I’m wanting to try and read because somebody doesn’t have time to or isn’t able to read for me for 12 hours. All those pieces.

So, our kids are doing the things in the world and picking up the skills along the way. They’re not like, I want to learn the skill and now I can finally go and play that game. Or now I can finally go and read this book. Or the handwriting. Yes. Go Anna.

ANNA: Well, it’s exactly this though. I’m just going to take the next step. Because what’s so incredible about that is, if we are really true and really honest with ourselves, we don’t know what skills are going to be needed for the next generation and for five years from now and for 10 years from now.

Because I think about the books that were the standard when I was in school, they probably wouldn’t even believe it if kids today read some of the stuff that they thought we needed to know then. And so, what’s so great when it’s coming the other direction, they’re able to take it way further than this curriculum can lead them, because that’s actually pinning them in. But if they’re following interests and creating new things and making new discoveries, and then getting the skills along the way. Yes, those skills can be foundational, but because they’re foundational, they’re always going to learn them. They’re just going to learn them through something that’s interesting and maybe taking them way beyond what we could have done with the curriculum. So, I love that so much.

PAM: For me, that was another one of the huge shifts, right? It was truly just understanding that, oh, it’s not that I’m throwing out the curriculum, and they will never learn how to spell and they’ll never learn how to read and their math skills will be atrocious. Each of those things is so much bigger when you’re actually in the world. Back to what you were talking about at the very beginning, Anna, about just being in the world and living in the world, and we’re just picking up those skills. And yes, if they are actually foundational to living a human life wherever it is that we’re living, you are going to come across the need for them as you’re living.

ANNA: Absolutely. Right. That’s why they’re foundational. We don’t have to force it. And we don’t have to pull it out, because I feel like the way that schools can separate learning from life and reality almost makes it feel mysterious and difficult. Like, what does this mean? Why am I having to do it?

And like you said, the drills, the drills, the drills.

And what I found so interesting with my girls is, in our state at the time, we had to take a standardized test every couple years, I think. Maybe every year. It’s been a little while. But what was so interesting to me is they would be able to do all of these English things and looking at sentences and picking the right word. And I’m like, oh my gosh. I remember filling out those sheets with making the verb match the tense of the thing. And they never did that. They learned it from talking, being spoken to reading books, having books, read to them, playing games. They learned the language that was around them because they were in the world.

And I think that what’s empowering about that is I think they had a belief. I see it in them as adults, that they can figure things out, they can learn things. Whereas I think school kind of makes it mysterious, like, no, you have to be in this room and someone that’s an expert’s going to tell you, and then you’re going to have to really work hard and practice it to learn it. And I just don’t think that’s true. And so, what I love about unschooling is just that questioning. We can start questioning, is that true it? Does that make sense? Do I see that in my life as an adult? Does it really play out when I’m watching my kids organically learn? And that’s when I think things get really interesting.

ERIKA: I think the school model can just lead to people thinking that they can’t learn. Where really, it’s like, I can’t memorize stuff that I’m not interested in, which I think is just natural. Or like, I can’t memorize stuff that makes no sense to me and I can’t use it anywhere in my life. I think that’s reasonable, but to conclude that, then that means I can’t learn, it’s just so sad that that is the result of so much of school-style teaching.

I see it a little bit just culturally with my kids, where they’ll have some of these beliefs of like, I’m supposed to know this, or, well, in school they do this and I can’t do this, or I don’t know if I would be able to. And so, I mean, it’s interesting that those things still come up, even though they can make their own decisions and learn all kinds of things. And so, it’s just interesting to have those conversations with them about like, well, what are the things that you want to do? And thankfully, outside of school, there are an infinite number of ways to learn the things that they want to learn.

And so, we’re working through some new computer programs with Oliver and he took a look at one the other day and he was just like, I don’t think I can learn this. And I was like, it looks super overwhelming at first, but I’m sure that we can figure it out. Either someone who is an expert who could work with you on it or we could look up videos. There are just so many ways to learn.

I think, in some moments we run into those, “I’m not practiced at learning” kind of ideas that they have about it, but then it’s fun to point out to them, but that’s all you do. That really is what you’ve done your whole life. It just doesn’t feel like what it looks like in the stories or what you hear about with your friends who are in school.

ANNA: Right. And that what’s so important about that piece that you just puzzled there is, what I recognized was that my role was my energy about that. Because I think what can happen is, if you hear your child say, I don’t know how to do that, and this person knows how to do this and I don’t know how to do it, suddenly all of our tapes come and the mother-in-law’s tape and the thing going, oh, we failed them. We’ve done this. But really, it was just what you were saying. I was like, wait a minute. I’ve lived with you all these years. I’ve seen you learn things that I can’t even learn. Oh my gosh. We just need some different tools. If this is something you’re interested in now, then here’s the thing.

But they really look to me for my energy. So, if I brought heaviness about, oh my gosh, you don’t know how to do that and we better do this and that, or we need to jump back into that, I think it really would’ve changed that. And instead, it was just, like you said, just empowering them. Like, you are learning incredible things every day. You can learn whatever you want. Let’s figure out what you need and we’ll do it together. So, just watching that energy and making sure that I’m not letting the tapes from other people come into that relationship with my child.

PAM: Yeah. I think that’s definitely us doing our work and practicing, because, like you said, that just brings back all those messages. Oh, but if they were in school, they would’ve learned this in this grade and this in this grade, and taking that leap to the future as in how we learn as adults.

And I think for me, the shift to just thinking of us all as human beings and wherever we are as a human being in this moment and what we’re interested in learning, and even if it feels overwhelming in the moment, like, oh my gosh, something I continue to do is use your time machine idea, Anna, which is when I’m something like, holy crap, I have no idea. I can just imagine in six months when I’m sitting here and just humming along, that’s going to be so cool. And that just kind of helps me take that next step. It’s like, oh yeah, give myself a bunch of time and I’ll just figure it out along the way. I’ll play with it. And that’s the way human beings learn, as you were mentioning earlier.

So, to be able to take our messages and our fears around school and kids and to be able to just say, this is human beings and learning stuff. That helped me so much anyway to just move through those moments, because those cultural messages are everywhere. It’s not just that we learned them growing up and then now we have them. We also hear them all the time now. In this back-to-school season, we hear them even more. And it can have us questioning ourselves.

So, I think it’s so useful for us to do that bit of processing for ourselves, because as you said, Anna, the energy that we show up with can make all the difference. If we show up with, oh my gosh, something’s wrong, that needs fixing, or, oh my goodness, that looks like a lot of stuff to take in just one bite at a time, as they say, baby steps, whatever kind of language helps for them and helps for you as you move through it to remember like, this is just learning.

And I think it’s threaded through our entire conversation, but I don’t know that we’ve said it loud. We can learn something at every age. So, just because something in school is covered in grade four. I always go back to pioneer times, because that was when Joseph left school. That was one of the topics going on. It doesn’t matter at what age. It doesn’t even matter if, but whatever age something comes up about pioneer times, that that period of history, and they’re curious about it, they can learn it at any time. There is no need for it to be done at a certain age. You can see why that’s useful inside a school curriculum, because you don’t want like three years in a row for the teacher to love pioneer times, and they have to do it for three years in a row. They have to break it up that way, right? So, okay, this is the chunk. There’s often not much more logic than that. We’ve got this many years of history to cover, let’s do this much each year. Same with geography, same with so much of it, right? But we can learn anything at any age.

ANNA: Now I’m super curious what Canadian pioneer times are like. I’m going to have to look it up and learn at 55.

PAM: We loved visiting the Pioneer Village. I found it at the time because I was very new at unschooling and thought, well we can do this instead. This is how we can learn it, outside, because he was finding it interesting at the time. But it ended up being one of our favorite places to go as a family for the first two years. We got a park pass, so we could go any time. There’s no cars, so you could walk around. We would bring walkie talkies (before mobile phones) and play tag. Because we could all just be within this area and it wasn’t huge. We would give clues, I’m beside a big steeple, or I see horses, clues like that. And we would go and find each other and my gosh.

We had so much fun in Pioneer Times for two years, like I said, at least. And we go back there just for the memories. We went a couple years ago. Anyway, so that’s funny. Exactly. Any age, any age.

ERIKA: And any topic! I love that so much. Well, this has been so much fun, as expected. We hope you enjoyed our conversation and maybe had an a-ha moment or picked up some ideas to consider on your own unschooling journey. And if you enjoy these kinds of conversations, I think you would love the Living Joyfully Network. It is such an amazing group of people connecting and having thoughtful conversations about all the things we encounter in our own unschooling lives. You can learn more about the Network at livingjoyfully.ca/network or on livingjoyfullyshop.com. We hope to meet you there! And thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time! Bye!

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Let’s dive into a question I get pretty regularly, and that’s whether I have podcast episodes with unschooling parents that used to be teachers.

It’s fun to ponder the why behind the question. Does it seem like a strange leap to make? To me, choosing teaching indicates an interest in children and in learning, so to dive into that even more deeply with their own children through unschooling does seem like a rather natural next step to take.

But whatever the reason behind this pretty common question, the answer is a resounding yes! On the podcast to this point, there have been 22 guests who were, or are, teachers or university professors, who study education at the post-secondary level, or even teach education courses.

In this episode, I’ve gathered a few snippets from teachers turned unschoolers sharing about their experience and how that journey came about for them. It’s so interesting!

Audio clips taken from these episodes …

EU106: Unschooling Connections with Kelly Callahan

EU054: From Teaching to Unschooling with Grace Koelma

EU243: Parenting Shifts with Sarah Peshek

EU213: Unschooling and Math with Marcella O’Brien

EU193: Unschooling Younger Kids with Martha Delmore

EU254: Finding Unschooling with Daniela Bramwell

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

CONNECT WITH OUR WORK

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, and coaching!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

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Anna, Erika, and I dive into listener questions! We talk about the fears and doubts that come up at the start of the unschooling journey, the idea of wanting to measure success, and what to do when a child is interested in a topic that seems too grown up for them.

And as I mention at the beginning of our conversation, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer. That’s because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any given situation that will work for everyone. Instead, our focus is on exploring different aspects of the situation and playing with the kinds of questions we might ask ourselves to better understand what’s up. We’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling.

QUESTION SUMMARIES

We had a quick first question from Sabrina who was looking for interviews with single parents who are unschooling. Pam put together a reference page with episodes to check out.

Our second question is from Erin in New Jersey. She wonders how to get past some of the doubts she has about unschooling and the judgmental opinions of family and friends in order to trust herself. She also mentions feeling a need to measure success when it comes to unschooling and isn’t sure if that’s okay.

Our third question is from Joy in Ireland. Her eight-year-old son has a strong interest in war, weapons, fighting games, and history. Some of what he wants to watch and play is rated PG-13, which feels like it might be unsafe for him. She sees him learning so much from his interest, but worries that he might be desensitized to violence and that the more mature content could be harmful.

Our final question is from McKinzie. She is a third-generation teacher and is finding deschooling and trusting unschooling to be difficult, despite wholeheartedly agreeing with the concept. She specifically feels like teaching math and reading could be important, because she doesn’t want to “leave it to chance.”

Read the transcript here.

CONNECT WITH OUR WORK

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, and coaching!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

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Anna, Erika, and I dive into listener questions! We talk about navigating sibling and friend relationships, the idea of self-regulation when it comes to technology, and the journey of finding community and connection for ourselves and our children.

And as I mention at the beginning of our conversation, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer. That’s because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any given situation that will work for everyone. Instead, our focus is on exploring different aspects of the situation and playing with the kinds of questions we might ask ourselves to better understand what’s up. We’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling.

QUESTION SUMMARIES

Our first question is from Alison. There are shifts going on with her daughters’ relationship with each other and with their mutual friends. She wants to stand up for her younger daughter when she is being excluded and wants to help them without being pushy.

Our second question is from Belinda in Canada. Her six-year-old son wants to use the iPad more than she feels comfortable with. She believes he can’t self-regulate and wants to protect him from spending too much time on the iPad, while also wishing she didn’t feel that way.

Our final question is from Amelia in Utah. Her five-year-old daughter’s friends are all starting school and so, she’s looking for ideas about finding support and connections with other unschooling families.

Read the transcript here.

CONNECT WITH OUR WORK

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, and coaching!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

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Anna, Erika, and I dive into listener questions! We talk about cocooning and connecting with young teens, the mainstream concept of productivity and how we get curious about external messages of judgment, and the idea of an “ideal unschooler.”

And as I mention at the beginning of our conversation, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer. That’s because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any given situation that will work for everyone. Instead, our focus is on exploring different aspects of the situation and playing with the kinds of questions we might ask ourselves to better understand what’s up. We’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling.

QUESTION SUMMARIES

Our first question comes from the comments on our last Q&A YouTube video. The viewer is feeling disconnected from their young teen and worrying about the time he’s spending gaming.

Our second question from Maya is concerning the concept of productivity. She wonders why it feels difficult to release her judgments about productivity and laziness.

Our final question relates to curiosity. The listener wonders if people who are more naturally curious about a wide variety of topics make better unschoolers and whether there is something they can do to help their younger two children who seem uninterested in following those curiosity trails.

Read the transcript here.

CONNECT WITH OUR WORK

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, and coaching!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

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Anna, Erika, and I dive into listener questions! We explore technology and “screen time,” deschooling, connection, and validation.

And as I mention at the beginning of our conversation, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer. That’s because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any given situation that will work for everyone. Instead, our focus is on exploring different aspects of the situation and playing with the kinds of questions we might ask ourselves to better understand what’s up. We’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling.

QUESTION SUMMARIES

Our first question is from Ella, a new unschooling mom with three young children. As the family is deschooling, she’s noticing that the children are choosing to watch TV for a lot of the day. Her partner is uncomfortable with the situation and she wants to know about setting boundaries around TV time or how to find a balance of how her children are spending their free time.

Our second question from Tara is concerning avid video-gaming kids who used to spend more time playing outside. Tara feels stuck in a rut and like her children no longer want to do the things that they used to do. Often, when they do go outside, they love their time there, but it’s hard to get them out the door.

Our final question is from Nadia, who is trying to figure out how to support her children as they attend school at her ex-husband’s insistence. She’s wondering what her options are as she believes unschooling would be a better path for them, though it feels like she doesn’t have a choice given the circumstances.

Read the transcript here.

CONNECT WITH OUR WORK

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, and coaching!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

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In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika explore the abundance mindset. We often find ourselves thinking about abundance versus scarcity in conversations on the podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network. In this episode, we dive into the many ways that shifting to abundance has helped us and our families with creative problem solving. We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling, coaching calls, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello, I’m Anna Brown with Living Joyfully, and today I am joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis.

ERIKA AND PAM: Hello! Hi!

ANNA: Before we get started, I wanted to encourage you to check out our shop where you can find books, courses, coaching, and information about the Living Joyfully Network. And this also includes our new course, Four Pillars of Unschooling, where we explore four foundational ideas and paradigm shifts that helped us along our journey. The shop has resources and support for every stage of your journey. You can find the link in the show notes, or you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com.

Today we’re going to be talking about the abundance mindset, how to cultivate it, and how it can help us on our unschooling journey. Erika, would you like to get us started?

ERIKA: I would! I love a mindset shift and the word abundance just feels so good to me, so I’m excited to dive into this one.

So, when we talk about abundance in our conversations on the podcast and on the Network, what we’re really talking about is a mindset. And when we’re cultivating that mindset of abundance, we open ourselves up to possibilities. We’re telling ourselves there’s plenty of time. We know that even if things don’t go as we initially imagined, that there are solutions and possibilities. It’s a feeling of keeping ourselves open.

And then the flip side of abundance is scarcity. And if we’re mentally in a place of scarcity, it can feel like there’s not enough time. We don’t have enough money. I can’t possibly do all the things that I need to do. We need to try to speed through things to get to the next thing. And so, a scarcity mindset is at play if I’m worried about the timeline of my children’s learning or if I’m feeling like a lot of pressure around making the proper decision in this moment.

And so, we end up using those two words a lot, abundance and scarcity to describe our mental states. And I think just recognizing when I’m getting stuck in that scarcity mode can help me to reframe and get to that more helpful mindset of abundance.

PAM: Yeah, I love that. It’s absolutely a mindset shift. And I think, like in your examples, it’s so great to remember that it applies to so much more than just money. Many conversations where you hear talk about scarcity and abundance mindset, they are in relation to money and income and those kinds of things. But yes, bigger picture, that same mindset shift can be so helpful to recognize, it’s a scarcity of time if you’re worried, oh, what are my kids learning? When are they going to learn this? And, oh my gosh, what if they don’t learn this?

When we shift to that lifelong learning perspective, and we recognize that, you know what? When something becomes interesting to them or important to them or just hits something that they’re wanting to accomplish or do, that’s when they can learn it and that’s when they will learn it with less effort. Or it doesn’t seem hard. It almost doesn’t seem like you’re learning, but that’s because you’ve got a reason for it. It’s become important. It’s not like, learn this now for some day. That’s hard, because, what are you going to connect that to? How’s that going to make sense?

But when you make that shift to lifelong learning, it takes that scarcity of time component away and helps you realize that there is an abundance and there’s a lifetime of it where things can bubble up along the way. So, I just find it really fun, too, when I’m stressed about something to ask if there is an abundance component to it or a scarcity component to it. Just because that starts helping me think about it in a little bit bigger picture. And that’s when there are possibilities and solutions versus the more tunnel vision that happens to me when I’m thinking scarcity.

ANNA: Yeah. And I think for me it’s really the same thing that you both just said, but it’s that energetic shift. Because, like you said, Erika, we can put it into those categories a lot. When I’m thinking about if I’m feeling some tightness or something, it’s like, ooh, what’s happening there? And then I recognize, oh, I’m bringing that scarcity energy to this. It is tunneling me in and I feel the contraction just even thinking about it. And so, that abundance is almost like the deep breath. It’s like, oh, okay, I’ve got time.

And it’s funny, because I’m glad you brought up plenty of time, because you know I say that all the time and it really is, to me, exactly abundance. It really centers me to, this is a long game. Whatever it is, even if it’s something that’s going to complete in the next week or two, it’s like this deep breath. There’s plenty of time. We’re going to work this out. And so, that energy that I bring to it is really what we’re talking about in terms of the paradigm shift today.

But there are specific things that come up that I think are fun to explore. And one of the big ones for me was the idea that everything didn’t have to come from me. I think as parents, especially when we have little kids, everything’s coming from me, food, and all the things. And so, this shift to recognizing like, oh, there’s a broader world here. There are more people in my kids’ lives. And I noticed them finding ways to make things happen that I didn’t know could happen, and I couldn’t find the path myself.

And so, that’s when, again, I realized I was tunneling in on, okay, they’re asking for something or wanting to do something, and I’m thinking there’s one path to this thing that they’re asking about. “I want to get a horse,” or, “I want to do,” whatever big idea thing they might have. And I’m thinking there’s one way. That’s tunneling me in.

And so, when I can breathe into, the world is big and abundant and there are so many different ways, then we just saw magical things happen, just interesting connections and meeting new people and things. And so, again, for me it was always about checking that energy, but recognizing that this is broader than just me having to say, oh, we don’t have the money for that, or we don’t have the time for that, or whatever might be the constraint.

ERIKA: Yeah, I, I actually was going to mention horses, because I feel like it’s just one of those potentially scary, big things that could come up. So, just imagine any kind of moment when your kid comes to you with an interest that just feels like, oh my god, we don’t have the money for this. We don’t have the time for this, or the space for this, or whatever it is. And so, I just love that. It’s not that you’re changing what you’re doing necessarily, it’s changing how you’re thinking about what you’re doing. And it’s opening that up.

And so, it really does feel like the scarcity view is that tunnel vision. I can only see that they said they want horseback riding lessons. I’m seeing that it’s going to look like this and it’s going to cost this and it’s going to take this time, and all these different things like that. There’s just that one path that I can first see and if I get stuck in, but that won’t work for us, then that’s it. That’s the end of it. And it feels like being trapped.

And so, then the abundance, and I mean, we’ve had this happen so many times in the Network where someone will bring, oh my gosh, I’m freaking out because my kid wants this. And it’s like, okay, but you’re in the scarcity mindset of, we can’t do it because of X, Y, Z. And so, switching to the abundance just feels like taking a broader view of the whole thing. Opening myself up to all the different ways that we could incorporate an interest or explore things without it costing money. Or like you’re saying, everything doesn’t have to come from me. It doesn’t mean that I have to be the one with all the answers. We could just start with being creative and exploring things and if I assume that abundance is actually there and that abundance is the reality, it just helps so much with that creativity and exploring all the different possible options.

PAM: I do think that is such a helpful step. I’m trying to think, to notice this shift, so for me it’s like I just need to notice when I’m uncomfortable about something or if you’re feeling that overwhelmed, just like you were describing there, Erika, like, oh my gosh, this is the path and we can’t do that. We can’t do that. So, it’s when I’m feeling uncomfortable, it’s like, okay, just ask myself some questions. Right? And then that’s when you remember. Because we all get stuck in that moment. I think it’s not that it never happens just because you know that there’s a difference between scarcity and abundance.

It’s like, okay, I need to find the clues for how I react to a feeling of scarcity. What does it look like for me? So that I can just be on the lookout for those little clues or triggers, or whatever you want to call them, that give you that, oh, okay, let’s just play around with this a little bit more.

Because then, yes, all that you guys were talking about. When we shift to that abundance, it is like remembering, oh, I don’t need to have all the solutions. We can have conversations. Because I have also found quite often when someone comes with an ask or I think of something and my immediate thought is thinking, oh, we can’t do that. Lack of time, lack of money, lack of like all the things. When you take that moment to have a conversation, that is often their solution to the need. Maybe it doesn’t need to look like that. We want to make it look like the way that they’re talking about, but when we can have conversations and get down to what are they wanting, like, I really want to dance. I really want to go horseback riding. You don’t have to jump to owning a horse to try out horseback riding.

So, in having those conversations, it goes back to our why not yes? Speaking of Four Pillars of Unschooling course, that’s when we can open up to the abundance, we can open up to the creative ideas, we can open up to other possible paths.
And even recognizing the first baby step. Maybe the first baby step is going and just watching people and just getting to maybe meet a few horses. And then maybe it’s finding a place where maybe it’s just a ride, booking a ride, a trail ride, and you go and do that and is that fun? And then it’s like, oh, maybe lessons. That’s something that’s a little more regular.

There are so many baby steps along the way, and then at each step you can learn a little bit more about them. And with that abundance mindset, it’s not like each step has to be this one thing on this one path. The beautiful thing about seeing the abundance is like, oh, we see this one little step and let’s try it, get our feedback, see how it goes, and look at all the other possibilities that might exist along with this. Now we’ve had this experience and we know how it feels.

I think, too, the challenge in that shift as well is the plenty of time piece. We want to deliver as fast as possible, but when we’re like, oh no, we don’t need to jump to the end in the most efficient way, that’s when we start bubbling up around trust. It’s like, oh, I trust that things will unfold, baby step by baby step in some way, in that direction, but I don’t need to presuppose what it looks like in the end.

We’re going to learn so much each step of the way that we may tweak it and end up someplace different, but someplace better that’s more related to what the person was actually wanting versus how they verbally framed it the first time they mentioned it to us.

ANNA: Digging into those needs, I think, is so important. And something that you said earlier led me on a slight bit of a tangent, but it is about how to notice the blocks or switch, and that is to then to really feel like, okay, where’s that tightness coming from? Because this could be coming from a lot of places. Sometimes it can be coming from maybe a guilt of, we don’t have the money to do that right now, and am I harming my kids or am I holding them back somehow? And it’s like, no, but we have to process that. We have to process that, like, okay. That’s where that’s coming from.

Or sometimes maybe we weren’t heard as a child, and so it’s really important for us to hear our kids and we’re feeling like we’re not hearing them, but watch for those little triggers and just give yourself some moments around that, because like Pam said, it’s then we can lean back into the baby steps of, I can hear my child and we can have a conversation and we can be taking baby steps. We don’t have to jump all the way to the end and solve it and have this one solution that’s come out of it.

But give yourself some space around that, because I think you’ll feel it in your body if you’re feeling that tightness. Or if their big idea is making you, I mean, sometimes it might make you grumpy or a little snappy, like, oh, why is there another big idea that we’ve got to do? Recognize that there’s something there that I want to figure out and give myself some space and love around, because it is hard. There’s lots going on and kids have big ideas.

And so, just recognizing that there are so many ways to support them in cultivating the big ideas, moving towards the big ideas that doesn’t involve you having to step out of your comfort zone even. And maybe you will a little bit down the road, but it’s not like you have to leap out of it the minute an idea comes. Because like you said, there are needs under that idea that we can start to play with and have conversations. That helps the person feel heard, helps them feel seen, helps them really fine tune the idea because it may just be this idea thrown out and they want to fine tune it and understand it and have a conversation about it. And so, I just wanted to make sure I watched any kind of reactions that were about me, so that I wasn’t putting that on the situation or the discussion that was happening with my child.

ERIKA: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love that. And I’m just thinking about how many places those triggers and messages could be coming from, just with social media and seeing other people’s lives and comparing that to our life, that could definitely trigger a feeling of scarcity or like, I should be doing it in a way that looks like this or just that comparison can cause that feeling of getting stuck there. But when the big ideas come, the more I can deep breathe myself through, it’s just conversations, it’s just exploration. We’re just being creative and cultivating that creativity and openness with that abundance mindset. That helps everyone in the family with every single thing.

It’s going to serve our children later if, when they think of something, they have that practice of not tunneling in on the one one way. It’s fun brainstorming and creatively thinking about things as a family. I feel like it’s just so valuable.

And it was making me also think that it’s super common, especially in a parent role or the adult role to feel the need to come in with a solution to solve the problem. And it’s all related, but everything doesn’t have to come from me. It just doesn’t occur to me at the beginning, because, well, I’m the parent and I’m the one with the money and so it’s really easy to accidentally come with a solution and not even almost realize that I’m doing it. And especially if they seem to have a very clear idea about what they want to do, too. It’s like, okay, we all are just tunneled in on this thing now. And it can cause this all to get stuck, I think, especially if it feels like something that’s just not doable because of money or anything else.
But yeah, just remembering that I don’t need to come with a solution. Or if I notice myself coming with a solution, I can be like, oh wait, that was a solution. This doesn’t have to be the one way. It’s all such great learning for moving through problems and moving through life.

PAM: Yeah. They really are skills, for lack of a better word, but just gaining experience with different ways to move through things. To see that, I want a horse, is the first step, not the answer. And I found if that’s the family ethos and the way we process and move through things, I found after months, years of experience, that’s how they were processing, like you mentioned. They’re taking that out into the world with them and the way that they look at things, there is more creativity. There are possibilities. And also it’s not so much about the timeline. It’s not like I need everything to be done immediately. Because they’ve had so much experience growing up with that, let’s do the thing and let’s figure out a way to make it work. And checking in with the different contexts and the different constraints that are part of getting to whatever direction you’re wanting to go. There are just so many pieces. Anna?

ANNA: I got excited because of what you just said, which was the trust. And you mentioned it earlier, that it’s an important piece. And this is why. And it’s because there’s a trust. And like you said, Erika, it’s not just the big things like the horse, it’s the little things like the popsicles ran out. It’s the little things where we develop this trust of, we are going to figure this out. And the timeline is such a perfect thing, because it may not be immediately that we can get more popsicles, but they know that I’m not going to forget about it. I’m not brushing them off. I’m not just not going to think about it because we just went to the grocery store. We’re going to keep it top of mind. We’re going to remember it. We’re going to put it on the list. We’re going to make sure. We’re going to recognize that maybe we didn’t get enough popsicles last time. It’s just going to be this idea of like, oh, okay, what I’m saying is important and valued in my family, and there’s a trust that we’ll figure it out.

So, what I think you’ll see shift when that trust develops is they’re not coming at things with such a sense of urgency. Because I think if we don’t feel heard, and this is adults and kids alike, if we don’t feel heard, we get louder and maybe a little bit more insistent and maybe bring a little bit more sense of urgency.

Like, “You don’t understand how important this is to me.” But when we develop that trust, when we follow through and we keep having the conversations and we keep moving those baby steps towards it, it changes it, because we all can do that deep breath that I talked about at the beginning and go, yeah, we’re going to figure this out. There are lots of different ways to get there. And so, the way you said it, Pam, I was like, oh, that’s it. That’s why trust is so important. It’s not about solving it immediately. It is about just knowing we are hearing each other and we’re moving in that direction.

PAM: And I’ve got to say, the popsicle example is just beautiful. Let’s walk through that just a touch. You know, the, oh man, I’d like a popsicle and we’re out of them. We can say, oh, I’ll put it on the list for next time. But maybe we grocery shopped yesterday and we didn’t get enough and we had a whole bunch of friends over and we went through them faster than we expected. And when we have that trust in the relationship and they feel comfortable sharing, their reaction can be, oh, but I really want one now. There’s that urgency. Maybe it’s hot, maybe whatever. There doesn’t need to be a reason or an excuse or anything.

But then that’s a trust piece, too, that it’ll be like, oh, I can’t go right now, but I can go later today. When we realize, oh, a week from now, next time I’m running into town isn’t going to work for them. But that’s that trust piece, that they trust us that they can share without having to get louder and louder and louder. Because if they feel like we’re not hearing them, they are going to just be like, but no, but no. And then all sorts of chaos can unfold.

But when they trust that they could say no, I can’t wait till five days from now or three days from now, or even tomorrow sometimes. But when they know there’s that trust, they’ll actually check in with themselves and, and say they can wait. Or maybe, if you’re just getting into this, maybe they will need it now. But if we can deliver it now, and now and now, and they can trust that if now is real, we will do as much as possible. I find that then they can relax because they’ve got that trust. They see that when something’s urgent, we will do as much as we can to help them in that moment. But then once that trust develops, they can check in with themselves. It’s like, okay, yeah, you know what? I had two popsicles today, tomorrow is fine, and then maybe next grocery shopping is fine. It is just super fascinating to see that develop.

But yeah, I don’t want people to expect that immediately if they’re just making that shift now, because that trust takes some time to develop and we need to show that they can trust us right through our actions.

ANNA: Okay. One quick thing, Erika, because I know you have something to say, too, but this is about the popsicle. That takes a little bit of time to develop. Here’s the energy piece that we’re talking about. So, when that happens, we don’t have enough popsicles, whatever, I can be frustrated like, okay, we literally just went to the store. Why do we not have enough popsicles? I can get frustrated or I can be like, oh my gosh, it is so hot outside. We can’t get to the store right now, but let’s crush some ice. Let’s pour some stuff on it. Let’s make something. That’s that abundance, that energy shift that for me was so important, because I could get stuck in that place of like, okay, oh my gosh, I just went grocery shopping. I don’t want to go again. You know how I feel about grocery shopping? That’s not fun for me. But that’s me tunneling in, that’s me bringing that scarcity mindset when we can have fun with it. We still may need to get the popsicles down the road, maybe even tomorrow or whatever, but I’m bringing a lightness to it and a connection to it that feels better to me and it feels better to them.

PAM: And how fun might it be to make popsicles?

ERIKA: Stick a spoon in it and let’s see what happens. Now we also have an activity to do. But right. So, it’s the trust. It’s kids trusting that we are not just shutting things down because of our fears and our scarcity and our tunnel vision. So, there’s that trust that we’re going to creatively work through things together. But I think the other part of trust for the abundance mindset is us trusting in abundance itself.

And so, that has been such a big shift for me that really does help when I’m starting to have worries and fears about things, if I can come back to trusting there’s going to be a way to move through it, trusting that there are going to be plenty of possibilities and trusting in our capability to make things happen in one way or another.

And it won’t necessarily be that original vision that I thought was going to happen, but there are abundant possibilities. That is what really, just day to day, helps me move through our lives together.

PAM: That’s so brilliant. There are so many pieces. There’s an abundance of pieces to the abundance mindset. That energy piece that we can bring. I’ll start with noticing our triggers, noticing something that that tells us, oh, it might be helpful to look at this shift to see more possibilities.

The energy we bring to it, the trust that we’re developing, the openness to all sorts of possibilities. It really is the release. To the brainstorming side of it, maybe we suggest making the popsicles and they’re like, no, I need it now. And then you’re crushing ice maybe. But releasing that pressure of scarcity that we’re feeling, that is just so key, I think, to shifting to that energy, to that trust in abundance unfolding, even if we don’t know how in the moment it’s going to unfold. But that it’s happened before.

And I think one other piece that’s so helpful is each time, especially when you’re first working at this, is to make note when it works out. It’s like, oh, I had no idea that that’s where we’d end up. Because maybe we’re starting to talk about making juice and then they think of something else they want to freeze or they want to go play in the bath now, because we’re talking about liquid things. You just never know where it’s going to go.

But I think when we can find proof that it works, we have those little reminders. It’s like, oh yeah, this helped. Because that’s just something that helped me notice my triggers a little bit faster. And to be a little bit more like, oh yes, I want to try this mindset shift, because it’s kind of fun. So, there are just so many little pieces that can be involved, and that’s why we always talk about playing with things for ourselves. See which pieces work for you, because maybe not all of the pieces are meaningful to each person. Our triggers are definitely going to be different, because there will be a lot of things from our childhood and from conventional voices that we have taken in and absorbed that we’re going to be working through.

But it’s so fun to play with because, for me, it’s goes back to curiosity. When I can be curious about where it’s going to go, that is something that helps me make that shift to, oh, okay, let’s explore here rather than tunneling into Yes/No, we can or can’t do this particular thing.

ERIKA: Yeah, I was thinking that it’s harder to get to the abundance mindset if I am having a hard time personally, so if I’m in pain or if I’m sick, or if I haven’t had enough sleep, all those self-care pieces or the hungry, angry, lonely, tired, that we’ve talked about, the HALT pieces. All of those could potentially contribute to me getting in that scarcity mindset.

So, then I feel like my job is to notice, oh, it’s that. These are my reasons. Let me try to either take care of myself or be kind to myself that this is a hard moment, but it still is going to be helpful if I can try to shift to an abundance mindset. But those are going to be the more challenging times to get to that place for me.

ANNA: Right. And I feel like our energy does really set the stage. So, being aware of that helps, because again, if we’re going to a scarcity place, you’ll see your kids going to a scarcity place, which then maybe becomes more insistent or more frustrated or wanting something a certain way because it’s feeling scarce. Like, I’ve got to hone in on this, I have to have it right now, kind of thing.

But I think you’re so right that sometimes when our capacity’s low for whatever reason, that’s hard. But that’s when we talk about narration, because I think kids are more capable than we think. If we can say, okay, I know we can solve this, but right now I’m starving and I can’t think and I’m so tired. We are going to get to this. Just narrating a little bit about what’s happening can calm their nervous system to go, okay. They hear me. They’re not helping me right this moment, but they hear me and it’s important. So, that’s a little baby step we can do when we can’t like jump to just the creativity and the abundance if there’s some capacity issues. Just talk about it, you know?

PAM: Yeah. And that’s where the trust comes in as well. When we’ve built that trust and we have been able to share, narrate, and mention if we’re not feeling well or we’re tired or whatever, that they can hear those and take them in, because they don’t feel like we’re just trying to put them off.

ANNA: Right. And I would say definitely follow up. So, if you say something like, “Okay, I’m just too tired right now, it’s really late and I want to revisit it,” write it down, put it on the whiteboard, whatever your family does to show that we are going to revisit this first thing in the morning and do it. Because that’s how we develop the trust by following through, by being there, by remembering.
And even they may have moved on. That’s okay, but you’re still there to say, “Hey, remember that thing you were talking about at 11:00 last night? Do you want to revisit it and figure out how we can do it?” And they may be like, “Oh no, I don’t care.” And that’s okay. But just, I wanted to make sure I was remembering to follow up and not just like, okay, I got them to be quiet and now I’m like not going back to that again.

PAM: Yeah. You don’t want to be just hoping that they don’t bring it up again, because that’s where you’re going to lose points in the trust. It really is all about the actions following the words. That’s where the trust is going to develop. When they know that you will follow through, then they don’t need that immediacy as much. Rather than, “I need it immediately, because if we wait six hours, you’re just going to have forgotten it.” Right? But when they can trust that we’ll come back to it, happily come back to it, so often they get it.

ANNA: Yes. Well, I loved this! It was very fun to dive into abundance and I think there is just lots to think about. Checking in with our triggers, watching the energy we’re bringing, see how it changes things. Play with it. I love that, Pam, let’s just play with it and see if it shifts anything in your house. I think that’ll be really fun.

So, thanks to you both for being here today. And thank you for listening. We hope you found it helpful on your unschooling journey. And if you enjoy these kinds of conversations, we know that you would love the Living Joyfully Network. It is such an amazing group of people connecting and having thoughtful conversations about things and teasing out all the different nuances, and I just love it so much. So, you can learn more about that at livingjoyfully.ca/network and we hope to see you all there.
PAM AND ERIKA: Bye!

ANNA: Take care!

View Details

Pam and Anna are joined by Living Joyfully Network member Sara Davidson to talk about what she’s been learning about consent.

Sara was previously on the podcast in episode 312. It was great to hear her family updates and to dive deep into the topic of consent. We talked about four different types of consent, enthusiastic, willing, unwilling, and coerced, and Sara shared some stories that illustrated these different types. We also explored some strategies and tools that have been helpful with our families as we try to live consensually together.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling, coaching calls, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

EU312: The Breadth of Unschooling with Sara Davidson

Ace – What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski, PhD

Are You Willing? Instantly transform your vitality, parenting and life flow with this breakthrough practice by Marion Rose

The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent by Betty Martin

The Wheel of Consent

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello, everyone! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-host, Anna Brown, and our guest, Living Joyfully Network member Sara Davidson.

Hello to you all. On today’s episode, we have invited Sara to join us in talking about a topic that she’s been exploring deeply recently, which is consent, and I think this will be a really fun and interesting conversation.

Now, before we get started, have you checked out the Living Joyfully Shop yet? Our online shop has my unschooling books, lots of helpful coaching options and online courses such as Navigating Conflict, Validation, and Four Pillars of Unschooling. You can also learn more about the Living Joyfully Network there. We are excited to be creating a one-stop shop to support you on your unschooling journey, and we hope you’ll check it out at Livingjoyfullyshop.com.

So, with that done, Sara was first on the podcast a couple of years ago in episode 312, which we will link in the show notes. I encourage all our listeners to check out that episode and learn more about her journey to unschooling. We are very thrilled to have you back, Sara. It has been such a pleasure getting to know you on the Network these last few years.

I was just wondering, can you give us a bit of an update just to get the conversation started? How old are your kids now?

SARA: Oh, sure. I’d love to give an update. I believe that the last time we spoke on the podcast, my kiddos were 9 and 11, and now they are 12 and 14. In the last podcast episode, I talked about all the non-human animals that were part of our family and those have not changed except for we have one addition.

We rescued a bunny along the side of the road a couple months ago and ended up adopting them. And they are Bun Bun and they are a force of nature and we love them, but they have been quite an adventure. So, they are the new edition and our only animal edition.

Ryan and Izzy are my two kiddos and they have grown and changed so much. Some things have stayed the same. Yet they’re also almost completely different people than they were the last time I was a guest.

Ryan, he still really loves gaming. He’s into Roblox obbies and Total War, War Hammer 3 and Family Among Us. But what’s new is he’s just recently, like within the last year and a half, he’s started going on all my Saturday morning walks with the dog, which has led to this love of birding. He and I are really passionate birders. And we use this Merlin app to identify all the birds in our area.

Last year, he started getting interested in running. He set up his own training programs and he’s now run three 5K races all on his own, which has been really fun to watch. And he also started getting into football and he’s playing around with the idea of playing tackle league football, which would be the first organized sport that he’s ever done, if he decides to do that. So, that’s really cool.

Izzy’s 14. I don’t know if I mentioned that Ryan was my 12-year-old, but Izzy’s 14. She’s really into Microsoft Flight Simulator. She’s still very passionate about aviation, just like last time. She’s been running her own Discord server with some other homeschooling and unschooling kids that has a Minecraft server associated with that. And so, that’s really fun for them.

So, airplanes, airplanes, airplanes, everything airplanes. Whether it’s airports, the logistics behind it, the flying, everything, she’s into that. And then also into traveling. She recently started getting into planning for a future car and driving has been an exciting prospect for them. Also, current events and politics and riding their bike. So, those are Izzy’s interests right now, which is really fun.

And then, Joe’s still into Fortnite. He plays Fortnite. He’s still into soccer. But last time we talked it was the German soccer league, and now he’s shifted to the Italian soccer league as his favorite. He also likes building stuff with his hands.

And then for me right now, what’s bubbling is gardening. I have started all my plants from seed, which I’ve never done before. And birding and watercolor and stuff like that.

And so, those are our individual interests that have some overlap between family members. As a family unit, we are loving Exploding Kittens, which is a tablet-based game, Poetry for Neanderthals, which is an actual physical card game. We recently discovered that oranges and cream taste amazing together, like whipped cream with oranges. And so, now we’ve been having oranges and cream tea parties and I don’t know if that’s going to become a tradition, but it’s been really fun.

ANNA: I love that. There are so many fun things and it’s been fun to watch the different interests ebb and flow and I love it. I always enjoy the updates and what’s happening with you all doing all kinds of fun stuff.

PAM: About the oranges, last week, Mike and Jules made an orange-based salad, but oranges and marshmallow and some cream in there and some pineapple and coconut.

SARA: It’s similar!

ANNA: My mom makes that. It’s a southern thing, so that’s interesting. That’s considered a southern thing here. But I remember it. It had a lot going on for me at the time. But I love that.

Oh my goodness. Okay, so we’re going to dive right in, because I’m very excited. You have mentioned recently on the Network and to us that you’ve been exploring consent and willingness and how those two things weave together and all the little things that surround that.

And I was wondering if you could just share some of your exploration around that and what tools you’ve found helpful and the paradigm and the mindset shifts. Because I think it’s been an interesting journey from what I’ve heard already and I’m excited to talk about it with you.

SARA: Yes. I just wanted to start with why consent is such an interesting topic for me and why it feels so important. I feel like it’s one of those cornerstones, when we talk about building space for these connected relationships that we want to have with our immediate family, and then ultimately with the world. But let’s just keep it in the immediate family for now. Consent and willingness is the cornerstone of that, and the best and just most amazing and richest learning happens in that space of willingness and consent.

I’ve found a couple of tools that have been really helpful for me. They have things that order my brain a little bit. I have three tools that I’ll probably touch on while we’re talking, but the main one that I wanted to mention was the framework for consent that was created by a sex researcher named Emily Nagoski, who wrote the book Come As You Are. And I encountered this framework through Angela Chen’s work. Angela is the author of Ace.

So, Emily Nagoski developed some categories for consent that went along the lines of this enthusiastic, willing, unwilling, and coerced consent. What helped me with that is, first of all, I know Emily Nagoski was specifically writing this framework for physical touch and intimacy, but I feel like it really can expand outward to pretty much all relational interactions. And it gave me this more nuanced framework for consent beyond this binary like, yes, I’m consenting, or no, I’m not, which can feel really black and white and confusing at times when there’s so much of life that actually occurs in kind of a gray area.

And so, if it’s okay, I’d like to go ahead and share so we have a common language. I did adapt some of the definitions for each of these categories to make them broader, beyond just physical touch. But I’d like to go through each of those four categories if that’s okay.

ANNA: Yeah, absolutely!

SARA: Okay. So, the first was enthusiastic consent. And I’m going to read from my notes here. So, it’s when I want something for my own reasons, because it brings me joy. When I don’t fear the consequences of saying yes or saying no. When saying no means missing out on something I want. So, that’s enthusiastic consent.

Willing consent would be when I may care about something, but I don’t need to do it right now. When I would not otherwise choose it for myself, but I’m willing because someone else wants it and it’s okay with me. When I’m pretty sure saying yes will have an okay result. And I think maybe I’d regret saying no. Or when I believe that the desire to do something might begin after I say yes. So, that would be the willing consent area.

And then Angela Chen was really clear to point out that the next two categories of unwilling consent and coerced consent are only consent in the most literal sense, that someone did not yell out, “No!” For unwilling consent, it’s when I fear the consequences of saying no more than I fear the consequences of saying yes. When I feel not just an absence of desire to do something, but an absence of desire for desire. When I hope that by saying yes, you’ll stop bothering me or think that if I say no, you’ll only keep trying to persuade me. So, that was the unwilling consent.

And for coerced consent, we get into when you threaten me with harmful consequences if I say no. When I feel I’ll be hurt if I say yes, but that I’ll be hurt more if I say no. And when saying yes means experiencing something I actively dread.

So, those are the four. That’s the framework. And in my parenting journey, I have experienced all of those, and I would like to touch on how that’s shown up for me and what I am trying to foster in my family and then sometimes where I get a little tripped up.

PAM: Yeah. That would be lovely. There were a few places where I was vigorously nodding, if you’re watching on video, because there were a couple of pieces where I really liked the depth to which she went and grabbed some of those nuances. The frame through desire for the more enthusiastic ones, and then when you get down to the other two, I haven’t said no, but the feelings of coercion and how I’m framing that in my head, when I’m almost doing that pros and cons of, what are the consequences going to be? And even bringing in the consequences of both the yes and the no. Comparing them really makes it clear, at least for me, what she’s talking about. So, I love that.

ANNA: I love how it does bring those nuances in, because consent was a very big guidepost for me early on. We’ve been talking about autonomy in the Network this month, which I’ve found really enjoyable. For me, the word really was consent. But you’re right. As a binary, it’s a little bit tricky to fit into life, to explain to people, and to understand. And so, I really enjoyed the willingness definition, too, because there are times I make choices because you’re interested in doing that, and you’re important to me, and I know I’m not going to be harmed by it and I want to do that. And to me, that is still a consent that feels okay.

And then how different that energy is from those lower two on that spectrum. We’re dipping into this territory of actually, it doesn’t feel okay. Yeah, I may have shown up because I feel forced, or I feel worried, but it doesn’t feel the same. I really do love looking at those nuances, because that’s real life. There’s just a lot of nuance.

SARA: Yes. And I think between those top two, which were the enthusiastic and willing consent, and then the bottom two, which were the unwilling and coerced consent, it really isn’t what it looks like. It’s what it feels like.

And so, those top two are connecting. We’re connecting truly with ourselves. We’re connecting truly with the people in front of us. And it builds that relationship and trust. And then once you get moving into those bottom two, again, it’s a feeling. Because consent for one person looks completely different than consent for another. But if there’s that feeling of disconnect, then it’s a little red flag. Did we just tip into this area where we’re now disconnecting from each other and from ourselves?

PAM: Yeah. And I think another piece that’s so valuable, and it ties in with talking about autonomy this month too, is that it’s not a right/wrong, yes/no. It really is so individual. It’s not like, well, this is a situation where consent should be just fine, like we don’t need to discuss the nuances. Of course you want to come and do X, Y, Z with us. But even just planting that seed that it’s a spectrum, that it really is about the individual, and it’s really about the moment, too.

That willingness, using that framework really brings us into the moment. Right now, this is how it feels to me. And yet, it is so much about the feeling and the energy, because it’s so completely individual. It’s not about the question at hand really.

SARA: And so, if you all are okay with it.

PAM: I was going to say, are you going to share some stories?

SARA: Yes. I’d like to start, because I have stories in every single one of these categories.

We’ll start with the really fun ones, which is the enthusiastic consent, which is again, where I want something for my own reasons, because it brings me joy. And what I’ve experienced, for me and for my kids and for my family, is like, this is our yes!! This is our internal, bright, sparkly, joyful, oh, I want that. That is enthusiastic consent. And I’ve learned how to spot that. I know what that feels like for me inside now. It’s really bright. And I can see it on my kids, too. I can see what their yes looks like in their body language and their facial expressions and the energy in their voice.

And so, it’s been really fun, because unschooling has given us this space to really learn what our yes is. What are we really drawn to? Where’s that joy? Where’s that sparkle? And then trying to figure out how to go and do that. Like, ooh, let’s follow that. How can we do that? And maybe we can do that in this moment. Maybe there needs to be some planning that happens. But those are when you get into the nuances and it’s really fun.

And it’s been interesting for me as a mom, because before unschooling I didn’t even know what my own yes felt like. And so, by watching my kids and experiencing that for myself, I’m like, oh, that’s what it feels like when I really am enthusiastic about some things. And I got a couple of stories, but I don’t know if you all want to add to that.

PAM: I love stories.

SARA: So, the fun part about this yes is we get to follow it in unschooling and I feel like we have so much time and space to do that. And then sometimes it can feel a little challenging for me when somebody’s yes isn’t actually what they say. Or I actually can’t do it for them in the moment. I remember there was a time when Izzy really wanted to fly like a bird, and this was when they were really, really young. And I hadn’t heard about validation.

And I don’t even remember how I necessarily handled it, but it felt really hard for me when they’re like, mom, I want to fly like a bird. They just wanted to go to the front yard, spread their arms out, and just fly. And I think what my current self would say is, yeah, that would be a lot of validation. Like, oh my gosh, you just wish you could just go out to the front yard and take off and it’s so frustrating that you can’t.

And then that creativity, like, well, you may not be able to fly like a bird, but would you like to watch a video cam of a bird flying? Or maybe we could get you up in an airplane. Just something to get those creative juices of, that yes, as you imagined it, can’t quite happen, but there are so many other possibilities. First the validation of, that’s really hard. And then the creativity of, but how could we do other things that are also following that yes that you might feel.

And then the other piece, and this is my last story on the enthusiastic yes piece. My brain goes to challenges, because the good stuff just feels crazy and things are happening. There have been times where I’ve experienced an internal yes for something. In this case, I really wanted to go see my favorite movie in the movie theater. And I was just so drawn to do this. And my kiddos were adamant that they did not want me to leave the house. And I tried all different kinds of things. Like, okay, how could I honor this yes? How could I actually go do this thing that feels really good to me?

And through all of the back and forth, it became clear to me that it just wasn’t going to be something that my kids were going to be okay with. And in that moment, it was really about validating myself and how hard that felt. But then re-grounding in, okay, what are my choices? I could go to this movie and say, forget you guys. I really just have to go. Maybe I could choose that. But just re-grounding in what choices do I have? What is my why? And re-grounding in the abundance of time, like, maybe this movie will come back out in 10 years and I’ll get to see it then. My kids aren’t going to be this age forever, telling me that they desperately need me to stay in the house.

And then, for me, I ended up choosing connection. So, I was like, I really have this yes to go do this thing, yet my connection with my kids and honoring that relationship felt like where I needed to actually be and spend my time. So, I put the movie aside. But it did feel challenging there for a little bit to say that that yes needed to wait.

ANNA: That enthusiastic yes. It is fun. I loved the point you said early on, like you really had to figure out what that even felt like to you. Because I think so many of us, as we go through the system, we’re so externally focused, like, what do people need from us? What are we supposed to do in this environment? And so, I do think it’s a process to learn the enthusiastic yes.

And I feel like my kids really did lead the way for that for me as well. And so, I really started to see, oh, that’s what it feels like. But you’re right, sometimes there are these limitations or these contextual pieces that make that hard in the moment. But I think when we can really ground into it, feel it, check in with our why, it doesn’t have to be a negative story.

And I have a friend that always says to celebrate the closeness of the match. And so, sometimes it’s like, oh, okay, I couldn’t do it exactly like I thought I could, but I’m going to celebrate that I even figured out this was something that I wanted and that maybe I can do this piece of it, or I can do it in a different way. I can watch the movie when it comes on streaming, whatever that looks like. And so, I think it’s interesting just to think about what that looks like and then at the spectrum of how we react when we have that enthusiastic yes.

PAM: Yeah. I love that you revisited your priorities for yourself, because it’s still your choice, right? It was still your choice to make, so it was, I see the impact that my enthusiastic yes choice would have on those around me. And is that something I want to do? And it’s still a choice. Like you said, I could have gone and maybe you do your best to figure out a way that they would be comfortable enough. There’s no literal right or wrong in these moments.

But re-grounding in the fact that it’s our choice and not getting stuck in that yes/no, people are letting me go or not letting me go. This is still re-grounding in, it’s my choice to make, but as Anna was saying, looking into the context of it all. And is that context or are the consequences of me doing this enthusiastic yes in this moment in our lives, with the relationships, and the effect that it will have or will likely have on my relationships, those are all great questions.

So, if we think of it as yes/no, people aren’t letting us, we can get very resistant and very tunnel vision on trying to figure out how to convince them to let us do it, rather than taking the time to really reground in our choice and see the implications and play with those and see what’s really worth it. So, not choosing in the end doesn’t negate the fact that it was an enthusiastic yes. It’s embracing that really, but embracing it within the bigger picture of our lives.

And I feel, too, that some people might think, through the conventional framework, oh, you gave in. They know they can just get mad about something and you’ll change your mind, et cetera. And that may even be what it looks like to people from the outside looking in.

But when we recognize that we’ve grounded in that choice and we have chosen, like you said, to prioritize the relationship and connection and feeling like that was just too much of an impact to follow through on that enthusiastic yes right now, oh my gosh, the richness and the experience and the validation, without even words, the validation of who they are and how they’re feeling in that moment, just by us saying, okay, I understand. And what do they learn taking that forward, when the situation may be reversed other times, this is a conversation that we are all important. They know it was an enthusiastic yes, because you were trying to do it, so they understand that’s important to you.

SARA: And they still sometimes will be like, mom, I’m sorry you didn’t get to go to that movie. I’m like, I’m okay. I bought it and I watch it whenever I want.

PAM: Well, now you’ll get a VR headset, so you feel like you’re sitting in a huge movie theater watching it.

SARA: That’s right. I forgot about VR. Wow. Oh my goodness. Well, that’s all I had on the enthusiastic yes piece. So, I was going to move to the willing consent stories.

So, for willing consent, it’s when I’m pretty sure saying yes will have an okay result. And I think maybe I’d regret saying no. So, this is that more gray area. And I feel like how this looks in my family is a lot of back and forth. And usually what’s happening is one person has an enthusiastic yes for something, but it involves another person and they’re kind of like, nah, I don’t really want to do that. And so, for me, what works best in our family and every family’s going to look different, is I usually talk to each of my people in their own separate rooms. And I bounce around and I’m like, okay, this person said this. What do you think about that? Does that feel good to you? And I just keep cycling. And sometimes this takes a really, really long time.

But I tell myself, I think, Pam, you said it once, it’s like, this is the time that unschooling takes. I want to be part of this process, because this is where I learn all the juicy details. We really get down to the needs. We really figure out, well, why don’t you want to go out right now? Is it just because you don’t want to go out at all today? Or were you watching this video and there’s 15 minutes left and you just want to finish it and then you’d be willing? Or maybe you want to take your iPad with you. So, there’s just so many different nuances.

And so, I’m the hopper that just hops between my three people until we reach this consensus where everyone’s like, okay, yeah, I’m good with that. And how this feels in my body, the willing consent, it doesn’t feel like this big sparkly yes to me. But it feels light. It’s like, yeah, I can do that. And it’s like there’s no resistance, there’s no heaviness about it. And then I can see that for my kids as well. I can see that they’re not going, eh, sure. Or that they have that facial expression where they’re just kind of like, ah, whatever. But they’re actually like, okay. Yeah. And it’s this lighter, not sparkly yes. But an okay. Yeah, I’m good with that.

So, there have been some times where one of my kiddos had a binary just within themselves where they both want to do something and they also don’t want to do something. And so, I think Anna, you were the one who gave me words for this, which I found really helpful also with myself to be like, okay, so a part of you sounds like you really want to do this thing in this way, but it sounds like another part isn’t so sure. And so, what is this other part that’s not so sure? Is there something they’re worried about or is there something we can do to make that part more comfortable? And so, it’s kind of like a parts work piece.

And then the other piece about the willing consent I wanted to touch on is when there’s an actual need. Like, for instance, for my sparkly yes, I want to go to the movie, that wasn’t an absolute need of mine. I determined that I don’t really need this. It would be really nice to have. There are certain things that I needed to leave the house for, like food, or to go walk the dog, because we have a dog and that dog has needs and this is how we needed to fill that need. And I had strong resistance for me leaving for those events as well. And I had done some work around that and realized, no, this is actually something that I need to do for our family members, to keep our household running the way that we need it to run, to keep people fed.

And in that instance, and again, I think Anna, you gave me words for this, to help somebody who’s not in that willingness place yet, to validate them and say, I know how hard this is for you, to have me leave the house. How can we make it easier? Is there something that would make you feel more comfortable? Because I know when I leave, it’s hard for you.

And so, it wasn’t that I was just never leaving the house, but it was this delicate acknowledgement that this still isn’t okay for this person. And I can let them know, I see you, it’s not okay for you. But then we did find ways and it took years of iterations of, what if I went out this way or at this time, or called you here or took my pepper spray, and it was just an ongoing conversation of, this is hard for you. How can we make it feel better?

ANNA: Yeah. I love that. I think, Pam, you’re going to want to talk about talking to different people, because I know that was a big piece for you and we found that the same, like it doesn’t have to be this big family meeting that we’re all hashing out. Because sometimes, depending if we’re internal or external processors, leaving space for that, and so I love that piece of it.

I, of course, love the parts language, because I think it does help us identify like, okay, what does that part need to feel better? It gives us a little bit of a focus versus just, no, and I don’t know, and this back and forth of feeling so confused. And so, that language has been really helpful for me as well. And so, I love all of those pieces and that creativity to get to the willingness. So yeah, it’s not an enthusiastic yes for you to leave, but okay, let’s try this. Let’s try this. It’s like, yeah, I’m willing to try that. And I love that you said, too, that it changes. Because we may make agreements and like, okay, alright, I’m willing for you to go with these conditions, and that that feels better to me. And then it’s like, okay, there were still parts that felt hard, so we need to keep tweaking.

That’s what I love about, I called it consensual living, where we were really just understanding that we’re going to figure this out. There are lots of solutions to any given problem. And so, that trust that we’re going to be heard, we’re going to be seen, it’s not going to be ignored or pushed through. I really found that was the fountain of creativity, because when those basic needs of trust and being heard were met, then they were much more willing to get into that creative process. But when they were feeling unsteady, and I’ve seen it in other families where, if they’re going to push through it anyway, what difference does it make? You don’t see that creativity bubble up. And so, it can take a while to build that trust. But I love that description of how you did that.

PAM: Yeah, I was going to say, that trust and how that takes a while to cultivate, because they are giving us some trust in situations like you described, Sara, in that willingness is a trust that we’ll try this and we’ll see. It’s not like, okay, I have just committed to you doing this forever moving forward no matter how I feel.

And so, that trust that they didn’t just lock themselves into something is huge, because conventionally, so often we can be trying to convince them to let us do the thing and then the next time we’ve got to go out, it’s like, well last time I did X and you were fine with it, so it should be fine this time. Trusting that we won’t be bringing that kind of energy or using that kind of coercion, for lack of a better word.

It truly is about consent, but working together and trying to figure out a way to make it work and yes, definitely the going around to talk to them individually, because they were such different processors. It just took some needed longer conversations, some needed space to think more, and I could be there with them and give them that space and engage with them and pick out what they’ve shared, and then I can go to the next person and share it in their language. Because they may not yet understand, no matter their age, the other person’s language and what it actually means. So, I could understand each person’s language and re-frame what other people are saying. Not in their words, but in the words that would be meaningful or understood by the other person.

It was just the most beautiful investment and beautiful use of my time and energy, because it helped us, like you mentioned, Sara, we’re also telling them about their sibling or their other parent or myself, what we are feeling, thinking, how we’re experiencing it. So, they’re learning about us, too, everybody else, too, at the same time that they’re taking the time and the conversation to understand themselves and how they’re feeling affected or what their needs are, what they’re feeling right in this moment, or their constraints that they’re feeling.

So, they’re all figuring themselves out, and I’m learning more about them. It’s just this beautiful spiral that takes time, but as you’ve said so many times, Anna, that’s my time that I’m investing upfront versus the time that I’d have to invest later if we just plowed ahead, did the thing, and then we had meltdowns and upset that we’d have to process through after. So, it’s not like I do it or I don’t do it.

SARA: You’ll spend the energy one way or the other.

ANNA: Yeah. I would always rather have those conversations where I’m learning about them and they’re learning about me, versus trying to manage energy and make repairs and do all the things afterwards, which sometimes we get in a place where we have to do that. I think we’ll talk about those in those next two spots that you’re going to talk about. But if I can avoid it with some connection and stuff upfront, then I will. That is just me.

SARA: And this is where I think I wanted to throw in the second resource. I have read the first 25% of this book. But just knowing that it’s there, it’s really been helpful and it’s Are You Willing? by Marion Rose. And she has a willingness practice. I haven’t actually used Marion Rose’s specific practice, but she walks through her willingness practice.

What’s been helpful for me is, I’ve glanced through it and been like, oh, I can do this for myself to see if I can arrive at a willing consent. For example, I just did it last week when Ryan wanted to make homemade dog food and I really wanted to want to do that. But I noticed that I felt some heaviness and some resistance. And so, with this willingness practice, instead of being like, oh, I’m just going to ignore that, I’m feeling a little heavy and tense about some things, nebulously, and just go do the thing, I knew that that tightness would come out somehow in my interaction, while I was doing this dog food with him.

And so, I sat down and I’m like, what am I trying to protect? Why am I feeling tight? And I realized, oh, I was feeling tight, because I was worried that if I made dog food, I’d be too tired to make dinner and that I’d be on my feet a lot. And that that would mean that I would do this one type of cooking, but then I couldn’t provide for myself and the family later on. And then I was able, recognizing that, to come up with some ideas that would care for those things while I was making dog food with Ryan.

So, I was like, well, if I get tired on my feet, he’s pretty self-sufficient, I could just pull up a chair and sit. And also, while he’s making dog food, I could do some things that prepare me for my meal. So, I’m prepping for the dinner by cleaning up or whatever. And so, I worked through those tight spots and that friction to finally, I came to this point where I was like, yes, I would like to do that with Ryan. And it was this light feeling and there’s nothing that is feeling tight or tense or heavy to me about this yes.

And that’s where I knew, but that’s where it was so worth that upfront willingness work that I did. Because then when it came time to make that homemade dog food with Ryan, I was having so much fun and I wasn’t snipping about, oh, you made a mess here and now I have to clean it up. And it was just really light and it felt really nice and I knew I had cared for myself as well in this activity that I didn’t choose for myself.

ANNA: Yeah, to me, that really sounds like my practice of getting to the underlying need. Because we can have this first reaction of, I don’t want to do this, I want to do this. But then when we get to the underlying need, it’s like, I want to be able to make dinner later, or I don’t want the kitchen disaster, because I need the clean surface to start making dinner. Just knowing those things about myself and being able to articulate it at times, too, it sounds like that may have been a more internal process for you, but I found there were times it was helpful for me to articulate that process of me getting to my underlying need, depending on the situation, because it helped them do the same.

So, it’s like, oh, I want to make this special treat for the dog, because I’m really excited about something with Toby. Okay. That we might be able to do in a different way. Or, no, it’s this specific recipe that I want to make. Then we’re having a conversation where more solutions and creativity can come in, versus just staying up here with, make the dog food, don’t make the dog food. So, I like that. But it is interesting to tie it into this willingness piece. Do you want to share the tool with that?

SARA: It’s really just the book, Are You Willing? if people are curious about, what does that even look like? Marion Rose, she laid it out, I thought, in a really beautiful way. What do you ask yourself? What do you sense? Where’s your tightness? Do you have a part at play? And how do you care for that? And then find either your willingness or you might actually arrive at, actually, no, I’m not willing and here’s why. And can we do it a different time? Or whatever, which is fine too.

ANNA: And that’s okay too.

SARA: Pam, I think this was something you mentioned, so I’ve been playing around with this. There are certain things that I know are going to happen where I can maybe do some willingness work upfront before the event. And I knew this thing with Ryan, he had already been like, I want to do it tomorrow. And I was like, okay, I’m feeling a little tight about that. So, I knew I would like to maybe do some internal willingness work here.

But I think where I do a lot of the verbal processing, like what you were talking about is when someone comes to me. It’s more like, I haven’t had that upfront prep but I’m noticing I’m feeling tight and I’ll be like, oh, I noticed I’m a little tight about that. Just give me a moment. I would like to figure out what’s happening for me. And it’s maybe just like a, give me a moment. If you could just give me a moment and then I do sometimes verbally go through, hey, I can’t do this for you now. Could I do it in 15 minutes? Because I’m trying to finish this thing. And so, it’s more like live action processing versus the upfront. So, I’ve been playing around with which ones feel best in the moment for me to try to pull out.

PAM: Yeah. It depends on the context. How much time ahead do I know? But yeah, that is one thing that my family has known for many years. It’s like, okay, mom will need a couple of minutes to process. And there were times when I said, if you need an answer right away, it’s no, because that’s what I’m feeling. But if you give me a couple minutes to think it through, five minutes, then we’ll see where I’m at.

And that was just the processing that you were talking about, Sara, like what is the context of this? How is this going to spiral out to the rest of the day if they want to run out and do this thing now? And I had a different plan in my head of how the day was unfolding. I do need that minute to just play it out in my head and see if anything is effective.

Like in the dog food situation, I might think, oh, I’m going to think of the dinner that I was thinking we’d have in a couple nights, which is so much easier to make. I’ll switch that up and I’ll make an easier dinner. It reminded me to think. While he’s making the dog food, I can weave in some prep, because I’ve thought a little bit ahead of time. I know my window is going to be a bit shorter or my energy is going to be a bit less, et cetera. So, I can play with things. It’s just so valuable to have that time just to think things through. And like you were saying, then we’re less snippy or however that energy comes out.

And for me, that is the energy of being unsure of how things are going to go. And when I take that time to process, if I decide I’m unwilling, now I know why. And I can go and talk to them and maybe we can come up with a plan that shifts my willingness. Because when I say I’m unwilling because of X, Y, and Z impact, and they’re like, oh, the creative juices get flowing. Because we know we’re all on a team. And it’s not like, no, don’t try to convince me otherwise. It’s like, no, I’m not feeling able or up for it because of this and this. There have been times when they say, well, you can have a long nap tomorrow. There’s nothing going on. And maybe that is a possibility, but everybody’s working together.

And even when they say things like that, that gives me a clue about how enthusiastic they are, how important this is to them. And I may have thought this was just an idea that they had. And the more they try to come up with more ways to make it work, that gives me more information that, ooh, for some reason this is more important to them today than it was last week when they wanted to do the same thing or all those pieces. So, it just brings just so much more information into the context of the whole choice and conversation.

SARA: Yeah. And so, I think the next two were unwilling consent and coerced consent. And so, just really quickly, the unwilling consent was when I hope that by saying yes, you’ll stop bothering me. Or I think that if I say no, you’ll only keep trying to persuade me. I still find myself ever so often dipping my toe into this unwilling consent area. And I know I’ve done it, because I can sense that there’s a disconnect that’s happened.

And I guess, first, I just wanted to reiterate the importance to distinguish between this unwilling consent and consent, truly, it’s not what it looks like. It’s what it feels like. And I don’t know who said this, but I loved it so much. The difference is not necessarily one of action, but one of intention and agency.

So, when you’re in the first two categories, people feel like they have agency. The intention is, let’s keep our relationship. We want us all to be seen and heard. And then when you move down into unwilling consent, not all parties feel like they have agency. There’s a disconnect happening there, but that could look like anything or nothing at all. So, anyway, it’s not what it looks like. It’s what it feels like.

And so, where I tend to have little hangups is when I notice that I have an attachment of some kind, where I believe that there’s a better way or a right way, or someone should be thinking this way. And so, when I have this attachment, I’ve noticed that the stronger my attachment or expectation about something, the harder it is for me to gauge consent in the other person. The stronger I get like, this is the way it needs to be, I almost have blinders and I can’t actually tell if the other person is even consenting to the thing.

And so, this actually happened to me last week in consent in conversation, which was a new concept to me just a couple years ago. It’s like, wait, there’s consent in conversation? Because my husband revealed a gap in his knowledge and I was convinced that he needed to know this. Like, oh my gosh, you need to know this. And so, I proceeded to follow him through the house with all my talking. I even got out a book. I was like, it’s right here. Look, you need to know this.

And then the next day, I looked back on it and I was reflecting on that interaction and I was like, I have no clue if he actually was interested in anything that I just said there. And I very well could have gone over his consent to actually want to hear anything that I had to say. And in that instance, I went back to him and I said, I’m really sorry. I really thought you needed to know this. And I just realized that I didn’t even ask you if you were interested. I was like, how did that feel? Did you want to have that conversation? And then that was more like a repair, like, okay, I’m sorry.

But I go there sometimes and I get real sure that I’m right and by golly, I’m going to chase that person down. And I feel like this happens a lot with kids, where an adult will say, I have something and you need to hear it. And they just talk at the kid, which is like that Charlie Brown kind of wa wa thing. And so, I can still tend to do that, not so much with my kids, but I can trip into that with my husband at times and notice that I’m not looking for whether he’s really interested in this thing that I feel is really important.

And then the other piece that I wanted to throw in was the idea of self consent. Because I feel as though I have absorbed many cultural stories, ideas, beliefs, assumptions over the years that gave me a script for how I should or ought to act or behave, but didn’t actually ask me for my consent or willingness. And I’ve noticed that, as I’ve internalized some of these stories and I wasn’t aware of them, I would act in accordance with a story, but I was actually coercing myself into a choice that I didn’t think I had a choice.

And so, that’s where a willingness practice really comes in. And my red flags for that are when I start to say, oh, I have to do this, I ought to do this, I should do this. That’s my red flag that there may be a coercive story or some sort of limiting belief that I’m not aware of happening there for me under the surface and to really just keep peeling back and see where that leads for me.

And so, I just want to say the repair piece. I continue to notice at times where I’ll notice I’m pushing, and then on reflection I’ll be like, oh, I wasn’t sure if that person really wanted that for themselves. And that’s where the repair work comes in.

ANNA: Yeah. And the repair piece is so important. When you were talking about that, it reminded me, Pam, how we always talk about, if we have this tunnel vision to this outcome, that we miss so many signs. And I think you’re right. Some of those signs are the people going, wait a minute, we don’t want to be on the bullet train that you’re on that’s ending at this particular place. And so, I think that’s a really good reminder. And I think that self piece is interesting, too, because I would say that’s probably harder for me. I have a radar for pushing through people’s consent, but that piece of when the shoulds happen, I think the shoulds can tunnel us in.

When I’m in my head about that and then that tunnels me in, I feel like I’m probably missing things around me. And yes, the repair is, of course, so important and we all are going to make repairs. That’s a big piece of it, the trust.

PAM: Repairs are part of it. It’s not about having an expectation of ourselves that we will get good enough that we are never going to need to repair a connection ever again. That’s too much to put on ourselves. That’s not how human beings work, because we all are growing and changing. So, what does work in a relationship, in a connection, a way to engage with another person, what works for months then doesn’t work. And then we need to figure out a new way. Maybe it’s a new way to approach them, maybe it’s a new way to have conversations. Maybe they’re talking more in this season or now they’re not talking so much. So, I need to look more for clues in their behavior, clues in their reactions, all those different pieces.

So, repair is fully as important and valuable as the original act of connection itself. I did love the story of you chasing your husband down.

SARA: I’m a chaser.

PAM: So, there’s that understanding and that tunnel vision where we just can’t see, just because we’ve latched on to something. It was an enthusiastic yes for you to share this information, if we’re going to use this framework. Yet the processing piece to see, okay, so what is the impact for the people around me?

And then the self consent piece, that is such a great way to look at it, because, from growing up in the system, I can find myself saying, you should be able to do this. You have to do this. Why can’t you just get this bit done. And we can so often try to guilt ourselves or try to manipulate ourselves, coerce ourselves nicely, and it’s just for ourselves, to do these things.

But to take that moment to question, am I actually giving consent? Is this my inner voice or are these outer voices in my head that I’ve absorbed, that I’m using, totally bypassing my own consent and just thinking, I need to do this. I haven’t given myself a choice really. I’m just trying to find words in my head to convince myself to do this thing that I think I should do or should be able to do. So, yeah, to use that consent framework for ourselves is brilliant.

SARA: Yes. And the last category was the coerced consent. And I will say that, since we’ve moved to unschooling, this is not a place that I have gone, honestly. But for the first five years of my parenting journey, I was very steeped in the mainstream ideas of what it meant to be a parent and what that parent-child relationship should look like.

So, in the first five years, it might have looked something like, “If you don’t eat your vegetables, then you’re not going to get ice cream at the end of the dinner.” So, that kind of coercive way of managing that. And it was out of love for that child and believing that that was how to keep them healthy and safe. And so, my kids remember that.

They remember some of the coercion and so, when something like that comes up, usually they actually are teasing me about it. But I’ll just say, “You know, I’m really sorry that I did that to you. I was doing the best I could. I thought it was the right thing. I’m really sorry, because that just stunk.” And to apologize again and just repair and hear them, and then also to give myself a lot of grace, because I could beat myself up, which I do on occasion, but usually I was doing the best that I could with the information that I had, and I was an imperfect human and I’m still going to keep making mistakes. So, to really give myself a lot of grace for that time in my parenting journey where coerced consent was a part of our daily lives.

And I’m just really glad that it changed, because that was very disconnecting. Looking back, I can see how disconnecting that was. And I’m just so grateful for the path that we are on now, because it just feels so much better. Oh my gosh. It’s just so beautiful and amazing and I just am grateful every day for it. So, that was coerced consent.

ANNA: Right. And I think it is that piece, too, that if we find ourselves in that situation, you can change. At any moment, you can change and you can make those repairs and you can find that way and you can recognize, hey, is what I’m doing creating a disconnect? Is what I am doing really impacting this person?

And it happens even with the best intentions. Again, it’s not about beating anybody up. It is just that, wow. We can make those changes and I think it takes a lot to let go of those ideas. And so, I just really think that’s amazing that you were able to come from that place and just realize, no, this is not how I want to be with my kids. It’s beautiful.

SARA: I had some amazing guides. My kids. Well, I just wanted to say, though, with Anna, because sometimes I can feel a little pressured, because I’m like, oh, I didn’t quite do that as well as I would’ve liked to, in retrospect. But then realizing, the relationships I have with my kids are very resilient and they are so willing, if I’m honest about what happened and I’m honest about, hey, I really did make a mistake here and I have more information now and I don’t want to make that choice again, they really are so willing to be like, it’s okay, mom. And so, there’s really a resilience in that relationship that allows for these missteps and repairs. And I think it’s just that they see you wanting to repair and they see you hearing them.

ANNA: That’s what I was going to say, because I think you’re discounting yourself a little too much in that process. Because that piece of being able to apologize and recognize and make a repair, that is not easy for a lot of people, Sara.

And I don’t like to say that the parent did the best they could when it was this abusive thing for a long time. That doesn’t cut it, and, “Kids are resilient,” can also fall into that category that can feel bad. But they absolutely notice that authenticity of you coming back and saying, you know what? This didn’t feel good to me. And that’s what they’re recognizing. And that is you being able to say, hey, I bought into this and now I’m not. And so, I just want to give you kudos for that.

SARA: We’ve been homeschooling for eight years now and unschooling for six. And I’d say for that entire time it has been a very joyfully intense unpacking of all that I have absorbed all the years prior to that.

PAM: And I do think, too, like you just mentioned off the cuff a little bit ago about your kids being guides and this whole piece was a really big journey of untangling for me, because yes, I could watch my kids doing things and they were in a space where they could make a mistake and it was totally okay. I learned from them that it’s just like, oh, that didn’t work. Even if there was frustration involved, they went back to and they tried a different way. Whereas for me, it’s like, oh my gosh, if that was me, I would be embarrassed or if I wasn’t good at it, I’d want to quit, like, okay, I’m not good at this, after 20 minutes and just never try again because I wasn’t capable yet.

And to see that that’s not the only way. I just grew up feeling so judged and graded and, you need to get good grades and don’t let anybody see you do something that wouldn’t be a good grade, basically. You have to hide those pieces. So, looking at them and seeing that in action and yes, it’s that process you were mentioning, Anna, of getting to, it’s okay to do things and for them to not quite work out. I can still show up and try something else. I can still show up and repair. I can still show up and explain where my head was, but keep showing up. That’s the repair piece.

I think it’s like, if we have a disconnecting moment and maybe we do need a little bit of time to cool down, et cetera, but the coming back, the repair piece, without judgment even as much as I could, without shame. They taught me not to show up in that moment feeling shame for what happened, because what happened is what happened and we’re just going to figure out something from there and move forward.

And I do think it’s so valuable, too, for our kids to see us showing up in all the moments so they don’t feel like they need to hide the moments when things don’t go so well, because, oh, things only don’t go well for kids. Like, when I’m an adult, everything has to be perfect. You don’t want to be planting those kinds of seeds either. But every experience of us showing up to just say, oops, yeah, no, that didn’t feel good for me. And sometimes they say, I didn’t notice. There were lots of times where they say, I didn’t notice. Because I was the one feeling it, but I could share that.

It’s like, oh, okay, that’s another piece of information for me. It’s my reaction actually. It’s not about that situation, because what I felt from it is out of step with what the other people involved felt from it. So, that’s just more information for me to process, like, what was triggering that? So, it is so much about our work to do, to get to that spot, to that place where we can process and show up and repair, because that is not the message that many of us got growing up.

ANNA: I want to tie in one quick thing that has come up in the Network, too, about this enthusiastic yes. Because I think it would be helpful for people to think about when they’re going forward. Nora McDonald talked about it, but she was explaining some things about what was happening with her kids and recognizing that she was walking in a place of the willingness, but then when she saw the enthusiastic yes, it was like, oh, this is really different.

So, watching for that feel, because you talked about the feel earlier, Sara, I think it’s so important. Like, oh, this feels different. I think the conversation we had around it in the Network was about like, oh yeah, we could get them to the park day or to the co-op or to the thing. But it was hard and it felt challenging, but we got there and they had an okay time and it was fine.

But then when it was the enthusiastic yes, it was like they’re hopping in the car, they packed their snacks, they’re ready to go. And it’s like, oh, that’s what it can look like. So, for me, it’s about leaving space and slowing it down, because I do tend to be the go forward type, but slowing it down to give those enthusiastic yeses a chance to bubble up so that we can then act on those and find those and go, oh, there it is, versus my agenda or what I might be bringing to the moment or what I think we should be doing.

Which again, I have good ideas, but if I’m tunneling in, I’m missing some of that. And so, I think that was just one of the pieces of this whole framework that you’ve shared with us that I wanted to pull out, how it applies in our day-to-day life, too, and watching for those enthusiastic yeses from our kids.

PAM: Yeah. I think that energy makes such a big difference. And especially when we’re first coming to unschooling, for me anyway, I had these great plans. Oh, we’ll be able to do this and this and this because we’re not going to school anymore. And getting that willingness. “Yeah. Okay, we’ll go here. Okay, we’ll go here.”

But yes, recognizing all of a sudden when you hit on something where they finally suggested something and it’s like, wow, what a difference. And to give more space for those things to bubble up versus always trying to keep us busy so that it looks good on the outside to other people in our family who don’t really understand what we’re doing, but if I could list off that we went to these five places over the last seven days, they would be placated.

So, peeling back for myself as to why I was wanting to do these things where I was only getting some basic willingness to participate and they came along. But what that did was short circuit a lot of our chance for the more enthusiastic yes, because nobody had the time or the brain space to actually figure out what they really wanted to do.

ANNA: And there’s so much learning in the enthusiastic yes. Because if it’s a willingness, they’re coming along with my ideas, it’s really more about me. And even if they’re happily, willingly coming along, it’s still my idea. And so, it is short circuiting me learning about the person in front of me as well. Because when they’re guided by their enthusiastic yes, I’m learning what lights them up. And I felt like there are times when my excitement doesn’t leave space for that. And so, I think that was just a really interesting point around that.

PAM: All right, Sara, did we get all your stories today?

SARA: Yes. I just wanted to share one more resource. I won’t go into it in depth. I just wanted to mention it in case folks wanted to read more about consent. It was one more tool and it was Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent. And I guess I can hold it up a little bit here for people on YouTube. Can you see that?

ANNA: Yep. Serve, take, accept, allow.

SARA: So, basically it’s a wheel broken into four quadrants that show the different relational experiences that we might have, falling into four categories of serve, take, allow and accept. And again, Betty Martin was focused on physical touch, but I have just found at times it’s so helpful, especially when I’m having a hangup in a certain area, to come back to this graphic and be like, oh, I’m having trouble in the allowing quadrant.

And it really helps me focus on that. And so, Betty Martin wrote a book called The Art of Receiving and Giving that really goes into the Wheel of Consent in depth. And then it’s also available online. And I just wanted to point to that, because it’s just been another framework that I’ve looked at and there have been a-ha moments just speckled throughout just by seeing this one graphic. So, I wanted to share that as well, but not go into any more depth on it.

ANNA: Thank you. And we’ll put all the resources in the show notes so that people can link to these different authors and these different concepts, because it is really fun to dig into all of it.

PAM: Yeah, it is. It’s so, so interesting just to take one lens and look at things through that framework. So, thank you so much for joining us, Sara. And to our listeners, we hope you enjoyed our conversation and maybe even picked up a nugget or two that will help you on your unschooling journey, and in your relationships, and just using that consent lens in all sorts of aspects.

I love so much that the resources you’ve been sharing, Sara, were actually written in more of the sexual framework of consent. Yet, it really works in the relationship framework. And it really works for all ages. All our relationships, our adult relationships.

ANNA: I have one more quick thing. Because that’s the thing that’s so important about consent. If we are not learning about it when we’re young, if we’re not experiencing this with relationships, if we’re not understanding these pieces, why do we think that, at 18, these young men, women, and people are going to get it and then be able to have relationships that have consent? No.

It starts so much earlier than that. And so, that’s why it’s such a passion area for me, because I think it really is the seed of what creates these healthy relationships in adulthood.

SARA: For sure.

PAM: All right! If you enjoy these kinds of conversations, I think you would love the Living Joyfully Network. It is such an amazing group of people, connecting and having thoughtful conversations just like this, all about the things that we encounter in our unschooling lives. And you can learn more at livingjoyfully.ca/network. We hope to meet you there. Thank you very much for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

SARA AND ANNA: Bye!

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In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika dive into a very interesting lens on parenting—the independence agenda. It’s fascinating to see how this seemingly reasonable goal of fostering our children’s independence can get in the way of not only our relationship with them, but their developing self-awareness and inner voice.

We talk about how different people really are, define the terms independence and autonomy, explore how it’s the “agenda” part of the independence agenda that is the problem, and lots more.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling, coaching calls, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and I am joined today by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hello to you both!

ANNA AND ERIKA: Hi! Hello!

PAM: And today we are going to dive into a very interesting lens on parenting, and that is the independence agenda. And it’s fascinating to see how this seemingly reasonable goal of fostering our children’s independence can get in the way of not only our relationship with them, but their developing self-awareness and inner voice.

But before we get started, we want to let you know there is a new course in the Living Joyfully Shop, Four Pillars of Unschooling. And note that it is not called THE Four Pillars of Unschooling. Rather, these are four of the foundational paradigm shifts that really helped us on our unschooling journeys.

And it is not to say that there are only four. Yet, if you’re newer to unschooling and actively deschooling, you’re likely wrestling with at least one of these paradigm shifts, if not all four in some ways. And if you’ve been unschooling for years, it can often be so re-energizing, re-grounding when we revisit the fundamentals of unschooling. It helps us clear the fog a little bit and just notice the beautiful unschooling in action that is unfolding in our days.

You’ll find it in our store at LivingJoyfullyShop.com. Check it out and see if it’s a good fit for you. So, Anna, would you like to get us started talking about the independence agenda?

ANNA: I would. So, I’ve thought about this a lot over the years. I feel like it first crossed my radar when I had babies. I started hearing this messaging, they need to learn to self-soothe, they should sleep by themselves, and, they’ll never be independent if you don’t push them. And that messaging just really rubbed me the wrong way. Partly it went against everything I’d learned about attachment in psychology in school, and mostly because I wanted nothing more than to be connected with these amazing humans that had come into my life. For me, I realized that I was more interested in exploring interdependence and what that could mean.

I think the richness in life is our connections and relationships. We aren’t meant to be these independent silos. Learning to be in relationship felt like a much more useful skill and lens for my kids to bring into their life and for me to continue to grow in that area, because I had a lot of baggage, thinking that I had to do it all by myself and that that was the goal. And I just didn’t really want to hand that to them, because I saw the ways that it didn’t serve me. And it’s so interesting, because we start to implement this idea and even train babies towards this independence in our culture just so early, and I think it might be a little bit more intense in the US. I’m kind of curious about that from our international audience.

But I think in other countries, they have their own pieces as well, and I just think it’s worth thinking about, where is it coming from? Who does it serve? For me, attachment theory was a much more useful lens. I found that from that securely attached place, my girls were able to explore the world and carve out lives for themselves. And so, there’s a lot here and a lot bubbling in my mind, but I’m interested to see where the conversation goes. So, what’s coming up for you, Erika?

ERIKA: Yeah, it’s such a rich and deep topic, I think. But one of the first things that popped to mind when I was thinking of the independence agenda is just that it sounds so ableist, too. It’s just not taking into account that people are different and independence, if there’s a timeline component to it, if there’s an agenda to it, which there is. Like what you’re talking about with babies, I remember there was a timeline, it was four months sleeping on their own, that kind of thing, then that is showing that what people are believing is that all babies are the same. And so, it’s just not true. And when you have a family of individual people with their individual differences, having that timeline, agenda of independence is just not going to fit.

I was also thinking that the idea of independence feels good when it’s coming from within a person for themselves. It makes me feel capable. It makes me feel like I can make my own decisions. I can do things. That’s a good feeling, but it’s coming from inside. It doesn’t feel good to have someone else tell me, you need to be able to do that by yourself. I’m not going to help you do that. That kind of thing feels like I’m alone. What if I can’t handle it?

And so, in mainstream parenting you might hear warnings like, I’m not going to be around to do this for you in 10 years, so you better learn how to do it by yourself. But that feels kind of ominous and threatening in the moment. And I just think there’s a lot of time typically for those skills to develop. And I just want my kids to know that I will help them. If I can, that’s what I will do. And it doesn’t matter what the age is and it doesn’t matter about some kind of a timeline.

So, I feel like if they’re forced into needing to do things for themselves earlier than we were expecting, for whatever reason, that they can figure that out. But in this moment, we’re all in it together. And everyone is different.

PAM: That everyone is different piece is fundamental and, for me, that “agenda” word is so important when we talk about the independence agenda. Because, as you’re saying, Erika, independence is cool. We can feel capable. It’s like, oh cool, I can do this thing myself, etc. Independence is not a bad thing, but it’s the agenda piece.

That’s like, I know when you should be able to do that thing independently or else there’s something wrong with you. But when we can lose the conventional timetable, the agenda piece, and look at supporting our child’s choices, which will include when they want to do things independently, and just be helping them along the way, what we’re doing is we’re validating, we’re supporting, we’re normalizing their unique timetable and how it unfolds for them.

And that can surely look so different not only for different kids, even different children in the same family, just because people are different. And one might do this thing independently earlier than the other child, and then it’s the complete opposite for something else. Just because people are different and the things that each child is interested in are so different. So, you see their interests and then how they want to engage with them, when opportunities for independence arise, all those things will bubble together and they will take this beautiful, unique path to what independence means for them.

And I love your ableism point, too, Erika, and one does not even need to be labeled in any sense for there to be an artificial timeline on top of the things that they should or shouldn’t be able to do. To get to that point where you can understand that this is their life, this is their path, the way their life will unfold, and that choice for independence along it. It becomes so natural when you don’t use that as a lens, when you don’t have that independence agenda on top of it all, you see it unfold because it’s naturally what humans like to do.

ANNA: Right, but I think it’s interesting to think of this independence as a goal, because that’s where it becomes this agenda piece. It’s this goal of independence. And I really wanted to peel that back, because I feel like, again, as humans, it’s the interdependence that helps us reach the places we want to reach and do the things we want to do. It’s this idea of, especially taking kids and, okay, you need to go recreate the wheel independently. We’re not going to help you. You’re not going to get any feedback. And I’m just like, is that real life? Because I have a partner that I’ve been with since I was very young, and we do things together. I’m not independently doing everything on my own. And I feel like having those relationships makes my life richer.

And so, is independence, this silo, the goal? Because, basically, the definition of independence is you’re not receiving help. You’re able to do it on your own without help. Is that the goal? Because I think when we push that on kids, it can leave them, like you’re saying, Erika, a little bit out in the cold feeling like, this is scary. And yet maybe they have these amazing goals that actually put them off into the world. But they would get there more easily and more comfortably by getting feedback and having support and help as they go. Pam?

PAM: Yeah, I’m just excited, because what bubbled up for me there is how valuable that interdependence piece is. I just always think of a child who can dress themselves and then therefore the parent expects them to dress themselves the next time. “You can do this, you can do this. You did this last week.” Whatever it is, “You did this last week.” But context means so much. And so, we can just think of that in our lives. Some days we have more energy. Some days we’re raring to go. Some days we’re not and we need more help. So, to have that in our network, to have that in our relationships.

As adults, how hard is it to ask for help? Because we have just been trained that, I should be able to do this by myself, and then we just dig ourselves a deeper and deeper hole, because either we don’t do the thing and then we feel bad that we didn’t do the thing, or we try to do the thing and it just takes the last ounce that we have. Oh my gosh, interdependence is so much more valuable at any age!

If our child’s like, “No, I don’t feel like picking an outfit and getting dressed,” and they’re not saying that nicely. They’re probably crying and whining. Those are clues for us. Oh, there is something different today that they’re just not feeling that they’re able to do this on their own. And what a gift for us to be able to help them in those moments. That’s the team, that’s the interdependence. And at any age, any age, just to normalize asking for help when you need it, it’s just so big.

ERIKA: Yeah. That’s exactly where I was going to go next. I had made a note of “needing help is not a bad thing,” and if our kids know what it’s like to feel they need help and ask for help and receive help, that will just make such a huge difference in their lives.

And so, when you were talking about the examples of context, so, something like being able to sleep on their own, that feels like once they can achieve it, now we’re good. Now they do that. And so, it can be triggering or bring up some things for us when it’s like, and now why are they not doing this? Why are they not doing the thing? And so, looking at the context and valuing that the child can come to me and say, “I’m having a hard time sleeping by myself now,” or, “I’m having a hard time falling asleep,” that’s showing us that something else is going on.

Maybe it’s brain development and now there’s all these new thoughts that are worrying them at night. There are always a lot of things going on, deeper things going on, and so I love using that as a clue to ask, what is the context? What is changing? What is growing about the kids that these things that they used to be able to do easily, now they’re saying they need help?

ANNA: Right. And I think it just translates into our adult lives, because I think all three of us have baggage in this area where it’s hard to ask for help, because we were trained in school and in whatever, that you need to do it on your own and no cheating, no this, no whatever.

I mean, “cheating” even! To call it that! In our normal lives, we all work together. And of course we collaborate and of course if I don’t know how to do this thing, Erika, help me do this thing. Wait a minute, Pam, I forgot how to do this thing. How do I do this thing? That’s natural. That makes us all better at the work that we’re doing, to be able to share our knowledge and skills. But we all grew up in this environment where you need to be by yourself at your desk and nobody can help you. And I really just wanted my kids to have a different feel of that, that it’s okay to ask for help and that, actually, we are stronger together.

PAM: It’s human resources, whatever kinds of resources that one finds one needs in this moment, not even needs, wants. I don’t have to justify it by saying I need this. I can want some help. I shouldn’t have to have excuses for it, right?

So, yeah, I think that whole independence thing is such a trigger for people. And I think a lot of the messaging is like, well, if we don’t make them do it, they won’t ever become independent, because independence is harder than being cared for.

But to me, that’s like, well, they won’t learn the hard things. They won’t learn algebra if we don’t make them learn algebra. It is all the same messaging. But, no. When human beings have the choice, there will be moments when they want to do things, if it has meaning in their life, and timetable wise, whenever it has meaning in their life. Human beings will choose to do the harder things when it’s theirs to choose.

And the context is everything. And the people are different is everything. Because what that looks like for them is what it looks like for them. That’s their truth. Not putting my expectations or my view of shoulds on top of all that. That just muddies the water. It damages our relationship. It stops me from learning who they actually are versus my vision of who I wish they were. All those pieces just get in the way. So, independence, to me, it’s just a thing. It’s just another aspect of living and I’m just going to help them explore their independence as they want to explore it.

ERIKA: Yeah. It’s like the scarcity of time feeling, where you’re jumping ahead to the future. Like, “This 4-year-old can’t put on his shoes. This is going to be terrible in 20 years,” not realizing this expanse of time that’s going to happen between now and then. And so, it’s about not letting those future fears interfere with what you’re doing with the child in front of you who is just on their own path.

ANNA: It’s those outside voices again. And we can just question them. Where are they coming from? Who is it serving? What does it mean? Why do we want that?

Because then I think that can just give us a clue of like, okay, that doesn’t have anything to do with this child in front of me, for sure. And really not even the partner in front of me or the friend in front of me, but for sure not this child in front of me.

And I think just to touch a tiny bit on those expectations, Pam, it’s like, if we have these expectations of what it looks like, we miss the learning about the actual person, because we’ve tunneled in on this expectation that they should be able to do X, Y, Z, or they should be living alone at this age, or they should be able to do this thing by this age.

We just miss who that person actually is and what their internal timetable is, and that they may be going in a completely different direction. I just don’t think it’s linear. And so, I think we miss that when we are focusing in on this linear path that so many of us grew up with. This is the progression, this is what it looks like. And I think so many of us weren’t served by that linear path, either, because I think that in reality, humans are very swirly. We do things in a very swirly way.

ERIKA: It reminding me of the little sheet that you get at a pediatrician’s office. They really do have these. These are the skills, these are the ages. Check them off one by one. And so, it can make you feel like, uh oh, this isn’t looking too good that my kid isn’t checking them off in the correct order and at the right speed. It’s really about blocking out that external stuff.

PAM: There’s a piece that comes up for me, too, that I think is an interesting question. Because in unschooling circles, we do talk a lot about autonomy, our child’s autonomy. And it’s like, well, if I’m not looking for independence, then they don’t have autonomy. But I think it’s so fascinating to think about those two, because they are not the same. Autonomy is not the same as independence. They’re very different.

When they want to make choices for themselves, they can make a choice that doesn’t look like independence for us, yet, that’s fully autonomous, because it is fully their choice in the moment.

So, if we want to talk a little bit about the theory behind it, the theory of self-determination, “Autonomy means that you have free will. That you can stand behind your actions and their values.” In other words, no one is forcing you to do something that you disagree with. “But independence means that you don’t need or accept help.” I want you to be independent. I want you to be able to do this by yourself and that you can do this without needing other people’s help. That is so different, right?

Autonomy does not require independence at all. You can absolutely be autonomous and still dependent on others or wanting others at some time (that’s the whole context piece) to help you and support you as you’re trying to do whatever the thing is. So, you can autonomously still act in accordance to your own belief and have free will and do all those things and still have the support and care of the people around you.

And, for me, that is the adult life that I want. I want to be supported by my network, by my community, by my family, whenever I need it, without having to justify it, without having to explain it. And that’s what we talk about so much when we talk about relationships and trust and connection and understanding each other.

Because when that happens, we’re not questioning, we’re not judging. We’re just like, oh, somebody’s wanting some help. Boom. I’m there. I’ll help out. And they fully have autonomy when they’re making that choice, when they’re making that ask, when somebody notices and offers. We don’t jump in and do it for them, but we can offer, we can help, we can support. It’s so different.

ANNA: And I think when we force the independence agenda, which again is pretty common actually among mainstream families, and it’s coming from a place of love, so, “They need to know how to do their laundry.” “They need to be independent and doing their laundry. I’m not going to help them,” whatever. But what it ends up fostering, again, is this silo, like, “Well, you’re not going to help me. I’m not going to help you, and I’m not going to do this.” And so, that becomes the norm.

Because we’re teaching that independence is the value, like independence is where you have value. That’s a really dangerous, slippery slope to me. And like you said, Erika, it’s so ableist for sure. But it’s like, wait a minute. It’s so potentially damaging, I think, because it stops us from wanting to help the other person. And it could even be that we’re coming at that from kindness. Well, but we don’t want to hurt their independence, when in fact, who’s that serving? I’m curious. I have my own thoughts about it. We don’t need to get into that here, but I think it’s just really peeling that back, because is that what you want? Or do you want to foster, we help each other? We support each other as a family, as friends? Because, like you said, Pam, that’s what I want right now at 55. That’s what I want.

ERIKA: Right. And it makes so much sense. I feel like once you start thinking about it like that, if the message that my kids and my family get are that we all can ask for help and get it, that’s just great. That’s a great takeaway, because that will help them all the time. But if we’re giving them the message of, you did it by yourself, that’s so much better. That’s so much better. Like, finally you did it by yourself. I feel like that totally happened to me as a kid. And it’s common and it is from a place of mostly love and support, like, I want you to be able to feel good about yourself and do things by yourself. But then it creates a whole culture of adults who don’t know how to ask for help and push through to the point of overwhelm and stress.

And that word autonomy, I can see how people could get it confused with the independence part, just because autonomous, it kind of sounds like they’re doing things on their own. And, “I want them to have autonomy,” means they are just doing their things on their own. But it’s just a different thing. That’s not what it looks like. Autonomy is making choices and not being forced to do something that you don’t want to do. So, there is nuance and it’s so interesting.

ANNA: It really is.

PAM: That can be one of the messages when we first come to unschooling that can be confusing. It’s like, oh, I’m not supposed to help them. I’m not supposed to step in and teach them things, so I don’t know what else to do. I’m just going to step back, hands off, and expect them to figure things out on their own.

And then we started equating that independence, that autonomy, as doing it themselves versus just choosing what they want to do. And then that really gets in the way, I think, of developing the relationships with them, of being in connection, of developing that trust.

And I just want to jump back to that laundry example, because that’s a beautiful thing. I love that example, because it’s like, oh, this is something they need to know when they’re out on their own. So, I need to support them in doing that thing. And then once they learn it, they should keep doing it, because someday they’re going to be out and they’re going to have to do it for themselves all the time. So, it’s like they need all this training, like years of laundry to be able to do laundry when they’re on their own. And when you think of it through that lens, it’s funny for most people, but I mean, yes, it’s definitely out of a loving space. I want to help them, I want to support them, and we can just really get in our head with that. And I think it just does so much more damage than it helps.

Because you can go to YouTube and learn how to do some laundry in 10 minutes and boom, you’ve got something washed and with whatever machine you got in front of you and you’ve built critical thinking skills. In every episode we talk about critical thinking skills, like working through problems.

I remember a call from a laundromat from Lissy when she moved to New York City at 18. I was like, oh yeah, this is how you do that. Oh my gosh, it was a two-minute phone call. Because she was like, I have this question. This isn’t the same. Different machines, different place, different country, a whole different experience. It was totally okay. That wasn’t a failure of some sort of laundry training that I didn’t do over the previous 10 years that I was like, oh, that’s a big X in my parenting.

ANNA: How cool that she called though? Because I would say I, my mom was one of those moms that, she didn’t let us do the laundry. I think she thought we would mess it up. And so, I learned laundry on my own. There wasn’t even YouTube. We just had to trial and error it and figure it out when we were on our own. But I love that Lissy could just call and you weren’t there. You didn’t know the machine, but you could talk it through with her. Again, that’s interdependence.

It’s like, okay, you have a little bit more knowledge in this. I want to understand this, because this is a little bit different than what I’m used to. There’s no failure in that on any side, and that’s what I want to foster.

And I think there are just so many ways to support the autonomy and support the independence that’s coming from them. That’s where maybe they cross over, autonomy and independence. If that choice is them wanting to do things on their own. And so, I don’t know. I just think it’s so interesting to think about. What are we trying to do? And is this path really getting us there?

ERIKA: Yeah. That was a thought that popped up for me, when they want some independence. That’s the other side of this conversation. Sometimes the kids are really the ones pushing independence in an area where maybe we’re not quite ready for it. And that’s where it’s autonomy again, giving them the choice of having more independence in an area where we kind of want to say, oh no, that’s fine. We’ll keep doing it for you. I’ll keep doing your laundry, because I’m just not sure about letting you do that yet. And so, yeah, just the context, the people are different. Each child is going to, if they’re given the chance to have that autonomy, they will show you what they want to be independent in and at what time. That’s them creating their own journey.

PAM: And they also give you the clues as to how much they want to celebrate that thing. If we celebrate it, because we’re super excited that they did it independently and we subtly give the message that doing it independently is better than needing or wanting help for it, that can get in the way, again, as you were talking about. But yes, they may want to do something independently and they may think it’s cool. We don’t have to be the stone wall all the time when it comes to doing something independently or not.

But we can take our clues from them. How exciting is this for them? We can validate like, oh yeah, that’s amazing. So cool. How fun. Whatever words work for them. We can meet them where they are in that choice, in that moment, and in that level of excitement without the expectation, again, that it would be the same every time, without subtly relaying the message that, okay, we now expect them to do that same thing every time. All those pieces.

Because we can be looking to outside to tell us what to do so often. So, if I’m going to follow our whole Unschooling Rules series, the rules of unschooling say, I’m not going to teach them. I’m not going to tell them. So, then I’m going to step back. So, we’re looking for that rule that says, okay, but in this situation we do X. Okay, now here’s a little bit different situation. Now we do Y. But no, it doesn’t work that that. There aren’t rules for us.

But if we just engage with the actual person in front of us in that moment, we have so many clues about how to engage with them, how to support them, how to validate them, how to meet them where they are in whatever level of excitement or frustration. We can understand who they are and just be with them. That is just so much more valuable than worrying about the rules. That’s our school mind. So, when you find yourself asking, but when they’re doing this and they’re feeling this, what should I do? Nope. Sorry. You’re going to have to just figure it out.

ANNA: But that’s back to what you said earlier where independence is not the bad word. What we’re calling into question is the agenda. The attachment to outcome. The expectations. And that’s what we’re calling into question here.

A friend recently was talking about supporting autonomy. That’s how she sees her role is as supporting her children’s autonomy. And so, they’re making choices. They’re wanting to do things and we’re supporting. So, it’s not the hands off, over here, you’re this autonomous being, doing things independently. It’s, yeah, we can be partners in that and I can support you in your individual choice and free will.

ERIKA: Right. And you can ask for help.

PAM: Yes! You can ask for help whenever you need it.

Thank you so much to both of you for this wonderful, wonderful conversation. And thank you to everyone for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this and that maybe you picked up a nugget or two that will be helpful on your unschooling journey.

Remember to check out our new course, Four Pillars of Unschooling in the Living Joyfully Shop at, not surprisingly, livingjoyfullyshop.com. We wish everyone a lovely week. Thanks so much.

ANNA: Take care.

ERIKA: Bye!

View Details

We are back with another episode in our Unschooling Stumbling Blocks series and we’re talking about including kids in decisions.

There are many reasons why parents may rush through big decisions without giving children a chance to weigh in, but we’ve found that including kids in decisions provides us with useful questions and information, helps avoid dysregulation and melt downs, and results in so much learning for everyone in the family. Being a part of making important decisions now gives children experience that will help them when they have their own big decisions to make in the future.

We also explored how important validation can be as we’re talking about making changes in a family. Anna mentioned an inspirational TikTok video that is a great example of validation and we have linked that below.

It was a really fun conversation and we hope you find it helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

TikTok video from @youngmi

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about supporting our children’s autonomy. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia. Hello to you both!

On today’s episode of Exploring Unschooling, we are diving into another unschooling stumbling block, which is including kids in decisions. I’m really excited to talk about this one, but first I wanted to give a quick plug to the Living Joyfully Network, which has really been life-changing for me in so many ways.

On the Network, we have amazing discussions about so many topics, since our community has such a wide variety of experiences. I love the community so much, because everyone there is really learning and growing and being intentional with their families. If you’d like to learn more about the Network and check it out for yourself, you can visit livingjoyfully.ca/network or you can click the link in the show notes. We would love to meet you there.

And Pam, would you like to get us started talking about including kids in decisions?

PAM: I definitely would. This has really been a fascinating part of the unschooling journey for me and it grew out of just recognizing how capable my kids were. I mean, even before they left school, I respected their feelings and their needs. But it wasn’t until they were home and I was seeing them in action day in and day out that I came to see how truly capable they were of making choices.

So, I saw how even if I wouldn’t make the same choice, the choice that they made made great sense for them. I got more and more comfortable with them making choices for themselves, and it was just brilliant to see it in action. Once you give them the space to do that instead of jumping in with, “Oh, well why don’t you do this? Oh, why don’t you do that?” it was really amazing to see.

And then let’s peel back another layer. It hit me that the decisions that parents typically make, that impact the whole family, we’re impacting them, even though I was making a decision. And so, that thought bubbled away alongside the thought of how capable my kids were of making decisions. And I was soon drawn to involving them in more choices, not just the ones that affected only them directly.

So, the first big one that I remember was about two years into our unschooling journey, and I went back and just quickly checked the dates and it started about two years in. And that’s when the idea of moving came up for us. So, I remember thinking that this is such a big decision, not just whether to move, but where to move. And it felt uncomfortable at first to fully involve the kids in the whole process. I worried that I would feel the need to override them at some point because they just couldn’t understand the nuance of this, or that, or the other thing that was involved. But I chose to step up and realize that this was my work to do. Let’s see how it goes. Put on that investigator’s hat and get curious about it.

Even though the process of finding a new home took about a year, fully involving them was amazing. They brought great questions with them, questions I didn’t think of asking, but were actually very relevant. They brought thoughtful feedback after touring properties and houses, and even if I didn’t have the same reaction as them, theirs made sense. Because now I was capable of seeing things through their eyes, so I could see how, yeah, that might feel a little off, or that might really excite them. So, their reactions and their feedback was awesome.

Their enthusiasm inspired me to keep going when I was getting tired of this long, long search. And when they didn’t feel like participating at times, they trusted the rest of us to keep their needs top of mind at that point. Because we had been all working together. There wasn’t that power dynamic of parents and kids at that point. They trusted that they were being heard, that they were being considered.

So, all in all, it was a very meaningful experience for me. You know how we talk about understanding something intellectually, but then getting it more deeply once we have our own experience of it unfolding in our lives? Well, after that experience, I understood in my bones that kids are capable of being included, as much as they are interested in, again, not at whatever level we expect them to be participating in it, but being able to participate as much as they wanted in those big family decisions. It reached every facet of our lives. It was just so meaningful for everyone and it just helped in so many ways that we will get into in this whole conversation, but like yes, an example of it in action.

ANNA: Right! And I think what’s so interesting is that it’s really stories in our head that it’s not going to be okay. Because we start thinking, like you said, they’re not going to understand the nuances, or they’re not going to get this, or they’re going to be more self-serving in what they’re wanting.

And then when we start peeling that back, it’s so interesting, because anytime we’re making a decision, we’re all kind of self-serving and thinking of what we want. We all have our thing top of mind. And so, what I loved about it, because we actually did a similar one with moving, and people did not understand, because in our case, we ended up not moving in large part because the girls weren’t ready to move. And people did not understand that. Like, what? Why are they getting to have the say in this big decision? And I was like, well, it is their life, too.

What I found was that they weren’t coming up from a place of being difficult or whatever. We were just able to talk about what it felt like to them. And then David and I were able to say, well, here are the things we’re concerned about. Here’s the things we’d have to change if we decided to not move versus move. Here’s these pieces.

And so, I feel like we talk about narration a lot and transparency, and I think that’s a big piece of that, because we can’t hold back the information and then think that anybody’s going to make a sound decision. And so, it’s so much about that interplay of sharing information. And this really goes back, for me, to each of us having the self-awareness to understand our needs, be able to communicate our needs, and then we’re working together to solve them. That’s really the dynamic that we tried to create, the environment that we tried to create in our family.

And so, it was interesting to see it play out. And so often, with little decisions and big, I learned so much more about them. They did bring incredible insights. They learned more about me, which was interesting, too. And I think they learned more just in general about how to approach a big decision and what are the different factors, and I felt like that has served them as they’ve been making big decisions in their own lives.

ERIKA: At first, they don’t even know what big decisions there are to be made. And so, it really is just cool to get to have those experiences as they’re growing up. And I was just thinking, the mainstream expectation is just that adults get to make decisions, because they’re the ones who have the money. They’re the ones who have all the knowledge about all the parts and the kids better just not complain about whatever decision is made and go along with it.

And so, I see that play out all around me in our culture. But I also remember being a kid, and at that time I was intelligent, fully human, had my own ideas, and totally could have been a part of decision making.

And so, I think some of the reasons for not including them in decisions can be feeling like it just makes things harder. The more people you have adding into the conversation to make this big decision, it takes more time and now there are potentially more variables that are coming up. So, as an example, we have a couple of vehicles that are getting pretty old at this point, and I know at some point in the pretty near future we’re going to need to get a new family car. And it would be really easy for me to just say, I get to pick the car and I’ll just do it and then that’s that.

But I know that we spend time in the car and it’s their car. That’s their experience of traveling, too. And so, like both of you have brought up, they’ll bring up things that would never occur to me. And so, it actually helps me make a better decision when I find out the things that are important to them and the things that they think, but what about this? Like, I’m worried if we have a new car, we’re not going to have whatever the thing is that they like about the current car and if I don’t include them in the decision, I’ll never find that out. And then, it could be a problem later down the road.

And so, I think it’s wishful thinking that we would be able to make decisions on our own without including them, and that it’s all just going to be fine and they’re going to be fine and everyone will just be happy with it, because it’s important to them. These things are important, where they live, what we’re driving, what we’re eating, what our vacations look like. All of these things that feel like a whole family decision. And there’s just so much learning, like you’re talking about, for all of us.

ANNA: I think one of the things that comes to mind when you say that, and we talk about this in other contexts, too, is this idea that it’s easier. It’s easier for us to make the decision. But to me, it’s just putting the work to the back end, because then the decision is made, and now you maybe have dysregulated kids or upset kids or upset spouse if you’ve just made the decision unilaterally. And it’s like, that’s harder work to me.

The work that you were talking about, Pam, in that long process of picking the house, it maybe took a little bit longer than if you’d just done it on your own, but that was such interesting work. Nobody was dysregulated in that work. You weren’t having to care for all the feelings. I mean, having conversations to care for the feelings, but so different than a dysregulated piece that could happen at the end when somebody’s uprooted from their environment and into another situation.

I’ve just heard so many people that it was just like, yep, I’m moving. And I remember it from my childhood. I still remember my friend being torn away from me. We talk about it all the time. Anyway, it’s just so interesting to think of this as easier, but is it easier?

PAM: I love that you always bring that up, Anna. When we have conversations around these things, the time invested beforehand or after and which feels better. And, for me, my mind so often goes to, like you were saying, Erika, it’s like more irons in the fire, more aspects to consider. The context grows, the more people are allowed to contribute to the context. Yet, for me, what I lean on is that, oh my gosh, the choice that we end up making is just, through my eyes, so much better. Even for me, right? Because I have missed things, like you were talking about, and it may not even be because I don’t care about it, it’s because I didn’t even tag it as something to consider. And when they tag something, I go, oh yeah, that’s a good point. So often, yes, it makes sense through their eyes.

And also, when I can understand it and I learn more about them and they learn more about me, but so often, the stuff that they bring up is also valuable for me and applicable to me. And that, in the end, when we make that choice together, looking back, I just see so many times that’s a better choice than the one I would’ve made unilaterally. So, that’s where my mind goes. But, absolutely, having to recover from having made a choice on my own, that is a whole other can of worms, too.

ERIKA: And all the parts joining into the context is so interesting, because whether or not you hear those parts, they’re there already. They already have their opinions about things, whether or not you’re asking them. And so, I think it’s just bringing all of the needs to light to help make the decision easier.

And I was also thinking about another decision that’s coming up for us is we all, I think, want to get a treadmill. All four of us do. And yet there’s still this process of trying to figure it out. It’s going to change the way our room is laid out. Do we all really understand that and how do we feel about that?

And so, I think Josh sometimes can be like, well, we want it. Come on, let’s just get it. Are we going to order it? And I’m just like, well, we haven’t seen what the room looks like yet. And I just know from previous experience, my kids are sensitive to change. And so, that’s just all part of our decision-making process now. Really thinking about, okay, let’s make sure we all really are settled in this and understand what it means and talk about all the possibilities, because once we start brainstorming, there are tons of possibilities.

ANNA: Okay. So, I’m going to take it in a slightly different direction. And, Erika, you may have to help me with this, but what I want to take it into, because I can hear the people out there saying, but sometimes, they have these attachments to things like, we can’t change the couch, or we can’t get the new rug, or the different things. And there’s this attachment that we don’t understand.

And somebody on the Network recently shared a TikTok from @youngmi, and so, Erika, I may need you to summarize what it was about, but that piece of just how we can brush through what they are saying when they have this attachment to the couch, we’re not giving attention to what it is they love about that.

In the moment, we just kind of get frustrated, so we go to that place of frustration like, “But the couch is 20 years old and it needs to go, and this is ridiculous.” We don’t leave space for those emotions. And I just think our kids really teach us these life lessons. And that’s kind of what that TikTok was about.

But do you remember what I’m talking about? The boba tea.

ERIKA: The mom was talking about her son having a really big emotional experience about her throwing away his last sip of boba tea. She said she could get him the exact same one again, same flavor. It’s going to be the same. And he was like, but it’s not the same one. That one is gone. And he’s crying and crying on the floor, and she’s just like, I don’t get it.

Then all of a sudden, she did get it. She was like, oh, he is just realizing this fact of life for the first time, that that cup, once it’s gone, is gone and there will never be another one of those cups. And so, it’s this really heavy existential realization. And he had it for the first time.

And so, once she realized that that was what had happened, that he was having this big a-ha moment about life, she was like, oh, I get it. That was the last one of that cup and it’s gone. And that is so, so sad. And he was like, yes. Finally, you understand what I mean. And he was able to move through it.

So, that’s the kind of validation that works, to actually move through. He felt like, yes, I was able to get you to understand what is going on for me emotionally. And she really did get it. And so, her message to other parents was just like, as kids are learning about what happens in life, these are really big and heavy concepts that they’re just realizing. And so, if they’re getting really upset about something that seems so little, it might be that it really means something much bigger and they’re realizing something big about life.

And so, with the couch and moving the room and not wanting to get rid of things, some of that feels so heavy and deep to them. And so, if we just keep saying, “That doesn’t make sense, it’s old, it’s whatever. Throwing it away is no big deal.” They’re not going to feel validated by that.

ANNA: Right. Because it’s impermanence, right? We’re learning it and we’ve had decades to wrap our head around how we lose things, things go away, and we have to change things and those different pieces. But for kids, it’s very new. This is the couch that they’ve known their whole life. This is the couch that they snuggle the dog on. This is the couch that means these things.

And so, I think what I learned was just to slow it down. And I talk about that a lot, because I can be like, get it done. I’m like, we got a new couch, let’s get it done. Let’s change the room, let’s paint it, let’s go. And it’s like, slow it down. Give everybody space to just wrap their head around it, because these concepts that I feel like we all still mess with and think about and think about in the larger terms of life, these are new concepts for them. And maybe it’s the first time they’re having to let go of something that’s important to them.

So, I don’t know. I just love that reminder. We’ve all been there with kids with this kind of attachment, but it doesn’t mean they’re not capable of making the decision, it’s just slowing it down and giving space for all those pieces.

PAM: It’s very funny. I’m just laughing, because just a couple of days ago, Rocco said something to me, very nice. He was trying to manage something and I was like, “You know? I’m not as attached to that as I was years ago.” It can be a different kind of conversation now.

And yes, I remember watching that TikTok and I got goosebumps again as you were describing it, Erika, because it’s like, but how would we know when something’s so big to them? But it’s in their reaction. If their reaction seems out of context or bigger than you would expect or anticipate, those are our clues. Those are our clues. Not that they don’t understand what’s going on, but maybe that they more deeply understand. And just remembering that this might be their first experience of X, Y, or Z.

So, seemingly out of proportion reactions are great clues for us to, like you said, Anna, slow down, take a moment. And it’s like, oh, what could this be meaning to them? Because she was just asking herself, why is this reaction going and going and going? Why can’t we just move through this? But that’s the whole point. She stuck with it. And she finally came to that realization like, oh, because we might think, why are they stuck? Why are they saying the same thing over and over? No, don’t take that couch. No, I want my old bubble tea, or whatever. It’s like, okay, I don’t have it yet. I don’t have it yet. It’s worth the effort and the time and the space to get to the place where we have it for so many reasons. Because now we’ve learned a little bit more about them. Now we can validate them, truly validate them, and they feel seen and heard and understood.

So, then they now can often more easily move through it. They don’t have to keep defending, don’t have to keep trying to explain, to explain, please see me, please see me, please hear what I’m saying. This means something to me. When we’re not dismissive, but we’re like, okay, I’m going to keep trying, I’m going to keep trying, I’m going to keep trying to get to that spot, and then trust builds there.

More connection builds there, more openness to care when it happens the next time, in something completely irrelevant, but it’s more experience that you are building as human beings together. So, it’s just so powerful when we can take that time to invest in the relationship, if you want to put it that way.

ANNA: And I think it gets to where we talk about underlying needs, too. So, we can have this conflict with a decision up at the surface, new couch, old couch, but then underneath that, it’s like, oh, when we slow down, when we take that time, we find out, how are we going to read on that couch? That couch looks different. Then it’s like, oh, well it’s about reading. Let’s create a reading nook that solves that. We can get stuck up here, and then we miss the reasons behind it on both sides. And I want to be able to articulate what my needs are to get the new couch or to whatever it is, so that then they were like, oh, okay, that makes sense.

But if we just stay up here at the authoritarian decision or the across-the-board decision, we lose some of that. And I think that’s what’s so interesting. And so, the question I always asked myself was, what is my attachment to not having them involved? What am I scared of of having them involved? What are the expectations that I have? Because those are the questions I want to ask myself when I feel that resistance to bringing them into a decision about something. And that work really served me, because again, I think it helped us stay in this place in our relationship where we both felt heard and seen as we were making these decisions that impacted all of us.

ERIKA: Right. It’s making me think, too, about that internal and external processing part. Sometimes, if you are an internal processor and you do a lot of figuring things out inside without the narration, without telling other people what’s going on in there, it can feel frustrating to be like, “But I’ve already figured out such a good solution to this problem, you guys. I wanted you to just say, yes, that’s perfect. Let’s move on.”

I think there’s that, and then there’s also just the sense of urgency that is so easy to have once you feel like there’s something that you want to move towards, it can be hard to pull back, but I don’t need to rush it. It’s okay to include these other people. It’s okay for it to take a little extra time. Because in most cases, decisions do not have to be made and executed on the day that it’s coming up.

And then I also think that including the kids in these family decisions, even though it’s more work on the front end, like you were saying, then they have investment in the end result. And so, I’ve found that to be so valuable. When we all feel like this was our decision, so many things can go more smoothly in the future. Where if it’s like, you did that and I didn’t want you to, we’ll be dealing with the repercussions of that forever. Like, you got rid of my thing when I wasn’t ready, or you didn’t listen to me about that. And so, really like including them in the conversations, even when it can feel frustrating, because I already figured everything out in my opinion, it helps.

PAM: I think that that is a great thing to remember. I’m so glad you brought that up, Erika, because it’s so true. We can, from a very loving space, there’s something that feels out of whack and we want to try and figure out a solution and us internal processors have thought it through and thought it through and thought it through and we finally came with this awesome idea and we don’t realize that if we haven’t talked about it, if we haven’t mentioned that we’re thinking about it, this is a completely new, out-of-the-blue idea to them. And I do not like out-of-the-blue ideas that are about to happen right now. I need a little bit of processing time. I need some time to just figure out, what are the implications for me of this thing happening?

So, it’s just so funny to think about it that way and just to recognize that if we’re not sharing what we’re thinking about, we don’t even know how much processing they’ll need around things or want around things or information they’ll want or what they may think of. And if we get that initial, “Oh, yay!” and do it really fast, but then two days later, it’s like, oh, but what about this and what about this? And you’re like, well, it’s gone now.

So, like you’re saying, most things, the vast majority of bigger decisions like this, family-related decisions, are not emergencies. They are not urgent. So, giving that space and time to everyone involved, not just inside our head, is just super, super valuable, I think. And it’s such a great point that it makes it so much easier later on, because everybody’s participating in the decision. We’ve had the time to think it through and like it’s like, okay, this is just the answer. It’s almost the afterthought.

ANNA: Right. And I want to touch on the piece that you just said about emergencies, because what we found is, this was our process of making decisions together and taking everybody’s into account and thinking about all the needs, so those times where there were emergent decisions, and they happened, like serious things happened, where it’s like, “We’ve got to make this decision right now. Get in the car, go. We’ve got something happening that’s intense,” it was just not a big deal, because they just knew and they just trusted. I gave them the information that I had. “This is what I feel like we’ve got to do.” And it was like, “Okay.” Because that’s that other piece that people go, “But if you give them that, then they’re going to always be like this.” And it was just not my experience.

The experience was that it built trust. When you were talking about that earlier, Pam, it builds trust in each other and that’s what then allows on either side to operate, whether you see they’re feeling something super emergent and I need to drop everything and go see what’s happening. And so, I think that’s another piece that I felt like was a side benefit that I wasn’t really sure how it would play out until it did.

ERIKA: I think they can really tell the difference. We may try to bring a super sense of urgency, like, but I need a new couch right now, because this couch is driving me crazy! But they know we’re not dealing with an emergency here. So, yeah, I like to remember to slow down when possible.

ANNA: But I also like that reminder about the processor, not just for us, because if we’re internally processing, but to think of the audience like, okay, do I have external processors that are going to want to bounce all the ideas off of me? And so, I need to kind of be ready for that to give space? Do I have somebody that’s going to go away for three days and I need to know that they actually are thinking about it and not think, oh, they don’t care because they went away for three days to think about it? And so, really knowing each other that way, and again, bringing some narration into it can really help us not get caught off guard by that.

PAM: And to not be thrown off if, the first few times through, family decisions are a little bit bumpy, because we’re learning about each other. We’re learning that somebody needs those three days of processing or however long. We are recognizing and learning that somebody will need to talk about it a lot, a lot more than if we’ve already figured out what we think the solution is and then they just need to say, but what about this? But what about this? Oh, what about this? And just to give ourselves that space for and the energy to be able to participate in that conversation, because you know it’s important for them. But we’re not going to learn that level, that depth of each other until we try it out.

ANNA: Until you do it. Yes.

ERIKA: Exactly! Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed our conversation and picked up a nugget or two for your own unschooling journey. And if you enjoy these kinds of conversations, I really think you’d love the Living Joyfully Network. You can learn more at livingjoyfully.ca/network. And if you’re looking for individualized support, whether it’s about unschooling, relationships, work, or just life, you can check out all of our coaching options at livingjoyfullyshop.com.

Have a great week everyone, and we’ll see you next time. Bye!

View Details

Deschooling is a bit of a buzzword in homeschooling and alternative education spaces at the moment. So, let’s dive in!

Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about the definition of the word, what that transition to unschooling can look like for parents and adults, the importance of letting go of expectations, some of the paradigm shifts that happen during deschooling, and how deschooling is something that we revisit over time as we reach new seasons in our children’s lives.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching calls, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello, everyone! I’m Anna Brown with Living Joyfully, and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Hello!

PAM AND ERIKA: Hello!

ANNA: Hello! Before we get started, I wanted to encourage you to visit the Living Joyfully Shop. There you’ll find all of Pam’s books, our growing catalog of courses, and you can join our online community, and also book coaching calls with us. We are really having fun creating this one-stop shop to support you as you navigate relationships with your loved ones and deep dive into your unschooling journey. You can follow the link in the show notes or just go to livingjoyfullyshop.com.

So, today we are going to be talking about deschooling. It seems that lately it’s kind of popping up again and it’s a word that’s maybe reaching a bit of a wider audience as people start to pull away from traditional schools for a variety of reasons. But people have questions about it. So, we thought it would be helpful to talk about it again. And I know we’ve talked about it before, but just keep digging in about what it looks like, what it can help us with, how it’s an ongoing process. So, I think we all have a lot to say about this. But Erika, would you like to get us started?

ERIKA: I would, yes. So, I think deschooling really has become kind of a buzzword in homeschooling and alternative education spaces, as people are really looking at the ways that school isn’t working for their children. This word comes up. Most of the time, the word “deschooling” is referring to a process of examining schoolish assumptions and beliefs and questioning those. So, getting out of a school mindset, as well as decompressing and healing from any time that has been spent in school.

And I’ll give you a couple of examples of schoolish assumptions and beliefs that you might start to question during deschooling, so that you know what kind of things we’re talking about. So, like believing that learning can only happen in a classroom, or that reading has to be happening by a certain age, that children need to be around a bunch of other children their same age, that mistakes are to be avoided, that grades are the most important thing, that everyone should be following the same educational path, that you can’t be successful without college, that children have to be made to do things that they don’t want to do, and that there are certain topics that they need to learn at a certain age, or even that children need to be taught in order for them to learn. And so, you can see just by listening to those, that these are major mindset shifts that are happening.

Deschooling is a mental and physical transition away from school for us as parents and for our kids, and all of the thought processes and choices that are wrapped up in that transition. And I know that today, we want to dive into a few important points about deschooling. First, that it looks different for children and parents, and we can explore what that can look like.

And we also really want to emphasize, like Anna was saying, that this is not a one-and-done, checklist kind of thing, where you could check it off. Anytime a belief comes up or a new phase in our child’s life comes up, more deschooling can happen.

I heard a question recently that was something like, is it okay if I feel like we need to go back to deschooling? Is it okay that our life is still looking like this? And I think the mom was really referring to the amount of time it seemed to be taking for her child to decompress and heal from his time in school. It seemed like he wasn’t interested in the usual things, which is just so common. And so, I think it’s valuable to envision deschooling not as a phase with an end point, and to really sink into allowing that transition to take the time it does and be ready to question your beliefs and give plenty of time and space for healing along the way as things come up for your family. And I know you both probably have a lot to say about this topic, so I’m excited to see where our conversation goes.

PAM: I will say, a million things bubbled up while you’re talking there, Erika. It’s like, oh my gosh, yes.

Maybe I’ll start from the kids’ point of view, since I’m the only one who had kids in school going through this deschooling process for them. If I had to put a timeline on it, at least a year of deschooling. My kids were only in school for a handful of years. My eldest was in grade four or five, I don’t even remember, but one of those. But yes, the messages that they came home with were strong.

My daughter who enjoyed school, I was actually a little bit surprised when she said, “Yeah, sure, I would prefer to stay home. That’s great.” But she had gotten the message that she wasn’t a very good reader. And so, when she wasn’t being forced to read, it’s like, “I don’t read.” And don’t put books within 10 feet of this poor girl for those first months, because it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have to do that? Okay, I’m going to step back from that.”

I wrote a whole article, we’ll link to that, about her journey with reading. To watch her step back from that and then to come to it herself was super fascinating and interesting, to the moment when she’s like, “I’m a bookworm!” She declared that. You could just see the connection she’s making to like, “A year or so ago, I hated books. I hated reading. I would swear I couldn’t read,” all those pieces, but to give her the space to come to that, a lot of deschooling in there.

Same with my son, his challenge was writing. And I remember when he picked up a pencil. It was at least a year after he left school, he was like, “I haven’t written by hand in ages.” And it was a choice to finally pick it up, but so much trauma and crap all wrapped up in that from his school experience. Those were a little bit more obvious to me, but there is the whole host of other stuff about the environment and stuff that we might not know about. So, to give them that space to just decompress.

And we’ve got lots of stories in the archive of the podcast, even young adults talking about, “I laid on the couch for a year. I just needed to really decompress entirely,” and for us to judge, like, “Oh, your experience wasn’t that bad. Why haven’t you recovered this quickly?” It takes as long as it takes.

And that was a fascinating thing for me that ties to what you were saying, Erika, that there is no timeline. “Why is this coming back up? Why do I feel like we still have some more deschooling to do?”

For me, and I talked about it in my first book Free to Learn, which is my five biggest deschooling a-ha moments or paradigm shifts that were most valuable for me, but the light bulb moment of my initial deschooling phase was when I didn’t really care if I was done deschooling at all. It’s like, oh, this is just part of life. Stuff comes up, I’ve got another layer to peel back. Oh gee, this has been my work all along. And it’s like, oh, I haven’t really had to peel back a lot of stuff lately. I think we’re unschooling. We’re just jumping right in there. All is good. But it no longer was that checklist, another school mindset to work through. It’s like, oh, we need to do this and this and I can say I’m an unschooler when my deschooling’s done. All those messages. That’s what you’re going to be shedding for the next little while.

For my kids, because they were a little bit younger, nine and seven, and my youngest had only been in for a few months, it was really diving into play, because they had so much time at school that they had missed engaging with the things that they really liked to do at home. And I call this in my journey book “the belly of the whale transition,” because we really cocooned at home for probably at least six months to a year, just regrounding ourselves, just decompressing from all the, “We’ve got to be out there, we’ve got to do things on everybody else’s timetable.” Just exploring what our timetable looked like. I thought we’d be out doing all these things, because we can now. But no, really just to decompress and just sink into the things that we love to do while I was also peeling back all these layers.

I didn’t even realize how many questions, things that I had just absorbed of, this is the way things are. I know we have all, I’m sure, suggested many times when you come to unschooling or you decide, you know what? I want to try out this thing, to really give it that window, give it that six months to a year. Nothing’s going to happen that after a year, year and a half, five years, your kids can’t go back to school. Not to think of it as, this is a lifelong decision that we’re making to take the kids out of school. This is just something we’re trying out, but give it that window. Give yourself and your kids that window to decompress, to do some serious deschooling and just explore what does life look like instead?

ANNA: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s so huge. So, my kids never went to school, and so I would say what my experience with deschooling is much more about me, but I think it really fits for everyone, whether you’re taking your kids out or not. So much of it is about our own journey, because I was in school for a very long time and really I didn’t have a bad experience and I absorbed these different things from it. But like that checklist you went through, Erika, it’s just like, there are so many things that we don’t even realize that we’ve absorbed and taken in as the one way, the only way.

And so, while I was able to see my kids really just exploring learning, I found, for me, there was layer after layer after layer that would bubble up for me. And a lot of times it would be maybe a transition age or some kind of milestone that passed that looks a little bit different when you’re not in school and you’re not in certain environments that I would be like, okay, what’s bubbling up for me here? And have to do that work to pause and lean back into my kids. Look at what they’re doing, look at our life as it is versus how it’s comparing.

And so, I think that’s such a big piece of it, is just really understanding that it’s going to keep bubbling up, because we have been trained that this is the one way that it works and the one way that it can happen. But wow, when you can open that up even just a little bit, you see your kids healing, you see your own healing, you see generational trauma healing. It’s just so powerful to give that space, like you said, Pam, just don’t put anything on it. Just give it some space.

ERIKA: Yeah. I think it really sinks in how individual this deschooling journey would be for each child and each parent. If we’re thinking there’s a right way to do it, that’s going to be frustrating, you know? And so, for kids, you can look at that same list of beliefs and see, if a child’s been in school for a while, they’re going to be picking up on a lot of those beliefs themselves, but from their angle, from the student angle.

And so, it could be things like you were talking about of, I’m not good at this, or even as terrible as, I’m stupid or I’m not good at things. And those are really heavy messages that they may have internalized. And so, when there is that space now that they’re not being controlled, not being told to do all these things, it’s just space to start asking, who am I now? And that’s big stuff. That’s really big stuff. And so, it makes sense that it can take time. It makes sense that it might look like doing nothing. And I think that panics some parents at first, because they’re used to the school schedule and all of this activity happening and so much, where it’s so busy, never time for anything. And deschooling could look really like the opposite of that. It could look like we’re doing nothing. We’re just sitting here. They just want to watch TV.

But if you can think of it almost from a trauma lens of like, this is a healing that needs to be happening, then maybe it’s easier to give more space to that and just know that not every child is going to have that response to this transition, but some will. Everyone is different.

ANNA: And we’ve seen things in the network where people’s children, I mean four years down the road, will start remembering things or things can happen. So, it is so unique, that journey. And I think I want to just speak also briefly to, if you haven’t pulled them out yet, but you’re in this situation where something’s rubbing, which may have brought you here, to listen to this.

This is really just a call to trust yourself, because there’s some messages. Because I think all of us for different reasons, even though my kids never went to school, I thought they were going to, I got hit with these messages of, something’s not right here, something’s not going to work here. This doesn’t feel good to progress along this path that I thought was going to be okay.

And for you, Pam, I’m sure there were messages along the way. And so, I think, too, part of this is just really starting to trust in that voice inside of us. I think that’s part of the layers of deschooling too, is just getting to, you know your kids. You know them way better than any teacher, any school, any institution. You know what feels good to your family, and so that’s starting to build your why when you’re going to make a big decision to pull them out or not put them in, because sometimes it’s that, right? It’s this preschooler that I don’t think I can put them in, or they don’t want to go, or they go for a bit and then it feels terrible and they’re crying and we’re being told, oh, just leave them. They’ll be fine later on. It’s like, no, if your heart’s telling you something different, part of this is just setting aside those outside voices to really tune into what you know.

PAM: That really sounds exactly like my journey and it took a while before I discovered even the word homeschooling. I would tell my kids, sorry, you have to go to school. Let’s try and make this as fun as possible, or whatever. But for me, the root of it was, to speak to what you were talking about, Anna, was, when something didn’t feel right to me, I would just continue to question the premises. Why? Why do we have to do it? So, if the context, the constraint, is that school has to be part of our lives, how can we work with that.

So, I was working with schools, I was giving presentations to teachers, I was talking with principals, just doing all the things there. Trusting ourselves when something is not feeling right and just being, for me, open and curious. It even goes back then to why isn’t this working? Why isn’t this a fit? What’s up here? How can we play around, as we were talking about on the last episode with Kendel, how can we play with the environment?

And it was in that constant research, that constant trying to find how this might work for us, that I came across an article that mentioned homeschooling and I’m like, what the heck is that? And is that legal? Because that sounds awesome. And oh my gosh, it was not long before I found out it was legal.

It was not long before we said, let’s try this. Because that’s the piece. Just follow what you’re feeling, trust what you’re feeling, and start asking questions, because it’s okay to ask questions. We’re not going to be arrested for our thoughts. We can question those fundamental things that just feel so true, like that we only learn when somebody teaches us something. How are we going to learn something if somebody doesn’t teach us something? But my gosh, we could spend an hour talking just about that question.

But ask yourself questions. Just be open to the fact that there may be other answers than the one that we’re so used to, the one that we’ve just absorbed growing up, or the one that we were explicitly told, you have to go to school because you need to learn these things. It can really shake our foundations to start asking these kinds of questions. But, oh my gosh, it is so valuable.

It’s baby steps and it’s playing with things. Is that a possibility? We played with, oh look, yeah, we can bring them home. We can see how it goes. Rocco and I talked about that in an episode a long time ago. But that is the really interesting thing, when something doesn’t feel right, just keep at it. Keep trying to figure something out. When something’s not working for anyone in our family, for any of our kids, just keep diving into that and learn more and just grow your own web of understanding about what’s going on. It is a very interesting journey and I love the call to adventure. What is it that’s just not sitting well for us, and what can we do about that?

ERIKA: Right. Yeah. I like how you describe yours as being playful and taking these little steps. Because for me it felt more like just whooshing along, this knowledge explosion and all the big mindset shifts that happened for me in maybe the beginning year when I first started reading about unschooling. And so, it didn’t feel slow in my mind or like I was taking baby steps, but that’s why it’s the unschooling journey. It might be a different thing that gets us to start thinking about it. And so, in my case, it was that feeling of, I don’t think I can put this child in preschool. That’s step one. What happens next?

And so, I think that deschooling phase, if we can think of it like that, if we can give ourselves space to be learning without worrying about all the little details, like how’s it going to turn out and what do I need to be doing? And getting ourselves worked up in that question that I hate, which is, is it all going to work out? And just trying to stay in the moment with our process and letting our kids have their own process, so much goodness can come from that deschooling phase. So much learning, so much more connection, so much more trust. But it’s going to take putting your worrying, thinking brain, all of that stuff, to the side a bit to give all of the family members space.

ANNA: And I think acknowledging, too, that it is a big step. It’s a big step to step out of the norm, because when you said that, and I don’t like it either, is it all going to work out? kind of thing, we don’t know that about school either. And if you’re getting messages that something’s not working for your child in school, it’s probably leaning on the side of there’s going to be problems down the road.

But I think why people stay is, well, but that’s what I’m supposed to do. There’s maybe some safety in thinking it’s not all coming to us. And so, that’s part of the deschooling, too, to realize they’re on their own unique journey like you. It really is about keeping focused on the moment and what’s in front of you and what does this child need in this moment? And what do you need to heal and to reconnect?

And for us, the priority is always the relationship. So, we’ll always come back to that when we’re talking about it. But I think just give yourself that space and not walk too far down that road, because like you said, Pam, it could be five years and then you go back into a more formal environment of school or something else. And there’s no right or wrong way, no one path.

But I think the more you tune into your inner voice, that’s going to lead you and your child, again, to keep that connection strong, to get the most out of whatever the experience is. So, just listen to those niggling pieces.

But I do just want to acknowledge, I get it. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we have a Network that supports people, because it is a little scary to step outside of the norm, more so for some people than others, depending on your whole family situation, and the support you have in your life. So, it’s interesting to think about and just baby steps and taking the leap. Sometimes, it’s taking the leap. Either way, it’s okay.

PAM: Oh yeah. It depends on what lens or framework you’re thinking about. Because it does feel like a huge leap. Okay. So many things! Let’s go back to that question. I remember one of my big a-ha moments or paradigm shifts while I was deschooling was from that question, is it all going to work out? to, oh, if I focus on this moment in front of me and we work through this moment in front of me and then we have another moment and we work through that moment, it’s like, oh, but we are just compounding a bunch of moments in which we worked through things. So, we will just continue to do that however long into the future I want to worry about it. So, that really helped me get back to the moment, rather than tripping into the future. If I want everything to work out in the end, well darn it, I better make this moment work out.

Another piece that bubbled up is, I remember so much the journey of deciding to take the kids out of school. And how, oh my gosh, finally when I took them out, it felt like, okay, phew. We finally decided. We made this big leap and it felt like that was the end. We’re done now. But literally, that’s the start of the deschooling. It is like, oh my gosh, there is actually so much more. This is actually the call to adventure, okay, we’re homeschooling now. Again, keeping it light enough that it’s not like, oh my god, I have committed to my kids being home with me for their entire educational career or however you want to frame it at that time, but when you can take that pressure off and the weight of expectations that we can put on ourselves. Even though we feel like, oh, we’re done. We finally decided we did the thing. Yay. We can live now. It’s actually the beginning of the journey. I think that was another realization along the way. So fun.

And then the other thing I just wanted to mention that I learned when I was home with them and deep in this deschooling was how valuable it was to look to my kids, because they really were my guides on this journey. Yes, I talked about some of the messages that they had absorbed and that they were deschooling through, but with this space now to be themselves, to choose what they’re doing, so much of that I saw in action with them, eventually I was like, oh, but I could do that, too.

So, I was giving them all that space and then I was like, Pam, you need to do this, this, this. Get all that stuff. How am I going to fit it in? Nope, you’ve got to get this stuff done. To realize that I could look to them and see the way they were approaching their days and it’s like, oh, what a beautifully human way to go at their days. When they were doing something that they enjoyed doing, I could see that mistakes were no big deal. They were just, oh, that didn’t work. I’m going to try something else. That would’ve been the end of me. I was, okay, I can’t do that. If I’m not going to be good at that, let me go slink over here and do something else.

Because obviously, as you mentioned, I had many more years of school where I had absorbed that message in that long list you were talking about, Erika, that mistakes are bad. And so, there were just so many things that I could learn through watching my kids that really helped me in my deschooling journey. Just to notice and to realize, to open up that these things were actually questions. They weren’t definitive. They weren’t, kids can do that and adults have to do this. To realize that, oh, it’s just about being human and we all have these choices on our plate, and how cool is that?

ERIKA: Yeah. It feels like some of these beliefs are almost a little barrier between you and the person or the connection or between you and the reality of the present moment. And questioning some of them feels kind of like removing that barrier. And I feel like that can happen when the kids are still in school. If you’re feeling like your connection with your kid is not that strong connection, I feel like these beliefs might be putting these barriers in between. So, when you can notice those things and think, what am I believing right now?

It’s almost like the role of mom and the role of student/child and all of these different rules that we have internalized because of our time living in the culture. It’s like, once you realize, oh, I’m believing that learning only happens in a classroom, and so, that’s why I’m treating my child like this, like it’s the most important thing. I really like how much it increases connection and strengthens the relationship when you start questioning these beliefs.

ANNA: Okay. And something you just said there made me think about the roles. I feel like we’re handed a lot of fear or this belief that we can’t do it and that we can’t handle it, especially if our kids maybe have special needs or have some special things going on with them. No, the experts. The experts. This is just something that’s drilled into us in school and our culture.

And so, again, I think the call for me is, I am with this child 24/7. I know. And I can get resources and I can bring other things in, but I just always watch for if someone’s trying to separate you in that way. Trying to say that you don’t know your child or, oh no, they can push through that, because they need this thing. And so, just watch for that messaging. Because I think it’s so strong.

And so, a big piece of this deschooling, I think, is owning our agency, taking back that agency, like, wait a minute, I do know who I am. I know who my child is. And I’m going to advocate for them. And again, whatever that environment is, whether they stay in an environment that’s in school or not, it can really change things.

But like you saw, Pam, you can go into that environment and try to advocate, advocate, advocate, but it just has its own set of rules. And if you don’t fit right into that, it can be really hard for kids.

PAM: Yeah, it’s its own set of constraints and that’s why I spent years. How can we inside these constraints, try to make this manageable? So yeah, very interesting.

And I’m still back to the kids as guides. And another reason why, when you choose to try this out, commit to it, I think that larger window is so valuable. We say at least six months, but a year, like give really a year, like as you’ve heard us all saying about a year. About a year, just as what our experience was, not as in that’s our recommendation, but through experience that seems to be at least the minimum span.

But what it does, like you were saying, is it gives us the opportunity as we’re observing our kids and connecting with them and hanging out with them to see how learning unfolds. Because so often, we’re deschooling, as in, our kids are not going to be in a classroom. I know how they learn in a classroom. They’ve got a curriculum and a teacher who tells them. Okay. How else are they going to learn?

But we need that space to see the natural learning unfold, to give them the time to dive into their interests and the things they’re interested in, and to see the connections, to see the next interest and what they brought from that, to see like all the different things growing and how their lives are unfolding. And through that, you just see the learning that’s happening. So, you need the space for that. It helps you trust the process. It helps you understand the process.

In the last episode, Kendel talked about it, too. You can read the books and you can understand it intellectually, but what a world of difference when you actually see it unfolding with your own children. That is just a deeper understanding, because you’ve got more connections now. I had these three things that made sense from the book or from the group, wherever. But then to be able to add context to that from your own life, it really solidifies it. It becomes a truth. That is part of the deschooling process as well. Like, okay, this all makes so much sense to me and I’m going to embrace this and jump in. And now let’s actually see how it unfolds for our family.

Because that’s the other really fascinating thing is in a classroom, everybody needs to adapt to the classroom process. They have their procedures, they have their methods, and we need to adapt to that. Whereas when we’re unschooling and we have that space, we don’t have 30 kids. We’ve got our handful of kids. And all of a sudden, we see how different each child is.

And that is another beautiful part of the deschooling journey is to see what learning looks like. How do they like to learn something when they have an interest? How do they dive into it? How do they deal with frustration? That’s a fascinating thing. I think you mentioned, Erika, they won’t do hard things if we don’t make them do things. Oh my gosh.

When your kid has the space to do the things that they are actually interested in, you will see them hit hard things. You will sometimes see them move on to something else completely. You will sometimes see them push right through as hard, through tears and frustration and anger and all the pieces and still go at it. It is just beautiful to see how different it is for each child. And again, then you start to apply that to yourself, too. It can look completely different for me, my partner. It just opens your eyes to humanness, I think.

ERIKA: It feels more like seeing and getting to know your child as who they are, rather than seeing them through this school lens or student lens or the deficit focus and all the things that going to school makes us focus on. And just thinking about like the fun of all that.

I was thinking, deschooling also can be super fun. I know sometimes you talk about, when they first leave school, to just think about it as summer vacation, extended, to just keep going with that kind of mindset, because it’s like, if school didn’t exist, what would you do?

What are the things that are fun to do together? What are the things that would make you feel more connected? What are the things that your child has been just waiting to be able to do and hasn’t had the time to do? So, all of that can actually be really fun. There’s the healing and there’s all this thinking work that happens. But there’s also just the fun and love of getting reconnected and actually just doing the things that you all love to do.

ANNA: That just reminds me of maybe what you were talking about with the woman who asked the question. Sometimes we’re kind of like, is this okay? We’re having too much fun. Is this okay? And it’s like, yes, it’s okay. So, I do think that’s a piece of it.

PAM: Yeah, that’s exactly it. I said we were cocooning and for many people, that image would be somber and, oh, they’re not going out and doing things. Oh my gosh, they need to recover quickly. Yet, holy bananas. That was a lot of fun. We had so much fun. We learned so much about each other. We just had fun doing things together.

And yes, thanks for the reminder. Why it was that extended summer vacation camp was because they left in March break. So, it was a school holiday. They were home and I’m like, okay, if we’re going to do this, they don’t even need to go back. Why do they have to go back and finish this school year?

And Rocco was like, yeah, that’s true. So, we went and asked them and they didn’t. And then that’s what helped me. It’s like, okay, think of it as an extended summer vacation. We don’t need school stuff or anything, right through to the fall. I’ll worry about back to school season when that time comes around.

But that was a long enough stretch that yes, we were in it. We were enjoying ourselves. Even if it didn’t look anything at all like what I thought it would the day that I went around and ask them if they would rather stay home. “I just learned that you actually don’t have to go to school. Would you like to?” “Oh yeah.” That was a really helpful way for me to frame it.

Another way, and I think I’ve got a blog post about that, was thinking of it as a season of Saturdays. Because Saturdays are often the days when we’re not trying to get our kids up and we’re not like, oh, they’re sleeping in. They should be up doing things. Like, okay, now they’re not going to school, but they should be up doing things. So, if you had months and months of Saturdays in front of you, what would you do? And that helped me get to, as you were talking about, Erika, what are the fun things that we like to do?

We ended up going to the parks a lot in our cocooning, but it felt like a cocoon because we weren’t in the midst of a whole bunch of people. We just took our cocoon with us and we went out to the park and would just spend hours by the creek, looking at the trees, walking around. We could play at the playground in there during school hours. There was nobody there, but we could stay as long as we wanted. And we left when we wanted to leave, instead of looking at the clock and saying, okay, now we have to go.

So, whatever metaphor works to help you just release the expectations that you’re putting on yourself, and then, through that, putting on your kids. Because when I was worried and looking for things, I wasn’t as able to observe them and see what they were doing. Because I had that lens, that barrier between us, that I was looking for what I thought it should look like. I was looking for them to say, oh, I want to learn some spelling words. I remember that was when I was like, oh, what about spelling? Oh my gosh. But that all worked out. But that’s when the pieces come up for us.

But unless we’re watching them in action and we’re seeing them writing when they want to write … So, for my son, my eldest, it was not handwriting, but oh my gosh, he learned to type really fast, really quickly when he wanted to communicate online. But if I was always looking for the handwriting, because that was an issue before, so I need to take special care with that thing, I would not have noticed and realized, oh, communication’s the important thing, not whether or not he’s handwriting it. Look, he’s able to chat with people. He’s getting his ideas across. He’s picking up things from others who are writing to him, etc. I could open up my view, because I was looking and able to look at them more clearly and just see what they were doing.

ANNA: I think it’s that piece of letting go of the expectation, so that’s a piece we can watch. Like, do we have an expectation or even a vision of what it’s going to be like? Letting go of that as well, because then you can see it unfold.

But there was another piece about understanding that with reading, handwriting, some of these specific things that maybe the child is having a problem with, these are often very environmentally specific. They need you to be able to read directions in school. They need you to be able to communicate in a certain way. Because maybe now everybody has computers, but back in the day, you didn’t have computers in elementary school to communicate. And so, recognizing so much of the deficit focus, like you mentioned, which is so important, is really about the environment. So, when we change that environment, those are no longer deficits and the gifts can really rise to the top.

PAM: Totally. Gifts are the perfect way to think about it. Instead of going in with that, oh, what is it that they are having a hard time with? And I need to focus on helping them, versus looking for the strengths and the gifts and back to people are different, kids are different, the different ways that they still do things, still are totally capable of doing things. They don’t need those specific skills. Those were very much environmentally-related.

ERIKA: I think one of the tricky things about deschooling is if you’re constantly looking, like you were talking about, Pam, looking for them to ask for the activity that looks like school again. Like, I’m just waiting for things to just naturally start looking more like school again. And so, if we can look for different things instead, that would be more fun.

ANNA: Definitely. I love that. Thank you so much, both of you, for diving into this. It was fun to just take a look back and to just see how it still applies to so many things. And we just appreciate everyone that’s listening today and hope that you found it helpful on your unschooling journey or just your journey in general.

And I do want to say that if you enjoy these types of conversations, we love talking about it in the network, the Living Joyfully Network. When you’re taking that leap and it feels a little scary, it is nice to have a community around you of people who have done it, who are maybe a little bit ahead of you on their journey, who are right there with you. That can just feel so good to be around people that understand the words that you’re saying, understand what you’ve been through with your kids. So, we just really encourage you to check it out. We have a lot of fun there and I really enjoy it. So, you can learn more about that at LivingJoyfully.ca/network. We hope to see you there and just appreciate everybody. Thank you!

PAM AND ERIKA: Bye!

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We’re back with another On the Journey episode! We had a delightful conversation with Living Joyfully Network member Kendel Ricker. Kendel is an unschooling mom of two kids, 11 and 9, and she shared some of her journey with us.

Kendel’s own education included homeschooling, private school, and public school, as well as university and teachers’ college. Her experiences allowed her to really come to home education for her own children with confidence. From there, her path to unschooling was really led by her children and it has been magical!

We talked about releasing expectations and control, finding creative outlets as parents, supporting our children’s interests, and looking for the “glimmers” in our everyday lives.

It was a really beautiful discussion and we hope you find it helpful on your journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Seasons.

Visit LivingJoyfullyShop.com to find our coaching, courses, and books.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out the Living Joyfully website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Join Pam on her next grand adventure on Patreon!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello, everyone! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis, and our lovely guest, Kendel Ricker. Hello, everyone.

ERIKA, ANNA, KENDEL: Hello!

PAM: Kendel is an unschooling mom with two kids and a member of the Living Joyfully Network, and I am really excited to share some of your experience and insights with our listeners.

To get us started, I have a two-part question. First, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everyone’s interested in right now? Because that’s always fun to hear. And then we would love to hear a bit about your story of how you came to unschooling.

KENDEL: Okay. Well, thank you so much for having me be part of this conversation. It’s so good to chat with you all. And I just wanted to say how thankful I am for this podcast over the years. It’s been really instrumental in helping me find this path. And these are some of my favorite episodes, where you bring on a parent who shares their journey, because it’s just such a point of connection with people all around the world, when you’re taking this path less traveled, to feel that community behind you. So, I hope that something I share today helps someone along that path like I have from listening to so many episodes like this.

A little bit about my family and myself, like you said, I have two kids, I call them affectionately “my little critters.” My daughter just turned 11 at the end of January, which is hard to believe. And then my son will be nine at the end of February. So, it’s that transition in the winter time where they switch over to the new age.

My daughter is really into birding right now. She can always be found with her adventure pack with binoculars and a compass and bird guides, and she just loves getting out into nature and doing things like swimming and kayaking and fossil hunting. And definitely, we look for opportunities to go try to find migratory birds to support that interest of hers. So, last year we went and saw about 1600 to 1800 tundra swans at a migratory zone. We’re always looking for opportunities like that. Or when there’s bird-type activities going on, like at conservation areas, we can go and be part of that.

And then she and I have actually really been enjoying a YouTube show. It’s called Brit Hikes Ontario. And so, he’s a British man and his wife, and they have set a 300 bird challenge for the year. So, we love watching that together, because it’s quite local to our area, the places they go. So, it’s really helping us learn to identify less common birds and then to see what months they’re passing through our area. So, we’ve been enjoying that together.

And, yeah, she also is a little bookworm. My dad for Christmas made her a window seat bench and a new bookshelf. So, many hours this winter she’s been with a cup of tea sitting at the window with her book. So, that’s been so fun to watch. And she also recently started taking art lessons and has always loved painting and drawing, and she also started violin lessons recently. And that’s been so lovely to watch unfold. So, that’s been cool.

And my son, who’s soon to be nine, his biggest passion is collecting vintage toys. So, he has quite a massive collection of vintage Fisher-Price, the mid-seventies era style. And he also loves the vintage Wrinkles Puppy puppets. I don’t know if you remember those from maybe the eighties. He has quite a few of those as well as a few moose and elephant style of those puppets. And he loves learning the history of those companies and learning all the different parts of the collection. And the fun is in trying to complete the sets, right?

And he also recently really got into western Playmobil and does these quite extensive small world setups. And recently, he’s been taking videos of them and I’ve helped him edit them with some western music in the background and some interesting effects. He loves that. And so, he’s my thrifting and antiquing buddy, too, because that’s a passion of mine, but he loves to come along and search out all the good deals on his vintage toys.

And then he also loves visiting local pioneer villages and heritage sites. And I guess that goes in with this interest in the western Playmobil sets. He sees a lot of these and he loves to go to local museums and see those artifacts and things.

And we all enjoy nature together. I think he loves it from a critter perspective. So, chipmunks, raccoons, squirrels. He likes to bring peanuts along and hide them in various places for the critters.

And then he’s also really into video games, and so is my daughter. And we mostly play them on the computer. And I think he’s a Minecraft whiz and, of course, one of his favorite things on there is we have a texture pack that’s Old Western. So, he loves to bring that to life on there and so creative. And then he also has started sketching old western buildings and he’s getting quite a cool sketch style, his own unique style, so yeah.

And then my husband, I did check in with him and say, how many years have we been married? We’ve been married for 14 years coming up in August, and he’s a structural engineer and he specializes mostly in bridges and we love doing nature stuff as a family together, kayaking and biking and hiking and again, visiting these local sites and just finding interesting things to do in our area. And we love going to provincial parks together. And in his free time, he does weightlifting and then video games as well.

And something him and my son really connect on is playing video games. So, for instance, they have one right now, I think it’s called Railway Tycoon, which would typically be a bit tricky for my son’s skill level. It’s quite complicated, but my son loves interacting with Ben while Ben’s playing. So, that’s so cool to watch unfold with them together.

And then there’s a game one of the moms in the Network suggested. It’s called Ultimate Chicken Horse. And we play it together as a family. And it is very fun and it has created a lot of laughter and it’s animals trying to get through obstacles that you set up to try and get each other and you have to make it difficult. So, that’s been really cool.

And, as for myself, I like photography. I did photography as a career for a number of years as well, so weddings and families and babies and stuff. But now I just do it as a hobby. And I love gardening and mostly I like planting a cutting flower garden, because then I like to bring them in and arrange them and take photos of them. So, that’s combining both of those passions. And I love to decorate for the seasons. I also like to thrift and antique those things and upcycle them to be part of the seasonal decor.

I think what takes a lot of my time and is also a passion of mine is just being an unschooling parent and creating activities and seasonal, fun things for the kids to do and looking for opportunities. And I love to plan events for our local home educating community. So, that’s takes up a lot of my time. Tomorrow, we have a Valentine’s party planned. We do like an annual Halloween party or Not Back to School party and forest meetups and field trips. So, I like to take that role for our community and create opportunities and friendships for my kids through it and put a lot of effort into that.

Right now, we’re also doing a reading club where it’s all very independent, but then we’ll get together at the end of March for a big reading celebration at our local library party. So, I enjoy doing that kind of thing as well.

ANNA: It just sounds so fun and I’m really excited about the seventies. That’s my era of Fisher-Price, so I have some old things that he might like, oh my gosh. I love that.

KENDEL: When we’re on online communities for that, it’s him and an older generation. And they just love seeing him enjoying it and sharing it, because they love seeing it being enjoyed by the next generation.

PAM: Yeah. I think that that is one of the things I love about these conversations. I understand why you love these episodes talking with other unschooling parents about their journeys and experiences, because it’s just so fun and fascinating to hear the different interests, because certainly in your first year, or even just thinking of homeschooling, but even unschooling especially, it’s like, what are my kids going to do? If they’re not going to school, what’s going to keep them busy? So, it’s just a lovely little window into anything that might catch their interest and just to see them.

And the other thing that really shines through for me as you talk about their different interests is, oh my gosh, how much time they have, because they’re not going to school, that they can have this varied set of interests that can weave together day to day. So, yes, that was lots of fun to hear about. So, moving on to your journey to unschooling.

KENDEL: Yes. Sometimes when I’m telling people in person, I actually start with the fact that I have had a lot of personal experience in both homeschooling, private, and public education. And so, I was homeschooled myself until grade two. And then I went to a private school from grade two to six, and then I homeschooled again for seven and eight, and then I went to a public high school until grade 12 and then did my undergrad at university and then eventually finished with teacher’s college.

So, that really does feel like part of my story, because it gave me an early experience with home education myself. And so, certain things that can be some of those first, immediate worries or concerns for parents when choosing home education, I knew that it was such a good fit for me. And I didn’t have that concern about socialization, because I had seen so many opportunities throughout my childhood, the two times that I did home educate, that there was so much to be part of and lots of quality friendships to be part of. And it was kind of a quality over quantity type thing. And that suited me really well. So, that set my mind at ease.

And then sometimes over the years, I’ve had a few people say, oh, well you’re a trained teacher and so, that’s what qualifies you to feel like you can home educate your children. And I actually feel like there was experience in public high school myself, and then there was getting that peek behind the curtain through my teaching placement through teachers’ college that showed me that there wasn’t anything particularly unattainable or magical about what’s done there. And, in fact, it probably built my confidence more in the fact that, with one-on-one, what all of those kids could have benefited from was one-on-one time with a supportive, loving parent or adult. So, it just gave me more encouragement that it was more attainable and doable because of that.

I’m sure you’ve heard from quite a few teachers-turned-unschoolers that it creates more unlearning that you have to do, because what I was mostly trained in was class management or how to get content across to a large group of children who don’t want to listen to you and how to get them the best grades possible type of thing. So, I feel like right away I have let parents know that I think that has caused me more unlearning and more of that peak behind the curtain that it’s manageable.

And then also having had private school and public school, I saw that even the private sector couldn’t provide what you can provide for your own children, which is unconditional love and support as a basis. And then so much more time, like you were mentioning, for them to just explore and see their curiosity unfold. That was my personal experience that made me feel like I could say when my kids were babies, I think I’m going to try home educating.

I think when I first started, I had a very different mindset. I did more classical homeschooling growing up. It was very much, here’s your curriculum books. And I was like, I can get done by noon and then have the rest of the day free. And so, I very much thought that would be what I do with my children. And then I had thought, oh, we have so much time in the afternoons then for all of these extracurricular activities to enrich their learning. My daughter, being the oldest, really fit well into that classical homeschooling model. I feel like she actually felt like we were playing school when baby brother was napping. And so, that really solidified, okay, this is the path for us.

And then once my son came of age to start doing more formal learning, I realized very quickly that he was much more hands-on, curiosity-led, experience-based. And he’s always been a questioner. And not in a defiant way, but just all the why’s, right? Like, why, why, why, why? And so, when you respect your children and you actually hear and take in what they’re saying and you’re not thinking, it’s just disrespect and, “because I said so,” you’re like, well, that is a good question. Why do we have to?

So, I think he was very instrumental in leading me down a more unschooling path or seeking out that lifestyle. And watching my kids and witnessing how they were learning and what was engaging to them and when they retained information when it was more enjoyable or learned from their own interest, that’s what kept helping me build the trust in this ever-evolving path towards more informal, just learning from life together all the time, kind of way.

And I think early on, a word that really stood out to me was Julie Bogart’s word “enchanted,” because that sat well with me when my kids were in those younger years of just looking for ways to make our everyday cozy and inviting and about connection and relationship and magical. Really seeing how quickly it was going and being like, I want this to be happy and magical, not filled with frustration. So, that was really helpful. And then, because I got sent down that path with my son questioning things, whereas my daughter was like, “We can keep playing school as long as you want, Mom,” I would then dive more into books and podcasts related to life without school type of topics, which really set me more on this path.

I think I knew about the term unschooling much earlier, like almost right away. And it was, oh, that’s not me. I’m going to do homeschooling, because it’s so much more, not less. So, I had a very skewed idea, as many people do, of what it is. But then as I got more and more into finding out information and hearing from other parents’ experiences, I was like, oh, okay. That’s what we are doing. I thought it was this big, bad “un” term, with a negative connotation, and realized, okay, that’s actually more so aligned with what we’re doing.

And so, I think that what guides our days is, connection as the number one, the relationship, learning to drop expectations of outcomes. And you talk about that a lot, but that’s been really big for me coming from that very schoolish teacher mentality of, okay, well we’re gonna home educate, but the expectations are still really high. That’s my responsibility as a parent. But learning that they reveal so much more amazing stuff when I’m not trying to get the outcome to be a very specific thing and just then really looking for what lights up my kids’ curiosity and then coming in and supporting that.

And I think another big thing I slowly move towards is, there’s no beginning. We’re not 9:00 AM till noon learning time. It’s so much more about 365. Sometimes, my daughter and I are having the best, deep conversations 10 o’clock at night. There’s just no beginning and end to when learning time is. It’s more of just a lifestyle.

And I think another key thing that I’ve implemented more over this course of coming more away from the structured, classical homeschooling is just more autonomy of choice, so when things are coming from my children and from their interests, it’s so much more beneficial, as it is for us adults. When you’re not being forced to think something cool or, “isn’t this neat?” It’s their choice. And they can learn to make those choices while they have this supportive, loving environment, too, instead of figuring that out once they’re out from our home and starting to finally get to make choices on their own.

PAM: I love that so much. Thank you very much for sharing the various insights that helped you along the way. A lot of them are very similar to mine, because my kids were in school for a while. I didn’t even know that homeschooling was legal then. And we live in the same area.

But I think that’s so fascinating to see that, like you said, as a teacher, you probably had more things to release because you had a picture of what learning “should” in quotes look like.

And I loved your insight, and I think this is something that I share quite a bit, when somebody’s curious about what we do, it’s the difference between a class of 30 kids and a family of a handful of kids maybe. They’ll ask, how do you know they’re learning? You don’t do tests! All those questions, they’re just super curious about. But to recognize that, oh yeah. I see why you need a test in a classroom. But when you get so much time one-on-one with them, as you were saying, oh my gosh, their learning shines. And when you’re connected and engaging with them, you see it in action. That’s the proof. They’re using new words. They’re sharing new things that they’re excited about. “Oh, I discovered this. Oh, look at this bird. All those little pieces are just part of your days.

I think we learn to value those and to see those as the markers. If we’re needing to look for the markers of learning, those are them. Not a mark on a test or a worksheet completed, but they are at least equivalent, but yes, as you shared from your experience, just hanging out with your kids, it’s like, oh, this is just amazingly beautiful.

ERIKA: I love the idea of the one-on-one connection and hearing about your children’s interests. It just makes me think, okay, there’s no school in the world that is going to have birding for 11-year-olds and Playmobil history and Fisher-Price history and these things.

But when they’re picking their own interests, you can see how much learning happens. And when you’re not focused on, “These are the only things that matter,” the whole world opens up with things to learn about. And I just love the joy that comes from that kind of learning.

And you started to talk about it a little bit, that work of letting go of thinking that we can control the outcomes or thinking that we can direct what our kids should be doing and that’s our inner work to do as parents to let go of some of those beliefs. It’s a mindset shift.

And so, I was wondering if we could dive in a little bit more to all the gifts that come from doing that inner work of letting go of control.

KENDEL: Yeah, that’s definitely, I think, just my base personality outside of even being a parent or a home educating parent. I know you guys are big into some of the Myers-Briggs and things and it’s the need to know what the future holds and security are really big for my personality.

So, it’s definitely been my work, as you said, Erika, to learn to let that go. And as my kids are becoming more of this middle aged childhood age, I’m seeing things that maybe I read early on in certain books that helped me, but now I’m seeing them in practice.

A big book for me when the kids were young, that really helped me shift my perspective from feeling like the responsibility as a parent was to control and to guide a certain outcome was Alison Gopnik’s The Gardener and the Carpenter. If anyone hasn’t read it, briefly, it’s, we’re not carpenters as parents and our children are a block of wood that we can have perfectly fashioned into a certain outcome, but instead we can look at ourselves as gardeners who are creating the environment for our children to flourish and they are going to be a spectacular flower or plant that’s already who they are. And we can just give it its needs, the basic needs and enrichment for it to grow. And so, that was super helpful, especially if you’re an unschooling parent, the biggest part of my responsibility sometimes I feel is the environment that we’re creating.

So, I was very easily and quickly able to visualize that as the garden that I can enrich with fertilizer and shelter from the storms and all these things. And so, that really helped me. And it was more theoretical at that point in terms of, okay, that’s the direction I want to go in. But then, as my children are growing older and I’m seeing them prove all that to me, it’s really helpful and it’s coming more into reality now.

Another book that really helped me set aside that feeling of, it was almost like you’re a good parent if you do have that control and you are trying to get your children to certain things, I let that go more so, I was reading, I think this podcast introduced Roya Dedeaux to me and her book Connect With Courage. That was so big to me, because I had kind of let go of that idea of, it’s my job to mold them into something, the carpenter mentality.

But then that book was specifically about hobbies and interests, which I think is an area where I still felt that bit of control because I’m the parent who knows what the options are. So, I have to continually be suggesting them all. And when I could lean into and realize that there were so many more, like I would suggest things and they would be like, maybe, and not be met with that instant yes. Through reading her book, I let go of some control over all that and I really realized then that there were so many more one hundred percent yes right away that were just the everyday things.

From an outsider’s perspective, I felt a lot of external pressure just in conversation with extended family or friends when what they know is to ask, oh, are they in karate, swimming, dance? What are they in? You have all this extra time as a home educator. I almost think I felt pressure that those things validated what I was doing. I think I realized that those are just the things people know about and what we’re doing is so much less known in terms of these little things that we talked about at the beginning of the podcast that are so magical and create hours and hours of learning and fun and interest for the children.

I really started to realize that it was more, like you were saying, about me needing to have that response of, these are what my kids are involved in. If I could let go of that feeling of needing them to be in any of those things to validate what we were doing, I had more time to listen for those little clues, like my daughter would be saying, when can we bake biscuits again? Oh, well, we’re too busy doing all these other things, so we’ll get to that. And my son, when are we going to the forest next? Oh, well after this and this. And so, if you fill your weeks with too much busy work that the kids might be somewhat enjoying but aren’t helping them figure out who they are and really fulfilling them.

I learned to really validate and celebrate all these little things as if I was on some sort of mission to show people these are even more valid than one of the 20 things you can choose from for kids, because look at the excitement and joy my kids are experiencing doing these smaller things that might not seem as spectacular.

And then just watching them throughout that process is what’s important, because you can think a lot of things. You can read a book and think maybe, and then you’ve just got to wait and see it play out. So, it was me stepping aside and letting that happen.

I have an example of that, as I was working through this for myself and getting more confident with not having this list of things I could tell people when they were asking, but really focus in on what I was saying earlier and saying, oh, he’s really into collecting this set right now, and all these mini things. And when people see how much you value it, then I just had to be happy with that and they can take it or leave it.

But when I stopped offering all these options and gave more time, my daughter came to me and said, I really want to play violin. And I was like, oh. That’s out of the blue. Okay. And so, my dad played violin, so she was familiar with the instrument and had tried it with him a few times.

And I love this example, because what Connect with Courage really helped me with was that there’s no set outcomes and then they can quit. If you let it be theirs and they take the ownership of it, they don’t feel all that pressure from us. Because it’s one thing, okay. She chose it. That’s great. But I could also then come in and make that a very different experience.

So, one thing that came up was only a month and a half or so into her learning violin, she had just started playing with the bow and just got off of the finger plucking and her teacher said that there was recital coming up. And so, she knew that either way she could say yes or no to be part of it. She hadn’t even ever played a song before and I was really surprised when she did say yes. But I think it’s because if I look at my experiences, maybe with music lessons, I could definitely feel a, “You will be part of this. You will stick with it, because we’ve paid for it.” There was pressure. And because she knows it’s totally hers and there’s no pressure either way, she was excited to be part of it.

Her teacher in her art class as well as in her violin class remarks that they can see a huge difference because they know she wants to be there and that she’s choosing it. I don’t require her to practice or nag her to do so. And so, it’s just one of the first big things where I’ve seen all of the work I’ve been doing for myself playing out within them and seeing the theory come to life and it’s like, okay, it does work. I’m seeing that she’s self-driven in it and thoroughly enjoying it.

And so, now the work will be if at whatever time she wants to quit, I need to be like, that’s great. Because I’m also learning that a no is just as value valuable as a yes or a continuing because you learn about yourself and practice with that is so crucial, I think, as part of becoming an adult, knowing when something’s a good fit. And knowing that it’s not invalid because at some point you quit even if you had such great potential. So, that’ll be my next little bit of carrying through the theory is being comfortable with whatever choices they’re making for themselves.

ERIKA: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I loved all of that so much. I feel like there’s so many little parts to pull out. I love that you recognized your personality pieces with the tending toward control. I think that’s so important to realize, like, I’m going to need an outlet for myself in this area. And maybe I could start to control the environment instead of the people. I feel like that’s so huge.

And then just with the people around you wondering, putting that pressure on you of like, what are the activities the kids are doing? They don’t know to ask about birding and Fisher-Price. It doesn’t make any sense. They only know these typical things that the kids might be involved in.

And so, I love the idea of giving the kids space for things to bubble up for them. And then, the violin example is just so beautiful. It’s a surprise. It’s even something that some parents would push their children to do and she’s choosing to do it herself with that space so that you know it’s just something that she’s interested in. So, I thought all of that was so beautiful.

ANNA: Yeah, the thing I wanted to pull out, and we’ve talked about this before, but it’s that piece when we step back and stop with our agenda, which is so common, because we’re trying to do the best job, we’re trying to be the best parent, but then that’s actually when we learn about them. That’s when those things bubble up from them and we actually start to see, oh, there are enthusiastic yeses. They’re there. They just might not have been for the list of things I had in mind.

And so, I love that reminder that it’s not like we’re going to step away and it’s just going to stay here. Other things will bubble up, but it’ll be coming from them. So, I think that’s just really beautiful. And I think that piece that Erika pulled out, too, about the other people, I actually think and I bet it has been your experience, too, that when you’re sharing those things that they enjoy, actually people are interested in talking about that. They just didn’t know. They just thought, oh, you only can do karate or this or that, or whatever, the standard violin. But seeing the birding and the other things can just bring that excitement to the conversation that’s so much more real. And I think that connection is so much more real, too. So, I don’t know. I just felt like that was really beautiful.

KENDEL: I just see that it opens up in them, oh, here’s all the things about me. We don’t have to stay on the surface level, too. I feel like maybe childhood gets viewed more like a procedure, like you go to school, and then what are your extracurriculars?

Another thing that really helped build my confidence over the years was literally soccer. In Ontario, Pam, it’s just what kids do in the summer. And so, they’ll say, my kid hates it, but it’s what there is to do and it’s good for them to be active, whatever the response was. And we already paid for it, so we’re staying in it.

And when I could see that and then reflect on my own childhood experiences of that pressure to stay in things, or the questions of, what would I have been doing alternatively if I had more choice? Those all just really helped me get over the concern of what it looks like to others, because it looks great to have the soccer trophy photo at the end of the summer, but when you talk to that parent, they’re like, “We had to drag them there every weekend or every Saturday.” And so, I’m like, you know what? And then that’s kind of a modern thing too, is all of all of social media, right? Getting past what it looks like from one photo and really not letting that determine what you’re going to do with your own family.

And, like I was saying, it uncovers the authentic level of adults, too, when they realize, oh yes, those are all valid things. I’ll share little things that I’m up to.

PAM: I, too, have a third of a season of soccer experience! But the piece in that area that stood out for me, you mentioned, Kendel, when you’re in those conversations with someone and you are sharing your excitement. You are excited as you share or like, this is so cool, they’re so into this thing! That almost gives them permission to release their judgment, because they’ve either got typical questions, what grade are you in? We encountered people whose favorite question once they knew we were homeschooling was, “Do you like your teacher?” And the laughter, the, “Ha ha. I set them up.”

But, oh my gosh, when we just share that bigger picture that doesn’t look like school, but we are enthusiastic and excited about our kids’ engagement with whatever the thing is, so often, that lights them up and almost gives them permission to start thinking about and sharing. And we can ask, what do you love to do for fun? We can just share those bits and then turn it over to them. And so often, that would just leave them for a second to think like, oh, for fun. I have work and I have this. And sometimes even our extracurricular activities as adults feel more like work, because we’ve scheduled them in. I’ve got to go do X, Y, Z. Just that reminder that, oh yeah, I enjoy doing that actually just brings back a little more to it.

And there was one other thing that I, I wanted to bring out again. When you were talking about having the list of, of things, oh, we can do this and this, and then you your days are full with busyness with these activities and they mention something that they’re interested in and then it takes a while for that to maybe bubble up. It took some time.

And you were talking about just freeing up the time to let that bubble up and become more of a priority, versus whatever list we have in our head that we think they would enjoy, et cetera. But how giving them the space to think about it and choose things that they’re interested in, but then to be able to engage in them soon, they learn so much more about themselves that way. Because this is something that’s catching their attention. And then when they can engage with it, they learn. Do I like the thing? Do I want to engage for a bit and quit? And the level of detail. How do I like to engage with this thing? Oh, we’ll try it this way. I’ll play violin with my grandfather for a while and that’s really cool. I’d like to dive into this a little bit more.

What we’re allowing with that space is for them to discover themselves, back to your gardener metaphor. We’re nurturing and helping them become the plants that they want to be. But unless they’re following the things that they’re interested in and exploring them the way they would like to explore it, and then taking what happens and deciding the next thing that they want to do with it or however, it’s hard for them to figure out who they want to be.

We have all these ideas and we can bombard them and let’s try this out, let’s try this out, let’s try this out. But when you give the space for it to bubble up within themselves, I just feel it’s so much richer and it’s just so much more fun to hang around with them when they’re doing stuff that they’re super into doing.

KENDEL: And I can see with the violin, even, if she finds a style she likes and her instructor’s amazing, but you don’t need to feel concreted into, well, you’ve said you wanted to. Even in terms of, if that no longer becomes a good fit, and she’s like, I know the basics now, I want to take it on my own.

Because part of part of my coming to all this was asking actual adults, too, what did you do as a kid? Did you want to? Do you resent it? What I found out was, of course, anything that they felt forced to do, even if their parents had good intention, it doesn’t stick with them through adulthood.

And it was the things that they really pushed for on their own once they finally felt of sense of autonomy that still has impacted their life or they still incorporated in their life in some way. And so, yeah, not getting stuck in anything, too. Oh, if that instructor’s not a good fit, let’s find a mentor or someone for you to play with. Or, oh, you enjoy playing as a group. Let’s find some other kids. Whatever it may be, letting them really know that they have choice in what it turns into as well, because then it’s going to be so much more rich and beautiful than we could plan for.

ANNA: Yeah, so much. And the piece that you said about that it may end and we don’t know what she’s getting out of it and what she’s going to take into the next thing, and so, just not having an energy around that, I think is really important.

ERIKA: I just loved it. I was just like, yes!

ANNA: Yes. We love it. Oh my goodness.

KENDEL: We’re focused on the violin, but what it’s bringing up, the first point that Pam was talking about, it brought up to me that I’m really being intentional about how when I am sharing about what both of them are doing, you were talking about the excitement you can get, and I’m making sure that I’m not verbally, or body language-wise, insinuating that because she’s taking a formal extracurricular activity with an instructor at the home, that that’s no more valid.

And so, I’m purposely being careful to make all of the experiences equally as important. And that’s more new for me, because I’m a big people pleaser, so it was giving people what they wanted to hear, or if it’s conventionally “Violin?! Wow, that’s amazing. Tell me all about it,” equally bragging up whatever small world my son created that week, or whatever he was doing, so it’s not seeing anything as on this hierarchy as well, because it’s about, like you were saying, Pam, the passion behind it, the interest, and you’ve all been saying what they’re getting out of it. That’s what’s important no matter what the activity is.

PAM: I think that is something that I found so interesting, because, even for interests that look conventional to people and that they can think, oh yes, that’s a thing. Like music lessons. So often, unschooled kids are coming at it with such a different perspective and energy, because they have agency in it. They’re not being told, “Yes, this is good for you. We really think you’ll enjoy it. You should have fun, you should practice,” with some future outcome in mind. Versus an unschooled kid who’s like, “Oh. That looks really interesting. I want to try it out.”

And like you were saying, even in her art class or her violin, the teachers, and that is a comment that I think we’ve all heard over the years when our kids engage in something in a more conventional setting, the teachers or instructors are just like, wow. It’s such a different energy. It’s such a different energy they’re showing up with. They are actually curious about learning the thing versus putting in the time because their parents brought them here and they need to stay. It’s just night and day.

When I think back on sharing that, that was such a beautiful point, Kendel, not to be more effusive about things that look more conventional, the people-pleasing aspect. It was good for me to remind myself that for the most part, number one, if I’m just meeting them and I’m never going to meet them again, whatever. But if it’s somebody who’s a little bit more part of our lives, then over time, they will see that there are various things that our kids are interested in and that we are just as excited about all the different things rather than the one that looks a little bit more conventional. And then they’re like, “Oh, she’s going to be a violinist in an orchestra,” kind of comments. It’s like, oh, maybe. We’ll see. I didn’t even think about that!

ANNA: All of the predictions.

PAM: But yeah, that “over time” piece I found just to be so helpful so that I could just ground in how we are now and what we’re doing now. And then next time it’ll be something different, et cetera.

And then I can just imagine that they’re building their picture of what our lives look like, because I can’t explain what our lives look like in one little conversation. So, it’s fun just to think of it as planting the seeds as we go.

ANNA: Yeah. I love that. One of the things I wanted to talk about, because I know that it’s something that you love, Kendel, is just cherishing the glimmers. And I love that, too. But I thought maybe you could tell us a little bit about what that looks like for you in your life and how it impacts your energy and connections, because I’m all about that. How do we keep that energy of connection? Because I think our kids really feed off of that, as well.

KENDEL: Yeah, the term glimmers, I think I came across it over the pandemic, probably on TikTok or Instagram. The basic idea is that it’s the opposite of triggers. And I think it gave an immediate word to something I was already doing as more of a gratitude practice of just finding those little tiny treasures among the mundane. Life can sometimes feel mundane. The chores, whatever, whatever. If we can find those little pockets of glimmers, it really helps build gratitude and contentment and peace.

And one way I love doing it, personally, I know, Anna, you are a photographer as well, and you have a really awesome camera. I don’t know what lenses you have, but birds and the moon and it’s just amazing. But I love to, say we’re walking down a path that’s seemingly all the same long grass on both sides of the path, I’ll be on a treasure hunt for that little purple thistle and that cool old fence post or whatever, and I’ll actually photograph it as a kind of gratitude practice.

And so, that’s a nice visual of like, it’s just a field of grass, but what little treasures, what little glimmers are lying in there? And so, I apply that just to everyday life, to build in gratitude and to be more in the moment. I can definitely always be far into the future in my head and it helps me ground back into the moment and really be thankful.

And another thing that recently I came across on, I think it was Wonder-Led Life’s Instagram feed. It was a quote that is, “It’s often more about what we aren’t doing than what we are doing.” And that was very similar to me. Again, it, like glimmers, gave a word to something that was meaningful to me in a way I go about life. So, that quote, it gave words to what I had been feeling lately, which was often reflecting on how our lives are quite different than the status quo of our culture. I would often be like, what would we be doing right now if we lived a more conventional life?

And realizing that by applying that, it’s often more about what we aren’t doing than what we are doing at different times throughout my days and weeks, it really focused me in on the moment and like, yes, we are doing this and this and this right now, but alternatively, we could be doing this. I found that really helpful. And I don’t know, it’s not groundbreaking, but for any parents out there, if they just implement that quote or that way of thinking for the various moments throughout their week, it really does build gratitude for all of the amazing things that this lifestyle can be.

So, whether it’s our slow morning routine together, instead of, well, what are we doing? Instead of focusing on that, you can think about, well, we’re not rushing, we’re not stressed, we’re not begging not to go somewhere or dragging the kids out of bed. So, it’s more about what we aren’t doing in that moment than technically what we are doing. And I think that you can really turn that on the flip side as well, and a lot of times we can compare our children to school children, our nieces and nephews or extended family and friends, and you have to realize that it’s often more about what they aren’t doing than what they are doing as well in the public school system or whatever.

What is lacking, even though, oh, wow, they’re reading really well or they’re getting that grade or whatever, that’s what they are doing, but that’s not meaning that there’s not this whole huge body of things that they don’t know and they’re missing out on or aren’t experiencing.

And so, in our home educating group in our local area, there’s quite a few people that come to home educating from school for various reasons. And so, when they start to feel that, am I enough? Am I doing good enough for my child? I’m comparing them to the kids that stayed in school that they’re still friends with, but I remind them there’s this whole mountain of things that they aren’t getting or that you’re able to provide them, social and emotional safety and mental health and all of these things that are so much more important than the academics. And it’ll all fall in line once all those things are taken care of.

So, that statement and the glimmers are looking for those little pockets of joy that bring you into the moment and the gratitude that comes from that. Thinking of all of the things that people just don’t even maybe know about that you get to experience day to day, which is so special.

ANNA: I love that piece, because I think for me, it’s the same. It’s, what are those things that bring me into the moment? And you’re right, photography is something I love and it is that. I feel like I notice things, because I’m thinking. And I just started recently painting more, and so I’m like, it’s the same thing. I look and I’m like, oh, I see the textures of that. And with the kids, it’s just noticing the little thing that lights them up or just the small, even mundane pieces of the day. I don’t know. When you bring that gratitude with it and noticing those little pieces, I just found it brought so much joy and connection, because I feel like everybody feels more seen in that way when we can notice those little things about the people in our life.

ERIKA: I think it’s that reminder to get out of the thinking brain more. It’s just so easy. We have so many things potentially to be thinking about and worrying about and all the things when we have children and when we’re thinking about learning and all of these things, and so, I just love glimmers as that reminder. The intention to be looking for glimmers through the day is just that reminder to get back out of my thinking brain into the moment, looking for things that just bring you some feeling of connection and joy. It feels really good.

PAM: I was just going to say it helped me feel grounded, like when you were talking about it, that really, it re-grounds me in the fact that everything is a choice. It reminds us that when we’re doing the things we’re doing, even if it feels routine, even if it feels mundane, to remember that this is a choice.

Just seeing the little things, noticing those, it’s like, oh yes, look, I can just celebrate again that we are choosing to do this versus the other things.

Because you can get like, “This is our day, this is what we do. We do this every morning,” and you can forget to celebrate that piece that, these are all the things that we’re not doing, because this is why. It grounds you back into your why, why we want to be here, why we’re making these choices. So, yeah, it’s such a fun practice, I think.

KENDEL: Yeah, I was just going to say, giving that word to it. I love what Erika said, it brings you out of your thinking mind, because I can get real stuck in there, and into the moment. But I also think it just translated throughout my life as a framework.

Because it’ll be, for instance, friendships and connections. I think thinking in that way has given me more guilt about being very intentional with what we do choose to do and with our limited amount of time for social time. You’re looking almost for people as they’re a glimmer in my life. Where am I going to cash in my limited amount of time in this world?

And you’re wanting it to be something that’s going to leave you energized and not depleted. So, it definitely just has been a framework of, I think, because my personality is the people pleaser, it helped me be like, it’s an active thing. Instead of feeling guilt and shame for being picky and choosy about, and intentional about your life, that is actively choosing something for our well-being, for our happiness, as opposed to feeling like it’s something you should be ashamed of doing because you just notice that you want to be filling your life with as much joy and happiness as possible in your limited amount of time. And so, you’re not settling for things. I think it’s really been a whole framework shift for me, if that makes sense.

PAM: Oh, thank you so much for joining us, Kendel. It was such a pleasure to speak with you. I’m really excited to share this with our listeners. And thank you, listeners, for joining us as well.

We hope you enjoyed our conversation and maybe even picked up a nugget or two of connection or insight that you can use on your own unschooling journey.

And if you would like to have more conversations like this more often, we invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network. It is such a supportive community. It’s full of conversations like this, all about the things big and small that we encounter in our unschooling lives. And you won’t have to preface every comment or question with, “I enjoy spending time with my kids.” So, learn more and join us at living joyfully.ca/network. We wish everyone a lovely week and look forward to welcoming you into the Network! Bye, everyone!

ANNA, ERIKA, AND KENDEL: Bye!

View Details

In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika explore the sibling dynamic and some of the questions that come up when unschooling families navigate sibling relationships. We talk about letting go of expectations, watching out for casting our children in roles, understanding our own triggers, and how “fair” doesn’t mean “equal.”

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching calls, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Podcast

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about Celebrating Interests. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and we are so glad you have joined us for this episode of the Exploring Unschooling podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Anna Brown. Welcome to you both!

ANNA AND PAM: Hello!

ERIKA: Hi! So, on today’s episode, we are diving into a really popular topic, and that is siblings. So many of the questions we receive on the podcast are about sibling relationships, and it’s also a huge topic of discussion on the Living Joyfully Network.

On the Network, members can share specific challenges they’re facing and it just opens up these amazing discussions since our community has such a wide variety of experiences. I know I always take something away from our conversations that helps me see things in my own life with my family in a new way. And everyone on the Network is really being intentional and open and curious, and that just creates such a great atmosphere for learning and growing as a parent and as a human.

And so, if you’d like to learn more about the Network and check it out for yourself, visit livingjoyfully.ca/network, because we would love to meet you.

And now onto our discussion for today, Siblings. Do you want to get us started, Pam?

PAM: Absolutely. I would love to get us started. And, knowing me, I think it can be so helpful to start with exploring our expectations, because there are so many conventional messages around siblings that we need to explore so that we can let them go.

We can’t skip this stage by saying to ourselves, “I release my expectations. I know I shouldn’t have them,” because trying to bury them that way won’t last long. They will bubble up in our energy. They will bubble up in our word choice. Even if we don’t consciously recognize that we’re bringing them in, they will bubble up, because they are part of our essence right now.

So, we need to do the work to discover the expectations that we personally hold and dig into them to understand where they come from, explore the implicit messages for our kids that we are subtly communicating, and just see if they actually make sense for us.

So, for example, I think an expectation that a lot of us hold, certainly when we first have kids, is that our kids will be the best of friends. Of course, our family will get along! Of course, the kids will be nice to one another and play together and help each other out! When they grow up, they will be the best of friends. Even if we didn’t get along with our siblings, we envision it’ll be different this time. It’ll be better for our kids. I think that’s a great one to pull apart a bit and just ask ourselves some questions. Why do we think that? Do we think that the shared genetics means that they’ll naturally get along? Or is it the close proximity? They live in the same house. They know each other so well. Of course they’ll develop deep and meaningful connections that will last them a lifetime.

Does telling them, “Be nice to one another! You’re siblings!” work? So, I think it starts to seem a little bit unrealistic when we peel back the layers around the connection between being siblings and being friends, because those are actually very different things, and so much so because people are different.

That genetic connection really isn’t going to take you far, I don’t think. People are incredibly and beautifully so different, aren’t they?

ANNA: Oh my gosh. This one’s a big one for me, just for my personal journey. I have two girls, now adults, but they are pretty close in age, like less than two years. And I would say, early on, they really were the best of friends and always playing together and it had this idealistic feel, with its own bumps along the way. And then when they got to the preteen, early teen years, I saw this need for them to define themselves separately.

They’re very different, like you said. I mean, could not be more different in every way. And at that stage it just really highlighted that. They wanted people that were more in line with different aspects of themselves. There were even times where it wasn’t like fighting necessarily, but there was a little bit of that, but it was more just this distance, and so I really had to do work, and it kind of hit me by surprise, to just really let that go. They may never be friends. They may not hang out together when they’re older like that. May not ever happen. And it was only then through that releasing that I was able to actually see them and facilitate what they needed at that time.

And they have a fine relationship now. They’re not the best of friends, but we enjoy being together as a family, all of those pieces. But I know that had I really harped on that and stayed there, I think it would’ve gotten really ugly. And so, I think just watching for when these things bubble up, like you said, there’s all these external messages and they can hit us at odd and different times and understanding that we’re all different and move through things differently is just so, so important.

ERIKA: Yeah. I feel like I benefited from your learning about this, because on the Network, I was able to hear a lot about the different phases that kids go through. And so, I definitely have noticed myself clinging to those times when they are playing so well together and making each other laugh so hard. And those moments just feel so great. And so, I had some fear, as they’re getting older, like, what if they stopped doing that? How’s that going to feel for me? I was afraid of that ending.

But I feel like it’s been less scary than I was anticipating, just because I’m so actively observing who they are every step of the way. And so, the decisions that they’re making now and the choices that they make and the way they’re relating to each other now just kind of make sense to me. I see who they are and I’m not putting my wishes or expectations or this fantasy life that I could imagine ahead of who they really are in reality, in this moment, as they’re growing.

And so, I think that’ll really help as they continue to grow and as their relationship continues to change over the next years. And so, that was one part.

But I think that’s not the only expectation even that we have potentially about siblings is that they’ll be friends. It’s like, the big brother who will be the protector or there’s all these different potential things that we’ve learned about as we are growing up and what we experienced maybe with our own siblings, like, what are the dynamics? What is the older sibling supposed to be like? And what’s the little baby sibling supposed to be like?

And so, just recognizing that so many of those things are just stories and cultural ideas that don’t really have anything to do with these actual different people who are right here showing us who they are.

ANNA: And that leads to one that I want to talk about that’s related and a little bit different and that is the roles that we tend to cast people in. And our brain can just do that for a lot of different reasons that we don’t even have to go into. But it is something to watch for, because it’s like that. The big brother’s going to be this. That’s one aspect of roles, but another one is these assumptions that we make about a person. “You’re the shy one. You’re the sporty one. You’re this one.” That really pits siblings against each other, because neither is feeling heard or none are feeling heard. None are feeling seen for who they truly are. And so, that piece you were talking about, Erika, where you see them, you know them, you celebrate who they are uniquely, that is actually what creates a family that feels good, because we’re all feeling heard and seen individually, without these expectations of, we are one way, we are another way.

I read the book Siblings Without Rivalry when my girls were very young, like infant and two, because I was going to get ahead of it, right? My partner, his relationship with his brother is terrible. And so, actually, I found the book interesting, because I could see his life playing out in that book. How the roles were cast, how it was created that they would hate each other. And ultimately, they’ve found their peace to some extent as they’ve gotten older. But it’s like, oh! It was not mal-intent at all, but it’s just not giving intentionality to, how am I showing up? Am I really tuning into who this unique person is in front of me?

PAM: I love that. So, it’s something that we’ve talked about, looking at your child as an individual. What do they like? Who are they? How do they move through the world? And how deep that is. That is so important in this topic, too, in sibling relationships, to be able to see them as an individual versus a role. Because yes, that role, then it’s like, does one parent prefer the sporty one? So, now we are going to have this closer relationship. Oh, we’re introverts. We’ll stay in and sit in a room, whatever, so it just messes with all the relationships. It messes with the sibling relationships. It can mess with parent-child relationships, which then affects the sibling relationships, because then it becomes competitive.

When we start bringing roles in, we are not looking at the individual. It’s like, okay, we understand them. We’ve now got this definition for them that we can use in substitute, because it’s faster to think about sporty person than it is, this is my child that loves hockey or loves football and loves this part of it and wants to play it all the time. The individual nuances of sport are just so valuable in having a relationship with that person, in connecting with that person, and in supporting that person in the pieces that they enjoy.

And if we cast them so much in that role, we don’t think about them in the bigger picture. They may want to grow beyond it. It really makes it so hard for us to connect with the people in our family. And one thing that I love, and I guess we can link to it in the show notes, is the whole idea of a family of individuals. That idea hit me because I did a lot of processing around this, and the idea of our family as a family of individuals versus language that talks about, we are a family that does this or we are a family that does that. Not only casting the people into their own individual roles, we’re casting the family into a role that, we always get along with each other. We always do this or we are a sporty family and that poor one child that really is not interested just gets dragged along to all these events.

But that’s the great thing. Think about it through your family’s lens, the individuals that are in your family.

And for me, the a-ha moment that came out of that was recognizing that at first I was thinking about the idea of fairness. At holiday time or birthdays, they all get this number of gifts. Or if we go out, they all get this kind of thing. I spend the same amount when we travel here or we do this thing. So, when I started digging into that, it’s like, oh, they are such different people. If one of my kids wanted a baseball glove or something that supported their sport love, and then I was like, oh, I want to be fair. I don’t want them fighting over the thing. I give everybody a baseball glove, as an example, you can quickly see. The other child sticks that in the closet and it never comes out again.

So, for me, taking that idea of fair and alongside the idea that people are different, I started to realize that the question for me was more the idea of feeling equally loved. What would that look like for each child? Because when you start thinking of it through that lens, it would look very different for each child. So, in some seasons, one child will need more of your attention to actively process through a challenge that they’re going through maybe, and another child who’s loving that sport needs more of the family budget right now, because they’re traveling for games and stuff like that. And maybe another just needs more of your presence right now, because they’re embracing a cocooning season and just knowing that you’re there for them just helps them feel good.

And you can see how, in that situation, they would all feel equally loved. But how you are with them looks very, very different. And it’s that equally loved piece that helps keep that competition out of the sibling relationships. It helps them recognize that, oh, we all have value, we’re all loved, and we’re very different people, and it looks very different for each of us. So, there is just such depth to talking about sibling relationships, isn’t there?

ANNA: And we get there by seeing them as unique people and not the roles. That’s the work of how to get to that place of, what does that even feel like?

ERIKA: Right, because fair doesn’t really even make sense once you start to think that people are different. It’s not even a thing anymore.

And I feel like what’s interesting about the fairness part is it’s coming from the place of the parent showing love. That is the point of it. Like, I want to be doing a very good job as a parent, so I want to make sure that everything is fair.

And so, I grew up that way. And I made a really intentional choice to not ever bring any fairness language into my interactions with my own kids as they were growing up. And I really do think it made a big difference in their relationship. And I’m sure it’s personality-based, too. But I grew up with a lot of messages about making sure everything was equal and fair, and I see it with my mom when she interacts with my kids, like, “I can play with you for 10 minutes and then I’m going to go play with your sister for 10 minutes,” and she’ll do that without even really realizing what she’s doing, because it’s overwhelming to have both kids coming at her and she wants to make sure that they’re both getting their time. It’s coming from a place of caring about them and wanting to do a good job.

And yet then I see how, if that’s the way it is, over and over, it starts to be like, but it’s my turn. And that’s not fair. She got more minutes. And so, we just haven’t had that type of discussion with our kids. They don’t really do that. “But it’s not fair,” is not really something that we hear.

And so, I don’t think my natural state from birth would be to be competitive. I feel like I’ve always been super aware and concerned about other people’s feelings and would have wanted more of that type of relationship with my siblings, where I would’ve wanted them to get what they needed and celebrating people, all of our family, as different individuals and wanting to support each other in getting what we all needed.

But instead, it did turn more into, but now she got that, what do I get? Really making sure that we’re competing. And so, I don’t know. It does feel like something that’s learned, that fair means equal thing.

PAM: Yeah, I think they don’t think children are capable of supporting each other, of taking other people’s, their siblings’, needs into account. I think they do learn to compare and that is what unlikely through our language and through our loving wish, that we treat them all equal so that they all feel equally loved. But it’s not a comparison thing. It’s not a tit for tat thing.

It really is supporting them as the individual. Like your example, Erika, is just brilliant. Ten minutes each child, because, what if one child just wanted to show her something that would take three minutes and the other one wants to get into a deep discussion that would take 15? You’ve got practically 20 minutes each way, but you’ve left one kid who showed them for two minutes and then is bored trying to keep them occupied for the next seven minutes of the 10 minutes, and then the other one feels like, oh, I didn’t get enough time, but I wanted to show you a little bit more. So, they’re both left feeling like the connection wasn’t what they were looking for just because it was equally divided. It’s fascinating.

ANNA: It really is. And I do want to say, this is going to be a little bit of a counterpoint, but because I’m thinking of my own two girls very close in age, and I’m thinking of a friend with three girls very close in age, sometimes it did mean we needed two Switches or we needed three things, and it wasn’t so much about fair is equal.

It’s more like, but wait a minute! I want to play the new thing, too! And so, I had to let go of this idea or maybe this is another expectation, that siblings are going to share. Because no, not always. Sometimes we need two things and we need three things, because we’re all wanting to engage with whatever that thing is. So, this isn’t about these perfect children that are sitting there, but there is a mindset piece to it. So, I just wanted to throw that in there.

ERIKA: Right and if they have more of an experience of like, our needs are going to get met and what I care about is important, then they’re much more likely to be expressing what they want as what they actually want. And so, if Oliver says, “Why did Maya get that? I want that,” I believe him. It’s not about competing with her. It’s like, “I also want that.” And then that totally makes sense.

PAM: Yeah. Completely. Because it’s them being themselves and wanting to engage in the things that they’re interested in.

So, yeah, if somebody got one thing, that’s the difference. If you think about a family where fair is being determined as equal, they see somebody getting something else that’s popular, it’s like, I need to have that, too, so that you’re being fair. So, it’s a power thing. And they need it. And they want it and it sits in the shelf, but I got it through that expression of, yes. I have equal power in in this family. I will get those things.

But if somebody gets something and everybody’s loving it and they want more time with it, yes. You get another one and then maybe another one, and maybe one for the parent.

ANNA: Yeah and it wasn’t the Nintendo Switch back in the day. What is that thing, Pam, that we have? A DS. Yeah. So, all four of us had the DS, David, me, and the girls, because we all wanted to engage with it. And there were moments where I was like, this is ridiculous that we have four of these. And other times where I’m like, it brought us so much joy and was so fun and it just made a lot of sense.
So, yeah, definitely that. Yeah. But can I go onto a different topic?

One of the things I wanted to talk about, because it comes up a lot with siblings, we see it on the Network and other places is when there’s conflicts. So, we have the fights or the different things happening or escalations happening. And I just wanted to really talk about, for me, I can have a justice button. And so, I really had to watch for my own triggers. What was being triggered in me? Am I worried about the younger one? Am I feeling like this one’s taking advantage? Whatever it was.

I noticed all of that was not about what was in front of me. It was a lot about my own experience as a sibling, my own experience at school with those type of dynamics. And so, I really wanted to watch for those triggers, so that I could set that aside. Because what I wanted to bring to a potential conflict or an actual conflict was this neutral observer role, a facilitator, but not someone that’s passing judgment.

So, if I hear screaming in the other room, it’s coming in like, whoa, everybody’s upset. Let’s just take a pause. What’s going on? Tell me what’s happening. I wanted to bring that kind of calm energy of, I’m not passing a judgment about it.

And that helped so much. Then I could hear them. And I want to talk about validation later. I’ll let you guys talk in just a second, but bring that energy of, I want to understand and we’re going to work this out. And you mentioned that a little bit too, Erika.

When we have that trust that I’m going to be heard, nobody’s going to be judging me, we’re going to figure this out, those conflicts can be deescalated much faster than in other environments where there’s judging and you have to defend and explain and you feel like you’re not being heard.

ERIKA: Yeah. The triggers are hard though. This is one of the really hard things, I think, about being a parent, because we’re not always or maybe ever conscious of all these different things that are trapped within us, these old wounds or old things that have happened. And so, to be unaware of that and then go into this new situation and realize, oh my gosh, I really am holding a lot of something uncomfortable about what’s happening here.

I’ve seen it play out with different parents really thinking that the older child should know better. The older child gets viewed as, well, they’re older, so they shouldn’t ever be doing this to the younger child or something. And expecting more from that older child than what makes sense for their age. And so, it helps to just be aware of the children where they are. They’re all doing the best they can, the same as we are, and just realizing that if we’re feeling something that’s so strong and heavy towards an interaction, it’s got to be something more within ourselves to peel back.

PAM: Yeah, I love that. Just noticing something’s bubbling up and it’s like, oh, maybe this feels bigger than the situation warrants.

When you have a second child, the first child just looks so much older. Even if they’re only four or they’re only five, you know? But all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, you are just so much bigger, so much more seemingly capable than this young one here. So, it’s back to expectations. We can put so many expectations on them, and maybe we’ve worked through it once or twice. “We’ve talked about this before! You don’t do that.” Meeting them where they are, and knowing and learning who they are and helping them process and move through the situation, it is just incredible. It’s night and day.

It’s so valuable to walk in without judgments or preconceived notions into a moment. Also, I think to walk in with no preconceived solution to it. If I walk in knowing, “Okay, this happened again, you should be doing this, and you should be doing that. And please remember what I said next time this happens. Do that again, please.” That’s just not how human beings tick. It’s not how they learn, memorizing someone else’s solution. It’s back to people are different. Memorizing how someone else moves most comfortably through a conflict just is not it. Sure, it’s great information to have, maybe, like, oh yeah, that’s how they like to move through it, but what works for me? I need to play with all sorts of different ways to move through it.

And I think it also becomes, again, back to the individual, for some kids being there and having the conversation together works. It helps move them through tit. I know for my kids for a while, as we were learning these tools, it was really helpful just to scatter when things got overwhelming and then I could talk to each of them individually. Because when we were together and we had moved to unschooling, there was that defensiveness, there was still a bit of that power dynamic where, “No, they don’t get to do that,” or, “I get to do that,” and it was hard to validate one child in front of somebody else. (We’ll get to validation next.) And so, to be able to talk to them individually and process individually and come up with plans, “Next time maybe, what would feel good? What might we try?”

And just to play with things and play with different ways to move through it. And that took time. That took months, years, and it doesn’t matter how long. I don’t want given amount of time. Like if I do this for this long, then this will be solved and we’ll move on to something else. Again, it’s the individual people in front of you. Some pieces of it they might pick up really quickly. Other pieces may take a lot of time for them to find their way through it, and then to be able to remember that when we’re in a heightened moment is even another step.

When we’re triggered, we know how hard it is to try and come back to this moment and be present with the other people in it, even as adults. All human beings are going to be challenged by that. To have the expectation that our kids will figure it out and then be able to do it for the rest of their lives, that’s just a pretty heavy one for them to hold.

ANNA: And so, I feel like this leads into validation from a lot of different directions, because I think when we understand our kids as unique creatures, their own people, that helps us with the validation piece. Because validation really is tuning into the individual in front of you. And it’s helpful to remember, we don’t have to agree or even understand their experience to hear and validate and show up for it.

And I’ve told this story many times before, but we had a friend over and the girls were young and screaming breaks out. I’m visiting with this old friend in one room and screaming breaks out in the other room and I go down there and she’s observing me, this friend who does not have kids.

And my oldest is like, “I hate her! I never want a sister!” The whole nine yards is coming out. Just all the big language. All the everything. And I just was calm with her. Like, “You just wish you’d never had a sister at all. You are just so angry right now and you just want her gone. You just don’t want a sister.” And just really validating those big, hard emotions. And she’s like, “Well. It’s not that. I just wish she would listen.” And she was able to move through, because I wasn’t scared by her big language. I didn’t go, “But you love her and she means well and she didn’t want to do this,” and the kind of explaining that we tend to do, because we can be protective for the young one who we love and that feels scary.

But five minutes, two minutes later, they’re back playing happily together. And my friend’s like, “What in the world just happened? How did we go from, I thought the house was going to burn down to, they’re just playing and laughing again?” And I was like, “She just needed to feel heard in that moment.” She was super frustrated. They’re young, they’re figuring things out, like super frustrated. And I could hear that, because I don’t have to take in and defend her sister. And like you said, sometimes it’s separating, so that I can validate little sister who’s like, “She is being mean, she’s doing this,” whatever it is.

But I think one of the pieces I want to get about validation when we’re talking about it with siblings is, even the hard stuff. Even the ugly stuff. Even the things like that, we need to validate and be with them, because that’s how we move through those hard emotions is by that validation.

PAM: The language that feels to us like it’s over the top, it may just be the language that they have. They’re just trying to express their emotions. But we have that nuance. So, when we can come to them and see and hear and validate, what we’re validating is the emotion, we’re validating them where they are. It’s not really about the language, right?

So, that’s how she could start to see, oh, well it’s this thing. But she needed to be heard that this thing was big for her. And they have a limited amount of language, depending on age, to be able to express that. So, they just pick the biggest words just to show. Validation is all about the other person. It is not about, “I am now saying that I agree with you. What a pain that other child is. Why did we even have them?” That’s not what we’re saying when we say, you never wanted to have a sibling, a brother or sister, whatever. It’s not what we’re saying when we’re validating.

We’re not agreeing because we validate. We are meeting them, showing them that we see them, that we see whatever it is, whatever energy that they’re having, emotion that they’re having in that moment. It just makes all the difference to feeling seen and heard. And through those conversations, that’s where they’re practicing the skills. It’s like, oh yeah, that wasn’t actually that. It was, “I wasn’t being heard.” And through a few times of that, then they can get first to the, “I’m not feeling heard,” but they need lots of time to practice that and to start identifying that, to find the nuances so they can start to recognize them, and then they can get to that place themselves. And then we meet them where they’re saying, “They’re not listening to me,” and then we work through that piece. It’s hard and it’s so beautiful, too.

ERIKA: Yeah. I feel like we’re getting to a point that I was hoping to make, which is just how often these sibling relationships are the fertile learning ground for how to interact with another human. And so, yeah, it’s challenging and they are coming without these skills, and yet here are all of these great opportunities. So, I feel like just knowing that and having that idea in my mind helps me in the moments of conflict. If I can think, this is what it’s all about. Navigating these conflicts and doing this well with them and validating them and really hearing them out and helping them learn to express themselves, helping them learn to narrate for themselves, all of those kinds of skills, it’s going to help them for the rest of their lives. Navigating conflict is not going to be something that goes away throughout life. And so, one of the values in having a sibling is these opportunities to learn some of these relating skills.

And validating is so much easier, like you were saying, when we are looking at them as individuals and not in their roles and that can tend to be a place where I get stuck, if I’m thinking, but you don’t do that. Or, but you aren’t like that, or, but you should know better. And so, I love how all these things are connected in this topic.

PAM: Yeah, I love that point, Erika. The validation looks so different for each child, more than likely, and with our partner, but we’re talking about siblings today, but yes, it is so individual, because it really helps to know the individual to be able to play with the language. Again, it’s not, here are the steps to validating. Please do that next time your child is upset. We all wish there were rules or a procedure that we could follow that works for everybody. But we are all different. We are all individuals. And it can change over time and it changes over seasons and skills and as we change as human beings.

But it’s just so fascinating to recognize the value of it. For me, it goes back to our dance metaphor in relationships. I may say a little something that just doesn’t seem to quite land, but then I say something else and I keep trying. And that may be how I’m getting more information.

I also wanted to add, and I know we’ve talked about this before with validation and we’ll link to some of our older episodes, too, but also maybe in the moment, validation isn’t about words. For a couple of my kids when things were heightened, validation was about just being with them. Just being with the energy, meeting them with that energy. You alluded to that, Anna, too, just being that grounded presence where they know, “Hey, they can stay in the room even when I’m super upset. And I’m still okay and I will get through.” There are so many messages communicated when I can just be there with them and we’ll more than likely have short, long, lots of conversations later for the processing piece. But also just processing through the energy might be something that needs to be done in silence. Any additional energy that I bring just can’t be absorbed yet. Conversation can’t be had.

So, we might think that validation must be about conversation. I just wanted to say that it’s never just one thing. What does your child need in that moment? That is the most important thing, not some sort of process somebody told you about.

ANNA: Right. It really is. So, for me, it’s watching my own self, grounding myself, and then showing up however is needed, because we’re going to get those clues. We’re going to get clues from our child. If they’re wanting a conversation about it, if they’re just wanting us to be there, if they’re wanting us to help them pull out of a situation.

Because sometimes there’s this headbutting going on and they’re just needing our help to move things along and change things up or be with them. But I feel like I get there best to see those pieces when I’m grounded, when I’ve watched for my triggers, when I’m not coming into it with that activated energy.

ERIKA: Right. “I can handle this,” is a really good feeling. And I know as the upset person, it really feels so good to have someone who can be there for it, and that it feels like, this is okay. Even this is okay.

Parenting siblings benefits from so many of the tools that we talk about. So, validation, of course, narration, definitely, remembering the HALT, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, bringing in the context for our kids, these kinds of narration things.

And I feel like it has also helped when I reflect on past conflicts and show them how we have gotten through them. You know what I mean? This is something that has helped Oliver a lot, because he’ll be really stuck in the moment and feel so angry. And then if we can remember, “You’ve felt like this before. Do you remember that those feelings pass and that we can find a way to make things feel better?”

That memory usually helps settle his nervous system, because you can feel stuck in that moment of conflict and it can feel like you can’t escape. But, I was a kid once. I had siblings. I remember what it was like to feel so angry and so frustrated by them, and we move through it, and just using all of those skills helps so much.

ANNA: Yeah. I love that reminder, because it really is. I mean, that’s why we talk about the same things over and over again, because they apply to so many different situations. So, I’m going to give a quick shout out to the Living Joyfully Podcast, because we really talk about those tools in that specific way and just in relationships in general.

And, like you said, Erika, this is the first intense relationship for them with their sibling and with us and I think it’s made so much more valuable by our presence and by sharing these tools and by talking about things and by being that presence with them and helping them understand that. What I’ve seen with my kids, and we’ve talked about this before, is just that they take those tools that we were using to relate to each other and then use them with their friends and ultimately their partners and beyond and at work and all of these places. And I just thought, oh, these have really served them, these skills that I had to work on and figure out, too.

ERIKA: Right. And thinking of it as opportunities to use these skills also feels a lot better than hoping that these conflicts never happen and thinking that a perfect relationship is going to be the goal. If I can think more like, any conflict is going to be a chance for us to learn something new and practice these skills, that just feels so much nicer.

PAM: It really does. And holding out the idea that my destination is, “there will not be conflicts,” I think that’s another expectation we might be holding. Good to peel back and see what you think about that one. But yeah, the goal isn’t to never have conflict. It is exploring and finding the tools that work for you right now to help you navigate those moments, because yeah, that’s life.

ERIKA: Well, we have had a lot of fun diving into this topic, obviously, so thank you, Pam and Anna, and thank you to our listeners. We hope that you’ve found this conversation helpful on your unschooling journey. And if you’re looking for individualized support, whether it’s about unschooling, relationships, work, or just life, you can check out all of our coaching options at LivingJoyfullyShop.com.

Have a great week and we will see you next time! Bye!

ANNA AND PAM: Bye!

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What’s so magical about age 18?

Pam, Anna, Erika, and our guest Erin dig into the transition from childhood to adulthood and what it means for our unschooled kids. It’s common for parents to bump up against some cultural beliefs about this phase of life and inadvertently put expectations on young adults. Strangers, friends, and family also all seem to be interested in the choices that our kids are making at this age! When we become aware of all of this messaging and remember that people are all different and unique, we can create a supportive environment for our young adult children to follow their own path.

Erin is an unschooling mom with four children over 18 and member of the Living Joyfully Network. She was previously on the podcast in episode 285, which you can check out if you’d like to hear more about her story. And check out her website, everlearning.ca.

We’re so glad that she was able to join us for this discussion and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching calls, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

EU285: Unschooling Stories with Erin

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about Building Community. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis and our wonderful guest, Erin. Hello, everyone!

So, Erin has been on the podcast before, back in episode 285, so please check that episode out to hear more details about her unschooling journey. But today, she’s joining us to explore the question, “What’s so magical about age 18?” which I am very excited to dive into.

But before we get started, we just want to encourage you to visit the Living Joyfully Shop. There you’ll find my books, our growing catalog of courses, you can join our online community, and book coaching calls with us. I’m just so excited to build a one-stop shop to support you as you navigate relationships with your loved ones and dive deep into your unschooling journey. So, you can follow the link in the show notes or just go to livingjoyfullyshop.com.

And now, what the heck is up with age 18? And Anna, would you like to get us started?

ANNA: I do want to get us started. Oh my goodness. I’m so glad we’re doing an episode about this age and season of life. I feel like it’s not talked about nearly enough. And there are so many parts at play. Culturally, we have this idea, I think, that once they’re 18, our work is done, but this really isn’t even about unschooling at all and it just couldn’t be further from the truth.

There’s this older labor bureau study from around 2007, 2008, that talked about age 27 being the average age where the majority of kids were living independently, so that’s age 27. And that’s just the majority, so this idea that everyone is on their own at 18 just isn’t true.

And I think letting go of that idea really helps us focus on the individuals in our family and what transitioning into adulthood is going to look like for them, because it’s so unique.

I think actually it’s easier for us in unschooling families to understand this, because our focus is on connection. It’s on relationships. And those relationships and connections last a lifetime. So, for us, the age is maybe a little less relevant, because we’re not product-focused.

But that said, when our kids start moving into adulthood, there’s a lot of messaging. It’s coming at them, it’s coming at us, messages about next steps and, “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” And it can be this really stressful time.

And I think it can be fraught with triggers for us. I found that time in my own life to be stressful and I had a very conventional upbringing, but it was really important for me to separate my experience from my kids’ experience and I wanted to really protect the space and help quiet the noise as they navigated this time.

And so, I know we have so much to talk about, but those are the things that came to mind first, this cultural expectation and really understanding what’s bubbling up for us, because this is an age we all remember, whereas some of the earlier ages, we may not.

PAM: I remember the interesting piece, too, is, even though we have a different perspective on things because we’ve been unschooling and living unschooling, but there’s also the piece that, for me anyway, I was deep in the moment with them doing the things and everything and the “18” messages started coming more powerfully as my kids got older. So, when they were younger, it was like, I’ll worry about that years from now. And in general it was, I don’t have expectations anymore. But as 16, 17 started coming up and people are now asking different kinds of questions, “What college are they going to? What are they going to be doing?” all these pieces, those expectations started hitting me then.

So, it was another wave where I had to work through it again. What is it? Why are these messages throwing me off kilter? It would just have me wobble a bit and I’d be revisiting all sorts of pieces that brought that lifestyle and perspective into this new season of our lives there.

ERIKA: This is going to be a really interesting conversation for me. So, my kids are 12 and 14 right now, and I’m just thinking that you don’t really know what your vision of “18” really means until you’re confronted with it. And so, I like the idea of thinking about it now and just being more aware that what people are going to be expecting is going to change, and even of what messages my kids have internalized about what it means to turn 18 and what it means to be an adult.

Because I know that they do have some of those stories for themselves of like, when I grow up then this will happen or whatever, but not getting so hooked on that number, that age, because obviously things will change over the years. It’s not going to be that they wake up when they’re 18 and now everything they thought about being an adult is coming true.

ERIN: Yeah. I can relate so much to both of you, Anna and Pam, as far as, you’re humming along and you’ve done some of the work, and then there is this shift. It’s just a really interesting entrance into people’s perceptions of what adulthood should look like.

And so, I think last time we spoke on your podcast, Pam, I was talking about this period of time for several years where I really had this sweet spot, I would say, with our life and doing life without school. And I felt really confident. And as we got closer to “18,” it’s whenever people perceive the high school years as being over, suddenly, it’s a lot of questions is what it is. Because I found through a lot of the homeschool/unschool journey, people didn’t really know what we were doing, so they would ask some questions. It was almost so far from what they were used to that, unless it was good friends of mine or family that I could maybe talk a little bit more specifically with, there was a generality to the questions.

And then I think you come to this space that everybody’s pretty familiar with, right? Whether it’s the world of work or it’s college or university or whatever people are doing, moving out, driver’s licenses, all those kind of older things. Suddenly the conversations were different because they had some familiarity with that stage of life.

One of the things that’s kind of neat about that, too, though, I find is that now that my youngest is 18, I’ve really officially moved out of that zone. There is a little bit more parallel at times in conversation I can have with people, because, as much as we might think that everybody has it all together and their kids’ path to doing whatever, I’m just finding in all kinds of places there is trepidation about what their kids are doing, if their kids are happy, if their kids are safe. And so, there’s some commonality, too, that we can have, which is nice.

ANNA: Yeah, that’s that piece, right? Because I think sometimes when we’re unschooling, we get caught in this belief that this is specific to unschooling, this concern that they’re not going to do this thing or it looks different. And I think you’re right. I think it’s very common. I think it’s really this commonality of everyone moving through it, because it is just such a time of change. And as parents, we’re letting go of pieces and things are happening. And so, I think it just can be really helpful as unschoolers to step out of this idea that it’s specific to that.

And then when we can let go of that, that’s when we can focus on the individuals. Because, Erin, you have several kids, Pam as well. I have two. And it’s been absolutely unique for each of our children. It has been so different and unique and that’s the cool part about it, too.

ERIN: And I think it gives other people a little bit of space. We’re having conversations and maybe asking each other how our kids are. And you can feel they are feeling that same nervousness that we all feel. And so, I think when we can just really give a lot of space and breadth and encouragement to whatever’s happening for their kids. I think maybe that’s what we can offer in those conversations. We’re not coming with judgment or preconceived ideas and I find that people maybe are feeling a little bit better for having those more open-ended conversations.

PAM: Yeah. And I think that that age comes in there, too. When we can bring the energy of, there isn’t a timetable. We don’t need to have this solved. Or our kids don’t need to have this solved. And I think, for me, the fun thing about those conversations was that piece, was that curiosity, that space you were talking about, Erin, where it can be like, oh yeah, they’re interested in this thing and they’re trying out this thing and they’re doing this thing that they’re enjoying. And it brings a conversation, for me anyway, back from the, “I have an 18-year-old or an almost 18-year-old,” to, look at this amazing person in front of me. When you can bring it back to the individual who’s there and talk about them.

Like you were saying, Anna, the way it unfolds is so unique to each person. And, for me, what helped me when I was starting to wobble was really just steeping again in “unschooling is a lifestyle.” And there doesn’t need to be this timetable, like back when it was about learning to read by a certain age and the idea that there was a timetable. I’ve been through those kinds of messages before, so I could tap back into that. It’s like, oh yeah, you know what? There doesn’t need to be a timetable for this either. I can lean into what they like to do. This is who I want to be as a parent. I still want to maintain a strong and trusting connection with them no matter their age.

Actually, it was reminding myself about all those pieces of the kind of parent I wanted to be that I honed through unschooling, and just realizing, or remembering yet again, that this is a lifestyle. This is what I’ve chosen for my family and for how I want to relate to them really. That, no matter our ages, and right now, my kids are all in their twenties and thirties, it’s still how I want to relate to them. It’s how I want to relate to human beings.

But there was definitely that time where I needed to process and remind myself of that, and then I could bring that easier energy to all those conversations. And yeah, sometimes you could just see them relax. When they’re chatting with me, it’s like all of a sudden they recognize that this isn’t a conversation with someone to whom they need to give the answers about what their child is doing, because those are the questions they’re typically getting, too. So, you could just see them relax a little bit. It’s like, oh yeah, this is the stuff they’re up to. And even just to help them relax a little bit on that, it made the conversations really interesting.

ERIKA: I love that. I can totally picture that and how you’re talking about those earlier conversations, too. Anytime there’s that societal expectation on parents and on kids, everyone around is feeling that pressure. And so, it’s so nice to be able to be the one to help maybe relieve some of that pressure, at least in the conversations with us, because they’re probably just feeling a bit defensive about what their own kid is doing and worrying about being judged for what they are and are not doing yet. And so, yeah, I just love that. I love that we can question it and just be like, there is no one right way and people are different.

ANNA: Right. And that’s my PSA portion of this one is just stop it. We can be the generation that stops those questions at that age. Because when Afton, my oldest, was that age, she was traveling by herself and she was probably 18, 19 and I mean literally strangers on airplanes asking her, what college are you going to? Or, what are you doing now? Like, find other words. Connect with people about, what trip are you going on? What’s happening with you right now? What are you interested in?

And for those teens that are in that stage, what I would tell her is, turn it back around and say, what did you love about college? Are you working in the field that you went to college for? And turn it back to them. Because so often they were like, oh, I hated this. Or, oh no, I’ve done this. Or, oh, I didn’t do this. And it was a much more interesting conversation. And I don’t think there’s any kind of malice with the questions. I think it’s just that we don’t know how to ask questions of kids. What grade are you in? What’s your favorite subject? So, this is just another area to stretch and leave space for us all to be different and for there to be different paths.

ERIN: Yeah. I got thinking about that, Anna, when I was thinking about this topic. People are at a loss for other things to say and other things to ask, because most kids are in school for a good chunk of their day and their week. And so, it’s what people know.

And so, yeah, I agree with you. It’s not said with malice, but I know my kids have found it just really repetitive. Even if it’s something that they want to talk about, even if it’s a passion or an interest or something they’re feeling really comfortable about, it’s just like over and over. What other age is like this?

Can you imagine? Everywhere you go people are asking you like, what are you doing? What are your plans? And then what are you going to do with that? Because it’s not just, what are you doing? We had a line of questioning happening over the holidays and it didn’t stop there. Then it was sort of like, well, do you think that there’s money in that field? Do you think there’s security? It’s a lot of questions!

ANNA: That we would never ask anyone else. We’d never go to the neighbor and ask about their personal finances and have they really planned ahead for what’s going to happen next? We just wouldn’t do that. So, it’s such an interesting thing.

ERIKA: There’s got to be something about the promise or the hopefulness of that age. They’re just starting to be an adult. And at this phase, we know so much about all of the trials and tribulations, all the decisions and all the things we’ve had to do, but looking at that fresh new adult who has all the decision-making in front of them, I think it probably makes people a little bit excited, a little bit concerned. A lot of things are brought up in us just because we remember. We know all that we’ve done from that age until now and I think a lot of people really like to pass along their words of wisdom or share the things that they’ve learned in order to help the next generation. So, I see why people get excited, but it’s so tiring as an 18-year-old to be like, oh my gosh, I have to explain myself to everyone now.

PAM: Yeah. That is such a good point. And I think back to our work as well, a big paradigm shift for me as we dove deeper into unschooling was holding back my two cents. Because it would get in the way of my kids’ exploration. It’s like, “Oh, should I be going in that direction?” It quiets their instincts, their motivation, their inner voice, however you want to phrase it. But if I could not jump in, “Oh yeah, this is really cool if you do it this way,” and learn how they may well do it differently, but I came to realize how much sense it made for them to do it that way.

And yet to recognize and realize that it’s the same. It doesn’t change because now they’re a young adult. Yes, I’ve learned these things. But you know what? It doesn’t mean those particular things would make their path any easier.

There’s that beautiful dance, that beautiful line of supporting them and helping them, and even pointing out things that we feel might be helpful, but again, without that expectation. And often, I found that I needed to give so much more space than I first anticipated to let things unfold, for them to pick up nuances, for them to understand themselves.

Because also, as we were saying earlier, there are so many ways their life is changing as well when they hit these ages, more opportunities are opening up. So, to give them that space to explore them and figure it out for themselves, while also being there to help. It’s not hands off. We’re always talking about that dance and that we’re not always going to get it perfect, but we’re going to get clues. If we jump in and they’re like, what? Or, no thanks, don’t wanna hear that. Or they immediately do something completely different. Not taking those things personally again.

It’s revisiting all these lessons that we’ve learned and recognizing that they apply to our kids as young adults, and then do it again as adult adults, wherever you decide you’re going to draw those lines. So, that is really fascinating to me. And something you always say, Anna, which is that there’s plenty of time. That is always such a great reminder, because if we remind ourselves about the individual in front of us, we can start to recognize how their timeline is unique to them. And it doesn’t need to be a rush. I don’t need to prove to other people. The priority is the child in front of me and their journey and their journey is a lifetime, to just keep reminding myself. We don’t need a deadline. We don’t need a deadline for anything.

So, there’s just so many different circumstances for each person’s life. It’s just so fun to hang out with them and see how it unfolds, even if it’s different, even if it’s like, that would not be a choice I would make or anything like that. It reminds me just to celebrate the person that they are and each time I just learn something more about them and I go, oh, damn. That’s pretty cool.

ANNA: And that it’s not a race and that this is a lifelong journey. And if we’re lucky, it’s pretty long. And so, I was just talking to a friend this morning and saying that disappointment is taking stock too soon. And I think that’s when we put these artificial deadlines that we’re measuring something. And really, it’s just the unfolding. It’s still unfolding for me at 55 years old. If we can embrace that piece.

And I will say, mine are now just turned 24 and 26, that societal pressure does ease. It’s pretty intense. It’s pretty specific to that timeframe of, like you were saying, Erin, 16 to 20, where it’s these milestones that people have in their own mind and then they just kind of are like, oh, they’re living their life doing their thing. It’s not so micromanaged.

But something else I wanted to say that’s almost the reverse of this is something that you said earlier, Erika, about how they’re taking in societal pieces and they’re taking in things about it. And so, something that I had to embrace, give some space for, was that they were going to maybe try things from motivations that I didn’t think were great, that were motivations from external pieces, societal pieces.

But it’s like you were saying, Pam, that’s not my journey either. I can’t stop them from doing that, and I can’t guide them around that. They knew they weren’t getting pressure from me in particular and that they had my support and I could be there to facilitate, but I could see them at times making choices. And now looking back, we can have conversations about it and they’ve said like, yeah, I kind of wish I could go back and do some of that again. But we can’t change that for them. So again, I guess it’s the reminder of so much of this is our work to just recognize we can’t control the path.

ERIN: I’ve also been thinking about the idea of how much more space and time I shouldn’t say I’ve had to leave, but in order to have the relationships that I want to have, I’ve had to leave. And it’s not even that they necessarily need all that time, but just having enough margin to be available for some of those conversations. And I know we talk about this with teens for sure, but I think it continues.

I think we were up till about 2:30 the other night, just kind of spontaneously, similar to what you were talking about. My son was just processing different things with his job and his path and management versus going a different route and just really thinking it through financially and all those kinds of things, too.
And some of it was that balance, I guess, if you will, between what externally people are saying he should do, or not him specifically, but people, and then what he enjoys and the quality of life he wants to have. And that’s not a quick conversation apparently. It just went on and on. But he really needed to process that.

And you could see bits of that, being aware of what’s expected. And maybe it’s a little bit tricky when you’ve come up through a childhood where you have a lot of freedom and things aren’t very standard and it’s wonderful in one sense, but you are also very true to yourself when you grow up that way. And so, then there’s a little bit more of a rub between the external expectations. It’s more to sift through.

PAM: Yeah. I love that example, Erin, and that reminded me that something that I’ve picked up is a realization that, oh, this is what relationships are. Because it’s like, okay, they’re 18, even if they’re moving out and they’re doing other things, it’s like, I’m still not “done.” It’s still the processing. Because yes, they’re used to actually processing things as a human being, to not just to do what’s expected of them, but to think about it and consider it, making real choices as to whether it’s something they want to do and then maybe they do try it out and then later on they might change their mind. But that’s a conversation. That’s processing.

Even as adults, how cool is it to be able to process, to continue to really move through your life with intention? Even if it’s like, I don’t have time, I’m just going to do this thing because it seems best to me, or that’s what everybody’s telling me to do, I’m going to try it out. They are just learning so much about themselves and that we have that relationship with them, that when they want to process and when they want to bounce ideas around or any of those pieces, that they trust and know that we will do that with them. So yeah, it was like, oh, adults out of the house. I’m done now with my parenting. And no, no. It’s like, oh these are the relationships that I wanted to have. And it is a lifelong thing. Oh, how interesting.

ERIKA: And just the part about the lessons that we’ve learned and those things that we question now as adults, they might not be in a place to question that yet. And so, it makes sense that they’re going to have their own journey just as we did. Maybe they have a little bit of an advantage for listening to that inner voice, but there will still be a process of critically looking at society’s messages and expectations, listening to their inner voice, figuring out what works for them.

And so, I think it makes sense that young adults, sometimes even unschooling young adults, are like, “I think I’m going to try this thing that everyone else is doing,” and we could be, from our position, like, “But why? You don’t have to. You just don’t have to do that.” But I think it’s wasted energy for us to try to convince them about stuff that it’s taken us this long to come to. They just are going to be on their own journey with it.

ANNA: Yeah. And I think it’s that being available. And Erin, just like your experience and yours, too, Pam, it is a time of intensity. And really, Erika, you’re already seeing it with your early teens, this need to process these big ideas and then go away and be doing things and then all of a sudden, yes, we’re here for the three-hour conversation.

And I think you’re right, Pam. It’s just relationships. When we think about the people we’re closest to that we want to process things with and we want to bounce things off of, how cool is it that we are that person for our adult children, these adults. And I don’t know. I love it and it can be intense at times. And I think partly that intensity for me comes from the triggers. I remember how intense it felt to be on our own now. Like, this is what’s happening. And then we’ve got to make all these decisions that seem really weighty and big.

And so, I do love what I see in them, Erin, like you said, a stronger connection to self. And also just that they are coming to me to talk about it. I didn’t go to my parents to talk about the stress I was under with some of this stuff. I just kind of felt like I had to do it. I just had to figure it out and do it. And so, I love that there’s more space for that collaboration, that community feel of relationships.

ERIN: And I wonder if some of that not going to your parents, because I think a lot of people have that experience, is that maybe we normalized that degree of stress. And it was like, well this is the stage of life I’m in. This is just how it needs to be. So, I don’t know. And there might be some of that, but it’s fun that they can play with that a little bit and think maybe there are some choices within this or some different options.

ANNA: Yeah. It’s cool.

PAM: It’s really cool to see the different kinds of choices that they make over time. And just like when they were younger, you see the learning and the things that they’re figuring out, not just through the processing, but just through the choices they’re making. Oh, we’re going to try this out. Well, something motivated you to try that thing out. And how interesting is that? And yeah, so there’s just so many pieces.

And I love that, for the most part, we remember, or re-remember that breadth of what it means to be a person, that we have revisited over time as we’ve wobbled with unschooling and gone back to looking at our kids and, oh yeah, look, they’re a complete human being. They have interests. They’re learning things all the time. I say learning things all the time, and then I worry, oh, people will look at their kid and think, oh, they’re not digging into this interest or anything like that. Because there are cocooning stages where it doesn’t look like they’re doing much, but oh my gosh, they’re learning so much about themselves just by existing in this season and seeing how things unfold and just getting curious, especially when their choices maybe don’t seem like they will work out the way they hoped they would work out. But how many times over the years, over their lifetime so far has it surprised me? So, like we were saying, I’m not going to jump in and say no, but I can sure be curious as to how it unfolds.

ERIN: I have something that popped up just about choices that they make and so, on the one hand, I think you’d mentioned earlier on Anna, about triggers. This can be a period of time or a stage of life where there are a lot of triggers for us, and I know a lot of it is we want the best for our kids, but some of it is that external opinion of what they’re doing. But to a certain degree, I think we have to just observe how much is our own ego as well. Because you know people have been watching, right? People have been watching the homeschool journey. What is this strange thing that this family’s doing? How will the kids turn out?

And so, yeah, there is a certain amount of pressure on us that’s real and I think to be able to observe that, be aware of it. I’m curious. I’ve never asked my kids. I don’t know how much they feel that or if they even do. But yeah, it’s an odd thing that there’s this low-level observation happening.

ANNA: And it’s real. And I think, that’s why, for me, when I talk about this, because obviously we’ve been talking about it for many, many years now, I really do focus on, it’s about me being the person I want to be.

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen down the road or whatever. But I truly believe if I’m being the person I want to be, showing up in kindness and compassion and supporting, that that’s the best I can do. So, it’s like, for me, to really pull it away from the outcomes, because that’s their own personal journey.
They’re going to take that journey and have all kinds of things about their childhood and other pieces. I will say, at this stage, I am grateful to have the relationships that I have with them and that we enjoy being with each other so much. But yeah, it’s so tricky.

But the other piece did come back to me, which you touched on it a little bit, Pam, but it’s like, remember the tools, because I think sometimes when we move into this stage, suddenly you’ll see parents maybe double down on the conventional piece. Like, we’ve done all this stuff, now we’re going to college, or now it’s going to look like X, Y, Z.

And even if they go to college, what I love about the mindset we bring with unschooling is the curiosity. And it’s a tool. A college course is a tool. A welding course is a tool. Exploring Europe is a tool. All of it is valid and real and important. And so, I think it does take extra work, like you’re saying, Erin, for us to do that at that time, because the eyes are on us, all the eyes.

But for me it was just like, shut that out and focus on the individual in front of me. What’s making their heart sing? What is helping them move through this stage? Just thinking of our kids, how many do we have with all of us here? Eleven kids between us! So unique and different. Every single one of them is so different and this journey is so different and all just as cool and interesting as the next.

ERIKA: When you said people are looking to see how the kids turn out, that triggers me so much, because I’m just like, what does turning out mean for a human? I’m still changing so much and growing and learning at this age, and so, I think keeping that front and center for me that there’s not a finish line and if there is one, there’s certainly not one at age 23. And so, just remembering that journey, there’s no turning out. And it doesn’t matter if you’re unschooling or if you’re in school or whatever, no matter how you grow, there’s still not a finish line as much as some people think that there is one.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. I would not want someone to think my journey ended at 23, even though it looked pretty conventional up till that point. Yuck. Oh my gosh, so much has happened since then and so much growth and that’s happening with each and every one of our children and all of the people out there.

PAM: That’s true. I just turn it back to myself each time. It’s like, oh yeah. I have changed so much in that time. I need to give everybody the grace to have their own journey.

ERIN: Yeah. Just one more thing on that, which is what I started to notice is it wasn’t even just the 18, it’s like people started to prepare for the 18 sometimes at 13, 14. And so, a lot of the people that we would have been together in the past, these memories of the kids on the hiking trails and the all the different things and just having a lot of fun together. And I really started to notice for quite a few people that joy just got swept right away in the teen years. They’d had all these wonderful years, some were traditionally homeschooling, some were unschooling, it didn’t really matter. They were all kind of finding their own joyful way of doing things. And then there was this period of time where suddenly the teens didn’t have time to get together.

Whether it was, I don’t know, just getting into a lot of structured courses or work or whatever and not that those are bad things and they can be what kids want to do and they can be really helpful. But I think it depends on the mindset. If it’s coming from that mindset of fear, “We need to prepare for 18,” it just felt a little bit sad to me to see some of that energy change.

ERIKA: That reminds me of the energy that changed when my kids were turning three and four. It’s these milestone places along the way. I remember my own mind going there. And it didn’t stay there for long, because it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But I had thoughts of like, well, Oliver’s turning three, so things are going to have to get more serious around here. He’s really going to have to start learning.

And so, I think that high school thing is the same. It’s like, okay, they’re entering the high school years. Things have to get more serious. They have to start making decisions. And so, it’s just noticing when those more cultural things are popping up in my mind.

PAM: Because societally, when the goal is, more conventionally, college or university, high school is when you’ve got to start prepping for that, right? You’ve got to get the grades throughout your high school career to get into the school that you want. So, you can pretty easily see how that unfolds, why that starts bubbling up then. And when it bubbles up for us, I think it really is just noticing expectations and the fear that’s behind those expectations, as you were mentioning, Erin, that maybe when they were younger, we didn’t realize that we held, because there was no reason to think about it. It’s just so fascinating to me. We can think, oh yeah, college, they can choose whether or not they go. Yep. Done with that. Yet when the age starts, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, well, maybe just in case, maybe we should, all those pieces.

So, I think it comes up in maybe how we talk with them. It comes up in our conversations outside our family. It comes up in the conversations they’re having with other people.

So, yeah, it is really worth the effort, I think, to just peel back the layers for ourselves when we just start to feel some shoulds and, “We have to do this,” when we feel those, it’s just such a great clue to dive in and just ask, “Do we have to? Why should we do that?”

Because even if we come to the point where, for us, yes, this feels like something I really want to happen, at least now we have the language and the understanding about ourselves and the self-awareness to be able to share at least, “I’m feeling,” to bring that to the conversation.

A conversation that starts with, “I’m kind of feeling this,” versus, “I think you should do this,” it’s a 180 degree difference as conversation starters, just to start feeling it with them and seeing what they’re feeling. And maybe we’re commiserating and maybe we’re coming up with some new ideas.

Maybe they’re thinking about things that we didn’t know about yet, and it’s like, oh, well that’s so much cooler. Because that is something else I realized. My plans, which were coming from expectations and, “This is how life should unfold,” just were never as creative and interesting as so many of the plans that they chose for themselves, because then all of a sudden it’s like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense for you.

ERIN: Well, and naturally, often teens do become more serious and focused on something in particular or maybe just generally. So, I think, it isn’t to say that they don’t drive some of that focus, because they do. They get passionate about things and they want to learn, and I think they are interested in their future. And so, they will find steps that might make sense or pieces that they might be interested in.
But I think it’s that idea of, what’s driving it? Is it external? Is it this fear that we are saying, okay. It’s time for things to get unpleasant.

ANNA: Right. And I think that “there’s plenty of time” piece is a really good place to start, because even if we can let go of the artificial timelines of it, just because they choose not to go to college at 18 doesn’t mean they won’t at 22 or 28. So, if we can let go of the rigid timeline, just even that alone provides a little breathing room to learn more about ourselves, to make sure someone’s ready for that step. Make sure someone’s ready to do whatever the next thing is. And so, even that’s a piece of work we can catch in ourselves and go, okay, right. We don’t have to buy into artificial timelines.

Again, I think the piece is tuning into the individual who’s in front of you, what do they need, what makes sense for them? And really just being there and creating that space. I think that’s a great place to start with all of this.

PAM: What bubbled up for me there, Anna, is just the reminder, not only tune into the individual and the things they’re interested in, but their personality and who they are in the world, how they like to engage with the world, to remember not only just introvert, extrovert, because we can be like, okay, now you should be doing this. We can start to see them as, “They’re adults now.” Group things. But introvert, extrovert. I was just reminded very strongly there of Michael’s more multi-passionate way of going, because he had applied and been accepted to college and had this job and was thinking about doing this thing and this thing. And it’s important for me not to get fixated on any one of those paths, because he’s just got so many possibilities that he loves. And again, just be curious to see how things unfold when these decision points come for now. For now. They can come again and again. But right now, oh, you know what? This is the path that he’s going to choose.

So, understanding that, for him, having so many different interests and paths and possibilities is just how he works and how he thrives. So, supporting that versus another child who’s just deeply into their passion and just diving into that deeper and deeper and deeper over the years. That is really cool, too. But to expect that out of another because their personality is so different, it just doesn’t work.
Knowing the individual and their unique interests and everything, but again, the root is that people are different and their personalities and the way they approach their life is just another great thing to keep mind, I think. Any last words before we go? I think we’ve hit everything.

ANNA: I think we’ve definitely covered a lot. I think there’s just lots to think about with this one.

PAM: So much. Yeah. I love this age, because I feel like it’s another one of the big seasons. The toddlers into choosing unschooling and then the teen years and I think it’s just another season where there are so many expectations that we have absorbed growing up, and that society is bringing in on us. It’s just another time when I found I needed to just get more purposeful and ground back in my why and ground back in remembering who we are and who I wanted to be as a parent, but in relationship with the people in my family, regardless of their ages. So, yeah, I’m glad we’re exploring this.

ERIN: Sorry, one more. Something came to my mind. I was thinking that it was kind of funny timing that I think when I joined two or three online groups within a season and I think my youngest was 15 at the time and my oldest was 21 or something like that.

And it’s such a funny time to start like diving into these, but it’s been so helpful and it continues to be helpful. So, I don’t know, I guess I would just like to put that in as a word of encouragement that, I think I’ll be curious to see as time goes on, but I feel like more and more people are doing that.

I’m noticing there are a few of us who still are wanting to talk about these things and sort these things out, because it’s the same principles but new life stage. There’s still a lot to think through and work through in ourselves. So yeah, just wanted to put that out there that I found that really useful.

ANNA: I love it, because I mean, when we started the Network, both of our kids, Pam, were grown whatever, but it’s like, right, because it’s so much about the journey. For me, it’s so much about learning how I want to show up in all my relationships, including the ones with my adult kids. So, yeah, it’s really a very cool time.

PAM: And it’s just very inspirational. It just reminds me, again, like are you making choices in the direction of the person that you want to be, regardless of life stages? I just learned that these questions are just so valuable for me and the reminder to live intentionally, don’t just get on this path even though you chose this path and do the things, just get your little to-do list, but moving through my life with intention and just hanging out with people who are doing the same thing is just very inspiring. Day in and day out.

All right. Well, thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun and I hope everyone listening has found this conversation helpful on their unschooling journey. And yes, you can come leave comments on social, on the post on the website. We would love to hear what’s sparked for you about this idea of, oh my gosh, my kids are going to become adults, this magical age of 18, where it’s like, okay, I’m done. Y’all take care of yourself now.

But if you are looking for some individualized support, whether it is about unschooling, whether it’s about your relationships, your life with your kids, work, etc., we would invite you to check out our coaching options at livingjoyfullyshop.com.

And as we mentioned, we would love for you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network. You will find links to that in the show notes, and we wish you all a wonderful week and we’ll see you next time. Bye! Thanks, Erin!

View Details

In this episode, we are starting a new series called Unschooling Stumbling Blocks, where we talk about common challenges on the unschooling journey.

For this first stumbling block, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about “quitting” vs “sticking it out.” This idea comes up in parenting regardless of whether you’re unschooling or not. Do we need to teach our children to persevere? If we paid for lessons that aren’t feeling good to our child, is it okay for them to stop? We dig into the cultural beliefs, the sunk cost fallacy, and give some food for thought about all of the choices that we have.

It was really fun to discuss this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching calls, and more!

In our newest 4-week focus course, we explore Validation, a transformational relationship tool for building understanding and connection in our most important relationships, like the ones with our kids and our partner. Check it out and we hope you’ll share how it helps you in your relationships!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about Celebrating Interests. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello! I am Anna Brown with Living Joyfully, and we are so glad you’ve joined us for this episode of the Exploring Unschooling podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Welcome to you both.

PAM AND ERIKA: Hello!

ANNA: Hello! Before we get started, I just wanted to remind people to check out the Living Joyfully Shop. We’re adding things all the time, and recently we’ve added a focus course on validation. Validation is a topic near and dear to my heart, and I find it to be quite magical. It transforms any exchange and enhances connection in such a deep and meaningful way. You can find it and other offerings, including coaching, at LivingJoyfullyShop.com.

Today, we are going to be talking about a common stumbling block. While not specific to unschooling, it does come up a lot in unschooling circles, and that is the idea of quitting versus sticking it out.

I am very excited to have this conversation, because it’s such a valuable paradigm shift for all involved, and I remember it for myself and my work there, so I’m excited to talk about that. But, Erika, do you want to get us started?

ERIKA: I do. So, yes, this idea does come up a lot, I think, both in mainstream parenting and in unschooling. And I think I want to start with what we’re referring to when we say quitting versus sticking it out and where those ideas or cultural beliefs might be coming from.

So, when people say quitting, most people are talking about when their children start an activity, a program, a class, taking lessons, doing a project, and then change their minds and want to stop. And then sticking it out is when, even if your child is no longer enjoying it or it feels boring or something inside them is telling them to stop or it’s feeling too hard, they keep going and either finish that project, the course, whatever. They keep attending the lessons that they signed up for.

And this is not just about children, either. We could find ourselves in these situations, too, where it can feel like we’re either “quitting” or we feel like we need to stick it out. And I find myself putting “quitting” in quotes every time I say it, because it just feels like it’s not a helpful word. It does not tell the whole story.

And one of the first things that pops into my mind when I hear these two options is that there are never just two options. Like, are these really the only two options, quitting or sticking it out? But maybe we can talk more about that later.

Anyway, where do these ideas come from? So, I think we have a cultural belief in laziness, which we’ve talked about before, and the idea of quitting feels like laziness. It can invoke a fear of failing or of being left behind, maybe not making enough money to survive in the world, some of these really big core fears. And then on the reverse side, we have the idea of sticking it out, which has really been romanticized in our culture. Grit. Toughness. Perseverance. These are ideals in our culture. And so, regardless of the circumstances or regardless of if it even makes any sense to stick it out, there is this inherent cultural value in staying with something that’s hard.

And so, I think these became loaded ideas and loaded words for people, which makes sense. It feels bad if we’re thinking our child will be judged as being lazy or if we think that these choices mean they won’t find success in life. But I know I’ve talked before about how laziness isn’t really a real thing and it bothers me to even say that word. And I think once we dig deeper into those beliefs and really tune into what is actually going on, then we can get to the root of those fears and rewrite the story for ourselves.

PAM: I want to say what comes to mind, too, as you were talking there, Erika, is I think we can feel like we need to teach our child how to stick it out. Like that that is something that’s teachable. And all those other messages, like you were saying, are more about guilting them into doing it, versus a skill.

One of the big a-ha moments for me was, oh, it’s not about teaching them to stick it out, because, “They committed to this.” We’re going to have a lot of air quotes going in this episode! But it’s more about exploring the world and finding the things that are so interesting to them that they choose to commit to them, they choose to stick it out, even if something’s frustrating for them. There’s a frustrating moment, but they know in the bigger picture this is something they want to do, and they’re so determined.

Sometimes we even get frustrated, because our kids are so determined to finish this game or to build this tower that keeps falling down and they’re getting upset, but we can’t get them to take a break. We can’t get them to stop. They still need to keep trying. That is determination, that internal motivation.

And so, when we’re thinking about interests and the things that our kids are trying out, it was so helpful for me to just frame these as choices and exploring the world for them to find the things that are interesting enough that they want to commit more fully, if that’s the way you want to phrase it.

So, it wasn’t about teaching it as a skill, it was about finding things that were innately something that they were more determined to push through. And the thing about the word “quitting,” Erika, yeah, it is very strong word, because really, for me, and it’s not something I would ever use. Because it’s choice.
For me, it just, my choice is not to go this week or not to do the thing this week. So, we’ll get to that choice piece, but that was the most important thing, because when I go to choice, that reminds me about all the learning that happens. But anyway, I won’t jump too far ahead.

ANNA: But I think the language is important, right? Because I think the language really is setting the stage, because it’s like you said, Erika, I think when we get caught up in those cultural stories of, but the stick-to-it-iveness and the perseverance, and that’s how you get ahead.

And what I think is really interesting that I observed just in being an unschooling parent and having these more organic environments was that there really were lots of times when they were very focused on things that were of interest to them. And then it was like, oh, it’s the same for me.

When I’m really interested in something, I will stick to it. And when I’m not, it’s really hard. And I know, and this is my own personal journey, I did stick with things when I was younger that passed the point of my enjoyment. And what I realize in looking back is it actually didn’t serve me or the class or organization or other thing involved, because I was half checked out.

And so, a sports team is a good example for people, because they’re like, “But you’re there for the team! And you’re this and that.” And it’s like, yeah, they’re not there for the team if they’re already half checked out because this is not the sport for them or they’re uncomfortable with it. If it doesn’t feel good to them, that isn’t serving the team, because there are people on that team who really want to be there and can’t wait to get up in the morning to get to practice.

And so, can we just learn to honor people where they are? Because, like you said, Pam, then it becomes a process of finding, where are these slots? And there might be many, and there might be a particular lane, depending on your personality. It’s like, wow, when we can find those things that really get us excited to push through that frustration to figure it out, because it’s so interesting to us, I believe that’s where we serve the world, more so than this pushing ourselves along the lines of convention, which I don’t think serves anyone.

ERIKA: Yeah. I love that point of looking at it from our own experience. Can someone else make you persevere at something that you don’t want to do? And what are the results of that? Is that really the best decision for you?

And so, I know we have all seen our kids push through tons of discomfort and difficulty when it’s something that they’re really invested in. And so, I think it’s that judgment of their interests that gets in the way. This thing that they really are diving so deep into, we can’t even see it, because we’re looking tunnel vision at the things that are more valuable to us. And so, I really think any parent with children could find an example in their life of their kids not wanting to stop something that’s hard because they just want to keep trying and trying until they get it. And seeing that right there shows you that they have those abilities. It just depends on what activity they’re doing.

PAM: Yeah. It really is a transferable skill, if you want to think about it that way, that perseverance, that grit, all those buzzwords around that. It doesn’t matter. You can see it in whatever they’re doing. And I think you’re totally right there, Erika, that we can judge, like we don’t value it if it’s pushing through on something that we don’t value, but it is as meaningful for perseverance, because it’s meaningful to them and they can bring that energy to whatever is that meaningful to them.

I wanted to jump into one of the bigger areas where people can feel pushed to wanting their kids to stick it out is when they’ve paid for things. So, if they’ve paid for an activity, if they’ve paid for a team.

Oh, and that reminded me. I remember so many times, when the kids that don’t want to be there, they’re out in the field looking up at the sky, they’re in the karate class, chatting with somebody else. In all the places, you can tell they don’t want to be there. And it’s just less fun for the people who really do want to be there and they’re taking up space.

Anyway, when we pay for the karate class or joining the baseball team or whatever it is, I think that is something that can trip us up, as well. And I know you talk a lot about the sunk cost fallacy, so I’m going to turn that over to you, Anna.

But one of the things that I noticed for myself at the beginning of our journey that was a big a-ha moment for me was that I didn’t need to jump to paid activities the moment my child had an interest in something. So, if it’s baseball, we can throw a ball around, we can have a bat. We can set up T-ball, we can explore it.

We can dance around the living room. We can go to public swim time. All these pieces. There are so many ways that we can help our child explore something before we put money on the table, if that’s something that can trip us up, if we find that’s a trigger for us. So, just to open up our creativity at the beginning. I think there’s an expert thing in there too, right? It’s like, oh, well, a coach needs to tell them how to do that. Or, a teacher needs to show them how to do it properly. They’ll get bad habits. All these little pieces.

So, I think it can be challenging if our kid expresses an interest in something and then the first thing we do is send them out to some sort of paid opportunity, and if that doesn’t work out for well for them the first few times, I think they will be less interested in expressing interest to us in things because we’ll just keep sending them out to do the thing and to do the thing.

ANNA: Right. That’s the piece. Okay. So, the two pieces I wanted to touch on, that is a big one, which is this unintended consequence of forcing someone to stick it out. And I think especially with kids, but really with anyone, it’s just people don’t do it to adults as often, is that you just stop being interested. You just stop wanting to try things, because, if I even dabble, they’re going to make me do piano lessons for the next three years. And so, just this unintended consequence of really stopping them from finding the thing that’s their passion and the thing that really speaks to them.

I do want just touch briefly on the sunk cost piece, because I’ve talked about it in a lot of places, but it was a really big shift for me, because I do want to be a good steward of our money. I want to be aware. We wanted our kids to understand that and have a sense of money.

But my husband is in finance and he very much talks to them a lot about money, so it was surprised me in a way when he was like, “It’s a sunk cost.” And I’m like, “Well, what do you mean?” He was like, “We’ve already paid it, so the money is gone. So, you can force them to go to something they don’t want to be in, and this unintended consequence potentially happens, or you can take them out. You’re not going to get the money back either way.”

And so, then it was like, oh. Then the shift for me was, we’re paying for the opportunity. We’re paying for the opportunity to try this. And so, if it was a large financial commitment, we would have conversations about it. Like, this is a large one, this one does have a long time frame. It’s expensive.
Are there ways to try it for free or try something that’s maybe a little lower stakes if you aren’t sure?

So, you can absolutely have those conversations about being a good steward with the money, but realizing that, when we make the decision, we are paying for the opportunity, just really opened up a lot of free-ness for me.

ERIKA: I think, along those lines, children, especially in younger ages, aren’t going to be able to wrap their head around the entire financial picture. And so, to expect that we say, “This course costs this money, do you really want to do it?” That’s not something that they’re going to be able to really understand, the whole depth of what that might mean for us as the keepers of the money. And that feeling of, oh, it’s going to be wasteful. I think so much of the conversations need to happen more in advance and with us as the parents realizing that the financial decisions are ours. We can’t put the decision to enroll them in that class on them, like, “You told me to spend this money on you and now look, you want to quit.” Because kids live in the moment, like you’re always saying. And so, their feelings about the activity are not going to be so tied into the amount of money that we, as the adults, chose to spend on it.

And so, I think that in the beginning, like Pam, you were talking about exploring the interest in ways that are not so expensive, is really important, because that way you are getting more information about what the child is interested in without having added weight for yourself of all this money that I have spent.

PAM: And you’re gaining more experience, too, with the environments as well. So, with the activity itself, for example, like with karate, when Michael was wanting to do that, we could do free trials. I can phone up and ask, can we try out a lesson or two or for a week just to see if it’s a good fit? Even if it’s a payment for a week, but it’s not a commitment for a year or for so many months or whatever.

Because that’s the other piece for our child, right? Again, it’s not about the money, but what is it about? It’s about the interest that they have, but it’s also how they want to engage with the interest. What is that environment? Is it very rigid and rules-based and adult-controlled? Sometimes that fits. Sometimes that’s what kids are excited about, that vibes with them, but sometimes it doesn’t.

So, there are so many other possibilities. You can check out different dojos, you can check out different dance studios, all these pieces lead to or give us more information before we commit any particular amount of money to it. The more information that we can all have just helps us reach a choice in the moment that seems to make more sense. More confidence. More confidence in the choice that we’re making, because we want to be as confident as we can.

And yes, maybe three months from now it is just not working. But we haven’t pulled it out of the air and said, “Oh, here’s the closest studio or dojo and yes, they want you to commit for a year. And you said you wanted to go, here we are.” There’s just so much more information.

I think we kind of want to throw our hands up in the air and say, oh, I’m doing the best for my child. I’m finding the best dojo, or the best place. Again, that’s the external looking in, the external judgments or maybe somebody’s really good at marketing, but to remember that it’s our child, this particular child, and something that they’re interested in. And the goal is to help them learn, not to put a sticker on your car that says, we dance at whatever place.

ANNA: So, that tangentially reminds me of just how much learning is happening in all of these experiences, right? Because, even when someone decides to leave a particular environment, there’s so much that they’re learning about this interest. Like you said, how they want to engage with it. Is it this piece they like and don’t like? And so, what I wanted to be careful was to not put my piece on that by saying, you need to stay. Or even, you need to go. It wasn’t about me. It really needed to be about what they were learning.

And then we could talk about the fine tuning, because it was like, well, maybe I didn’t like this piece, but I really liked this piece. Okay, well that’s interesting. So, then if you look at it, that’s what we paid for. We paid for that fine tuning of knowledge. We didn’t pay necessarily for six weeks of a particular class. We paid for us to get this information about ourselves, how we want to engage with this particular interest.

And so, I think, again, just turning those things around and realizing, like we were talking about earlier, Erika, just turning it back to our own experiences. I do learn a lot from those things, and there are times that I’ve signed up for classes about a particular interest and ended up being like, this is not at all how I wanted to engage with this, but I learned things. Maybe I met someone that then we could do it differently. Or maybe I got just a few tools that I didn’t know about and I could take those and experiment with them myself. And so, it’s letting go of that judgment and just celebrating what we’re learning about ourselves or our kids are learning about themselves.

ERIKA: Right, because self knowledge is such a great goal. To think of that as the end result of all these choices that we’re making and all the interests that we follow. We’re either going to learn more about ourselves, they’re going to learn more about themselves, we’re going to learn more about them. That has so much value.

As we’re talking about it, I’m thinking of a couple of lessons that I’ve learned in this area over the years. One very expensive, unfortunate one was I prepaid for a year of a trampoline location that we had never been to, because I’m like, it’s trampolines. This is fun, you know?

And so, they had a really great deal, but it wasn’t open yet. And so, I was like, you know what? I’ll just sign up for the year, because the kids love these other trampoline places. It’s going to be fine. And then we go on the first day and they have all these placards of rules posted everywhere, and it really triggered Oliver feeling like he might get in trouble. And he’s like, “I don’t like the people who work here. I don’t like the rules. I no longer like the color orange,” because that’s what they were wearing. It was very intense for him. He was like, “The entire place is everything wrong, and I don’t ever want to come back here again.”

And so, that hurt me a bit, just in my pocketbook and just feeling like, oh my gosh, mainly feeling like, why did I make that decision in advance knowing that there was this chance? But what I’m glad I didn’t do is blame him for it and try to guilt him into, “I paid a lot of money and we need to do this.” Because him knowing himself and being able to express that it was not a good fit for him and it did not feel like a safe place for him is so much more important than anything else really. Just that knowledge of himself and being able to make those choices.

And so, that was one that I definitely learned from where I was like, okay, so next time, we’re not going to rush into paying for things. We’ll just see. Take the free next step or the one-time, one-day pass next step and see how it goes.

PAM: Yeah, I think it’s brilliant how much they and we learn in the situation, like you were saying before, that learning, when we can make that flip, all of a sudden, that’s worth it. Even for extraordinary amounts of money, it’s like, oh my gosh, we know each other better. They know themselves better.

And I think it might just be worth talking a little bit about how much we learn with the quitting piece. I think it’s like, okay, they learned they didn’t like this interest. But maybe that’s not what they learned in this moment, right? Oliver didn’t say, I hate trampoline. Now, there were a myriad of reasons why this place was not a good fit, but the fact there was a trampoline on the floor was not one of them.

But that’s exactly it. I remember, over the years, sometimes when an interest was a big thing and was taking up lots of hours and it was like, oh, maybe I want some more hours back. What would I do instead with that time? And to be able to play around with that. It’s like, oh, I wonder if I’m going to miss it. Do I miss it? There’s learning that happens long after the quitting that is just so valuable as well. It’s just so much about the interest. Are there other ways that I can pursue it?

I remember when Lissy took a break from photography for six months and she came back and she’s like, “Oh my gosh. I thought I’d stopped learning and now I’d have to pick up where I left off, but I just learned so much just from the magazines I was looking through, the websites that I was on,” just all this other learning was bubbling around. And when she came back, she was a different person after those six months, after choosing to get back to it. So, we can think they quit, so now they’re not learning about that thing anymore. Oh my gosh. They may not be learning as much about that particular thing, but they are learning an intense amount about themselves.

Okay, Anna, go.

ANNA: But that just reminded me, we saw this several times over my girls’ childhood where an interest that was gangbusters, and this didn’t even have to do with money necessarily, but just this gangbusters interest like go, go, go. Then they would stop. Whoa, okay. That’s gone. And then six months, eight months, even a year or so later, suddenly it’s back.

We’re bringing new things to it. It’s going to a different place. Maybe they took a different aspect of it. Maybe it’s the exact same, but we saw that so much, and so I would really watch myself to not go, oh, you stopped the, whatever it is, piano or the thing, or the whatever. Instead just being that observer of like, okay, this is where we are now. Interesting.

Because you really don’t know what kind of connections are happening. It’s like we talk about with the cocooning times. Things are happening in there. And pieces are being pulled together and things from different areas, and we just saw that over and over again.

So, just watch that judgment about stopping an activity or quitting or whatever, because there’s often just way more to the story. And even if, like you said, they never come back to that particular interest, there’s something in the thread of that that you will see echoed somewhere down the road, and so, it’s very cool to watch.

ERIKA: Right. I mean, that’s kind of what I was wanting to get to with that, there’s not just quitting and sticking it out. There’s a world of things that are in between those, and so, I think it’s really important to not write the story for them about what their, their conclusions are about this. So, maybe these piano lessons aren’t working right now, but if we start telling them, “I guess you’re not interested in piano anymore,” that’s not fair, because it probably is not that.

And then I just think it’s pretty common for us to write stories for children, culturally and try to pigeonhole them into their interests and things. And so, quitting can be a sign to us of like, oh, I guess that’s over. But like you were saying, that’s not what we see with real humans, and it’s not what we see with ourselves.

Just because we stop something at one point does not mean it’s not going to come back later. And so, just leaving so much space for that to happen and leaving the judgment behind when it comes to these choices that they’re making so that then they can decide for themselves. They can really have the space to think about, “But I did really like that part of it.” And then they can make another choice where that’s still part of their lives.

ANNA: Love that.

PAM: It is so worth our work to peel our way through those expectations that we have and to peel our way through what kind of conclusions we’re jumping to. Because yeah, when they quit something, as you’re saying, it’s not maybe that they are no longer interested in that. “I don’t want anything to do with it.” And when we can come and realize, oh, they’re not interested in that particular aspect or situation, way of exploring that interest at the time, but it doesn’t mean now they don’t like dance or whatever, just pulling something out of the air. Because after they quit lessons at a school, maybe they still like to watch musicals. Maybe they still want to dance around the living room.

There are just so many ways that we can still bring this into their lives. And if we’ve done the work so that we aren’t doing it with any expectations, that we fully support their choice to quit the thing, and we’re fully excited about the thing that we’re sharing and curious if they’re interested. And we don’t have expectations and energy around that, it’s just more exploration for them.

ERIKA: Yeah. I had one other thought when you were talking. When we are bringing too strong of opinions about their interests, then it’s hard for them to have the space to make their own decisions and choices about it.

And so, I find that the less I label, the lighter my energy is, the less attached I am to what they’re doing, all of those parts, which are all just internal work that I have to do for myself, the more that they can make their own choice. Whereas if I’m trying to convince them to continue and I’m saying, we put all this money into this thing, or, oh, I thought you really liked that, just trying to convince and convince, then they are going to have to get stronger and stronger in their storytelling to themselves of, I don’t like this, I don’t want to do this.

And so, it’s always going to help for me to have a lighter energy about it and less attachment to outcome for them, because then there is that space for them to really be listening to themselves and making a decision rather than just reacting to my energy.

ANNA: I think that’s right. Exactly. Then it becomes a reaction and it’s kind of confusing. And I think I want to go back to personalities that we talk about so often, because you can have the rebel personality who, the minute you start pushing them towards it, they’re going to back off even if they like it. You’re going to have the people-pleaser personality who is more like, mommy really loves it when I play piano, you know? And so, and it doesn’t even have to just be money or this, it could be like, you’re such a great pianist, you’re going to do this for the rest of your life. It can add this pressure.

And so. I think it becomes tricky, because I know sometimes then we have to back off. But for me that nuance is celebrating, letting them lead the way of what those conversations look like and celebrating when they’re celebrating, commiserating when they’re commiserating.

Just really let them be the guide of the energy. And so, I love that coming in with lighter energy, because I think we’re more apt to sense their energy when we’re not bringing in a lot of strong energy into the situation. I think it is a nuance. I think kids that do have a particular passion do like to be celebrated for it. They do like to know that we know how important it is to them. So, this isn’t necessarily a hands-off, don’t react, be a robot. It’s like you said, it’s just bringing more of a generous, kind, light energy and really picking up on what they’re putting out about it. I think it makes such a difference.

PAM: Yeah, I think taking their lead on that. It’s not about being hands off and having them figure it out. Again, personality wise, how much processing they want to do externally with you. Celebrating the moments that are important to them, even if it’s like, yeah, I’ve heard that a hundred times on the piano, or whatever it is. When they’re excited about it, it’s something new for them, something has struck them and if I don’t know in particular what that thing is, it doesn’t matter. I can still match their energy. And if I don’t know why they’re frustrated, I can still commiserate with them, all those pieces. I can meet them where they are emotionally versus having some sort of fixed target or reward. It’s not about rewards, consequences, that kind of stuff.

I wanted to go back to outside voices. Like, “Oh, you’re going to be a photographer,” was the one I remember, because Lissy was into photography at a pretty early age. And I still remember my sister-in-law and I was telling her, oh yeah, she’s been taking pictures every day this week that she said, what’s going on? What’s Lissy doing? She’s like, oh, she’s going to be a photographer. That is conventionally the message. People just like to latch on and tell a story. Okay, here’s the story. She’s 13 years old and very into photography. She’s going to be a photographer. And those messages can be really challenging for kids.

So, even having those kinds of conversations with them and holding that lightness around it. Just having a smile and a giggle and I just said, well, maybe, and changed the subject. Because maybe, but the expectations around it, there’s just so much more life in their interests and the staying with something or choosing not to do something in a particular moment is all just a rich part of life.

I feel it’s just another learning thing, and maybe six months they come back to it. Maybe three years from now you’re looking back and you didn’t realize, but this thing they’re doing now, actually, it is related to that thing that they stopped doing, but they picked up on that aspect and that’s what they kept moving forward with, versus the way it looked through that particular interest.

Maybe they found the root of it and now they’re doing it in another way, or learning more about it in other ways. It’s just so much richer than, in this moment, there’s an expectation that you stick it out because we make commitments and we follow through with our commitments. And worried that we have to teach them that, that that’s some skill, because look, the only time we need to make them stick it out is when it’s something they don’t like. It’s just so fascinating to think about, isn’t it?

ANNA: It really is. And I just think that language is so important. I think watching for our own triggers about this, like how we were treated as kids, what it’s bringing up for us. Are we thinking that the grandparents aren’t going to like that they’ve quit piano? As always, we talk about it’s doing our own work so that we can separate that to really tune into the person in front of us, whether it’s our spouse or friend or child, because it really is very similar, the way that we just show up to celebrate people.

Because that judgment is just so damaging for relationships. And so, it’s just, what is the work that I need to do to let that go? Because that is always about me. It’s not at all about the other person or what they’re doing. It’s always about something in me. And so, just taking that time to recognize that just gives us so much more information and just keeps those connections where we want them to be.

Well, this was really fun. So, I’m glad we talked about this topic and I just really appreciate you both being here and I thank all the listeners, too. And I hope that this conversation has been helpful on your unschooling journey and just in life in general, because a lot of times we can look at ourselves and say like, oh yeah, I can quit this thing that I don’t want to be doing anymore.

Do remember to check out The Living Joyfully Shop. There are links in the show notes, and just comment on social media and let us know what you’re thinking about this topic, and have a great week, and we will see you next time.

PAM: Bye everyone!

ANNA: Bye.

View Details

This week, we’re back with another On the Journey episode. Pam and Erika are joined by Living Joyfully Network member Jahaira Luzzi. Jahaira is an unschooling mom of two, ages 6 and 8, and a former early childhood educator.

We talk about Jahaira’s path to unschooling, including her exploration of various types of elementary schools after she left college. We also dive into the spiritual aspects of unschooling, the importance of presence, and more! We hope you enjoy our conversation and that it inspires you, no matter where you are along your journey.

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Visit LivingJoyfullyShop.com to find our coaching, courses, and books.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out the Living Joyfully website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Join Pam on her next grand adventure on Patreon!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Building Community.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and we are so glad you have joined us for this episode of the Exploring Unschooling Podcast. I’m joined by my co-host, Pam Laricchia, and our guest, Jahaira Luzzi. Welcome to you both.

PAM AND JAHAIRA: Hi!

ERIKA: And before we get started with our conversation, I just wanted to mention that we have a variety of coaching options available on our website, livingjoyfullyshop.com.

Sometimes it can be so helpful to get some one-on-one support. And Pam, Anna, and I all offer unschooling consultations. And Anna also offers coaching for individuals, couples, and families. So, whether you want to talk about unschooling, relationships, work, or just life, we’d love to hear from you. You can click on Coaching on our website, livingjoyfullyshop.com, and we’ll put that link in the show notes as well.

So, now I’m excited that we have Jahaira here with us today. And Pam, do you want to get us started with our conversation?

PAM: I do! Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jahaira, for being here. I have really enjoyed getting to know you for the last while on the Living Joyfully Network, and I know we all appreciate your contributions to the weekly calls, because they are always so valuable. So, I am very excited for even more people to hear from you.

And, to get us started, I have a two-part question, because I have always loved starting off with, if you could tell us a bit about you and your family and what everyone’s interested in right now, and then I’d love to hear just a quick overview about how you came to unschooling.

JAHAIRA: Okay. Hi, everyone. I just want to say thank you so much, Pam, because when I found out about unschooling and was looking to dig deeper, it was your podcast that made it possible. When I listened to the stories, I realized, oh, okay, this is real. This can happen. And this woman and all of these people have done it before me. So, okay, I can do this. I can do this. Because it’s just such a radical shift from being in school all your life and knowing that as the only way.

So, your podcast showed me all these stories about what’s possible. I remember being brought to tears, realizing the depth of what was possible and how it could even heal me. I just want to say thank you so much to you and Anna and Anne Ohman. Shout out to Anne and now Erika, too. Thank you guys so much for doing this for the world.

PAM: Thank you so much for sharing.

JAHAIRA: So, I’m Jahaira and I just celebrated my 43rd birthday and I’m a full-time stay-at-home mom. I’m with my kids full-time.

My favorite thing to do right now is to work out. I have been part of a workout community called Get Mom Strong. I found her on Instagram and I’ve basically been doing her program for four years now. And it’s weight training, it’s body weight, and it’s also dumbbells and other small equipment that I’ve built up over the years. And it just makes me feel stronger and more capable. And her way of teaching fitness is basically, especially for moms, is instead of trying to get skinny, you want to just appreciate your body for what it can do and what it has done and how beautiful the stretch marks can be when you look at it from the perspective of, this is what my body did to create my babies. So, it just brings this whole new spectrum of appreciating your body instead of trying to change it. And so, that’s why I love that program.

And I also am new to Jiujitsu, thanks to my husband, which is very interesting, because there’s a lot to learn and I feel like you have to practice a lot in order to get better. So, I’m doing that three times a week with my husband.

And I’m also learning a lot about something called non-duality, which is hard to explain, but I basically came across it through, Eckhart Tolle’s teachings. I know a lot of people probably know about The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And it’s basically a way to think about life in a way, or not even think about it, but noticing how your thoughts are basically what’s making you suffer. And all suffering is basically caused by this thick veil of thoughts, this dense layer of thoughts that’s clouding the reality of what is in this moment. So, I’m into that now.

And then my husband is John and we’ve been married for almost 10 years. He is a software engineer and a business analyst. And he is crazy about Jiujitsu. He wants to go every night of the week now and super passionate about it, watches YouTube videos all day, and is excited that I’m doing it now, too. But he’s super into it. And he likes chess and Jiujitsu is a lot like chess, because when you’re in certain situations, it’s similar to wrestling, but it’s how to move your body in certain situations in order to gain an upper hand. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s fun.

And then he also likes to hang out and smoke a cigar and is into cigars and knows how to take care of them and which ones are the good ones now, and is always looking for cigar buddies. And then we also just got a pizza maker, which is fun, because it hooks up to the gas thing outside. It’s powered by the gas, but it’s an actual pizza maker, fire, not wood fire, but fire, pizza maker. And so, he is learning the science of that and it’s really, really great to have delicious homemade pizza.

And then we have Leo, my 8-year-old son, who loves Roblox and VR and is really into Gorilla Tag right now and Rec Room. And he just got the new Oculus Quest headset, which he’s very lucky to have gotten that. So, now I was just watching him and his little sister play together for the first time, because now she’s using the older one. So, that’s really fun to witness them playing VR together.

And then Lianna is six and she loves Bluey which, I know, Pam, your kids are grown up, but you have seen Bluey, right?

PAM: Yeah.

JAHAIRA: Okay. Healing for the soul. I don’t know if everybody’s already seen Bluey. I’m sure everybody here in this community has already seen Bluey, but it is a beautiful production. From the music to just the things that they talk about. And just to see, to witness, how the parents can be so playful with the kids. And it’s just such an amazing example of being able to come back to that childlike state, to be with your kids, and just gentle parenting overall. It’s so amazing. It makes me cry. I am brought to tears watching that show sometimes.

And then, she also loves gymnastics and she’s gotten really good at her cartwheels and she’s working on her handstands now, so that’s fun. Gotta be careful in the living room, because there are flying legs every now and then, but it’s good. So, that’s us.

PAM: I remember when I was a child doing the cartwheels in the living room and smacking my ankle on the furniture. Swollen ankle. That’s my childhood. Indoor gymnastics.

But, anyway, all that aside, thank you so much. That’s what I love about the snapshots of people’s lives. I mean, maybe it’s just the way my mind works, but I can just see your four lives and all those interests weaving together. There are so many overlapping bits. And I love the jiujitsu and chess comparison and can totally see that and how a software person would be very interested in that as well. So much of it weaves together so beautifully. Thank you so much for sharing.

ERIKA: Yeah, we just got a new Oculus Quest. Oliver got the new one here, too. And they’re both very into Gorilla Tag, so that’s very fun. And Bluey is so beautiful. I’m glad that you mentioned it. Maya is 12, but she will watch it and she’s just like, “It makes me cry. You have to see this one. It makes me cry. It’s just so beautiful.”

JAHAIRA: She says that, too?

ERIKA: Mmhmm. She said that, too.

JAHAIRA: Yep. And she’s just 12, too. And I noticed the other day, Leo, he’s eight and he can see what the meaning is. You know what I mean? There’s the one episode where the smallest daughter is in her dream and she sees the sun and he recognized that the parallel is like, oh, mom is the sun. That’s what’s happening there. He could see it and I was just like, oh, yes. That’s so good. With that storytelling, being able to see those archetypes, like you talk about, Pam, through Bluey, it’s just so beautiful.

ERIKA: Yeah. And all the layers. Yeah. Did you want to share about how you found unschooling or when that was?

JAHAIRA: Yes. So, after high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do, of course, because I never got a chance to figure that out. And so, I just went into business administration after high school. So, my first two years of college, I was just studying business administration, just because I didn’t know what to do and just going through the motions and then waitressing and bartending at the same time.

And then at some point I got a job as an assistant in a childcare center. I thought, oh, these kids are lovely. This is wonderful. Like, okay, this is what I want to study. This is what I’ll do.

So, I went to school to study early childhood and, for internships, was placed in different public school settings. And then finally when I graduated, I got a job in a charter school, which I think now, charter schools, of course there are good ones, bad ones, but I think charter schools still have to comply a lot by state standards, so it’s very hard for them to do things that they want to do.

But I got a job in a charter school, in a kindergarten classroom, and basically only lasted six months, because it was heartbreaking every day to see what they were doing with the behavior charts, and then they would get punished. The punishment was supposed to help them to do better, but it just made it worse and it made them feel shame.

And just the standardized tests. We were doing standardized tests in kindergarten. They told them they couldn’t use the bathroom during the standardized tests. And I was like, this is just crazy. And then, all of the staff was just so mean and I was expected to be mean, too. I was expected to do what everybody else was doing, and I just couldn’t do it. And I was just like, this feels wrong. Every day, it was just like, I’m supposed to be doing this thing where I’m supposed to be disciplining them and I’m supposed to be doing what the head teacher’s doing, and I can’t do it. It was just, I couldn’t do it.

And my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, he witnessed all of this and I think that, since he saw what I was going through, that’s why he signed on to homeschooling, because he realized, too, how it just doesn’t make sense.

So, I ended up quitting that job and I had always had night jobs, waitressing jobs, bartending jobs, jobs in bars, and it was always really good money. So, I always say that that was the reason I was able to walk away so easily from that position, because I knew that I would be okay. I didn’t need that job. I could still take care of myself, because I had this night job.

And then that’s when I went down the rabbit hole of, I don’t remember exactly how I found the podcast. The first podcast I found was Brett Veinotte’s podcast, which is School Sucks. I know that you were on it, Pam, once. It’s called the School Sucks Podcast. I think I searched, why is it so hard? Or something. I don’t remember what I was searching, but I came across the School Sucks Podcast and that’s what led me down. Oh my god. That’s where I learned about John Taylor Gatto and the beginning of public school and why it was created and how, back in the industrial revolution, how they needed trained workers to be able to work the machines and they needed people to just comply.

And wow. I learned so much in that podcast. And I realized, oh, this is why it was so hard. That’s the intent of schools. And so, that’s why it was so hard.

And then that’s how I came across Pam’s podcast. And that’s when I started volunteering in these different schools now, because I was like, okay, I can still be a teacher, maybe I can still find a place for myself, not in the public school setting, but somewhere else maybe. So, I would just volunteer. I’d just go to these schools and be like, listen, can I just help you guys? What can I do to help? I’m a certified teacher, but I don’t have a job right now.

And so, I went to the Brooklyn Free School in New York, where it’s a Democratic free school, just to see how it worked. And I went to Montessori schools and volunteered, and then I ended up in a cooperative where I volunteered. It was a co-op. And that school was the first time that I witnessed the opposite of what I witnessed in my first teaching experience where the teachers were just so mean. In the cooperative, the teachers were so gentle and loving that it just fed my soul. It was just a shocker to see how you can treat them with dignity and they will cooperate. That is a thing.

And so, they ended up hiring me, which is what John Taylor Gatto preached about, because he was a teacher for 30 years and he talked about letting kids volunteer, putting them in the real world in these situations. And so, I was putting myself in those situations and then I ended up getting hired. They hired me after a certain amount of time and then after that, I had my own baby, and then that’s when I stopped working.

But that was also when I learned about Janet Lansbury, who is a woman who preaches about giving dignity to your children even when they’re babies. When I learned about how she preaches about how, when you pick up your baby, say to the baby, “Hi, baby. I’m gonna pick you up now,” instead of like, oh, this is just this chunk of meat that you just do whatever you want with and you don’t even treat it like it’s a human, because they don’t understand you anyway. What a gift that I got from Janet Lansbury. That was the beginning of gentle parenting and everything else, but yep. So, the kids have not ever been to school and they’re six and eight and that’s where we are now.

PAM: Oh my goodness. I love that. I love that you were discovering this whole other world before you even had your own children, that you had found that connection with young kids and you’re like, oh, this is something that feeds my soul, as you were saying. But then, the more typical route, early childhood education and working in public schools and just feeling how that did not fit, because you were in that space. That’s so interesting, to see what the head teachers were trying to accomplish and seeing the impact on the kids. And then seeing that, this is just something I’m not comfortable doing myself, engaging in myself. And then in a space where you could leave that, just reaching out to just try something. “I can volunteer here.” Yeah, I mean, that feeds MY soul.

It’s very different, right? Where we might think, oh, we have to go get a job. We have to stick to that and coming across the School Sucks Podcast is very, very interesting as just a way to open up. It’s like just crank on that idea a little bit. There are all sorts of interesting things under there and Gatto’s idea of just participating in the world and volunteering. That connection you made between your volunteering out there to find what connected with you, alongside that, you’re already living the ethos of the lifestyle before you even had your own kids.

And it’s lovely that your now spouse was your boyfriend then, because he could see you going through that without your own children being in the mix. Because I think sometimes that can be really hard, because of course we all want the best for our kids. And typically, the best is a good education, a good school. That is the typical path. But you guys had encountered and explored that path before you actually had your own kids. So, I can see how that was so super and so wonderful and lucky for them.

ERIKA: Yeah. It sounds like having that open and curious mindset well before Pam ever said open and curious on the podcast to you. You could have gone into that work situation and just held onto the same beliefs that everyone else there did. But since your mind was open and curious even then, it was like, I see this, I hear what they’re telling me. But it’s not okay with me, so let me explore. And that can just lead to a whole life journey. And I just love that.

I was thinking that one of my favorite shifts that happened when I started unschooling was that maybe I had an idea about how my children would end up, or had a vision of what childhood is like, or what education is like, or what my children will be like, and shifting to noticing how unique they are, how different they are from me, seeing them for really who they are.

And I love thinking about every day as a chance to learn something else about this unique person who’s in front of me. And so, the choices that they’re making and all the things that they’re doing are just giving me more information about who they are as humans. And I think it’s just so fun and so interesting. I know you’ve also talked about studying your kids or learning your kids and so, I just wanted you to maybe share about what that looks like for you.

JAHAIRA: So, yeah, the studying my children, I don’t know if Pam remembers saying it, but it was something that I got from Pam. I think it was talking about buying curriculum and it was like, instead of buying a curriculum, your kids are the curriculum. Instead of, here’s these books. That’s gonna tell you what to teach them. It’s like, how about just learn about them and then go from there?

So, for me, I feel like lately it’s hard to really slow down enough, especially maybe because I’m a stay-at-home mom. So, you get busy with doing the dishes and cleaning the house and doing all the things around the house and you see that they’re okay and they’re doing their own thing and they’re learning and they’re having fun.

But sometimes it’s like, nope, you’ve got to remember to come back and just sit down and actually listen to them. Like slow down, slow way down enough, so that when they’re telling you a story, really listen to the words that they’re saying and really focus. Because I feel like my mind as a mom is always like, oh, I gotta do this. There’s things I gotta do. There’s something I have to remember. Don’t forget that you’ve gotta do this. So, it’s hard to set that part aside for a second to really slow down enough to be like, okay, what’s going on guys? And just being present with them. And that’s the first step, I feel like.

I feel like unschooling, it’s hands off in a lot of ways, because obviously you’re just letting them be curious and discover their own interests and everything. But also, and I know you guys talked about this before, it’s also all encompassing, it’s all hands in, because you really have to just be paying attention all the time. And you have to be that facilitator for them. And if you’re not willing to do that, then it’s not better than school in a lot of ways.

But I think that, yeah, slowing down enough. It is like the course that you have, Childhood Redefined. It really is redefining this role that we have in their lives. They’re not just this little thing to be molded, but they are someone who’s growing into their own whatever it may be. I’m not explaining that well, but you guys know what I’m talking about. And so, it’s our role to really be curious and then from there, whatever you see that they’re into, offer different things to them to get them even more excited about life and learning.

PAM: We can help expand their world around the pieces that they’re interested in. And over the years, there will be all sorts of pieces that they will be interested in, but they will also all connect. I’ll get myself all excited about that. But it really does come back. I do love the idea of being a student of our kids. And I love the way you pulled that out, rather than a curriculum, but it’s like, okay, what do I do instead?

I say, I don’t use curriculum, but then what do I do? But shifting it to look at our kids, oh my gosh, we learn so much. I think we learn so much about human beings, because I remember when I first came across homeschooling and then very quickly unschooling, to spend that time with my kids, I realized how capable they are at very young ages. That whole molding thing comes with the idea that, well, they don’t know these things. They don’t know themselves. I’m responsible to teach them how to be a human being. But they are human beings right from the get go and they have personalities and they actually have likes and dislikes and challenges and strengths that all make sense for who they are.

And if we are not a student of them, so much of that seems random. Like, why are they mad about that? Or even, why are they mad about that today when it was fine last week? There are reasons. It is just so fascinating on that human level, I think, to discover who they are. And then from there, then it is so logical, but it just flows so beautifully, the things that they’re interested in or the way they like to learn and just dive into something or sit back and watch for a while. You just discover who they are as a person.

You don’t need to teach them how to be a person. They are just so incredibly capable of taking in what’s going on in the moment and reacting even when they don’t have the words for it or the deeper understanding, but you can see their reaction, how they are trying to communicate in that moment. Even if they’re trying to communicate overwhelm, they’re feeling overwhelmed, and they’re expressing it.

So, when we learn their language, rather than expecting and waiting, like, I’m gonna teach them what emotions are and what the names are for them and I’m waiting till they can communicate that to me and until that point they don’t really understand that, they intuitively as a human being understand so much about themselves. And when we are there with them and understanding on that level, I have to backtrack and say not a perfect understanding, but we are with them as they’re processing and we can help with a little tweak here. Maybe we try something that might help reduce the overwhelm that they’re feeling and maybe it doesn’t really work, but we’ve shown them a tool and we have both learned that, yeah, that doesn’t help me at all in this particular situation. There is no wrong. It’s always learning, right? We learn more about it.

And again, when it comes to relationships, it’s not about like getting it right or fixing it fast. Even if we sidestep, even something goes a little bit off kilter, that repair and them knowing that we are there because of the relationship, not their actions. You know what I mean? They don’t have to act right or do the thing that we told them would solve the problem for them.

And the other thing, and then I’ll be quiet for a moment, but the other thing that I love that being a student of our child helps us do is something that I found to be such a huge a-ha moment, which is seeing things through their eyes. When I’m going into a situation and I care about them and I love them and something’s upsetting them, I try to put myself in their shoes and I’m like, oh, this thing would make me feel so much better. So, I go and do the thing and it does not help them at all.

And I’m like, well, that’s weird. That’s strange. Something’s off. Yet, how different if I can say, oh, I’m gonna see this situation through their eyes, because they’re a different person, they’re a different personality. They have different things that overwhelm them, different strengths, different challenges. They are a different human being.

And if I can try see through their eyes and have that level of understanding, I may choose to try and help or support them in a way that I would never want somebody to do for me, but I know them and through their eyes and this might be more helpful for them. And when I can do that, I do find that I am more successful at connecting with them, more successful at helping them move through it. And when I’m looking through their eyes, I am now all of a sudden taking away that pressure of, I want to solve this fast. I want them to move through this fast. This is really uncomfortable for me.

And when I can go and meet them where they are, all of a sudden their timetable and their processing makes a little bit more sense to me, and I can take that edge off the pressure. Because when we’re all worked up and we come at each other with that energy, that can just make things spiral even more.

ERIKA: Yeah. A couple things came up for me when you were talking. The first is, it’s helpful for me to remember how I felt when I was five or six. I remember being young and I remember that I was me then, too. And so, I know that my kids are themselves now. I don’t need to wait for them to grow in order for their opinions and their choices and all of those different things about them to make sense. They are who they are.

And so, that’s why that curiosity of just learning more about them and getting to that point where I can see things through their eyes, getting to that point where I know if they’ve made a choice, it makes sense for them. So, if it doesn’t make sense to me that they made that choice, I just have more to learn about them. That’s just so fun and interesting. And I think remembering how it was for me, that I have always felt like a human all along, can help me put that into perspective.

And then, Jahaira, I loved how you were talking about being really intentional about spending the time just being there and observing. And I think that’s so important, because when you can put something on your list, like, do this math page with my kids, it’s something that’s easy to check off and it’s a task to do. Or like, cook dinner. That’s a task. But this “be there” doesn’t feel as much like I’m putting that on a to-do list, and so it really can get just pushed aside. I have these other tasks. There’s the work to do, there’s house stuff to do, places to go. And those more time-sensitive appointments and tasks can start to take over the time.

And so, I do think especially in the beginning, or especially if you don’t feel like you have all that knowledge about who your kids are and really wanna get in deeper with that, taking that time and being super intentional about, this is something that I’m going to do today. And what the thing is is just sitting there with them and seeing what they’re doing and what they’re interested in and being there.

We had a podcast guest who mentioned “very important sitting.” That was the phrase she used to increase the importance of that task for herself. So, she felt like it really was a valuable and important thing to do, just sitting in the living room, being there and having the kids exploring the world around her. It makes such a difference for them. They love it. They love having someone accessible like that. And then, for me, just such a huge difference in being able to pick up on the language and what they are talking about, what they’re thinking about and just getting to know them better. I love that.

PAM: I did love that piece, too. When Anna and I started the The Living Joyfully Podcast, where we were focusing more on relationships, the very first episode was talking about priorities, because I think that’s absolutely it. It’s so easy to get caught up in prioritizing the tasks that are more defined. Like, I know what I have to do. I pretty much know what I have to do, and I can get that done and I can knock it off. So yeah, naming it, just understanding that, oh, with our choices and our lifestyle, this is something that’s a priority for me.

And if it helps to frame it as being a student of my child and this is my learning time, it’s learning about ourselves in such a way that we know how to frame things or we learn how to frame things such that we will give it the priority commensurate with the value that we get out of it. Because it is such a valuable thing to do, isn’t it?

JAHAIRA: Yeah. You forget how valuable it is to just sit, like you said, Erika. Oh, well that’s not a thing. It’s like, that’s the most important thing. If I think about what my values are, of course, my children, that connection with my children. That’s connection. That’s what’s gonna nourish them. And if they feel nourished, then everything just is so much easier from there.

PAM: Yeah. Well, I think this last question is going to flow very nicely from this whole conversation, because I have found that, for many of us, when we embrace unschooling, it does become almost like a spiritual practice, right?

There are lots of different facets to it that ebb and flow over time, like we were just talking about, that presence in the moment, being there, challenging so many of our deep-rooted beliefs, which you did a good chunk of before even having children, and breaking the cycle of our own childhood trauma, there could be so much to process there as well.

So, I just thought it would be great to hear some of your experience around this aspect of unschooling or this way of looking at the deschooling and unschooling process and lifestyle.

JAHAIRA: Yeah, I think that in the beginning, it was just about education. It was just about, there’s a different way that they can learn. It doesn’t have to be like that. Let’s find out about these different schools and these different theories about education.

And then, the years go by and you realize it’s a spiritual thing, because with religion and spirituality, it’s like dealing with the unknown. This existence of being alive, what is this? And people turn to religion to try to comfort that feeling of the unknown. Like, okay, I can have faith in this thing, or I can believe in this thing. My husband, he’s been going to church more lately and it’s a Catholic church and I’m open to, what is this existence and what are they teaching there? I don’t know much about the Christians. They have this deep faith and it seems to really be this healing thing. It’s like this beautiful way of just having faith about this lifetime.

So, I think unschooling becomes this spiritual thing, because it’s the same thing. It’s like, okay, I have to trust here, because I don’t know. This unschooling thing, this is a new thing and people don’t even know about it and they think it’s radical.

When I tell people about my kids, let alone home homeschooling is already like, oh wow, you do, but if I try to explain unschooling, it’s like what!? So, for me, I have gained the confidence because of the stories that I’ve heard from so many people who have come before me and shown that it can be done.

But there is still this thing inside where it’s like, whew, I’ve really gotta stay present here and look at these old beliefs and trust that it’s gonna be okay. This nourishment is what’s most important with the children, not this education thing. So yeah, with the trust and mystery and that parallel with spirituality.

PAM: I love that. The trust piece. That wasn’t what came to mind for me at first, but absolutely. I love that you mentioned that, because yeah, when we first come to it and we’re learning about it and we are hearing from people who’ve done it or who have much more experience than we do and it’s making sense to us, you still need to trust, because you don’t know how that is actually gonna work in your family.

JAHAIRA: I feel like I need to know.

PAM: Because I don’t have your kids. And I think one of the big things that I found, I remember thinking at the beginning of the transition, that all of these experienced families, I love the relationships with their kids that they’re talking about. And I am really worried that they just have easy kids.

I remember that so well. It’s like, how is this relationship I have going to look like that relationship sometime in the future? But they say it does and it makes sense to me the way they explain the process. So you know what? I am going to trust and I’m gonna dive in and engage with the process.

I think one of the challenges comes if we choose not to engage. We just say, oh yeah, that’s really cool. And, kind of hands off, we just let them do their thing. That deeper relationship, that strong, connected, trusting relationship would be much harder to develop with our kids in that kind of situation where we’re kind of worried about engaging with them, worried that we shouldn’t be telling them what to do. We don’t do that.

But if you, instead of thinking about the education, because that’s where we’re first coming to it, so many of us. It’s like, well, if they’re not going to school, how else are they gonna learn? How are they gonna become educated? You know? So that’s what we think we’re replacing. And it’s like, oh, well if I’m not focused on that, what do I do? Focus on the relationship. Be a student of your child. Engage with them, be with them there, you can engage it. It’s a new way. It was for me, anyway, to learn how to engage with a person without directing them in the way that I would think this moment should unfold.

And the very important sitting, it all ties together. But watching them in the moment and seeing how they take it, while being with them. If I’m not with them, I can’t see how it’s unfolding. I can’t learn about them. I can’t see them making a different choice and go, oh yeah, that’s not a choice I’d make, but it sure makes sense for them. And it works out. Because maybe I saw it and I’m like, yeah, that’s not gonna work, but I’ll let them discover it for themselves and it does. And you go like, boom, mind blown. Learning my way isn’t the only way. It isn’t the right way. I can say it’s the right way for me, but yeah. It all goes back to that trust and then engaging in the moment.

And that’s how we build that trust, too, because we start to see it unfolding in our own families. And often it looks a little bit different. All unschooling families are different, because we’re all different people in them. But to see that trust piece unfolding right then and there in front of us over those first few months and years, then that becomes so valuable, that becomes our priority.

And then it’s so much easier to lean into that when we realize, oh, if I focus on just my relationship with them, everything else just kind of bubbles up out of that. We’re all doing the things that we’re interested in. We’re all learning, we’re all enjoying those pieces. We’re all having things go wrong. We’re all tweaking and changing and doing all those pieces. Oh yeah, this is life. This is the lifestyle that we’ve chosen, the practice.

I love thinking of unschooling as a practice and spirituality as a practice, because it’s just showing up each day and being present in the moment and bringing that ethos in and the “who I wanna be” into my engagement with my children, but also any human being that I want to be in that close of a relationship with, that I want to be connected with, want to have a trusting relationship. I get to choose who I want to have that depth of a relationship with.

ERIKA: Yeah. I think it is interesting how the unschooling journey leads to the deeper processing, the deeper revelations, and questioning the beliefs, and breaking our cycle of trauma. But it makes sense and I think it starts with that curious mindset that comes towards the beginning of unschooling. Like, what if? Is this possible? That starting place.

To me, it felt almost like just opening my mind up to possibilities, rather than just thinking I already know the answers, or I already know what’s going to happen, or I already know who my kids are going to become, I know who I am, all of that kind of stuff. Once I really started being in the moment with these new humans and really seeing, okay, they are different than me. People are different. One curious thought led to another and it really does just become this much deeper process of self-discovery. And so many really valuable things happen, I think, along the journey, if we can keep our minds open and just focus on the relationships, the relationships with ourselves and the relationships with our family, it’s just an incredible journey.

JAHAIRA: Yeah. That whole thing where you said, I know this, and I know that, and I know who I am. It’s like what I talked about, what we look at in non-duality, how it’s this thick layer of like, oh yeah, I know. I know how this is. Oh, we’re so sure of it. We just know. We just know. It’s like, you don’t know anything! We don’t even know what is this. This could be a VR game in itself. You know what I mean?
We get so caught up in that and I think it is because of all those years of schooling that we went through that it’s just mind blowing.

Here’s an example of an epiphany I had the other day. So, I thought it’d be a great idea to take the kids to go see The Nutcracker. I did research on it and I thought it was going to be this kid-friendly show with child actors and I just thought it was a great idea. I showed them the video real quick and I said, this looks like it’ll be fun, right? And they’re like, yeah, that looks like fun.

This is what ends up happening. I end up insisting to my husband to buy the tickets. He’s a real homebody and I’m the one that’s always like, let’s go try this thing or let’s introduce the kids to this and that and stuff. So, I insist that he buy the tickets. And he did. He wasn’t that happy about it, but he did buy the tickets.
We end up going there and it ends up being the ballet. It’s just the ballet. It’s a Nutcracker ballet. It’s just them dancing and the kids, they sat through the first act, I guess, and then the intermission. And then of course the intermission, it’s like, oh, we get to go home now. I’m like, no, no, this is the intermission. So, now, I’m embarrassed to say it, but now I’m insisting that we don’t leave and that we stay for the second act. Because I have this belief now, which now I can see it. Hindsight’s 20/20. I could only see it afterwards that I had this belief in my head.

Well, I made my husband buy the tickets. So, now we can’t leave, because I made him buy the tickets. And what if now he’s going to be mad at me if we leave early and he bought the tickets and he spent money on that. And there’s this whole thing, right? I’d really let that get the best of me in that moment.
And I wasn’t conscious of it then, but we ended up staying. The kids were so upset and I should have just said, you know what? Let’s just go. But I didn’t. And Leo was crying. Now I feel guilty. So, then we stayed. It was okay. Ended up being okay.

But I realized in that moment that him being there and not wanting to be there, imagine that every single day of your life for fucking eight hours a day. I had a glimpse of like, oh my god. He had to do it for an hour. Imagine you wake up in the morning and then you have to go somewhere you hate and sit through it for eight hours a day for however many hours of your life. What that does to a human being. It makes you lose that touch. That makes you lose this interconnection with whatever spiritual thing is going on.

And it was a bad thing that I made him go through that, but it just helped me remember, too, that we had to go through that. And that’s just layers and layers, day upon day, going through this. And it’s just shocking that we do that to people.

PAM: Well, thank you so much for sharing that story. And, oh my gosh, yes. But I don’t know. For me, anyway, I did not even realize. When I was in school, there was just no choice.

JAHAIRA: Yeah. You’re just resigned to it.

PAM: Right, exactly. You’re just like completely resigned and how am I gonna make the best of this? Because this is my life. And, oh my gosh, there’s so little choice. And, like you said, the spiritual aspect, the understanding of ourselves, it is so hard. I can kind of learn who I am within the constraints of all that, but there is just so much control over your life. You really just have no idea who you would be without that.

It reminds me, I remember Lissy in Girl Guides and they were going off to high school and they were like, “Oh, are you coming to school? Are you gonna come try at high school? Now we’re gonna go to high school. High school’s gonna be awesome. We have so much more time to ourselves. We can get a free period and we can leave for lunch.”

It just felt like their world was opening up and they literally would say like, “What do you do? Your life must be so boring,” because they could not envision what somebody would do if they didn’t have to go to a building and engage with the people who were in that same building with them. They, even as kids, could not imagine what they would do with that time. And so, yes, it really goes deep when you start thinking about it, doesn’t it?

JAHAIRA: Leo was playing video games and he got on with a cousin of his, who’s older. He’s probably 15 or 16. So, they’re playing Fortnite together, because Leo just started playing Fortnite. And so, they’re on the Discord talking and his cousin goes, so, wait, you don’t go to school? And he is like, no. He is like, so what do you do all day? And Leo’s like, I play games. He’s like, you just play games all day? You game all day and that’s it? That’s what you get to do? And Leo’s like, yeah, pretty much. And for this kid, it’s like, what? He can’t conceive of it.

And to hear that as a mom, too, like, oh, he is just playing games all day. But nobody knows what that means. Do you understand that he learned how to read, write, and do math through playing games all day? It’s like, no way!

ERIKA: Yeah. Just the time and space that you have in this kind of lifestyle, it’s such a gift and it’s something that you don’t even realize what it could mean if you don’t have it.

And I was thinking, too, that after we leave that system of schooling, we impose that on ourselves forever more unless we start to question it. And so, that really is such a big part of the unschooling journey is just realizing how much of our mind now is structured by school and starting to question things and starting to change some of the things we believe about ourselves and about the world, and yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

PAM: I know. It is. Because school just leads into college, university, into getting a job, into all those things, like you were talking about earlier, Jahaira. That’s the path and that’s what it’s training us for. And oh my gosh. I know. It’s just so exciting. Remembering back, I was like, I can question those things. I can make different choices and the world won’t blow up. It’s just amazing.

And they reach all aspects of your life. All of a sudden, it’s like, oh, this is up for grabs. And I can actually try and figure out what makes sense to me as a human being. And still, I learned so much about that by watching my kids, that oh, you can just make choices and see how they turn out and then make a different choice and make another choice.

JAHAIRA: And you’re like, I forgot about that. Oh, right. When you slow down enough to just be present with them, then you’re not being controlled by that veil of thoughts. Okay. I’m gonna slow down.

And I’ve talked about that on the calls, too, where if something does come up where I’m starting to feel anxious, I’m like, whoa, I can feel a feeling coming up. Something feels anxious. Hmm. What is that? What’s that about? That space to be curious and to slow down enough to be like, okay, I see, here’s this belief. Okay. I’m believing this. I’m believing that if he doesn’t do it this way, it’s not going to go right. It takes a lot.

Even though I do want to go to church with my husband and I want to see what it’s all about, and I want to learn about the Christians and Jesus Christ, at the end of the day, when I meditate, that quiet space, that is my church. I’m like, this is where the peace is. I don’t need to seek it by some dogma or somebody else telling me how I should be or how I should treat people. This silence here is the source of everything good or something.

We talked about on the call where it’s like, when you can slow down enough to be like, whoa, all these thoughts are going, and all these sensations are going. But hold on a minute. Let me just slow down enough to get back into my senses. What am I hearing? What am I feeling? Okay. It’s just right here, right now. Then from this quiet place, life is going to take me to what needs to be done. Instead of the mind and all the beliefs and all the years of schooling telling me what I should be and what will make me happy, and I’m so sure of it. I’m so sure this is going to make me happy.

It’s like, no, actually none of that shit’s going to make you happy. What’s going to make you happy is slowing down enough to just connect with these people right in front of you. It’s just so beautiful. I’m just so thankful that I came across unschooling and it’s just a blessing. It’s a blessing, right?

PAM: So much. Yes.

ERIKA: Yes. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jahaira. We really enjoyed speaking to you.

JAHAIRA: Thank you.

ERIKA: And thank you to all of our listeners. We hope that you found it helpful on your unschooling journey, and if you enjoy these conversations, I really think you’d love the Living Joyfully Network.
It’s such an amazing group of people connecting and having thoughtful conversations about all the things that we encounter in our unschooling lives. And you can learn more at livingjoyfully.ca/network. And if you’ve been on the fence, you can join with a monthly subscription option so you can check it out for a month, meet the community, explore the archive of themes and resources, and join in the conversations to get a sense for how the Network could fit into your life. And we hope to see you there. Wishing everyone a lovely week! Bye.

PAM: Bye bye. Thank you so much, Jahaira. Lovely to speak with you.

JAHAIRA: Thank you.

View Details

In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika dive deep into building community. As we regularly mention, people are different, and each member of your family will likely have different needs for community, friendship, and social time. We talk about in-person versus online connections, the value of interest-based communities, some of the many different ways we’ve found community during our unschooling years, and more.

It was really fun to discuss this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching calls, and more!

In our newest 4-week focus course, we explore Validation, a transformational relationship tool for building understanding and connection in our most important relationships, like the ones with our kids and our partner. Check it out and we hope you’ll share how it helps you in your relationships!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about Building Community. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello everyone! I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hello!

ANNA AND ERIKA: Hello!

PAM: So today, we’re going to talk about building community, and I am very excited to chat about it, because at first, it seems like a pretty simple idea, right? Find and connect with other people. But really, it’s so much more nuanced than that. So, I’m excited to dive into that. But before we get started, we just wanted to remind you about our shop.

There you can find my unschooling books, book coaching calls, or buy one of our courses, and our newest course is Validation, which is a transformational relationship tool for building understanding and connection in our most important relationships, like the ones with our kids and our partner. All our course content is available in both text and audio formats, whichever style works better for you.

So, maybe you want to listen on some days and you have a moment to read on other days. They can fit into the flow of your days, whatever they look like. You’ll find it in our store at livingjoyfullyshop.com or just follow the link in the show notes.

So, building community. Anna, would you like to get us started?

ANNA: I would. I’m pretty excited about this, because I have so many ideas bubbling around. So, we’ll see where it all goes.

But I think where I want to start, because this is a question that comes up a lot on the Network. It comes up just over the years. You hear a lot of, I need friends for my kids, or, what do we do about finding community? Or, there’s not a lot of unschoolers around me, or all these different pieces.

And so, I think the first, grounding place to be is we’re just going to slow it down and take a deep breath and just say, okay, where are the messages coming from? When I look at my kids, are they happy? Are they asking for more? Are they okay with the relationships that they have? Do I see that they’re wanting a little bit more? Is it me? Is it that I’m wanting more? Is it that I’m not wanting more?

And then I want us to talk about people are different in that way, so that we can recognize that this is going to look unique to each family, it’s going to look unique to each child. And so, just really recognizing that there are some cultural messages of ‘kids need to be with kids their own age.’ And it’s like, hey, let’s just pick that apart a little bit and see where it comes from. So, I want to throw that to you all first, but wanted to start there.

ERIKA: Yeah. I totally have heard that and felt that and all of those things. And right, if we’re looking at our experience, if we did go to school as kids, life as a kid looked absolutely packed full of time with other children. So, it makes sense if our children’s lives are looking quite different from that, that maybe that could be a little jarring or like, is this okay? And those questions can come up. But if we actually look at the personalities in our families, what our kids are asking us, how we are feeling, how they’re feeling. And it’s okay if I’m the one who is wanting more connection. And it’s okay if my kids are asking for more connection, but just tuning into, is it just that everyone else is in school and in all these activities and it’s feeling like maybe we need to be doing that too? Or is it really tuning into who are we? Are we happy with our lives right now?

ANNA: Yeah. I love that.

PAM: I do think it’s so valuable to take that moment and just really consider how much of it is stories and messages that we’ve absorbed growing up and over the years because, I found myself jumping to community as the first answer, as in, oh, you’re interested in this? Let’s join the sports team. Let’s go take a rec class. That community and that type of more conventional learning is the first answer that comes to mind.

And so, just really pulling apart that like, oh, okay. That doesn’t always have to be the answer. What actually is happening here? Is this something that I’m just pulling out? And then, even for our kids too, I think another thing that was always so helpful for me, even when my kids were looking for community or looking for friends, was to realize this really wasn’t about the unschooling at all. It’s really helpful to help them dig into it, too. What is their need that they’re actually looking to fulfill, because often we can, and our kids can too, jump to friends, other people, groups. Those are the answers. But to take that time to just really dig in and ask, well, what am I really trying to accomplish? What do I really want to do? And just to open things up again can be so, so helpful, I think.

ANNA: Yeah. And I think maybe not to romanticize the past, because I did live in a neighborhood where we were out and we were playing and there were kids around, but it had its challenges. I’m an introvert. There were challenges to it. And thinking of school, segregating us by geography and age into a box of a room, it didn’t always work. Those weren’t always the people that I’d connect with.

And I think of my life now where I have friends 15 years younger and 15 years older. And so, I think really we’re so lucky in our life that we can really lean into what works for our children and for ourselves in terms of connection and relationship and learning. Because, like you said, Pam, if we go to, well, we need to do a kids’ class on science, that’s its own thing, versus maybe it’s being mentored by somebody that’s really interested in the field that you’re interested in and they’re an adult and it’s more of a one-on-one. So, yeah, I love that idea of just unpacking all of those pieces.

ERIKA: Right. There’s not one right way for community. So, just like everything else we talk about, there’s not just one right path for, I’m interested in dance. Okay. It has to be this group class. That’s not necessarily the thing. And I love that idea of like. In many cases, socializing with an adult who’s super interested in the things that they’re interested in, that might feel like a way more suitable community in certain moments. So, I really love that.

And I was thinking about some of our experiences with kind of in-person community for my kids. And so, a couple of things that we tried just based on what I was looking for, what the kids were looking for, and again, just playing with all the possibilities. We really liked hosting park days because I found just kind of going to that same location at the same time each week was a way to have time for those kind of connections to develop. Because I have found that if we do these one-off activities like a class or, let’s all go to the museum, there’s not enough free time for the kids to really have a chance to interact.

And so, since my kids are very introverted, slow to warm, we laugh about it with Oliver’s best friend, that it took just months and months of this child following Oliver around and trying to talk to him before they finally really had a strong connection. It just took all that time to warm up and make that connection. And so, having that regular park day was something that helped us develop friendships.

And while most other groups that we saw were doing things like a planned, adult-led activity at the park, I was careful to make mine more just an open playtime so that the kids could find their buddies and make connections that way. And I advertised it in early days as just a parenting group. And then as the kids got older, we turned it into a homeschooling group, because then that way, we were finding the kids who were available during school hours.

ANNA: Yeah, I mean that’s definitely our experience, too. So, we were at the time in a fairly large city on the east coast and so, there were a lot of homeschoolers in the area, but we found that consistency of the park date was exactly that. It was just this known. It felt good. We could do different things.

And the only thing I kind of wanted to add to that is thinking about the different ages. I always found this kind of fascinating, because with the younger kids, it’s a lot more physical in nature. They like to have physical things, the playground equipment, the whatever, and then you get to this teen age where they want to sit. They want to sit and they’re chatting. Or sometimes they need like a side by side kind of thing. None of the people that that came to this were particularly sporty, but we would play kickball and it’s not super sporty. Pretty much anybody can play. But it did allow for a little bit of kind of parallel time for the teens and for those pre-teens to have something that you’re focusing on that’s outside yourself, but also it’s not super involved or competitive. It’s just kind of fun. So, that was something that worked well for us.

But yeah, having that open park day where people could hang out in a place that had different places to sit, places to climb, places to do, really worked well.

I think another piece that was important for kind of our in-person thing is I did a lot of driving. Our city was large and I just was okay with driving to connect with other people and to do. So, it wasn’t the neighborhood kids, it was driving to find people that were available during the day and that we do. So, letting go of some of those tapes of like, oh, you should just be able to swing open the door and there’s a pack of kids. Thankfully we didn’t have that. Actually, I didn’t want that. We didn’t have it. I was glad.

But for some people that’s a stumbling block to realize like, okay, there’s going to be a little bit more facilitation. But I think this may lead into your experience, too, Pam, the interest-driven pieces. We did do the pieces of homeschool groups and homeschool things, but we found a lot of connections were made via interest, and I think that was kind of your experience.

PAM: Yeah. Because we did not have lot of park days yet, 20-odd years ago here in Canada. There were just less numbers of homeschoolers, so there really wasn’t that kind of activity to participate in. Yet, like you said, we really went through interests.

So, the nice thing about connecting with people through an interest is you’ve already got that point of connection, right? You don’t have to find something to come up in conversation with. The other fascinating piece, too, that ties in with what you were saying with the driving piece is like, okay, you’ve got an interest and you’ve decided that actually participating in that interest around other people and with other people is something that they want to try out, or you want to try out, and then it was about finding a place that connected for them.

So it wasn’t, oh, you wanna take dance class? Here’s the closest dance studio. We’ve signed you up. Here we go. No. There were times when I was driving an hour, hour and a half, but to a place that really spoke to them and that really helped them get that experience that they were looking for. So, that was a very helpful thing to kind of unpack for myself that, oh no, why would I go and drive a distance when I’ve got one around the corner?

But when you go back to what the desire is, when you go back to this child or myself, like we’re a unique person and we’re looking for a specific thing. When you can find that and find the environment where that can thrive, it just makes a whole world of difference.

I remember Lissy and Girl Guides. For a number of years, she was looking for some more connection and activities, but not a particular one. She was looking more for that engagement, so that served for her for many years. And then when we wanted that space that you were talking about, Erika, because yeah, that space to just hang out and see how things unfold and to just let conversations and activities grow, when they found someone that they would like to connect more deeply with at the activity, then I would talk to the parents and invite them back to our house.

And that was the thing, too, is being open to being the place where people would hang out. Maybe I needed to drive and pick up the child and bring them to our house for that to happen, because the parents were maybe busy with a sibling or something else. They didn’t have time. And for them, it wasn’t a huge priority to drive their kid to some other kid’s house. Because their kid’s in a class with 30 other kids. They see other kids all the time. They weren’t prioritizing that. But if the other child wanted to come for a visit, I would say, ‘I’ll happily go pick them up and bring them over and drop them home whenever you need. And yes, they can stay over or they can stay for meal, blah, blah, blah.’

But I was open to doing that extra little bit, because it was accomplishing what we were wanting to do. It was meeting a desire. It was something to try out and some lifelong friendships have grown out of that. And it’s just so fascinating to see it in action and to realize that, when we talk about building community, we don’t need to know that there is a community at the end of this path and I just have to quickly walk it as fast as possible.

But when I’m open and curious and I see possibilities and ask what feels good in this moment, what feels like it might help us walk towards this pull that we’re feeling and then seeing how it unfolds is just so much more serendipitous. Things happen, I think, when we’re open to that versus, we must build community right now. Here we go.

ERIKA: I feel like that’s something we talked about in the Network a bit, this kind of playing around with setting up activities for a group and seeing what could come from it. And that was something that, as someone who was organizing events for a number of years, I had to really come to terms with being okay with people not showing up or being okay with things not going according to plan and just trying again.

And so, one thing that I learned was just to choose activities that I would be happy and our family would be happy to just do, even if no one was there. And so, if you are a family with some extroverts or with some people who do like doing activities in groups, it does make a big difference if you’re the one willing to plan things, because people are always looking for things to do and then my advice about that would be to just choose things that you’d be happy to do, even if no one shows up. Because then there’s really no disappointment. You get to do something fun. And if other people come, you’ve chosen an activity and then met someone who enjoys the same thing you do.

ANNA: That is exactly what I was going to say, because we got to a place where we had a pretty good sized group, but there were certainly fits and starts and that was the key. Talking to my kids, okay, is this something you want to do? I’ll put something together. Because you’re so right in that that’s the part people don’t want to do. And partly it’s time and extra kids and all the things. And it’s something that I don’t mind doing.

And so, when I would build it, they really would come, because they were so grateful. And again, we lived in a city with a lot of homeschoolers so we could get homeschool deals. I could make that call and get a super cheap price at the trampoline place or at those things. And people were so happy to participate in that. And it did give us just people to share things with.

But one of the other things I want to talk about, too, in relation to this in-person piece is our own needs as adults and as parents, because I think we’re all introverts here, but we have varying needs of wanting to be around people.

But I guess one of the things I want to say is that sometimes we think we’re going to go to the park day and we’re going to get our needs met to talk to parents. What I found was that that was not true, that I needed to let that part go, because I wanted to be there for the kids. I was really creating that particular environment for the kids to make connections, enjoy themselves and whatever. And often I did need to be even peripherally involved, aware of it. It wasn’t really my time.

So, then it was like, okay, then what do I do for my time? So, then it was finding ways. I had a friend that we did grocery store dates. And I found sometimes parenting conversations were hard for me, because I can get a little worked up about children and all of that. So, I actually found, for me, interest-based was better, too. So, if I was going to something that maybe was a group about rocks or a group about singing bowls or something else, that’s what we were talking about. We weren’t talking about the curriculum they were using or, what are your kids doing about this, or that kind of thing.

And so, I think the big lesson for me, and it’s not going to be a surprise to you two, it’s just open and curious. Don’t get tunneled in on it looking one way or a certain way. Just really start opening it up to, okay, what are the needs? There’s a million different ways to meet it. What can we do?

PAM: I think it is so valuable and helpful to realize that when I think of building community, I want a community, I don’t need a community that meets all my needs. One group doesn’t need to meet all my things. I can have various groups that support me when I want to talk about singing bowls and maybe another group is where I come for parenting stuff.

I remember when I was wanting to build a community and there really wasn’t, I decided to start a conference and I ran a conference for six years. I kind of forget that now. It’s like, oh yeah, that’s right. I did that thing. And that was great for bringing some unschooling families out of the woodwork and gathering them in a spot for a couple of days. So, that was a lovely way to meet some people that were local-ish. Because people would definitely drive to come. But it was nice to just be surrounded for a couple of days with other like-minded parents who at least who were open and curious and wanting to learn.

So, that was actually a nice connection for parents. And then we had kid-focused activities alongside it and what was beautiful was the shared parenting style, where we were totally comfortable with parents coming and going from talks and hanging out with their kids’ activities, kids running in, looking for their parents, et cetera.

So, yeah, when you’re open, like, what could I do? There are all sorts of possibilities, from letting people know that you’re at the trampoline place to running a conference.

ERIKA: That idea that we don’t have to find a whole family that fits our whole family as a friend group. That does give us a little bit of freedom then, so we can really look at the individual members of our family, what are we all looking for? And what I did as far as finding in-person community for myself that ended up working out so well, was doing a book club. Because I wanted to find other people who like diving into ideas. I wanted to find people who are curious and want to learn. And so, a book club is something that draws that type of personality.

And then the books I chose were things like How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and books by Alfie Kohn. And so, it was like, this is what we’re going to be talking about. And then I could start to see, who is that resonating with? Those are the people who kept coming. Then we started reading Pam’s books and it became just a fully unschooling book club. And so, for a few years, that was a really good place for me to connect with people in person who really were having the kinds of conversations that I wanted to be having. And it really filled my cup. So, yeah, I loved that.

PAM: I love that. You can just choose the books and somebody can pass and say, oh yeah, no, that’s not something I’m interested in. They’re moving on. It’s not a judgment at all, but it’s just this kind of call that says, hey, over here we’re chatting about these kinds of things. Are you interested? Yeah, I love that.

ANNA: Yeah, so much. But I think that leads us to that we all live in different types of places, some smaller, some bigger, all across the world, when we’re talking about who’s listening to this podcast and even who’s with us on the Network.

And so, I guess the Network brings to mind just this idea of how important online communities were for me. And I think we all will have our stories to share about that. But I feel like the online communities, I mean this is even way back in the day, were critical. Back then, it was Yahoo Groups, a little bit primitive. And Pam and I have been friends for almost 20 years, probably, meeting on an online group and it’s just incredible.

And so, what I love is that now we have things like the Network, where it’s just so much more rich in the tools and how to connect and how it brings us together and having those conversations. Because it’s very much like you alluded to, Pam, but it’s like when we have maybe a more parenting question or something that’s happening with our kids, I really wanted to take that to people that got it. If I was going to ask a co-sleeping question, I wanted somebody that would go, ‘Okay, the bolster here and the thing there, and this is how I did it,’ versus, ‘Oh, just put them in a crib and you won’t have that problem.’ Because for me, that wasn’t what I was interested in. And so just finding that community of people that are thinking about the ideas that are going through similar pieces, I just felt like that online community was such a rich part of my life and I have traveled, really, the world, meeting them since and that has enriched my life in so many ways.

ERIKA: Well, I was just going to say, online community is real community, which I know sometimes people can kind of poo poo it. It’s like, these aren’t real friendships. But oh my gosh, with my kids and their connections and with me and my connections, we know that this is real. And we have such better tools now for connecting online with Marco Polo and Discord videos and video calling and everything. And so, I feel like online connections can be so deep and rich and just provide access to a whole world of people in order for us to make better and deeper connections.

PAM: Yeah, I remember back when we were first connecting, Anna, online, it was like, those aren’t very meaningful when you’re an online friend. And like, oh my gosh, you’re going to go meet someone that you only know online? That’s scary. Those were the stories at the time.

But yes, I have found them to be such rich and meaningful connections that have lasted for many, many years. But as I was thinking about the value of community, for me personally, I just found that being in community with others who are on that same journey, a similar journey, really just helped me learn more. So, maybe it’s about what that journey may look like from somebody who’s further along. I learned so much about myself, about different things that I might want to ponder, where my blocks are. I find it inspiring to hear how things are going for people who are further along.

Like you said, Anna, that’s a place where I can take questions and get ideas that I would really like to think about versus having to discard the first six or seven, because it’s like, yeah, no, that’s not my path. So often, if I would ask parenting or even learning kinds of questions in my more conventional friend group, et cetera, it would be, send them to school or send them to their room. And fine, I can completely understand why those are your answers. But I found it would be a little bit of a disconnect in that relationship if they, out of the goodness of their heart, were trying to help me with my issue and I was going to completely ignore all their suggestions every time.

So, I wanted to find different communities where I wanted to bring different thoughts, different questions, and I would get different things out of them. So yeah, it wasn’t holding one and it wasn’t that it had to be in person. There was so much value all over the place.

ANNA: And I guess that’s making me think, too, just, we have this vast world. And finding people, Erika, like you were talking about, who like to think about the nuances or the ideas, for all three of us that’s important.

And when Erika and I connected, which was also online, it was just like, ah! Oh my gosh! There’s so many things that we can talk about and do and want to process. And that connection was so deep, so quickly. And I just think, how lucky are we? Because I live in kind of the mid of the United States on the East Coast, and she lives in Miami as far as you can get away and still be on the east coast there. And yet, it’s this relationship that has been so valuable to me and there’s been so much personal growth.

And one of the things I love about the Network is that very piece. There’s so much personal growth for me, because obviously our kids are grown, Pam and mine, yet it’s such a process of understanding ourselves. We still obviously have our kids in our lives, thankfully. And, I just feel like it’s so rich to learn from these other parents that are being so intentional and so interested in talking about the nuances and connecting and just loving up our kids and all of those pieces.

And I love the cultural aspects that that opens up to us from people all over the world and what’s different for them. I just think that cannot be beat. It’s just such a gift of being alive in this time right now. And so, I love that piece. Erika, you go and then I want to say something about kids.

PAM: Yeah, that’s where I was going, too.

ERIKA: Oh yeah. I was just going to say one more thing about the Network. Online communities are so great because they draw the people in according to what that community is. And so, if you can find a community that fits you, it’s just filled with people who you’re going to have fun connecting with.

And so, for me, the learning that I’ve had in the last three years, I feel like it’s been just exponential, because I’m now in this online community that really fits like what I like to think about and talk about and just all these amazing things come up.

So, I think, being able to travel around the world, finding these individual people who are such a good fit would be just this impossible thing if it were not for online groups.

And really, it’s the same in other groups that I’ve been on on Facebook or just different places on the internet about certain things. So, finding people that love to talk about the things that you’re interested in is just super great and you can’t always find that in person where you live. And so, yeah, I just love what we have available.

ANNA: Yeah. And so, where I’m going to go with that, and then Pam, to you, is that it’s the same for kids. Because realistically, again, the geographic location, the age, wherever we happen to live, that can be a very small pool of people. But both of my kids have met people from all over the world, still have relationships a decade late that they connected with over gaming or other interests, in different ways. And so, there are so many tools to help our kids take advantage of this rich, online environment that, like you said, Pam, can sometimes get this kind of scary rap. But there really are ways to navigate that world in a way that is super enriching.

PAM: Yeah. And we’ve talked about it in many episodes before. We can just go back to our navigating technology episode. But it’s like a night and day difference, because we’re cultivating connected relationships with our kids.

And our kids know that when they want to do something, we’re going to help them figure out ways to do it. So, they’re not worried about sharing pieces so much when they’re ready to share them. It’s not an expectation, but when they need your help to try and go meet another family, meet up with a friend, we’re there helping them, trying to figure that out and connecting with the other parents and all those pieces.

But yes, that’s where I was going. That’s the interesting thing, like the same way we’ve found that it’s so fun to connect with other people who want to think about whatever the particular interest is that we want to dive into. And maybe it goes from just following some people on Instagram or on Facebook just to start getting an idea and then maybe digging a bit deeper, maybe finding a group that starts talking about it, and then maybe more of a private group. There are different levels to it, and it depends on how connected we would like that community to become.

So, it’s not that I have to dive into the deep end right away. I can dip my toe in and start having an idea. And it’s the same with our kids. Our kids can have interests that maybe there aren’t a lot of people locally that are interested in that same thing. So, they can find that connection and that conversation that they’re looking for, that enriches their lives, that helps them learn, that helps them feel part of a community. They are part of a community.

I look at Lissy. She connected online around photography. There weren’t a lot of high school aged kids around who were interested and had the time. There were some who were interested in it, but they were just busy with classes and things. So, she found online community at the time, that was through Flickr and that really sustained her for a number of years.

And then she was like, oh, I really want in person. I want to start finding my tribe, face-to-face, which initiated her moving to New York City when she was 18 because that’s what she was looking for. But oh my gosh, we just set that up as kind of a two-month thing. Let’s try it out. Go see what it’s like. And she was very excited with what she found and they wanted to stay there.

So, working that out for her, it’s a journey. We always go back to it’s a journey. You don’t know where it’s going to end up, but it’s like, I’m going to try this next step. This next step looks really interesting. I’m really curious about it. Open and curious. Oh, here’s a way that we can kind of make that happen. And you work together and the thing happens. And then how did that unfold? How did people feel? Did we want to take the next step into the pool or whatever metaphor you want to use. But that’s just an example of how community can grow and how online community can be beautifully enriching at times.

And then at times you’re like, I’m looking for in-person community, and oh my gosh, I need to go to another country. I mean, she had an agent here who told her. I’ll never forget that at our first meeting, I don’t know, she was 15 or whatever. But she said, if you really want to work, it needs to be New York or LA. And that seed was planted. It’s true. That is where the vibrant communities are.

And she spent eight years or so in New York, and then a year in change ago she moved to LA and is finding another vibrant community. And literally the other week she was telling me about the difference between the creative communities in those two cities and LA is vibing for her right now. It’s really fitting who she feels she’s become and she just loves it there. And so, her community has changed yet she’s had New York people fly out and stay with her and hang out with her and LA people. It’s just so fun to watch how our communities can unfold and how we can cultivate them and how we can find new ones.

And it really does, I think, just help, like we talked about the beginning, to take the expectations off it and to understand what our true desires are. What are we really looking for? And then, not like we have to beeline right there. It’s like, okay, so this is kind of what I think I’m looking for. What’s a step I can take now in that direction? And valuing whether that’s online or in person, it really doesn’t matter, because you can get value out of that. And it doesn’t mean that you’re stuck there forever. It’s not a feeling of stuck. It’s like, let me try this out and see what I discover about myself and about the other people. Oh my gosh. I just love the idea.

ERIKA: It’s such a valuable way to look at it, no one right way. It’s just a journey. And it was reminding me of something I heard about the more true to yourself that you are being, the easier it is to connect with community that will actually suit you.

So, if you’re being true about your interests and what you like to do and, and the kind of conversations you like to have and all of that kind of stuff, then you’re more easily able to find the connections that fit. And so, I think the way that our kids’ lives are, is really set up perfectly to be able to follow that, because they can really just be themselves and follow the things that they’re interested in and what they want to do. And we have this whole world of potential community online and in person.

And the fact that my kids have seen me make online friends and then go visit them, they’re like, oh, so that’s possible too. Really the whole world is open for us. And since I’ve visited Virginia and visited Anna, Maya keeps saying, “I’m gonna live in Virginia one day. It’s so beautiful.” And so, I don’t know, it just opens up the world. We’re not just in this one place. And really, as long as we are following what our inner voice is telling us, it’s awesome.

ANNA: Right. And I love that.

And just a funny story from our lives, so Raelin was 13 and the two years prior to that had been on an unschooling gamers group and had made connections. And so, a mom that I had met in person but actually lived in Maine, so we were in North Carolina at the time, the other mom was in Maine, we decided to fly, sight unseen, to meet these boys that they had been gaming with on the west coast in Washington state. It’s a huge flight. It’s a big deal. And people thought we were nuts at the time. What are you doing? You don’t know these people at all.

And these boys’ parents were like, this is a little bit weird. And yet they’re now 10 years, 11 years later, they’re getting married, they’re still in touch. These were these rich friendships. And I think that comes from just, again, opening it up. There’s not one right way. There’s not one avenue to making friends and making connections.

And so, as unschoolers, we have this whole world to choose from and to explore and to be a part of. And like you saw with Maya, it just opens up this idea of, I can be friends anywhere. We can travel anywhere. We can meet people. We can figure things out. And I love that. The energy of that is so much more expansive.

So, I think one of the things I want to end on for me is, if you feel yourself feeling constricted about community, listen to this, breathe this in, because it’s really expansive. It really can be this expansive idea of all the different options, so many different ways to make connections locally, online, in person, with travel, all of these things.

And when we come from that expansive place, that’s when we see the opportunities just start appearing.

ERIKA: I had one other thing pop to mind that I forgot to mention earlier with the kids stuff. Sometimes there are kids who are super extroverted who will play with anyone they meet at any time, and that’s okay too.

I’ve seen parents worry about, but they don’t have friends. But if you’re going to the park and they’re playing with kids and they’re having a great time, if that’s not something that the child is worrying about, it’s the no one right way thing again about that too.

And just really listening to what the individual members of the family are saying and just knowing there’s lots of options.

ANNA: Yes!

PAM: Yes. I love that piece. It is the individual person. What are their needs? And again, like you were saying, if they’re enjoying whatever it is they’re doing, there’s your answer for now, right there.

So, that’s just another piece of the puzzle. That’s who my child is, you know? And that’s how they like to engage with the world right now. We can get ourselves in our head, worried about the other thing, the other way.

Well thank you so much! That was so much fun.

ANNA: Yes. Loved it.

PAM: And thanks everyone listening, for joining us. We hope you, too, have enjoyed our conversation about building community and will find it helpful on your unschooling journey. Wishing you a lovely day. Bye!

ANNA AND ERIKA: Bye!

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Pam shares the first edition of Harbor Highlights, the new monthly audio dispatch she’s creating for her Patreon supporters. In it, she’ll be sharing the behind-the-scenes details of her next grand adventure!

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We’re back with another episode in our Unschooling “Rules” series. And we use the word “rules” in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we […]

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On this episode of the podcast, we’re sharing another entry in our Unschooling “Rules” series. We use the word “rules” in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning […]

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This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a new episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series.

We use the word “rules” in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade—or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, for inquiry, for agency, and for growth.

In this episode, we’re diving into the “rule” that unschooling is “child-led.” We dig into some vocabulary to figure out why neither “child-led” nor “parent-led” are really what unschooling is about for us. We also talk about the idea of “unparenting” that can come up sometimes in unschooling conversations. And we explore what living and learning can look like outside of the control and power-over paradigm.

We had a lot of fun diving into this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTIONED ON THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop

The Living Joyfully Podcast

The Living Joyfully Network

EU148: The Value of Relationships for Learning

EU229: From Control to Connection

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Finding Our Groove, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of parenting and living.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Welcome! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and this is episode number 353 of the podcast.

I’m joined by my cohosts, Pam Laricchia and Anna Brown. Hi to you both!

PAM AND ANNA: Hello!

ERIKA: We’re back with another Unschooling “Rules” episode.

But before we dive into that, I just wanted to invite you to visit our website, livingjoyfully.ca. There you’ll find a wealth of information in our podcast archives for both this podcast as well as the Living Joyfully Podcast, blog posts and articles, links to Pam’s wonderful books about unschooling, as well as more details about coaching, courses, the Childhood Redefined Unschooling Online Summit, and our online community, the Living Joyfully Network.

You can also join our email newsletter list and contact us through our website form. There’s so much to explore. To check it out, visit livingjoyfully.ca.

And now I just want to remind everyone that with this Unschooling “Rules” series, we use the word rules in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule.

It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new. But we want to offer you space to look within to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody’s going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, inquiry, agency, and growth. So, Pam, would you like to get us started with our unschooling rule?

PAM: Absolutely. Thanks so much, Erika.

So, with this episode, we want to dive into a phrase that has been used pretty regularly over the years to describe unschooling, and that’s child-led learning. And while I get the idea behind it, if parents take it on as an unschooling rule and just run with it, it can lead to all sorts of misunderstandings.

So, to dig into how that can happen, let’s start with the idea behind it. Why “child-led?” And I think it can be a quick and effective way to describe the important paradigm shift away from learning and life as being adult-led.

Conventionally, kids are expected to follow the adults’ lead, right? Parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches. Adults know best and kids are expected to do what they’re told. The adults lead and the kids follow. With unschooling, we are shifting that power dynamic from being adult-led to being shared amongst the people in our lives, particularly our family.

But for many of us, adult-led is all we’ve ever known. As kids, we grew up enmeshed in that lens and felt pretty powerless until we became adults finally getting the power to control our days.

As we begin our journey, using the phrase “child-led” to describe unschooling reminds us to use this very different lens as we go about our days. And I think the metaphor of a pendulum to describe the journey through big paradigm shifts in general is pretty spot on. In our society, life is almost exclusively adult-led. The adults have the power. So, to break away from that paradigm and explore other possibilities, swinging that pendulum all the way to the other side to child led can be super informative. It encourages us to look at our days through a completely new lens.

What does life look like through the child’s eyes? If I don’t step in immediately to direct them (adult-led), what do they choose to do? Who are they as a whole human being?

And it is in this season that we practically discover a whole new world. I get goosebumps now just remembering that transition going, wow, we see children learning so beautifully without a curriculum. We see them making choices that make a ton of sense when we see them through their eyes. We come to recognize how truly capable they are. Our trust in them as a human being, navigating their world, grows, as does our trust in the process of unschooling. I think it really is quite amazing.

Yet, if people stay at that far opposite swing of the pendulum, adopting the idea of child-led as a rule to be followed forever or they’re not unschooling well, things can definitely get challenging.

ERIKA: Right. I do think that this rule is kind of the result of making that big paradigm shift. We can have so many a-ha moments when we start to step away from the adult-led norm. So, it’s like, wait a minute, kids do know things. And then remembering our experience as children and how we really could have had and wanted to have agency over our own lives. And so, once we start questioning that, it could feel like, yes! I want to free my children from that control. So now, they’re in charge, but it’s that pendulum swing, like you were saying. The term child led is helpful because it makes people think and it feels closer to what we’re doing in unschooling.

In the majority of schools, learning is completely directed by adults, and in unschooling, children are following their own interests, and so maybe it feels like they’re leading the way, but I think it can get confusing if we use that term to mean that we don’t have an influence as parents or that we’re not in the picture at all. The reality of unschooling can be so much richer and it doesn’t need to have the parent or the child as the leader.

ANNA: Right. And I’m so glad we’re talking about this one, because child-led, well, it kind of sounds nice, especially if you’re an advocate for children. But in practice, I think a lot is lost in translation. And like you both were saying, I think it does help people who are just starting out to wrap their heads around children not being told how and what to learn, to think about what it can look like to follow interest and how learning can look so different from the school model.

But yes, with any pendulum swing, it’s helpful to watch for it and to find a more settled spot that allows for nuance and connection. And I’ve heard people say that unschooling is the lazy way out, and I feel like this is kind of somehow related, because the vision of children just doing anything unchecked, the parent need not be involved at all. But, for me, nothing could be further from the reality of unschooling. I think it’s actually the opposite, because I definitely had moments where I was like, gosh, if I could just like plop them down with a worksheet at the table, that would be a whole lot easier. But instead, I needed to be fully engaged, listening, anticipating, connecting.

That intentionality allowed me to understand them and jump off from their interests and introduce new things to their world. And it was that interplay between all of us in the family that created the rich environment. And I think where it gets sticky is when parents get confused about their role and what that looks like, how to facilitate and be engaged without control and instead, they move to a hands-off approach thinking that’s what child-led means.

PAM: Yes, yes.

In my mind, I see a well-meaning parent sitting on top of the bob, the weight at the end of the pendulum, one hand holding the end of the string and the other hand reaching out and holding onto a children’s metal dome climbing structure. You can see tension starting to unfold across their face as it gets harder and harder to hold onto that bright yellow metal bar as gravity begins to pull the weight back down.

And if they’ve adopted the idea of “child-led” as a forever unschooling rule rather than a useful tool for a season, they are going to be hanging on for dear life, because that’s what a good unschooling parent does in their mind. And we all want that “A” still. That’s part of this whole process, as well.

To explore this tension, as Anna mentioned, let’s dive into the role of an unschooling parent. As I mentioned earlier, using the lens of child-led as we begin our unschooling journey can be so enlightening! And if the only way we know at first to interact with our kids is through telling them what to do or leaping into that teachable moment, sitting on our hands for a bit can be helpful both to give them some space to follow their interests unencumbered by our judgment, and so that we get the chance to see them in action. There’s a good chance they haven’t had a lot of space to just follow what they’re interested in in the way that is interesting to them and to be able to just change it up along the way.

But again, as the action of a pendulum so beautifully describes, we don’t want to stay there too long, because unschooling isn’t hands-off when it comes to learning. Our children’s rich learning absolutely includes engaging with us, their parents. In fact, strong relationships with our children are essential for unschooling and learning to thrive.

I think John Holt describes this so eloquently. John Holt was a classroom teacher and school reformer for many years before he eventually concluded that school and learning were never going to be a good fit. At that point, he became a fierce advocate for homeschooling, actually coining the term, “unschooling.”

But in his book, Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children, he talks about what children need growing up. He explains that children “need love, stability, consistent and unequivocal care and lasting relationships with people who are profoundly enough interested in them to look after them with warmth, gaiety, and patience.”

That was beautiful. And he packs so many important points about how the lives of parents and children weave together into this one sentence!

If you’re curious to follow that thread a bit more, I wrote a whole talk about the value of relationships for learning, exploring why connected and trusting relationships with our children lie at the heart of their learning. And in it, I dive deeper into that quote. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the episode on the website where you can read the transcript, or in your podcast player, you can listen to it in episode 148.

So, that’s definitely one of the misunderstandings that can happen when parents take on the idea of “child-led” as an ongoing rule of unschooling. By inference, they see their role as being hands-off, expecting the child to discover things on their own and waiting for them to ask for supplies or support. You’re just sitting back waiting, excited. “Oh, I can’t wait to see what they’re just going to do,” when really, unschooling is incredibly hands-on.

ERIKA: Yeah, exactly. And I love that quote from John Holt, too. People learn in relationship to others, they learn with and from others. And so, focusing on the relationships we have with our children is just so valuable.

I think it can be tricky to go from one model that we’re so familiar with of the teacher and the students, controlling parents and adults over the children to this new model. And I feel like it’s like you’ve mentioned so many times over the years, Pam, that sort of vacuum that can be left of like, what are we replacing this model with? If I’m not in charge and directing and assigning and creating these teachable moments for my kids, then what is my role? And I think at first it can seem like maybe my role is just to get out of the way and be totally hands off and just not participate.

But life is so much richer when we can actively participate in life with our kids without control and directing. And as adults, we have access to knowledge and memories and resources that our kids don’t have. And so, we can use our money and our time and our knowledge and our insights to help bring more into their lives. And the difference to me is that I’m participating in their lives without putting expectations on them of what they should be learning or what they should be interested in. So, I can suggest ideas that they would have never known about and bring new activities into their lives. It’s actually one of the most exciting parts about our lives, that they can bring new ideas to me and I can do the same for them. We’re all learning more about ourselves and about each other in our relationships and more about the world, but all in our own unique ways and styles.

ANNA: And I think the richest environment has engaged adults, sharing and connecting. Our kids want to be connected to us. They want to feel heard and seen. And in that, we learn more about each other.

We see the myriad of different ways learning happens for each family member. We learn about different areas and opportunities for being in a family that’s connected and sharing passions from all the angles. One’s interest in photography could spark an interest in costume making for another. A favorite movie could lead to wanting to know more about that location for one, the act of movie making for another.

It’s in the connection and the conversations that we’d learn and start to create our own personal webs of learning.

Sitting back and waiting for a child to lead, I think can be confusing for everyone. There will be some kids who will have a really strong idea of what they want and how they want to get there, but it’s more common for kids to not be sure. To be curious, yeah. But not to maybe have a strictly defined interest. Sometimes we have young multipotentialites who like to dabble and have diverse interests, and how great to have a parent facilitating that, introducing and engaging without agenda. We don’t know what we don’t know. So, finding ways to expand that world is fun for all of us.

And that can be done in ways that suit the actual child or children that you have. That doesn’t need to mean mandatory museum visits and pushing our kids outside of their comfort zone because we think this is good for them. But it may mean noticing an interest in space and sharing what you know, and finding some resources or activities and seeing if they spark an interest. And they may not. And so then it’s on us to not take that personally.

We don’t want to jump on a passing comment and have them signed up for a series of classes, recognizing that so much can happen, learning can happen, just in a conversation, but I needed to be there and listen and be open to having the conversations in the first place.

What you’ll find is the more you know your child, the more trust you build, and the more interesting the conversations you can have are, and the better chance you’ll have of finding new things that you can bring into your lives.

I think another big part of this is being a person that’s curious about the world ourselves. What do I love? How can I bring those things into our space that excite me? How do I engage in the world around these interests that I have? Being an interested and curious person helps everyone in the family as they’re figuring out what lights them up and just shows a pathway to that different style of learning, because like you said, Erika, we can all be kind of stuck in the sitting in the desk with the authority figure upfront telling us what to do. So, it was a learning process for me as well.

PAM: And I think as you had mentioned, I think it was you, Erika, as well, that vacuum that we leave when it’s like, oh, I’m not directing. What do I do with myself? What do I do with my time? And absolutely, as you’re saying, Anna, finding my own interests, diving into them is definitely something that you can do in that space that’s now opened up.

If I’m not looking for teachable moments, if I am having these conversations with them, but not trying to direct them. Not trying to jump in the minute I hear dance or soccer, ah, let’s sign you up. Those conversations help us find the little bit that of soccer that’s interesting to them. Maybe it’s not literally wanting to play. Maybe it’s a location thing, a history thing. Maybe it’s something in a book that they’re reading or a game that they’re playing. And one of the characters was really into soccer and they found that interesting, so they’re just learning a little bit more about it. Doesn’t mean that they want to play yet.

But yeah, so one of the things we can do, and as you said Anna, it’s a great example for just how any human being can get interested in things and jump in and that’s part of that shift that brings both adults and children into the equal footing of unschooling. We’re all following our interests and learning new things and sharing things with each other.

I remember it was just so exciting when our kids come and share something that they’re interested in and it widened my world. So, it’s just widening our world. It doesn’t mean that we need to all of a sudden go do all the things. We don’t need to go hit all the museums and do all these field trips, because opening up the world doesn’t literally mean we need to make it wider. It doesn’t need to be more things. It’s whatever the thing is they’re interested in now. Because we are not following that curriculum that tells us, they’re this age, so we should be talking about this thing. We can talk about it when they’re interested in it.

And now we’re gonna take this a step wider, because unschooling isn’t hands off when it comes to parenting in general, either. So, we’ve been talking a lot about learning, but let’s widen that up. So, again, using the child-led lens as an ongoing rule, can lead us to presume that kids need to figure things out on their own in general, including how to care for themselves, how to be in relationships with others, with both family and friends, and how to navigate their world. There’s just so much stuff that we might be expecting them to figure out on their own if we stay with that child-led lens.

As parents, we want to be in relationship with our kids. We can validate their feelings and help them process their experiences so they can bring that understanding forward with them.

We can explore the context and circumstances of situations with them, so they start to see the bigger picture of things. We can brainstorm ideas with them as they contemplate how they want to move through a challenge, whether it’s learning-related, relationship-related, all the pieces of life. And we can do all that without judgment or expectations, without directing them. That’s the important piece. Without the expectation that, we mention there’s a soccer league, but we don’t expect that they’re going to go, “Yay! Thanks for signing me up!” They may, but like zero expectations.

So, instead, we’re supporting their learning about themselves and the world. Together, we’re navigating everyone’s needs, children and adults alike.

In unschooling circles, that hands-off approach to parenting, I think you’ll see that it’s often dubbed or, or spoken about as unparenting. Because it really does leave the child’s a flounder without help from their parents to recognize and incorporate the perspectives and needs of others, without someone to help them process their experiences and to chat about different approaches and tools they might want to try as they encounter challenges in their day. Not to mention fascinating conversations around the many ways in which people are fundamentally different from one another.

So, going back to our metaphor, I think what we’re aiming for is the pendulum to kind of settle into an equilibrium, without big swings either way, where neither adults nor children hold an ongoing power advantage. Now that said, keeping the pendulum still isn’t the goal either, because life happens and it may sway this way in that, but that’s based on the needs of the individual and the unique family members. So, if one member of the family, child or adult, is going through a challenging time, it’s natural that more of the family’s focus and energy leans in that direction to support them during that season.

The power of the family is gifted to each person as needed. We’re a team that helps each other out regardless of age. It’s not adult-led or child-led, and there is nothing hands-off about it. We are in strong and connected relationships with each other.

ERIKA: Yeah. I love that. And right, there’s so much to learn about the world and the cultural norms and relationships and all these things, and kids can pick up on and figure out so many things on their own, but if they also have an adult there who’s open to helping them learn without judgment, it’s just such an amazing asset.

And it’s so much fun to have those deep conversations with my kids or just to help them talk through misunderstandings with their friends or try to figure out what it is at the bottom, what’s bothering them, what is the need that’s not being met? And if I continue to be a trustworthy source of information and perspective and I validate their experience and their emotions, they keep coming back to share and to work through things with me. And I really value that so much.

I think with the unparenting, more hands-off approach, it’s kind of like the “always say yes” rule that we talked about months ago. Rather than sharing the context of a situation or helping my child think through this thing that they’re wanting to do, I could just offer a blanket yes and no support. And then I really do think it’s setting them up to having misunderstandings with others or some other type of upset later.

And so, if instead I’m supporting them and giving them information about what it is they want to do, then they get the benefit of my experience and perspective, and they know that I’m there for them and we can figure out a path forward that can work for everyone. And so, when I’m thinking about the learning versus the parenting, I guess when I think of learning in my family, I think of it rather than adult-led or child-led, I think of it as excitement-based or interest-based. And then with parenting, rather than thinking of it as, parents are in charge or children are in charge, I think of the four of us as a family team, where all of the people and all of the needs matter. It’s not adults in charge or kids in charge, and it’s just a different paradigm and a different way of looking at the roles and the relationships, and it just feels really good to me.

ANNA: Yes, and that was the thing for me too. Like it just felt better. I liked that feeling. There’s four of us and my family as well, and just how beautiful it was to just hear one another and to figure things out. And it just had such a better feel to me than whenever I got caught in that kind of control paradigm, which did not feel great.

And I am really glad we’re touching on unparenting, because it is something that you can see in unschooling circles at times, and I think it can come from a lot of different places. I think parents can find themselves doing a lot of deep work when they start unschooling. And sometimes that takes them out of the moment and they’re really in their head, thinking about their own childhood and the baggage and the triggers and the things, and it’s all of these pieces, but it’s disconnected from the kids who are then out there doing their thing.

I think others can have an independence agenda. “I want you to figure it out and do it yourself,” and either of those things and others can lead to this more hands-off approach that leaves kids not really knowing how to navigate some environments or how to find what they need.

And I’m just all about information. I think that kids want to understand the broader world and how to fit into it. But, for me, that’s not about conformity, but it’s just about information. Just understanding different pieces. How do our actions impact others? What certain environments, what expectations are there? What’s happening in these different cultures of different ideas about things? With information, they can make an informed decision about how they want to proceed. Is it the right environment for them at this moment? Maybe it isn’t. What can they expect if they do go down that path or attend that event or go to that certain place?

We don’t have all the answers, but our experience is valuable and as long as I’m sharing it with the caveat of, well, this is what I saw, this is what worked for me, and trusting that they will find their own path, then both of us can feel good and stay connected as we move through those pieces.

ERIKA: Going back to the idea of sharing our own interests and passions with them as part of what we can do, I feel like that’s related to what you were just talking about, where it’s like, in the control paradigm, I might hear them say, I’m interested in this. And then I say, oh, well you know what you should do is blah, blah, blah. But in this new paradigm, I can say, oh wow. Well, when I was a kid, I did this, or I saw this video, or I am interested in this. And so, just sharing from what I’m interested in about it and then listening to what they’re interested in about it, it’s just a completely different feeling than taking what their interests are and putting my own kind of expectations and judgements on them.

ANNA: Just one quick thing, because you spoke about this early on, that it’s not just about getting out of their way, but we all know that there is a piece of getting out of their way. And I know you’ve seen it, too. It’s kind of like what you’re just saying. It’s like, yes, sometimes we do need to get out of the way. We just don’t need to leave. We don’t need to leave the building. We want to stay connected, but we want to watch for those things that you’re talking about. Like, are we saying, well if you do it this way, then you’ll get to that place. That’s so different than just like, oh, that does sound interesting.

Here’s something I did similar and what I learned about it. Let’s figure out what it looks like for you.

Because I think that’s what’s hard for people. Like how do I replace it? What’s the next thing you know? What is that gonna look like? But I don’t know. I feel like it’s natural once you start to kind of just let go of those outside paradigms. I was thinking about some things you were saying.

PAM: And we do have a podcast episode. I don’t know the number off the top of my head, but From Control to Connection, because yes, that is talking about that transition, that paradigm shift, that vacuum, that when we stop controlling, well now what do we do now? Now, that’s that move to connection to being together, to being just engaged with one another. And I’m glad you mentioned that, Anna. Some kids have a very clear vision of what they want to do.

And so, it’s really about learning about each other as individuals and what kind of support and energy they’re needing or wanting or might be interested in, not feeling judged if we hand something up and they’re like, yeah, no. Not interested. Or, “What the heck? That doesn’t make any sense to me at all.” Or any of those kinds of reactions. We just learned something more about them. It’s not that they’re wrong. It’s not that we were wrong to share it, but it’s more learning for each of us in how we can connect and support each other.

So, I find that piece so very fascinating. And is really helpful at the beginning of the journey, because I think one of the biggest things in that shift from control to connection, especially if we have been more on the control side in our relationship with them before, is this transition isn’t, you wake up the next day and you say, you know what? I’m not going to control you any more!

There will need to be a shift. And it’s an internal shift for us, because I think it comes across in tone. I think it comes across in body energy. And it will take a while for them to trust when we say, “Oh, that’s really cool. Do you want to try this?” And we’re not saying, “I really think you should do this,” right, Erika? As you were saying. And they’re like, “What the heck? Usually you tell me what I should do and then I argue and then, you know, we move forward from there.”

But that the time that it takes for us to really understand it in our bones so that it’s not coming out as an underlying energy in the things that we say. Yeah, I’m saying this, that doesn’t sound controlling, but you can hear from my tone of voice that I really want you to choose this thing.

Also for them to develop a trust in us that, oh, I can say the thing, I can say, “Oh, it’s really curious about soccer. I just learned this thing,” and you’re not going to jump at me saying, “Let’s sign you up.” Or, “I signed you up. It starts in two weeks.” That trust is something, trust isn’t a one way thing. It’s something we develop together and it’s something that we learn together. And that’s where that connection piece really comes in. And that fully and energetically can replace control in our relationship.

ERIKA: Yes. I think life is just so much more interesting when we’re all bringing our full human selves to our families, like stepping away from the role of the parent, which I think is the block to this type of connection, thinking that we’re all knowing and we’re in charge, but we can still participate and explore and engage in the world together with our children.

So, anyway, it’s been so much fun to dive into this unschooling rule with you and for all of our listeners, we would love it if you would join us in the Living Joyfully Network, our online community where we talk about so many rich topics that impact our unschooling lives. It’s such a great place to connect with other families navigating the same challenges and experiencing that same joy of connection. You can learn more at livingjoyfully.ca/network. Thanks again for joining us and see you next time! Bye.

PAM: Bye!

View Details

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a compilation of experienced unschooling parents answering the question, “Looking back, what has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?” Another apt title might be Remembering Our Why, which is why we think it’s especially powerful to listen to during this back-to-school season. When we are able to […]

View Details

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a new episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series. We use the word “rules” in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning […]

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This week on the podcast, we’re diving into another Bringing It Home episode. We’re looking deeper at our last Unschooling “Rules” topic, that unschoolers have unlimited screen time, and exploring what it can look like to navigate technology with our unschooling families. Unsurprisingly, there is no one right approach. It’s so much about seeing through […]

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This week, we’re back with another On the Journey episode. Pam, Anna, and Erika are joined by Living Joyfully Network member Sarah McMackin. Sarah is an unschooling mom to Eamon, who just turned seven. She also runs a restaurant in Austin, TX with her husband, Ray. We talk about Sarah’s experience unschooling an only child, […]

View Details

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a new episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series!

We use the word “rules” in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade—or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, for inquiry, for agency, and for growth.

In this episode, we’re diving into the “rule” that unschoolers have unlimited “screen time.” We explore what that term even means, examine the fears and underlying beliefs that we carry, and share about the kinds of conversations that families have when they’re navigating technology use.

We had a lot of fun diving into this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTIONED ON THIS EPISODE

Our coaching and consulting calls

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

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We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Revitalizing Our Nest, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of autonomy and flow.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Welcome! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and this is episode 349 of the podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Anna Brown. Hi to you both.

ANNA: Hello!

PAM: Hello!

ERIKA: We have a fun Unschooling “Rules” episode for you today. And before we dive into that, I wanted to share a Living Joyfully update. If you’ve stopped by livingjoyfully.ca in the past few weeks, you will have seen our brand new website. The design has a new look and we added new areas of content as well.

Pam, Anna and I have been brainstorming all about the vision of Living Joyfully, and we realized that everything we talk about is really about relationships. Over the years, we’ve seen just how powerful the shift can be in our families when we change these paradigms and learn tools to help us in our relationships, and we want to bring that focus on relationships front and center in all that we do.

To that end, we have this podcast as well as the Living Joyfully Podcast where Pam and Anna share so many of these same ideas, but without the lens of unschooling. We also have the Living Joyfully Network, our online community, where we dive deep and learn together. And now, we’ve added individualized coaching and consulting opportunities to our offerings.

If you’re curious and would like to learn more about our relationship coaching and unschooling consulting, please visit livingjoyfully.ca/coaching. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Okay, so in this episode we’re going to talk about the unschooling “rule” that unschoolers have unlimited screen time. And first, we want to remind everyone that with this Unschooling “Rules” series, we use the word rules in quotes, to draw attention to the fact that there’s no such thing as an unschooling rule. It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you, and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody’s going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, inquiry, agency, and growth. So, Pam, let’s dive into screen time.

PAM: Yes, yes, yes. Let’s. Okay. Okay. You probably know by now from me that the first aspect I would like to talk about is language. And what is meant by the term “screen time.” So, at this point in our culture, that is a very general term, right? Because a screen can be, it can be a TV, it can be a laptop, it can be a desktop monitor, a phone, a tablet. It can be found in your house, in your car, in your pocket, maybe even in your fridge. So many of our day-to-day activities now involve screens in some ways such that the idea of “screen time” really doesn’t add much value to the conversation.

Screens are pretty ubiquitous in our lives. So, saying someone is in front of a screen is pretty meaningless. It tells us practically nothing about what they’re doing. Screens are just an interface, a way for a person to interact with technology, with a piece of hardware.

It’s what they’re using the screen to do that is interesting. What’s behind the screen? And that is an incredibly rich set of possibilities. It’s pretty much anything and everything. It can be an activity we really enjoy, like playing a video game or watching a movie. It can be a way to connect with others who also enjoy something that we love. It can be tips and tricks for improving our skills. It can be learning the history around an interest or an activity that we’re curious about, so, deepening our understanding of that it can be a way to find community, both online and off.

So, for me, instead of using the lens of screen to examine our days and whether or not my child is using one to engage with something, I am much more curious and have found it much more meaningful to know what that something is. What are they interested in? What are they exploring? What are they learning about? How are they learning about it? What tools are they using to help them move through their day? What entertains them? That’s the level at which I can actually connect with them, be in relationship with them, where I can better understand them and their interests and in turn, better support their learning, all the pieces. I learn so much more about who they are as a human being when I move beyond the screen interface and focus on what they’re using that screen to engage with.

ANNA: Oh my goodness. Okay, so you know that I love language, too. Really the three of us, this is something we enjoy, toying around with the words and thinking about being intentional about it.

So, I’m really glad this is where we’re starting, because I think that the words we choose set the energy for our actions and absolutely impact the stories we tell about our lives.

And so, think of the differences in these statements. My daughter was on screens all afternoon. My daughter watched four hours of cooking shows. Okay. That’s without me putting any tone to it, which I could have. And you can see how much more we learn and convey with just that tiny shift. If one is watching cooking shows for four hours, there’s something to that interest. There’s something there. And when we engage at that level, like you were talking about, Pam, being interested in what they’re enjoying, we learn even more about what they’re getting out of it and where it’s taking them.

We can think about screens as the interface to technology and then the next question, what is the technology bringing into our lives? Because like you said, it can be so many things. It could be about having time with friends and chatting and strategizing and solving complex problems and working as a team. It can be about exploring music or art, the storytelling, a way to dive into any particular interest. YouTube is this gateway to pretty much anything to study and just way too many to even name. I feel like it’s such an amazing time in the world where we can dive into any question or interest and go as deeply as we want or just scratch that surface for a quick answer all at the tip of our fingers.

And as someone who loves to learn all the things, I am grateful every day for technology and the myriad of screens that I have to interact with. And I really think being intentional with our language is such a great place to start, because it helps us to remain open and curious about what’s happening around us and connected to the people involved.

ERIKA: Right. Yes. I love this shift so much, because when we say our kids are just on their screens, I feel the distance that that creates. Now I’m way over here looking at them, really barely even looking at them. Maybe I’m just looking at the back of the screen they’re looking at. I’m seeing such a small sliver of what’s actually happening, and it can cause this reaction in me.

If all I see is a kid with a screen, I can think, they’re not doing anything. They’re not using their brain. They’re not being creative. But I actually have no idea what’s happening if I’m keeping myself at that distance and not letting myself see what they’re actually doing. So, challenging myself to be more specific with my language brings me that one step closer to who they are and what they love.

It puts me closer to being in connection with them. Well, it turns out my daughter was drawing on Procreate, creating a new character, or my son was playing Roblox with his friends. Or at another moment, maybe he was figuring out who that background actor was on Agents of Shield, and she was watching an exotic animal vet show.

So, that’s why it makes sense to take a pause if you’re tempted to use the word “screen time” and challenge yourself to go deeper. Really, all I have to do is think about my own life with my phone, my iPad, my computer, how many different things I use those devices for. It feels ridiculous to describe all of that time as “screen time,” and it’s the same for my kids. It’s always so much more real and more connecting to look closer and see what they’re actually interested in.

ANNA: Right. It really is. And it’s such an easy thing to do and it can really light up our kids when they see that we see them, that we’re genuinely interested and that we’re actually just naming what they’re doing and noticing what they’re doing. It’s so important.

So, a couple of the pieces that I want to touch on require a bit of introspection. So often, we find ourselves judging how our children or really anyone is spending their time. When we find ourselves doing that, I think it’s so much more about us than about them.

And one of the things that can be at play is fear. So, releasing our fear is really critical here, because when we’re projecting out into the future with fears, we’re pulling ourselves out of this moment and we are most likely harming the connection with the people in our life. It’s pretty safe to say that fear clouds our judgment, puts us into kind of this reptilian brain where we’re not using our critical thinking skills, we’re not engaging. Like you said, we’re on the other side of the room, looking over here, casting this fearful glance.

I feel like fear can be such a helpful red flag. There’s a purpose for it, but I personally just never want to act from that place instantly, unless it’s a tiger coming at me. You know? I want to use it as a clue to dig deeper, understand, where is it coming from? Time and time again, when I would dig into my fear, I would find some old wound or some outside noise from people or systems that didn’t know anything about my kids, and they definitely didn’t know anything about our life.

Processing my bits and setting aside those outside voices allowed me to tune back into my children and see what they were exploring and all that it was bringing to them and our family. And so, it is that clue of like, when I’m not noticing what they’re exploring, I’m probably in my head with some fear pieces. And so, there’s one more piece I want to talk about, but just I feel like you probably have a couple things to say about fear, too. So, I’m going to throw it back to you, Erika.

ERIKA: I know. I do. But I think it’s connected to what I was talking about before with the feeling of the distance that can happen. It has that feeling of disconnection. Because fear is something that’s happening because of my thoughts, and we talked about this recently in the network Marco Polo group, how there are the actual things that are happening. And then the next step is the thoughts that I have about those things and then the emotions like fear come after I’ve had my thoughts. And so, a situation that feels totally safe and comfortable for one person can feel scary to another person. And so, that’s why to me it’s so valuable to unpack my thoughts and beliefs.

Is my fear about screens really a fear about what other people would think if they saw my kids on screens? Is it one of those future projections, like you were mentioning, Anna? So digging into our fears and questioning them can be so powerful in so many areas, but I think it really is so common when we’re talking about the “screen time” worries, and then it’s all about getting out of our heads and all those thoughts and back into the moment of what’s actually happening in real life. And chances are good that the fears are really just coming from my own thoughts and beliefs that I can release.

PAM: Absolutely. So many kinds of fear can bubble up in this situation. And I found that people often mention the fear that they’re doing their kids a disservice by not insisting they do other things, that screens are addictive and their kids need protection.

But again, like you were saying, Erika, those are my thoughts and I can work through them. So, for me, processing those fears encouraged me to lean into engaging with my kids around their tech use and my own as well. Noticing how over time, more and more everyday things can now be done virtually through a screen interface.

So, for example, most often I don’t need to run to the bank anymore. I can do my banking through my browser or an app. We don’t need to go to the game store anymore to get a new game. We can download it through the console or the computer, again, either way, a screen. And sometimes we can’t choose to go to the store to browse for fun. So, yes, I definitely interface with screens more than I did a decade ago, but it’s often both more effective and efficient.

I remember moments and still have these moments where I’m sitting my computer. It’s like, okay, I’m going to do something else now. And I think of, what’s the next thing I want to do? And then it’s like, oh. I’m doing that on my computer too! I’m not even moving. So, leaning in with my kids helps me see the variety of things they’re doing and helps me engage with them around both what they’re doing and how they’re feeling about it. A wealth of fascinating conversations bubble up over the months and years as we just explore and learn about tech use alongside each other, because it’s something we’re all kind of experiencing for the first time as it grows in our lifetimes.

ANNA: Right. And that piece is so important, just our own experience of it and being maybe more honest about that than letting the fear take hold and cause that to clamp down. It’s always a great idea, I think, to just take that second look when we’re feeling that little bit of grip with fear, or like you said Erika, maybe the sign is just that you’re kind of pulled apart from your kids a little bit. That that means maybe fear is involved, you know?

Okay. So, another place to dig in and peel back is the fantasy that we create around our children and family. It makes sense. And I would say that most of us have done it at some point, thought about the children we would have and the family we would create. I remember having lists of names for future children when I was in middle school. And after our children actually arrive, we can still buy into some of these fantasies, ranging from future sports star to Ivy League academic or children dressed in woolen clothes frolicking joyfully in the woods.

We create ideas around what type of activities have value based on how they fit those visions. So, if you’re holding onto the academic vision, sports are a waste of time. In the sports vision, hanging out with friends is taking away focus from the sport. You can see how those visions really tunnel us in. And that’s one thing if it’s about us pursuing a passion for ourselves, it’s quite different and way out of our lane when we’re boxing in another person based on our vision for them.

The key for me was truly understanding that my children were unique humans on their own personal journeys. And this quote from Khalil Gibran has always spoken to me and grounded me in this understanding and idea. And I think I’ve actually read it on the podcast before, but I’m going to read it again.

“Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.

They come through you, but not from you.

And though they are with you, they belong not to you.

You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies, but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

And there’s so many things about that poem, but I’m just going to take the “house of tomorrow” piece, because I think it’s related to this conversation. Because with each generation, innovation takes us to new places that the generation before doesn’t understand and often vilifies.

So, when I was a kid, many, many years ago, having a telephone in your room was the thing that was literally going to bring doom and rot our brains, like that’s what we were told. Talking for hours on the phone was pretty new when I was in high school, because I remember actually as a little kid, we had what was called a party line. So, we shared a house phone line with 10 of our neighbors. So, you’d actually pick up the phone and see if somebody was talking. And so, you never lingered on a call because so many people were using it. So, this makes me sound like a hundred years old. I am not. Just 54. And that’s how fast things change.

By high school, I had a corded phone in my room and spent many nights talking to friends until the wee hours only to have to get up at the crack of dawn for school, which I’m sure concerned my parents. They were pretty chill about things, but you could tell. Because this was the buzz that was going around the culture is that these phones are bad for these kids and they shouldn’t be on them. And the thing that’s so funny looking back is that it wasn’t even just phones. People would complain about book reading. I’d hear this. “You’re spending too much time with your nose in a book.” Like what does that even mean, when we think about it now?

So, whenever we find ourselves needing to judge how another person spends their time, we can pause and remember that it’s probably saying a lot more about us and also maybe highlighting a lack of connection or really understanding the child or the person in front of us and what it is they’re engaging with. We maybe haven’t taken that extra time. Instead, we can focus on leaning in, finding ways to connect, learning more about their interests. Why are they enjoying this new thing so much? Learning the terms to be able to have a conversation to really see them and what they love.

I focus on connection because I feel like that’s where we learn more about ourselves, more about the person we love. And oversimplifying and trying to control another person’s interest is not a means to connect, be it sports, books, or technology. Behind those simplified descriptors is a world of nuance and learning. So, understanding the richness of any area of interest is such a simple step to take for the people that we love.

ERIKA: Oh I love this part. It’s so natural to have a vision of childhood and a vision of what our family would be like, and it could be based on what we remember from our own childhoods or just things we see on social media or read about. And it can feel like there is a right way to be a child or a right way to be a parent. But when we open up to the idea that I love so much that everyone is different and that we have so many ways to find our interests and to learn, it just takes a lot of pressure off. There really is not a perfect way to be a human.

I think a lot of people are really drawn to the latest technology, because it’s the cutting edge of human creativity and there’s so much potential there, but not everyone is drawn to it. And different people have different goals and interests and ways that they want their lives to look, and that’s pretty exciting.

And it can also be challenging as a parent when our children are choosing interests that we don’t understand, or that didn’t even exist in our childhoods. And that’s, I think, where that open and curious mindset comes in so handy. And maybe putting up a print out of that poem you shared too, Anna. That was really beautiful.

PAM: Well, you know what I loved, Erika, what you said there not being a perfect way to be human. That takes me right to the people are different and my way is okay. And even different people with different ways are all okay, too. And even while that can feel overwhelming at first, it’s like, oh my gosh, like everybody’s different. Oh no! I found it more approachable when I thought about it in terms of exploring the possibilities with an eye to discovering what I’m curious about and what works for me in terms of engaging with those interests as well as with people that I love. And it changes over time as we learn and grow and change ourselves.

So, for me, it becomes the ongoing mystery of life. I know that kind of sounds cliche and all, but truly isn’t it true? Just think about it for a minute. I’m a mystery to myself and that’s why I keep connecting and engaging. My kids are grown now and it is still so fun to connect with them and hear what they’re up to.

So anyway, this leads me to all of that connecting and engaging and, especially when they were younger, it was discovering what makes their eyes light up. And not judging whether or not the act of accessing those things involves a screen. That was just a piece of the process. It wasn’t the thing. It wasn’t, they love screens. That said so little about them. Right?

ERIKA: And so, when we’re in that connected place and actually seeing what we’re, what they’re doing, and we’re not in that fear place or that fantasy place, we’re now using language that’s connecting instead of just calling it “screen time,” now I think we’re ready to have conversations with them. And I think it can be pretty automatic at times to want to just make a rule or a proclamation, like, “No screens before 4:00,” or, “No screens until the weekend,” or, “One hour of Roblox per day, period.”

We hear about those types of rules and it can feel like they might be a good solution to our fears and concerns. But without communication and conversations, top-down rules and orders are so disconnecting. There’s such a big difference between a parent proclaiming that all screens must be turned off, and the whole family deciding together that they like how it feels when they have dinner and no one brings their devices to the table.

When we talk about not having limits on the time that our kids are engaging with their iPads or their computers, it doesn’t mean that we’re hands off. We’re staying connected. We’re having conversations when something is feeling bad, we’re talking about it and problem solving together. And when we can build trust in our relationships with our kids, they can come to us with their feelings and concerns, too.

So, like Maya has definitely told me that she wants to stop watching videos or to stop playing computer games for a while. And she knows that she can share that with me and I won’t villainize the games and the videos, and I can help her if she wants to go outside for a walk or play a board game with me instead. I can help her brainstorm things to do that are not screen-based when she wants, and I’ll help her troubleshoot when things get tricky in her games and apps too. She’s free to share all of her interests with me without judgment.

And by focusing on connection, the whole family can work together to have a rich life, rather than just me or just Josh and me as the parents like making decisions without having conversations and handing down those decisions that are really just based on my image of what our lives should look like. And so, I think it’s just a much better fit when we’re all involved in creating our family life together.

PAM: Yeah, I think that’s the crux of it for me, really. I think a rule, even one in the guise of not being a rule, like unlimited screen time encourages disengagement.

There’s the rule out there for everyone to see, so we know what’s up and we don’t need to talk about it, right? It leaves the impression that there aren’t any nuances to be had. But as you mentioned, nuances are found when real, different people are involved. When we’re engaged and supportive of each other, when we’re on a team together, we help each other navigate tricky or uncomfortable things without the judgment.

When someone’s feeling they’d like to do more things that don’t involve screens, we help them find ways to do that that feel fun and enjoyable. We don’t leap to, “Oh my goodness, we need a no screens for a week rule,” so that we can help them do this thing they want. It is okay to have a feeling of too muchness around something. I made up that phrase, but it felt so right. Those are great clues for us as we explore who we are and the things we like to do and how we like to do them.

Wanting to change things up doesn’t mean that where we are now is wrong. So there’s a quote from Sebene Selassie that has stayed with me for a while now. She wrote,

“We don’t need to make ourselves a problem to aspire to transformation.”

And that absolutely applies to our kids as well, especially as they explore how they engage with their interests and their days from food to screens to sleep, like all the things.

ANNA: And I love that too muchness because, just like you just said, it’s food, it’s screens, it’s sleep, it’s running, it’s exercise, it’s whatever. We can get into that kind of too muchness stage and then we can just start talking about how’s that feeling and what we want to do. And I think ultimately for me, and you kind of mentioned it before, this whole realm that we’re talking about at the screens, it’s about just having it be one little part of everything.

We’re having the same kind of conversations, it’s the same process, versus this boogeyman, and it’s something so big and we’re setting it aside and making separate rules about it. And I think for me, again, just that always boils down to connection and conversations for me. And that doesn’t mean big sit-down conversations with heavy energy, but light energy of checking in, sharing what’s going on with me, what I’m feeling too muchness about, listening to what going on for others in the family. Just having that be common dialogue that we talk about how we’re engaging with the world and the things around us.

I have seen families work through this and come out with some guidelines about when they do what, and I think the key for that to work is everyone being involved and also, so key, being open to things evolving, because, again, it’s not one thing that’s being restricted when we make rules around screens. Do we really want to restrict research, connecting with friends, checking the weather, looking up history of a word that you just heard that came up in a conversation? Those are just a few of the things I do daily on my phone or tab, and it would seem so strange to say those things can only happen in this pre-assigned window that we thought of last month.

And so, I think just being open to what we’re using things for, how things are evolving and just tuning into how everyone wants to spend their time. What else is happening around us? What can we bring in to enrich our lives? Those are the things that we can be exploring together so that the focus is on creating a life of using all kinds of tools and exploration.

Removing the hyperfocus on one aspect, the screen aspect, can actually remove defensiveness, misunderstanding, and open up creativity. Focusing on connection, learning about one another, building a trust that we’re all working together to create our best lives just relieved a lot of pressure around individual bits for me, because I knew we would figure things out together. I didn’t have to carry that weight and fear alone.

ERIKA: Yes. Well, I love this conversation. It was so much fun. I really enjoyed diving into the unschooling “rules” particularly and unlimited screen time. I hope you found our conversation helpful as you navigate technology with your family. And if you’d like to join in on lots of conversations just like this one, come join us in the Living Joyfully Network. You can find out more about it at livingjoyfully.ca/network. Wishing everyone a wonderful day! Bye.

PAM: Bye!

ANNA: Bye!

View Details

In this week’s Exploring Unschooling podcast episode, we’re diving deep into a listener question submitted by Michelle in Texas. She writes,

I listened to the episode with Xander regarding gaming, and it really helped change my perspective, especially during this unschooling phase. The question that keeps coming for us is definitely fear-based, but for good reason, and that’s online safety. Our son loves online gaming. Fortnite is the game of choice. But we struggle with the proper level of “parental controls” and his freedom to do what he loves, which is socializing and making new friends online. He’s easily influenced by a lot of the kids he plays with, and it has become a concern with behavior/attitude/mature content/cussing, etc. I’m so curious how unschooling parents protect their kids online without having strict parental controls. Unfortunately, I can’t listen all day, but I do try to pay attention and we have lots of conversations. I just don’t feel like he hears me, or maybe I’m approaching the topic too fearfully and strong. He wants to be accepted by his peers and will do almost anything to get it, which concerns me. Long-winded, but that’s what I’m dealing with and I’m sure other parents are, too.

As always, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer, because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any given situation that will work for everyone. Instead, our focus is on exploring different aspects of the situation and playing with the kinds of questions we might ask ourselves to better understand what’s up. We’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling and cultivating strong and connected relationships.

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and if you’re a patron of the podcast, be sure to mention that.

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

EU027: Ten Questions with Teresa Graham Brett

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out her website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Revitalizing the Nest and we’re looking at it through the lenses of autonomy and flow.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

CALL TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello, everyone! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and this is episode number 348 of the podcast. I am joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Welcome!

ERIKA: Hi!

ANNA: Hello.

PAM: So, in this episode we’re doing a Q&A Deep Dive exploring a listener submitted question. And of course, we want to remind everyone that our Q&A conversations are not focused on giving anyone the quote right answer, because there isn’t a universal right answer for any situation that will work for everyone. So, basically, we’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling. And if you have a question you’d like us to dive into, check out the show notes for the link to the Submit Your Question form for a future Q&A episode or just go to livingjoyfully.ca/question. We would love to explore the questions that you are pondering right now on your unschooling journey.

And if you’d like to have these kinds of conversations more often, check out the Living Joyfully Network online community. You will find all three of us there. We have regular live calls where members share their questions and concerns, their a-ha moments on the journey, as well as everyday snapshots of their unschooling lives. The community is incredibly rich with the twists and turns of real life with wonderful families from around the world, all through the lens of unschooling. It is so inspiring, and as I said that, I got goosebumps. It’s for real. So, you can learn more about and join the community at livingjoyfully.ca/network, or you can follow the link in the show notes. We’ll be sure to put it there. So, Anna, would you like to read the question for us?

ANNA: Yes! Okay, so our question comes from Michelle in Texas and she has an almost nine year old.

“I listened to the episode with Xander regarding gaming, and it really helped change my perspective, especially during this unschooling phase. The question that keeps coming for us is definitely fear-based, but for good reason, and that’s online safety.

Our son loves online gaming. Fortnite is the game of choice. But we struggle with the proper level of “parental controls” and his freedom to do what he loves, which is socializing and making new friends online. He’s easily influenced by a lot of the kids he plays with, and it has become a concern with behavior/attitude/mature content/cussing, et cetera. I’m so curious how unschooling parents protect their kids online without having strict parental controls. Unfortunately, I can’t listen all day, but I do try to pay attention and we have lots of conversations. I just don’t feel like he hears me, or maybe I’m approaching the topic too fearfully and strong. He wants to be accepted by his peers and will do almost anything to get it, which concerns me. Long-winded, but that’s what I’m dealing with and I’m sure other parents are, too.”

Okay, so thanks for your question, Michelle. And it is a topic that comes up a lot for good reason, and I think it’s really important to tease apart and think about. I always want to take some extra steps when I see I’m being driven by fear, you know, because fear tends to pull me out of the moment, but also away from my child. And so, taking the pause and naming the fear for me can be helpful.

And then, I want to dive back into the moment with my child to understand things from their perspective to see what I might be missing. I came to understand that what kept my children safest was our strong connection. I wanted them to feel completely comfortable coming to me when things felt off or if they had questions. And I could only foster that environment by being really open and not judging what they were doing.

If they felt like I didn’t like an activity, they were much less likely to come to me if something was going on with it. It kind of pushed them into this place where they would maybe take more than they wanted to for fear that it would play into my concerns. And if they felt comfortable with me and knew that I supported what they loved about the game or the activity, then when something was off, they knew that I’d help them process, but with this eye to getting them back to what they loved.

And it sounds like you’re already having a lot of conversations and that’s really what helped us. But definitely it was important to check in about any kind of tone or agenda I might have, because I know they can sneak in, especially if we’re carrying around any fear. So, I would share my experiences and the why behind any decision I was making. If I felt uncomfortable, I’d share it, but again, with an eye to still move towards the thing we were interested in, but in a way that felt better to us both.

I think talking about the online environment and how it’s unique is so helpful. People sometimes use that space to push boundaries and try things on, and sometimes that doesn’t feel good. So, empowering our kids to say something when it doesn’t feel good or doesn’t work.

And another thought that I had was if your son is, if feeling a scarcity of connections, maybe why you’re feeling like he’ll, “do anything to be accepted,” then I might focus on broadening that community, finding more online friends to add to the mix, because scarcity, like fear, can influence our behaviors and contribute to making choices that might not be the best for us. But that’s something you can start solving for and working towards together, more abundance in the online or even in real life friend department. There is an unschooling gamers Facebook group and families on our Living Joyfully Network connect through gaming as well.

It really is just so much about the relationship and it sounds like you have a great foundation there and looking at your own fears and, are we giving information or kind of passing along and handing some weight of our fears to our kids that just might not make sense to them at all? So, I found that just keeping connection as the driver can allow us all to feel comfortable as we navigate these tricky topics.

ERIKA: Yeah. I liked this question, too. I think you’re absolutely right that so many parents are facing these same concerns about online safety and navigating that with their children, whether or not they’re unschooling. And with so many different people and different parents and different children, there are just endless ways in which those concerns are addressed.

And I really love that you’re recognizing the underlying fears that you have and that possibility that the way you’re approaching it with him might be too strong or fear-based, because I do think it’s so easy to go there. We’re definitely surrounded by stories that can ramp up our fear and our imaginations can spiral a bit out of control just thinking of all the scary possibilities and that just feels so terrible and I’ve been there.

So, I guess first, I would just say to ground yourself back into the present moment and really honestly look at the things that are actually happening rather than what might happen. He’s probably heard a lot of your concerns and fears at this point, and so, those messages are already in there. Giving some space for a while might help you see what’s actually happening. And when I say giving some space, I don’t mean just leaving him alone, but just not like jumping in with the warnings and jumping in with a bunch of questions.

There have been phases where I’ve been worried about what my kids are watching or the way they’re interacting with their friends online. Maybe things don’t feel very kind in the interactions sometimes, things like that. And there have been times where I’ll jump in, like, “What is that you’re watching?” Or, “Is everybody okay?!” in this super fear-based, loaded, emotional way. The questions by themselves are not terrible questions, but when I bring them with that loaded energy of, I believe everyone’s in danger or something bad is going on, the kids react to that energy and it creates that disconnection.

And then, they want more privacy, because they believe that I’m not understanding them and what’s going on, and so the disconnection grows. And so, the repair that works for me in that case is giving them more space and more trust. When they don’t feel like I’m jumping on every little thing, then there’s room for them to actually come to me with their tricky situations, to ask me about safety, and to ask for my help with their conflicts.

And so over the years, I’ve given them information like, we don’t know who the people are who are playing online with you. They could be anyone. They could live anywhere. And so, we’ve had some fun imagining who these people might be. And so, it’s safe. I tell them, it’s safe to play online together, but it’s also important to remember we don’t know these other players well enough to trust them with our personal information.

And it actually reminds me of when Anna started playing Adopt Me with me on Roblox, and she wanted to believe and trust everything that everyone was saying in the chat. And I had to tell her, a lot of people are scamming and a lot of people are lying. And it’s still so much fun to play, but it just helps to be aware of that. And I think it takes some practice to get really savvy online, but that practice is what the kids are getting when they have the chance to explore.

And so, our family’s use of parental controls has evolved over the years, and it’s always the result of conversations with the kids and what they’re feeling comfortable with. Most of the controls that are just kind of automatically created are too limiting, we’ve found, and so they haven’t been super helpful. The kids know how to block people on their games. They know that they can always leave if something is feeling uncomfortable, find a new server, if someone is being obnoxious.

And I think watching gaming YouTubers has actually helped them learn a lot about some of the things that people do, the scamming and the pranking and the trolling, just so that they have a better idea of what to watch out for. And, like Anna was saying, the more I focus on keeping our connections strong than the safer they feel to come to me to talk about anything that doesn’t feel right.

PAM: Okay. I love so much what you both have shared, and thanks again, Michelle, for the question. I, too, really had a lot of fun thinking about it. And in fact, our theme in the Network this month as we’re recording this happens to be connection. And a big part of deschooling is the parenting journey from using tools of control to connection in our relationships with our kids. So, that’s on my mind and I think it’s an interesting angle to explore with this question.

So, let’s just play for a bit. Let’s take a moment to pull out to the bigger picture and think about the purpose of parental controls. They’re basically rules to control an environment, whether they’re built into a technology that’s involved, or they’re rules that the parents set and expect the child to follow.

So, let’s just say you found the “perfect” set of parental controls that you envision and you turn them on. So, now what? How do you feel? What do you do next? Maybe you let out a sigh of relief, maybe your shoulders drop a little bit. Ah, you’ve controlled the environment and things just feel safer now. You know your child will no longer be able to find their way into situations online that you find uncomfortable or worrisome. Now you can relax and leave them to play and have fun, and you can go off and enjoy doing your things. I mean, that sounds pretty cool, right? That’s the goal.

But I know I will forever remember the story that Teresa Graham Brett shared on the podcast way back in episode 27, because it just so clearly showed the contrast between control and connection when it comes to our relationships with our children. And I’m pretty sure the story is in her book too, Parenting for Social Change.

But just to summarize, when her eldest was young, she decided she’d let him watch PBS Kids, because it was educational and non-violent. That meant he could have free access at any time to PBS Kids and online, he could go to the PBS Kids website. So, in that parentally controlled and safe environment, he would watch this PBS show Caillou, and there would be a point in almost every episode where he would say, “Shut it off.” So, she’d shut it off and he’d move on to something else. And she never thought much about it at the time until she began questioning her parenting choices more directly.

She started watching TV with him and quickly recognized the difference there. When she was in the mode of everything on PBS Kids is fine, because it’s not my version of violence, she was actually uninvolved. Because she had deemed everything he had access to be safe, she wouldn’t watch with him. There was no partnership. And as she described it, she had abdicated her responsibility to him because she had controlled the environment in which he had access.

When she started hanging out with him, watching with him, paying attention to who he actually is as a person, she said, oh my gosh. She learned so much. For example, she came to see that in the show, Caillou was always getting in trouble at some point in the episode, and a parent or teacher would step into chide and correct him. It was consistently at that point that he wanted the show shut off. It became obvious that he was uncomfortable with that kind of emotional violence being imparted on a child, and that was such a huge a-ha moment for her. Wow. Their definitions of violence were so different.

What she thought was safe and what was aligned with the conventional narrative of media safety differed from what he needed, which was for children to be emotionally safe. The violence that he saw was not the violence that she saw. She said that if she could point to one thing that greatly expanded her view of media access, that was the moment. And I just wanted to share how she describes that shift.

So, she said, “Being responsible for the care of a child doesn’t require control. It requires being in connection and being a partner and being a facilitator.” Now, I wanted to share that because it’s just such a clear example of the shift from control to connection on our parenting journey. Instead of controlling their environment so that we’re comfortable stepping away, with the impression that it’s all good, they can’t encounter anything that we are uncomfortable with, we can be their partner. We can connect and engage with them. We can see the person they are and help them as they navigate and process the environments that they are keen to explore.

So, bringing that back and coming to your particular situation, Michelle, you mentioned that you’re having lots of conversations with your son about what you’re seeing with his online play. You also mentioned that you don’t think what you’re saying is connecting with him, because it feels like he’s not hearing you. And I love Anna’s point about paying attention to the energy that you’re bringing to the conversations. And I just wanted to add another thought to the mix and actually it’s just an extension of what Erika was talking about, because I am sure he’s heard what you’ve been saying.

So, repeating it over and over moving forward just won’t add much value to the conversation. So, what if for the next while, your conversations with him are more focused on listening to him, letting him lead any actual conversation. What is he seeing in the interactions that he has online? How is he feeling about them?

You can hang out with him quietly just absorbing his enjoyment and trying to see what things look like through his eyes. Leaving a relaxed space, like Erika talked about, for him to just share his thoughts or not. It doesn’t have to be actual conversations, because lots of communication happens that doesn’t need conversation. I think that’s such an interesting piece.

So, maybe you’ll glean some interesting insights just as Teresa did, but I do think you’ll definitely experience a deepening of your connection as you learn more about him and he feels seen and loved for who he is right now, Fortnite and all. He will just feel so seen and heard. And instead of you directing the conversations, there’s space for him to just mention what’s bubbling up, or even just noticing his reactions to things that are bubbling up that might spark conversations later. Because sometimes conversations happening in the charged moment of something going on there, there’s not space and time for reflection and conversations about that either. Anyway, so such a great question.

ANNA: It really is. And I may have just lost it, but it is that point of, it’s the walking in the shoes and the looking through the eyes thing, because what feels scary or inappropriate to us, unless we’re connected to understand what that feels like to them, we really do miss the boat. And so, I think that was really important for me.

And also, I think there’s a piece about, again, this experimental piece of being online that you do see your kids kind of push some boundaries and try things on and language or different things, but I think because it feels safe to them, and so, then understanding that and kind of having that and then being there for it, you know? And then, yeah, we can’t sit there every single minute they’re online, but we can make some intentional choices about just exploring and listening, not coming in just with our two cents, but really hearing about it. And, I don’t know, I just think about some things that I’ve seen with Erika’s kids, things I saw with my kids. It’s such an interesting environment that they have the ability to experiment with at this age.

ERIKA: Yeah, that’s what came up for me, too, when you were talking Pam, was just that like, me putting my, “what I would do if I were them” lens on it doesn’t make any sense, because what they’re doing is figuring out who they are, figuring out how the internet works, figuring out what these different cultures of video gaming are like. There’s a lot of things that I think happen in Fortnite that to me feel like, oh, well that’s terrible. But to them in it, it’s like that’s the culture. That’s how people are having fun and that’s the way that they’re interacting. And so, sometimes I’ll say like, does that, is that fun for you? Is this game fun for you? And they’ll be like, yeah. And people seem like they’re being mean to each other. And I’m like, oh, to me that doesn’t feel fun. But to them, they know, that’s just this game. This is a roleplaying game or this, you know, we’re in these characters and this is the way we’re interacting.

And I think it’s kind of amazing, because it’s such a rich environment for being able to explore different ways of being, different ways of treating people. And like mistakes, if they were to say they made a mistake in the way they’re interacting, that’s okay, too, because they’re just learning and it’s just that rich environment for being able to learn more about themselves and how to interact with people, too.

PAM: Yeah. I think I learned so much using that lens of role playing, too. That is so fascinating and there are absolutely environments where that is the focus and you take on a personality, any kind of personality and history and whatever and play through that lens or just communicate through that lens. And it’s just such an interesting way to explore and everybody participating in it knows what’s going on or quickly learns. That’s the experience. It’s like, oh! Holy bananas. This is really crazy.

But, oh yeah! So this is what we’re doing in this culture. So many different cultures. Different environments. And that’s the great thing. They can go in and experiment and experience and say, that’s not for me. Or say, oh, I could really lean in. No, this is really fun, mom.

So, the connection and the experience is just where, in my mind, they just learn so much more about the world, about themselves, about who they might want to be, about how they can be different in different situations and different environments, and that this is okay. I feel like it’s a rich, rich environment.

So, even just figuring out, sitting there, listening, figuring out what he’s enjoying. For him to be able to start having conversations. Looking through his eyes, when you’re there, half his mind may be like, oh, is this something mom’s not going to like? Is this something she’s going to say something about?

He’s not getting the opportunity to dig deeper and say, oh my gosh, this is fun. This is fun, because … Because his mind’s already busy worried about what might happen because of what he’s doing. So, opening up that space to really just absorb and process what he’s experiencing, I think just can go a long way for him.

ANNA: Just one quick thing. Even just listening to the two of you and I’m thinking people listening to the podcast will feel it, too, like just this lighter energy of curiosity. And we’re not just saying, ignore and throw out. We’re saying like, bring that lighter energy. Because in that space, we do hear more from them.

Because, like you said, Pam, I really do think when we bring a heavy weight of an energy to something, I think they are thinking, okay, what do I do? This weight doesn’t feel good. This energy doesn’t feel good. And so, then there may be censoring pieces and they’re not being honest, because they don’t really know that energy. So, I don’t know, just listening to the two of you with this light, playful, curious energy, still is so engaged, and yet a very different environment being created.

PAM: Right.

ERIKA: Yeah. I was just thinking as Pam was talking, like my experience as a child of a mom with a lot of worry and fear, it is a constant. That’s what I’m hearing in my mind as I’m making my choices is like I’m looking at everything kind of through her lens. I think it’s hard not to do that. It’s hard not to pass some of our fears down. But I do think it’s distracting, like it distracts from who I am, what choices I make. And so, I just want to try my best and be careful and mindful of what I’m passing on to my kids in that way, because there’s just so many different ways to be, and the things that I’m afraid of are the same things that other people love doing. And so, just remembering that and keeping it light.

ANNA: But don’t you think even just saying that, just saying like, this doesn’t feel great to me, but I can see you’re enjoying it. That takes that edge off of where maybe your mom or other moms might be more like, this feels terrible, this is bad. This is worrying me. And it has that weighty feel to it, versus this like, wow, this is my experience of it. Tell me about yours.

Because I think it’s unrealistic to think that we’re never going to be worried, that we’re not going to have things that are concerning us, that we’re not going to be passing some of that down, like you’re saying. But I think the more we own it for ourselves and the more honest we are about how we are moving through the world and that we’re curious about how you’re moving through the world, I just think that really changes that dynamic a lot.

PAM: I think so. I think so. It comes back to that team. It’s like, people are different. Even if we’re related by blood, we’re different. Our ages are different, but we still all have needs and things that we enjoy doing. And when we can bring that curiosity, when I can walk in and say, that feels uncomfortable and they can reply with, no, it’s lots of fun. Rather than making a mental note that, okay, next time I hear mom coming up the stairs, I need to move to a different game or just need to move to a different room or end this conversation or whatever. And again, they’re doing that out of love, too, because they don’t want you to be upset with them.

But that means that they do feel like they need to hide things and then we can’t have conversations. And then when things go a little awry for them, they will hesitate to come and try and process that with you because they’ll feel that “I told you so” energy, et cetera. Because this will be something new to us because they’ve been hiding it on us.

So, it’s that curious energy and just being curious about our child and what they love and why they love it. I think it just brings a whole different energy to the family, doesn’t it?

ANNA: It really does.

PAM: Okay. Thank you again so much for your question, Michelle. As you can tell, we really enjoyed diving into it. And if you, listener, have a question that you’d like us to dive into, check out the show notes for the link to submit your question for a future Q&A episode or just go to living joyfully.ca/question. We would love to explore the questions that you are pondering right now on your unschooling journey. Bye, everyone!

ERIKA: Bye!

PAM: I hope you found this episode helpful on your unschooling journey. And be sure to check out the growing podcast archive. The conversations never go out of date. You can find more information about my books, the Living Joyfully Network Online Community, and the Childhood Redefined Unschooling Summit online course at my website, livingjoyfully.ca.

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This week on the podcast, we’re diving into another Bringing It Home episode. We’re looking deeper at our last Unschooling “Rules” topic, that unschoolers don’t have bedtimes, and exploring what it can look like to navigate staying up late with our unschooling families.

Unsurprisingly, there is no one right approach. It’s so much about seeing through our children’s eyes and making choices that feel good to them. A world of possibilities exists when we are open and curious!

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out her website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

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Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

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Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Connection, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of trust and compassion.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. Listen to The Living Joyfully Podcast here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hi, everyone! I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and this is episode 347 of the Exploring Unschooling Podcast. And I’m joined today by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Welcome!

ERIKA: Hi!

PAM: Hello!

ANNA: On our last Unschooling Rules episode, we talked about the idea that unschoolers have no bedtimes, what that actually looks like and how in practice, it’s a lot different than that blanket statement might indicate. In this Bringing It home episode, we will continue the conversation talking about how it looks when kids stay up late and how we can navigate it in a way that works for all members of the family.

But before we get started, I wanted to remind everyone about the Living Joyfully Podcast. It’s our podcast that focuses on building strong, connected relationships in all areas of our life. You’ll find that the themes are similar to what you hear on this podcast, but without the unschooling lens, making it easier to share with people in your lives, and also as a framework of how to apply the principles to all of your relationships. We keep them in short, easy-to-digest bites, and end with some questions to contemplate. It’s been so much fun putting it out there, and we’d love it if you could check it out and share it with anyone you think might enjoy it. It’s available on your favorite podcast players, and you can also find it specifically at podcast.show/livingjoyfully.

Okay. Erika, do you wanna get us started talking about late nights and how we can navigate them?

ERIKA: I would love to. And I actually think it’s kind of perfect that I get to start us off on this episode entitled Staying Up Late because late bedtimes are very much a part of life and a part of our family discussions these days. We’re right in the middle of a season of sleep exploration.

I think one of the fun things about this topic is that there are just so many ways that bedtime plays out in different families, but I do think it’s so common to have certain phases of life or certain children who have that strong interest in staying up late. And what’s late to one person just feels like a great time to get some things done for someone else, or a great time to hang out with some friends. So, this is of course, so individual. Everyone is so different. And so for this episode, I thought it might be helpful to go through some of the big sticking points and issues that can come up when kids are wanting to stay up late, starting with, “But nighttime is time for grownups to finally relax and be together.”

And so, this was me at one point in what now feels like the distant past. The kids had been falling asleep much earlier than Josh and I for a long time. And then that natural bedtime and their sleepy cues gradually became later and later until it no longer made sense for Josh to try to stay up later than them if he had work in the morning.

And, for me, the biggest part of navigating that new reality was just realizing that these are all seasons. We had a season where he went to bed without me, and then a season where we both went to bed before the kids, but I knew that I couldn’t expect them to go to bed early forever. And so, just releasing that thought was so helpful. In particular, I think the teenage brain seems geared to late nights and late mornings.

And so, instead of fighting with what was happening or clinging to that vision of an early bedtime, I shifted my focus to figuring out a new way, new ways and new times of connecting with Josh instead. And it also helped to start doing my nighttime routine and my self-care earlier in the evening, which was a definite shift from waiting to take care of myself until the kids were asleep. That just wasn’t working anymore. And I really don’t like that feeling of getting so tired that I can’t even drag myself to the bathroom. And so, I guess it was really just being aware of the stories that I was telling about the situation and being open to shifting my routine as it became clear that they were needing something different from me and from their schedule.

ANNA: I think it is one of the biggest sticking points. We get this idea, this picture in our mind, of how nights are supposed to look, and we can spend a lot of energy and try to move everyone into that vision. Ultimately, it was realizing that part of the stress of the evenings was my own creation by trying to force or even ever so gently nudge people towards participating in my vision of the night.

But when we opened things up and let go of any preconceived notions of the solution and started turning to the needs, that’s when things started to feel easier. At that point, we could be creative. You know, both David and I were finding time in the evenings, and thinking about how the evenings were playing out in general. Thinking about food and teeth brushing, wind downs, who needed to get up early the next day? Where were we all going to sleep?

Keeping an abundance mindset about time and solutions helped us find creative ways for David and I to have time together, even when the kids were staying up later than we were. Opening everything up, I feel, allowed us to flow with the needs and find solutions that worked for everyone, and it was always evolving. The seasons that you talked about, always evolving.

PAM: Always evolving. And that opening up to possibilities beyond how I was envisioning them going to sleep was definitely key for me, too. I remember noticing that if I went into conversations about going to bed with even just the energy of getting them to commit to a plan just for that night, they were resistant. Even when they did say something like, “I just wanna finish this game or this level, or this book, or whatever, and then I’ll go to bed,” there was a good chance it wouldn’t actually happen that way anyway, because they were in their flow.

I came to see that I was actually trying to get them to predict their future flow, and that’s when it started to seem a little ridiculous. So, with that, I was able to shift to supporting them in their actual flow. So, I could share plans that were on tap for the next day without the energy of, so therefore you should go to bed soon. And they could just add that info to the mix as their evening played out.

And we’d also chat about how they’d like to be woken up if need be, or what other things that they wanted to have happen in anticipation of the plans for the next day. And eventually, I remember getting to that point where I enjoyed waking up in the morning while the kids were still all asleep.

And I’d just walk through the house to see evidence of the fun they’d gotten up to the night before, after I’d gone to bed, after Rocco and I had both gone to bed. So, sometimes it was like some dishes in the kitchen or an old game console pulled out and plugged into the TV, or blankets piled up on the couch.

I just came to see those little vignettes as lovely reminders that we are all individuals living our unique, both together and apart. It’s so interesting to get to that stage where your kids are awake and living and doing things while you’re sleeping. It’s beautiful how they weave together, right?

ERIKA: Mm-hmm. And I love seeing that evidence of fun, like you described it, too, especially like elaborate scenes with all the characters and the plushies. I just have so many good memories of that. And I love what you both emphasized about not getting stuck on the vision or that set outcome that we always talk about, like releasing that there’s this one right way. And getting creative and curious about the possibilities just helps me so much, especially in these kind of charged areas like sleep.

So, I thought maybe next we could dive into what happens when a child wants to be up late, but also doesn’t want to be alone. And this is one of those challenges that I find leads to all kinds of interesting conversations and problem-solving opportunities.

And so, as far as my experience goes, it felt like the kids and I gradually shifted later and later together as they were more interested in playing with friends online and had just more going on in their social lives. We had many nights where I would say, “I’m getting tired,” and one of them, or both of them would say, “Just a little bit longer, we’re still playing.” And so, because they weren’t comfortable with being up alone at night, I did my best to support them while still trying to be honest about my own capacity. And so, I ended up having a season of really late nights with them, which worked out pretty well. We had a lot of fun together, and I was there to hear all the things that they were exploring and talking about with their friends, and we just had late nights and late mornings together.

Well, one night, I had reached my personal point of exhaustion and I let them know that I needed to go to bed, and this time, they were really right in the middle of something super exciting. And so, rather than join me and go to bed, they agreed together that they would stay up longer than me. And so that was the beginning of a new phase of our lives. The experience that they’ve gained from listening to their bodies and figuring out about what time they need or want to wake up for the next day’s activities, what their bodies feel like when they’re tired, regular tired, or overtired. All of that I think is just so valuable and we all get to do what feels best to us as individuals, which really suits our family since we’re all so different.

ANNA: It was a lot like that for us, too. I feel like it was this gradual moving back of when they were tired and I’m a big proponent of listening to our bodies, eat when we’re hungry, sleep when we’re tired, and so, it really tested my commitment to that as we each figured out when we really wanted to sleep and even how much sleep we needed, which was different for all of us. And all of those kind of related bits that then became late mornings, early mornings, late nights, middle of the night.

But part of the conversation for me was to be honest about my capacity and narrating to show my process in the evenings. So, how my brain was feeling, and if I was getting frustrated or just too tired to play or move or think. I could talk about what was going on for me without putting anything on them, because it was different, but it was still giving them information and some language. And when they were still at an age of not wanting to be alone, that’s where we’d start the creativity again and find ways for them to maybe play quietly in the family bed or in the room if I was really needing to go to sleep. I’d put on a sleep mask and some earplugs sometimes.

I was thinking about this and it’s just so funny what a small blip of time it feels like now, but I remember how long those moments felt on those nights where it was being pushed and pushed and I was figuring out, where is my capacity? There were times early on that we had to think about David needing to get up early, so we would strategize about quieter play, being in another part of the house, doing that prep work before bed earlier so there was less commotion in that bathroom when we needed to go to bed.

And so, I was a night owl way back then. And so, staying up with them was really not hard for me. We would just all sleep in the next day. I’d get up a little bit earlier and so then I had to adjust having my quiet time, a little bit of quiet time for me, in the morning instead of late at night, which would’ve been probably my preference back then. But like you said, it is a season. And so, I just did my best to embrace that and just figure out, where is this going to take us next? What are we learning? And I love the things that you mentioned, like we’re learning so many things.

We never had the super, super late nights for anyone until my youngest was a teen and started gaming with night owls on the west coast. So, midnight for them was 3:00 AM for us. But by the time this was happening, she was in her own room and on headphones and every once in a while, we’d hear the shrieks from something happening in the game. But for the most part it really wasn’t that disruptive. And I’d just make a point to check in with her before I was going to bed and we’d have a chat and does she need any food? What does she need for her night? We also had conversations about what was happening the next day and if she felt like she would get enough sleep, or was fine pushing through and going to bed earlier the next night?

It was just this ongoing dialogue about what was going on and a process of her learning how her body worked and how it functioned best. I remember she would not agree to sleepovers with friends unless there was a cushion day afterwards, because she knew what a toll those all-nighters with the big sleepovers took for her body to catch up.

PAM: I just want to emphasize that point too, because them making choices, like pushing through tiredness, that’s all good. That’s not a bad choice. That’s not a wrong choice. That’s like, ooh, I can play around. I know I can stay up extra late. I can do it for two, maybe three nights in a row, but then yes, I need some catch up time, some extra rest time. So, things that might look like wrong decisions that our kids make, no, they’re just choices. And to let them explore. I remember how many times I was surprised in those first couple of years when they would stay up late anyway and we would go to the thing. And they’d be great. They’d have fun and they would just enjoy themselves and then they’d come and maybe crash earlier that night or whatever. It doesn’t have to be like clockwork how things unfold.

Anyway, I did want to mention that I remember being sent to my bed in my room all by myself. And it was uncomfortable for me over different seasons growing up. So, when my kids were young, there were seasons where I’d go from bedroom to bedroom, hanging out with each as they wound down and fell asleep, reading books, chatting, whatever we were into at the time.

And then there were other seasons when we’d all hang out in our bedroom watching TV and chatting, them eventually falling asleep and Rocco and I carrying them to their rooms. If they got up during the night, maybe they’d come join us or I’d go join them. Or they found me sleeping in like their brother or sister’s bedroom, and then they’d just wake me up and I’d move to their bedroom. It might be two or three different bedrooms during the night. And that worked fine for me, because I can sleep just about anywhere now.

Once we began unschooling though, and moved beyond the bedtimes, there were times when someone wanted me to stay up with them and we would just chat about it as you were both mentioning. Mostly it was that they wanted me in the same room and I’d hang out as they were doing their thing, and maybe I’d be napping here and there. They’d wake me up if they needed something or they wanted to share something exciting that had happened. Or I’d wake up when I heard the loud little noise and say, “Hey, what happened?”

And alongside that, there were times that we all found ourselves up later than usual for something fun. And as you were mentioning narrating, Anna, I’d just share how I was feeling along the way. So when I’m getting tired, I get giggly and laugh longer and at sillier things. And that was known for years as the Sleepy Giggles as we talked about it, and they thought it was pretty hilarious. They could definitely tell my behavior changed as I got tired. If I continued to stay up, I started feeling nauseated and needed to lie down.

Their bodies absolutely were different, but they understood mine pretty easily. It was unfolding right in front of them, and I was telling them what was going on. So, if things were still popping and they wanted me to be around, or I didn’t want to miss the fun of what was going on, I would just lie on the couch quietly. I started to feel better. Maybe I might fall asleep, but I was definitely still around to catch the highlights. And then as they got older, I’d say goodnight, check in, see if they needed anything and off to bed I went. Different seasons. And over time, it really was just all about the conversations, how we were feeling, what we needed, what was going on, and goodnight, have a great night!

ERIKA: I love that so much. We have experienced so much of that late night giggly time, too. Maya and I have had so much fun making each other laugh late at night. We even coined a term belirious to describe that feeling, and Oliver doesn’t quite get it. He prefers to go to sleep before he gets silly, which totally fits with his personality. And because everyone is so different, there are just so many ways that this can work in practice, the possibilities are really endless.

And so, I think it could be fun to mention some of those logistical pieces of late nights. Things like noise, light, different people having different schedules, and what can those sleeping arrangements look like? And for this, I just think the key is staying open and curious and including everyone in that problem solving process. I know sometimes as the parent, I come to my kids with the solution I think is going to work because I’m the parent, but the kids have really great ideas and thoughts about these situations, too, and so I lose out on a lot if I think my one answer is the right answer.

And there are so many things we’ve talked about in the Network that can help with creating a sleeping atmosphere for some people in the family while other people are still awake. So, things like closing doors, using blackout curtains, using earplugs or white noise machines, putting rugs under furniture and noisy chairs if the kids are scooting around in the night, using headphones for gaming, moving that activity, the gaming activity or whatever it is, to a room that’s farther away from the sleeping room, or moving the sleeping room to another room that you might not have even considered for sleeping, but it’s a little more out of the way , so now that seems perfect. And that’s just to name a few ideas.

ANNA: It just really is so amazing what bubbles up when we remain open and curious and involve all the parties. There are so many options and they’re just there if we start looking and just recognizing any resistance we might have and noticing, is that helping us find solutions or is it kind of shutting down the conversations, like you said, maybe narrowing in on one solution? Then we just have this tunnel vision. I wanted to actively set aside any resistance just to feel how it felt to be open, because my resistance comes from a place that I’m tired or I want it to be a certain way. It’s not a bad thing necessarily, but it’s just kind of checking in to understand, hey, if I set that aside, what actually opens up? And what I found was a lot.

And just remembering it’s not about one person acting in a vacuum. We talk about everyone’s needs and trust that we will keep at it until we find something that feels good. And we just get there a lot faster if we bring that open, curious mindset and everyone’s participating. From that place, I felt like we could get at the needs. So, that might be light or a need of quiet or food or the need of company. Whatever was bubbling up for the people involved, when we understand that need, that’s when the options opened up. It’s really this creative process to think about how to address noise or too much light. We miss those if we’re focused on the answer being that everyone just needs to be in bed asleep by X time.

We had friends that put up acoustic tile in their gamer’s room and it made a huge difference. I don’t mind earplugs, so that helped me, because I’m a very light sleeper. I’ve found that when kids know that we’re open to finding solutions and not trying to stop them from doing what they’re wanting to do, and they’re not trying to stop me from sleeping, we know that we’re all working in this together, then we can find these solutions that feel good.

And I know if families are newer to this, everyone may not be participating yet. They’re still a little unsure of what this process looks like, and can we trust it? But as the trust builds and all the ideas are considered and valued, that is going to change. And sometimes in the beginning, just making it fun and starting with some off-the-wall, silly ideas can just make people laugh and get them excited and they start throwing out ideas and it just sets the stage of, there’s no bad idea. We’re just here talking and trying to figure things out.

And you’re right. There have been so many great sleep conversations and breakthroughs on the Network. It is so unique to each family. And it’s definitely not a rule that all unschoolers stay up late, but hopefully, it’s about each person in the family really tuning into their body and finding rhythms that work with the life that each family is creating.

PAM: Oh, I know. I love that. And it really does just go such a long way to validate someone’s wish to stay up later. When they just feel seen and heard and trust that you’re going keep going to figure out ways to make it work for everyone, they often feel less defensive and resistant, feel like we’re on the same team. But as you mentioned, Anna, that process takes time, too, right? It takes time for that trust to build. So, maybe if sleep is your first one that you’re going into this kind of conversation with, because I knew where I wanted to get and with that understanding that, I can’t say, “Hey, you can fully trust me now. I changed my mind! We’re just gonna figure this out together.”

That is hard to trust. I can know that in my head and know that I want to get there, but I can also take my time and I can be extra giving upfront so that they can see through experience that they can really trust me. So, I think that is such an important point to help people get there if this is their first experience, that it can take some time. But it is so worth it and that’s where the relationships and the trust and the connection grow deeper and deeper over time.

And, as you both mentioned, kids really can come up with some great ideas. So, my being extra open to things, I got to start to hear, when they realize that they can share ideas, even silly ones, and I’ll be like, “Oh, that’s cool! That would be so funny.” Rather than, “Oh my gosh, that would never work,” the energy changes and then over time they feel more and more open to share things without fear that they’re going to be shut down or told that was a silly idea, or, “I don’t agree with you.” We come to see how capable kids really are and they really are open to considering the needs of others when they feel like their needs are respected too. It gets us to that team level where all our needs, all the things, our constraints, our quirks of personality, all those pieces are going to be respected and heard and woven into the mix of the ways we move forward.

And it’s not about like, let’s brainstorm and come up with one solution. It’s like, Ooh, what about this? Let’s go try this. Oh, what about this? Let’s go try this. Oh, that kind of worked, and just working through it, through the conversations. And it really became so much fun over the years to brainstorm unconventional possibilities, using the rooms in unconventional ways, setting up different environments and different spaces. For us, it was just so fun. We’re still moving our house around.

ERIKA: I just think like not getting stuck thinking we need to solve everything in some perfect way that’s just going to stay the perfect way forever. Especially with something like sleep, that’s just not going to happen. Things are going to change and we could just try different things. Even just for one night, we could try something and just see how it goes. And so, just being playful with it makes things feel so much lighter.

ANNA: So much lighter. But actually something bubbled up for me that’s not as light from Pam’s, but I do want to mention it, because it’s this idea we’ve seen in the Network and a lot of places over the years, it’s an older child that maybe wants to stay up later and maybe there’s younger siblings around.

And so, the focus is on what we’ve been talking about solving for these pieces. But really again, it’s about getting to that underlying need and maybe that older child is needing some quiet. It’s a bit more chaotic environment during the day with younger siblings. And then sometimes, as parents, we can get defensive about that, that wait a minute, but you know, this environment, whatever. But it’s like, so even things like that, just checking in. Like, hey, okay, is it that? What do they love about the late nights? Is it friends that are available? Is it quiet to think and it’s a creative time for them? And okay, how can we create that in other ways, maybe, during the day? Or how can we just honor it in the night?

But that’s that piece of just understanding each other, really being open, really looking for that underlying need. So, something you said, Pam just made me think of that piece.

ERIKA: Okay, so that brought something up for me too, which is I’ve heard the kids say things like, “I just want independence,” like, “I’m in charge of what happens right now. I’m gonna be getting food for myself and deciding what to do for myself.” So, sometimes it’s that, like a great opportunity to just do their own thing.

PAM: Yeah. And sometimes what those conversations are so useful, because the staying up late can be the solution that they’ve come to. And like you were saying, getting to that need underneath helps. It helps them recognize it. It helps us understand them better and also helps us maybe come up with like three or four different ways. So, if for a time or a week or whatever staying up late doesn’t work, maybe we can get them some quiet time on their own if that is the issue or whatever that underlying need is. Staying up late can definitely be one way, but maybe we can come up with an abundant three or four ways to meet that need, and staying up late is a choice on the platter rather than the one solution, as you were talking about, Erika.

ANNA: But we miss it if we’re just kind of tunneled in, even on this specific situation. It’s so much about just getting to know each other, having those conversations. What do you love about it? What’s fun about it? Because I think we can get so focused on even finding the solution, even when we’re doing it in this way, like being creative and we’re gonna find a solution. We’re kind of focused on that versus the learning, the learning that can happen when we’re finding out these nuances of each other and living in the family together.

PAM: Yeah. And it’s a season, right?

ANNA: I hate to say that, because I think people are like, gosh, Anna, we’ve heard it before, but it’s like, when you’re telling the things Pam, and I’m just thinking, oh, it was so long ago! It’s so quiet here now! And so, I know that sounds terrible because I really do remember how long those nights felt like. I remember just thinking, this is never going to end. I’m never going to sleep again. But you really do. It really changes so, so fast.

Oh my goodness. It has been so much fun to dive into this rich late night topic with you both, and we’d love it if you would join us on the Living Joyfully Network where we talk about this topic and many more that impact our unschooling lives. It’s such a great space to connect with other families navigating the same challenges, to feel support around that and experience all the joy of the connection as well. So, you can learn more about that at living joyfully.ca/network. So, thanks again for joining us here, and we hope to see you next time.

ERIKA: Bye!

PAM: I hope you found this episode helpful on your unschooling journey. And be sure to check out the growing podcast archive. The conversations never go out of date. You can find more information about my books, the Living Joyfully Network online community, and the Childhood Redefined Unschooling Summit online course at my website, living joyfully.ca.

View Details

This week, we’re back with another On the Journey episode. Pam, Anna, and Erika are joined by Living Joyfully Network member Cassie Emmott. Cassie is an unschooling mom with four children with diverse needs. She shares her path to unschooling and some insightful reflections about parenting and deschooling.

We talk about navigating challenging seasons and large families, the depth of inner work that unschooling encourages, and the choices we make to stay present and see the joy. Cassie also shares her beautiful poem about what processing feels like on the inside versus what it looks like on the outside. It’s so wonderful having her on the podcast and we hope you find our conversation inspiring on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Mentioned in the Episode

The Living Joyfully Network

Cassie’s podcast, Connecting The Dots – Because despite appearances, the dots are not placed at random: https://cassiehubert.com/podcast/#platform-pick

And her blog of poetry and essays: https://cassiehubert.com/blog/

Cassie on Instagram: @creativeperformermum

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out the Living Joyfully website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Connection, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of trust and compassion.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. Listen to The Living Joyfully Podcast here, or find it in your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully and this is episode number 346 of the Exploring Unschooling podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts Pam Laricchia and Anna Brown, as well as our guest this week, Cassie Emmott. Welcome to you all!

CASSIE: Hi!

ANNA: Hi!

PAM: Hello!

ERIKA: Today we’re sharing another episode in our On the Journey series where we speak to our guests about their experiences, their a-ha moments, their challenges, and what they’ve learned on their unschooling journeys. Cassie is a member of the Living Joyfully Network and I have so enjoyed meeting her and getting to know her and her family. She’s a very inspiring thinker and I just always get so much out of the ideas she shares with everyone on the Network. And so, I’m so excited to have her here for this On the Journey episode.

And before we get started, I just wanted to share. One of my absolute favorite network features is one I was hesitant about initially, and that is the live weekly Zoom calls that we call our live conversations. So, I’m introverted. I get nervous when I’m speaking in front of people, and at first, I really wasn’t sure if it would feel too strange to listen to and talk to people I don’t really know or if I would be too nervous to share my thoughts, especially in front of Pam and Anna, who I’d been listening to on the podcast and the summit for years. And so, it’s fun to realize that now that call is one of my absolute favorite parts of my whole week.

We have different types of calls throughout the month. Sometimes we have breakout rooms to chat in small group. And most of the calls are just an open discussion and we end up talking and hearing about so many interesting things. And what I’ve really noticed is that the energy of being together is just so amazing. There’s this great feeling of support and connection.

And one of the ways that the calls have helped me grow in my own journey is that I just have this confidence now that I can handle big emotions and big problems, my own and other people’s. I can move through things that feel hard at first and sit with feelings that are challenging. And since I now have so much more experience hearing challenges and hearing all different ideas and perspectives about those challenges, it’s really helped me ground into the fact that there are always so many ways to approach a situation and that we can figure things out. And so, I just really value all of the collective insight and the experience that the community has to offer and love all the connections I’ve made.

And so, if you’re curious about what the Living Joyfully Network has to offer you, I really encourage you to give it a try. You can check out LivingJoyfully.ca/network to learn more, and also feel free to message me on the Exploring Unschooling Instagram account, which you can find @ExploringUnschooling with any questions you have about it.

And now I’d like to turn it over to Pam to start us off on this On the Journey episode. Pam?

PAM: Yay! Thank you. Hi, Cassie!

CASSIE: Hi!

PAM: And I just want to echo Erika, that I, too, feel so lucky to have met you through the network and I’m really happy that you are here to share some of your thoughts and ideas. So first, to get us started, can you give us just a bit of an introduction to you and your family?

CASSIE: Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me. I’ve loved this podcast for some time, so it’s been really great and it’s been really lovely to meet all of you as well, so it’s been good.

So yeah, in our family we have me, Cassie, and Pete, and we are the grownups, arguably. And then we’ve also got Grace who is 11. Our birthdays all changed from sort of December through to March, so we’ve just had all the shift around. So, yeah, Grace is 11, Isaac’s 10, very much just, Olivia is eight, and Micah is three. And so, yeah, so that’s us lot.

And yeah, we’ve pretty much unschooled since the beginning. I had a friend who was considering pulling her kid out of school when he was quite a lot smaller and she looked at home education here in the UK and so she said, “Oh, would you consider doing it?” And my answer was, “No. I don’t like teaching children.” And that’s not true because I like teaching. I’m quite didactic, but I was like, hmm, I don’t really want to be in a classroom trying to make small people mind. It just doesn’t work. And so, I like my own and like kids I care about. And then it just went from there.

She was looking into some stuff and I ended up finding John Holt as most people seem to and it just opened a total paradigm shift. So, we went sort of that route and Pete has been with me since the beginning. I tend to do the reading and then I disseminate to him and it’s fun. We’ve gotten more kind of open as time’s gone on. I think they were so small. Grace was two when we first really considered this, so it’s still infancy really anyway. But it’s watching them grow and flourish and marking their own time and so that’s been really interesting.

So, Grace is currently, if that’s cool, I’ll share a bit about what they’re into.

ANNA: Yes, please!

CASSIE: So, Grace is into everything. She reminds me a lot of me at her age, books, the hind leg off a donkey, but also loves performing, loves making scripts, loves messing around for comic effect. She’s got cracking comic timing, always has had, and has always got some massive project on the go.

At the moment, she’s currently making about four films and several series, and she’s just decided she’s going to start a club, ironically, a school club, which is hilarious about krakens and things. And so, she’s been doing loads of editing and stop motion and she keeps diving into going a new script.

And literally this week, she’s suddenly got into baking, which she’s never been interested beyond the cakes. And so, she’s like, “I’m going to write a recipe book.” And so, she’s been doing that and she’s very sweet, very kind, incredibly good, big sister, really lovely and fun and really fabulous company. Very empathetic.

And then Isaac. So, Isaac is 10, but I should probably mention my middle two are both autistic. And that does make a big difference in our family, because Isaac is largely nonverbal. Doesn’t really talk. He sings though, and boy can that kid sing. He’s got a beautiful voice and an amazing ability to hear music and pick up melody like that.

And so, he’s also still in nappies, as is Olivia. So, it’s a very different setup to having a ten- and an eight-year-old who may be on a usual path. And so, he’s recently got into Sonic the Hedgehog and running games on his tablet, which is really fun. And it’s so funny hearing him kind of play stuff and when he crashes, he then just turns the whole thing off and flings it across the room.

And he’s very affectionate and cuddly. Loves music, loves bouncing and smushing his face to us, which is always lovely. And singing and if you sing something he’ll pick up really fast and sing it back to you for weeks. So, I used to set Psalms for church and I’d be making up a new tune and he’d just be singing it for the next two weeks, the bit that I wrote. He’s amazing like that. It’s so cool.

And he’s got loads of energy and used to escape a lot. Doesn’t so much now, but runs. See, he’s got a lot of energy, so he’s definitely kept us on our toes.

And then Olivia, who is eight now, she’s so sweet, too. She is loving dolls. Over Christmas, we got loads of dolls and she’s just been exploring looking after babies and she has a tablet most of the time and is always listening to a movie or something in the background. Currently, as of the last couple of days, she’s discovered recording herself, so she’s been doing microphone stuff, and recording herself, and all the tablets get nicked.

So, they’ve all got one and she keeps nicking them in order to use the extra storage. And so, she’s singing and recording herself. And she’s really artistic, creative. Grace is really artistic as well, likes drawing, but like she keeps tearing little characters or draws around the house, which is both not ideal but beautiful and is very affectionate and cuddly and again, also autistic. And that comes out for her more in the need to have all the lights off or all the lights on and certain things and just timings needed to be clear for her. But ever since she was a teeny tiny baby, she’s just really sweet and that’s lovely.

And then Micah. Micah is three and very loud. I call him Captain Shouty-Pants, because he loves to shout and at the moment he’s into numbers. There’s a program on BBC called Numberblocks and he’s been counting like crazy. So much fun and so funny. He’s also very dramatic, he gets it from his mum, and likes to sort of recite stories and he waits till he has your attention and then performs it for you. And he does this weird gesticulating thing, like he’s doing some kind of hammy Shakespeare. It’s so funny. And yeah, he’s very boisterous, loves to climb, fling himself across the room, build stuff. He’s really into building with Magna-Tiles at the moment, so he’s lots of fun.

And then Pete and I, what to say? Lots of things. He’s my best friend. I’m really blessed to have him. He’s an amazing dad and husband, so I’m very glad to have him in my life and the kids. He’s got back into Dungeons and Dragons more recently. He works as a chaplain at a school, so sort of a Christian school. And he’s a Christian chaplain, but he’s not like a minister or anything. He’s amazingly empathetic and carries this unschooling energy into his schoolwork and the office, and holds space for people and also gets excited about sharing faith, but it’s also the combination of that and the pastoral care. And he’s very playful and silly and we like riffing with words. So, that’s fun.

And then I’m kind of into everything all the time and oh, just all sorts. So, I’m an actor by trade and training, although for the last decade or so, I’ve very much been full-time mothering and home educating or not, and so I love performing and singing and writing songs and writing poems and just all sorts. I love anything that’s to do with people and how people tick and connecting and communicating and getting people to kind of get unstuck and all of that.

I love to bake, so the creativity comes out in loads of ways. And lately I have been deep diving into Minecraft, and I’ve currently spent a lot of the last few hours building a city out of a mountain, which has been great fun. So, I’m figuring out how to do that and it kind of plays with my design love. So, that’s a lot, but that’s kind of us. It’s a lot of us in the house, so, yeah. Hope that’s not too much.

ANNA: Oh my goodness. No, I love it so much and I think it just paints such a lovely picture and I just love it. And it kind of fits into what I want to talk about and I’m going to give just a quick background.

So, on the Network, we have a Marco Polo group, which is a video messaging app. And it’s so fun to get that glimpse into people’s homes and lives and just have that connection.

And gosh, I mean, what stood out for me from the beginning, Cassie, is just how you delight in your children, and it’s just this love and care and joy that just is so evident, and that is even in the midst of all the challenges that life throws because life throws challenges as we know. But there is just this deep connection and love and joy, and I feel like you’ve created an environment where all of your children with very diverse needs can thrive. And I just think it’d be really fun if you could tell us just a bit about some strategies or your journey as it came with that and what’s kind of helped you do that. And I know part of it is just who you are and what you bring to it, but I know you’ve had lots of learning along the way as we all have to create that environment that just feels so good.

CASSIE: Yeah. So, I’ve been thinking about it and so that I don’t give you like an epic thesis worthy of a giant document, I will do my best to nutshell it, because I have lots of words.

It’s funny. I was really thinking about this and it kind of hinges on like creativity, connection, and communication, which are starting to become my buzzwords in everything else that I’m doing as well. And it’s not deliberate. I’m not like marketing, but it’s like surrendering to who you actually have.

And I was chatting to Pete about it and just said, “Is there anything you want to add to that?” when I was sharing some of my thoughts, and he said, “Surrender.” And I think that is such a big word in so many aspects, in our faith journey, like surrendering to trusting that God’s got us, but also surrendering to who you actually have in front of you, who you’re dealing, with who they actually are, who you are at this precise moment in time, which changes, and then getting creative with how you work with that. So, I mean, there’s so many facets to this family, because, like the big diverse needs. I didn’t expect, for example, to have three kids in nappies when my youngest is three and the others are that much older. It’s fine. Do I wish at some point that they’d be in a position where they’re no longer in them? Of course. I’d love them to be free. But at the same time, to serve them in that way by loving them and just helping them is actually a different kind of joy and it’s slowed me down.

I think I was never a major stress head when it came to the kids. I think part of my actor training part of a lot of things, of just being where you are and learning how to really see where you are actually at and unpick that and ask the questions. That’s been really important. So, I came to motherhood I think with a bunch of that already, but not trying to propel us on this journey. And so, changing things up.

Sorry, this is going to go around and around because this is how my brain works. So, I hope you’re still following. Shout if it’s unclear. So, I think Pete and I joke that we get some things in place and we feel like we’ve got a rhythm and everything’s working and everyone’s needs are being met and then it’s usually about six weeks and it has to change all over again. And we just think we’ve got a pattern down or we know what we are doing.

And so, the surrender to change, which isn’t always easy, is really hard. And yet when we do and we lean into it, rather than fighting this uphill battle against what isn’t going to work anyway, it’s like, well, let’s just try this a different way and just see, and then it’ll probably change in another six weeks’ time.

I mean, it’s not as neat as that. That would be lovely.

Leaning into the dull and the mundane has meant that, where I dream of big and dramatic and life changing and world changing, has helped me to really see and helped us to really see the incredible beauty that is right in front of me. And it’s a bit like the macrocosm/microcosm thing. You know, you can walk out into a woods or a forest and go, “Wow, the whole thing!” and that is one part of it. Or you can then hone in right on the small things and and learn to delight in the beauty that is right in front of you in the teeny tiny.

And I think, whereas my heart dreams of massive stuff at the same time, it’s been a real journey for me, especially with the ongoing needs of the family, to keep looking at what’s there in the small. So, for example, Olivia started drawing on the walls. Now that I live in a rental property with landlords who aren’t wildly amenable to redecorating every 10 minutes, if at all. So, it’s that natural, very real fear of going, I don’t have loads of money. I don’t want to be repainting 95 times. This is tricky.

But then I looked at what she was drawing, and to be fair, I’ve been looking at what she was drawing anyway, so I got there quicker than that. But this was a few years ago, she was drawing these beautiful little Tinkerbell fairies and the quality of artwork was just so stunning.

And she’s not like a child-prodigy-stunning, but when you looked at the drawing, it’s just beautiful and really clear and she’s got a real style and a flare. And seeing that has meant that I could go, “Oh wow, but look at what she’s drawing.” It will probably wash off the walls eventually, and if not, we’ll have to paint before we leave. But it’s like, in doing that, I could have yelled and I have my human moments when I’m much more shouty pants myself. But instead going, she really needed to draw. And evidently the canvases I was offering her of a small piece of paper were not sufficient. She needed a big space, and so therefore, giving her that option to do that, has, I guess, taken the pressure of her needing to be a particular way.

And the same for Isaac. Just constantly being creative, finding space where they can all have little chill out spaces. Figuring out that we were all sleeping in the same room except for Isaac anyway, that maybe we needed to just move rooms and put loads of beds together, which we did just before Christmas. And so, we’re all in there because Grace at 10 and now 11, still needed us. And so, she needed to thrive and feel safe by knowing she was safe at night. And did I, again, dream that I would be sharing a family bed with a whole room like a giant dormitory? No.

I guess it’s just been this whole creative thing and respecting them as individual people and who they are and enjoying them for who they are and surrendering to the tablet stuff of giving them all a tablet and, you know, paying it off when we can. Or Olivia wanting to go to the shops and buy a doll and she got a load of Christmas money, so we took her to the shop every time and she just wanted to get all the things. And rather than going, “No, you must have one,” it’s like, okay, well we have this fund at the minute, let’s just use it for that. And her delight has been so rich and gorgeous and she’s playing with them and then she moves to something else.

And it is tricky sometimes trying to navigate lots of people in her family anyway, but lots of people with different needs. I just think keep being open to trying and trying something else and forgiving one another and apologizing when you screw up and then just being playful with it. And bedtimes went out the window a while ago, but we have a rhythm. Again, it’s just not rigid.

And I think the other big thing that I’ve been constantly working through in this whole aspect of parenting and with our kids is the need for permission. It’s a really real thing for that sense of outside permission that you’re not going to have someone turn around and tell you, “You’re doing it wrong.” And there’s so much cultural messaging around how to parent and what is the right way and what your kids should be learning. And when you don’t go to the school route, I have my wobbles and I’m going, are they going to learn anything? And then suddenly, Grace decides she’s baking, or she’s making these amazing short films and doing loads of editing and then showing them to anybody she just meets. And it’s just like, wow. And so, realizing that I don’t necessarily need permission from outside if I’m confident in the choice itself. And the same for Pete.

Just building a nest and building what we need. And at the moment, we’ve been in a long season of colds, but also of being very much in our house because it’s trickier to get out. We’ve now got some help and that that helps. But it’s still wet and horrible and everyone’s still under the weather and we are very much hibernating and surrendering the whole idea we should be going out and doing stuff is not where we’re at right now. And that’s okay, too. And maybe the reason I don’t go out and get out in the woods all the time, even though that’s what I imagined I’d be doing if I home educated my kids, I swear I was going to have a woodland life. It’s not been that at all, but it’s been a cuddle on the sofa, surrounded by toys, children bundling on you and squashing you, and then trying to Minecraft and not knock all your blocks off at the same time. And it’s been great. It’s been really fun.

And in the harder times, it’s, keep leaning back into that who they are and the delight that they give us because they’re flipping amazing. They’re really fun as well, and they’re funny and playful and silly and then I can be my playful silly self, which sometimes involves some daft dancing or weird wordplay. It’s not meant to be alliterative, but anyway. And it’s really fun. And I think that answers, but, you know,

ANNA: Right! I mean, I think what I love about that is, I do think you hit those big pieces, because surrender. I mean, that’s a beautiful word. And I think what I see is that element that’s in in you, that light in you, is really in that moment. And I think that surrender helps you be in that moment. And in that moment you are seeing the joy and the beauty, because you’re right when we’re in our head thinking about what other people are wanting for us or these other things, they’re not with these beautiful children. They’re not there.

And I think all of those things that you talked about are what get you into that moment where you can just be amazed and in awe of how wonderful they are. So yeah, I loved that so much. Thank you.

ERIKA: I was just going to pull out that six weeks at a time little thing that she had mentioned. I thought that was so great. Because it’s like, I mean, that is another type of surrender I think to just like realize, even when we feel like we’ve got it, it’s going to change again. They’re going to grow, something’s going to change, the next thing’s going to happen.

And so, just to kind of keep yourself from attaching too strongly to something that’s working, I think, has been a really fun thing to hear about.

PAM: Yeah. What bubbled up for me, and again, back to the surrender piece, and as you mentioned, Cassie, this is not what I imagined my life was going to look like back then. But that surrender piece and what you made so evident is that yes, it’s very different and it’s so amazing. Right? It’s not like I gave that up for something different, for a nebulous reason for myself. But this is also, in my experience, many times, was actually so much better and richer and just more fun than that steady path that I thought I was going to go on. So, the surrender piece, such a huge part.

But what kept me surrendering day after day was learning so many times, wow, this was even better than what I could have come up with on my own.

CASSIE: Yeah. And I think there’s dreams. Like, I still have big dreams. So, my heart still is very much in acting, but it was realizing that you can’t have two priorities. One has to always be slightly prior and it’s been the family, and I’ve said this so many times, but I’ve never regretted. I miss acting and performing and doing that whole thing like I’d miss a limb. But I’ve never missed it more than I have valued being able to be fully present with my family. And it’s like the two things can be held in tension. The desire for both the big dreams that I still have as a person on my own right and the passion that just will not die in this whole area and yet, maybe that’ll come in the future, but meanwhile I’m not giving up for something that’s just drudgery. I’m actually giving it up for something that’s so life giving and it might not be forever either.

PAM: That’s beautiful.

ERIKA: I love that. And I was thinking, too, that step forward path that Pam was talking about. It’s so freeing to be able to think of life as more of a journey metaphor, which does not look like a predictable line, but has all of these kind of unexpected twists and turns.

So, I had a thought that I wanted to talk about, because you shared a poem that you wrote about doing deep inner work that’s so much a part of deschooling and unschooling and I was wondering if you would share it with us and maybe some of your thoughts about that aspect of your life.

CASSIE: Sure. Okay. I’ll bring it up on my phone, because I didn’t print it out yet.

That deep work that brings us out into the light,

enabling us to really see,

To know ourselves –

This work of unpicking and unpacking our story,

Of tentatively claiming kinship

With those orphaned experiences,

those parts of our childlike character we were trained to reject –

This is the work that goes unseen.

Looking as though nothing is happening,

With no obvious shoot or bloom –

But, the seeming opposite,

That of a shrinking,

Diminishing,

A reducing of capacity and strength,

Becoming more pathetic –

Is less attractive,

Even offensive,

To those on the outside.

Yet the excavation underway below the surface –

Unearthing great caverns of beauty,

Geodes of pain,

Hidden rivers of strength –

This is where the refining and reforming

is at its most ambitious.

Here, the understanding

and redefinition of beauty,

is both infant and infinite.

Re-tuning to that holy note,

Becoming more crystalline,

We begin to resonate,

Growing in clarity,

Anchored in rock.

No errand for those whose hunger for hope is quenched,

This downward, uphill struggle will break you open,

Cutting to the quick,

Where every nerve vibrates,

Raw,

And grief threatens to drown.

Yet here is where peace is found.

In the turmoil of stillness,

At the edge of the abyss,

We die.

And wake to new life,

More tender,

And more whole.

This deep work –

Which none can know,

But the one on the inside who bears witness,

And tends the wounds with love –

This work is love made flesh,

And freedom follows.

There you go. That’s the end. You can talk again.

ANNA: Beautiful!

PAM: I know. So beautiful.

CASSIE: Thank you. Yeah. What was the question again? It’s funny, so yeah, just thinking about I think many of us are really afraid to truly see ourselves. I think we’re afraid of shame or rejection. We’re afraid of actually realizing our stories are full of shame, because maybe they are. Maybe we’re ashamed of things we’ve done or things we’ve been, or how we’ve been. Maybe we don’t know how to unpack that and we can often feel powerless to change.

And I think a lot of us are content to sleepwalk and we just won’t look too closely. It’s safer this way, and yet it really isn’t safer, because you don’t know what you’re going to bump into.

I think I had someone describe it once as a bit like walking into a room filled with cluttered furniture, but with the lights off and then you’re like, but it’s safer. I can’t see what’s there. But you crash into everything. You turn the lights on, you see everything that’s there.

(Cassie shared that the reference to the cluttered room came from Aundi Kolber’s book Try Softer and her IG handle is @aundikolber.)

I think saying you turn the lights on and then you’re like, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much there,” But you’re less likely to crash in and stab yourself in the eye from something you’ve stored. And I think the nature of all work that connects us with our sense of story, whatever that is, because everyone’s had pain, everyone’s had trauma, whether it’s big or small. I’ve had some pretty big ones, like one I’ll share briefly.

We lost a baby in a late term miscarriage and so that was a pretty big one, but then there’s others like looking at my family background and stuff that was beautiful and then going, oh, but some things that didn’t quite work for me and starting to realize that now. And that’s scary, because then you go, but I had a happy childhood and in many ways I really did. But looking slightly deeper is scary, because then you have to go, but what about the bits that maybe weren’t so great? And I didn’t have a terrible childhood at all. I had loving parents and a very supportive family in so many ways.

But it’s that nature of looking deeply can be really scary. And I think when I was writing this poem, I’d been writing it because I’d been processing a whole bunch of things about so many bits and pieces, but in the process of doing that, it’s exhausting. And physically, I’ve had five babies, but four babies, and then we had a lockdown and all the things, and so, physically I’m pretty drained and exhausted and yet also all this processing takes physical energy and that isn’t visible and it’s not visible because I still haven’t unpacked half of it. And so, it’s still messy on the inside. And so, that’s still taking energy. And then it looks like, whereas I used to be the super capable person, I mean I think I just ran too fast anyway. I’d be doing millions of classes and dancing and performing and used to be able to run on all of that.

And now it’s like if I’ve had one outing in a week, I’m done for the week. And it’s really crazy how much, I think from the outside, to people who knew me more at that point, it probably looks like I’m a bit useless now, or I just want to hole up in my comfort zone. And yet the nature of really asking the questions about, well, what was that like? How do I feel about that now? Is that still who I want to be? Does bring up pain? And allowing yourself to really feel that pain is sometimes almost as scary as the fact that there might be some.

But like with grief, which has been a theme that’s run a lot through my life, you can’t circumvent it. You can hide it, you can squash it, you can suppress it, but you can’t move through it if you don’t allow it to take the space it’s going to take.

And I don’t know, with unschooling, we’ve gone off a beaten path, or at least a beaten path I’ve known growing up with my kids and what I was parented like, and in lots of ways there was a certain amount of freedom too. And they were supportive from being an actor without telling me I had to get a trade behind me. I mean, that’s a big deal for a lot of people. And yet, things like expecting certain levels of respect or putting boundaries in place that mean, well, it’s the parent’s time now and it’s the kid’s bedtime and going, well, why? Is that really an important boundary? And sometimes those boundaries really are. Maybe Pete and I haven’t spoken to each other properly all week, and so actually we need that time. So, finding someone to create that to work for us. It’s not that the thing itself isn’t necessarily a good thing, but just the nature of unschooling as I’ve dived into it more as we’ve dived into it more as our kids have grown, I have wobbles every so often that what if they’re not reading in time? What if I’m not doing it right? And yet asking those questions, taking the space, allowing myself to feel what I’m feeling, and then also just connecting.

My interest in people, especially as a performer, as an actor, like I love the story. I love getting into the head and the heart of somebody, and it’s an incredible privilege when I’ve got to do that work to stand in effectively stand in somebody else’s body and walk out their journey. And that sounds a bit weird, but it’s like you are. You are offering your body to be a conduit to tell that story, to connect with the people in the audience, whether on screen or in person. And so, you are sharing that. And you have to allow them to be them, whoever that character is. And so, you have to know where you stop or start in order to be able to tell someone else’s story without just making it all about you.

And so that was good grounding. But with parenting and unschooling, it’s been a lot of, keep asking questions. And sometimes when we are tired or we snappish or you just want to do something or, “Well, they should really eat this.” I love to cook and it really annoys me when my kids won’t eat my food. And I’m like, “But I made it particularly. Why don’t you want it?” And yet, actually, hang on a minute. Does she need to? Is it really a value judgment on my worth and my cooking skills if she doesn’t? Is it really the end of the world if they eat nothing but bread and I have a family of ducks forever? Maybe I can cook something nice. I swear at one point we did have a family of ducks. We’d just get through bread. They’d just eat bread. I’m like, “Oh, the Emmett Quackers.” It was hilarious.

I just think we do not in our culture, and I think as people we are a bit scared of story being messy. And we’d like to wrap it in a nice bow. There’s nothing wrong with a lovely bow, but there’s no point in wrapping bow around something that’s really not actually at a point there’s some wholeness.

And yet, asking those questions, allowing yourself to sit with the you you’re not so sure you like until you come out the other side. Not necessarily going, “And I’m fixed!” at all, but going, do you know what? I like her. I don’t always like what I can do or can’t do. I get very frustrated or disappointed with my lack of energy or the fact that I feel that, what if I’m not getting my kids out enough? Or what if they’re only going to be on their tablets now forever? Of course they’re not. And then I see that they don’t but it, but I like who I’m becoming. I like the person.

It’s really funny. So, as a performer, voice is important, and that command of your voice and being able to do that. I mean, I once told someone off the stealing in my bike because I shouted at them and told them off. It was brilliant. I still have that. So, I went, “Ah, excuse me. Do you mind not stealing my bike, please!?” I just sort of yelled at him and all the adrenaline was pumping. It was hilarious.

And so, commanding voice and knowing that you can set a boundary by saying to your child, “No,” it’s very powerful. Except it gets in the way of connection and it gets in the way of that being a person. And so, when people say, well, if you just say no, I’m like, seriously? I can say no really authoritatively, till the cows come home. Believe me. I do old-school mom fantastically. I’ve played Russian matriarchs. I’m good at that. I’m not even that old, but I’ve played old ladies. It’s funny. But there’s that, do I want to do that? Or I insist on something and I watch my kid’s face fall or I watch the light go out their eyes or I get too teachery, because I like to get excited and tell you all about it and try and get you to get it with me. And then I watch Grace just switch off and glaze over and be like, “Mommy. I just want to play with the letters my way. I just want to make up words that are gibberish and then get you to say them. I don’t care what they spell.”

And it’s been challenging, but it’s been a real, again, journey of surrender, I guess, a journey of grace. And I think the idea that giving grace to yourself is a really good phrase, but it can be hard to know what that means and how to do that. And I think sometimes that means when you’re tired yet again, not feeling like you are less than for not, well get up and have a walk and it’ll make a difference. Because sometimes it will, but sometimes it isn’t what you need and it’s maybe you just need to sit and Minecraft for three hours and that’s self-care.

And it sounds really weird, but it’s something that brings you joy. And again, trusting that when you see yourself, you actually become more tender. Or you can choose to get hard and get bitter, but I think it brings you to the end of yourself. And for me, that means coming to God and going, I need, I need your love. And that encourages me to actually be kinder, because God’s way kinder with me than I ever am, and actually becoming more tenderhearted, more vulnerable, more open, which means you get hurt. But I’m so much more receptive for that. And I think that means I’m more receptive to my kids and to their pain and to their joys, and I think that. I don’t know if that answers your question.

ERIKA: I think that I love the part that you brought up about there being a physical toll from doing the mental inner work, because I have found that to be the case and it’s something where looking at me, you wouldn’t know why I have this face on right now. What’s going on? But it’s because of the internal work. And how common it is for unschooling to be a path into doing that work. And you don’t have to get there through unschooling. I think, as far as what I’ve seen, it’s pretty common for people in their forties to start looking at things on the inside and figuring out things. But I think unschooling, it almost boosts you forward on that internal journey, because you’re questioning everything. It has started the path of questioning everything. And so, I don’t know. I liked thinking about how big of a deal it is to do that and really giving yourself some credit, giving yourself some space and kindness and compassion for that work that you’re doing.

ANNA: Yeah. And I think, too, how that work, how we’ve seen it kind of interplay with unschooling families and other people is, like you said, it’s a deepening, because you understand yourself more as you look at those dark corners and the hard things, and not just gloss over it. I think it expands our heart. I think we’re able to open to other people. We’re able to see that they have their own unique journey, because we’re not just cramming our journey into some kind of a box or some kind of a stereotype. So, I just think all of that interplay of the unschooling and being in such close relationship with people every day, all the things. It creates this environment where we can really learn so much about ourselves and the people around us. I really love that so much.

PAM: I really love the word tender. It really does speak to that feeling. And as Erika mentioned, I think one of the things that we really don’t give a lot of credence to when we’re doing that deep work, that tender work, that vulnerable work, we don’t give credit or recognize how much of a physical toll it takes, like how much physical energy it takes to think like our body needs to feed our brain to do all this processing, to ask these questions, to just see how they feel in our bones, see how they feel inside.

I just loved the imagery of your poem, because it just brought to mind how so much of that processing can feel from, from little healing rivers to deep chasms, to all those pieces and coming through the other side more tender.

And I loved your point, too, about really, it’s worth it and it’s valuable to see what grace and compassion for ourselves looks like and feels like, because the words are valuable and helpful and everything, but what does that look like? Does it look like three hours of Minecraft is self-care? And literally knowing that, not just telling yourself that, but feeling it in your bones, knowing through experience that this feels good. This deserves to be on my list of things that can help me maybe recover some of that energy from processing.

You talked before about in and out, I forget the word you used, but maybe when it’s a transition time, like I have looked at this deep stuff up close in the forest. I’ve looked at this leaf for a long time. To me, the clue was kind of, I feel like I’m circling now. I’m not really making progress as I stare at this leaf. I’m not getting any more out of it. But yeah, to transition to, you know what? I’m going to look up now doesn’t mean I’m never going to look back at the leaf. That leaf is going to be carried with me now as I look up right and see different perspectives and start putting the puzzle together in a different way.

We don’t lose that, but for me, those are the pieces where grace and compassion for myself come in. It’s not judgment of myself. Maybe that’s part of it, like understanding that all these pieces are okay. Even if, I feel like I told somebody what I was doing, I haven’t been out for a week, that they may bring judgment with that, because we do hear those stories outside of us so much. But to really lean into what it means to be us and how we tick and giving ourselves that grace and compassion instead of judgment. Imagine if we supported ourselves like we support our children. Often, it’s easier to get to through supporting our children, but oh my gosh, it is so helpful to be able to give that to ourselves, too, as part of our journey. Anyway, thank you so much for the poem. It brought up so much for me!

CASSIE: Pleasure. Do you mind if I just add one thing? I was just thinking when you’re saying about the, just telling yourself, but not necessarily believing, I think that’s also a process from outside to in often and sometimes it comes inside out. And I think we can move inside out or outside in with a lot of realizations and understanding.

But I think sometimes, I would rather work inside out when I’m trying to figure out a journey or a character, because it’s like, what’s here and then what feels more honest as I go forward. But sometimes you just get stuck and so you say, move here, say this, do this, say it in this way. And then the feeling life catches up. And I just think it’s also okay for us to remember that when we know something is true, like there’s a truth about it, but maybe it hasn’t resonated or landed with us, like the whole, “It’s okay to say this is self-care,” when you’re secretly going, “But I feel like a fraud.”

It’s like, hearing that and going, “It’s okay that I have spoken this as a truth. I know this is true. My emotions, my feeling life will catch up. They’re just not there yet.” And trusting that by doing it and by giving yourself the space to do it more, whatever it is, gradually your feeling life or your sense of the reality of it and the validity of it will catch up and then you’ll be able to fully inhabit that.

But we can’t always do that straight away. So, if we’re waiting till we really believe it before we do it, we’ll never do it. But sometimes it’s like, I know this is good for me and I’m enjoying it. It is honestly good self-care. It’s not me just being lazy.

And so, then you start to believe it more as time catches up, that’s just something I’ve found really helpful to remember as well.

ERIKA: That’s really interesting. I feel like when Pam was talking, too, and with that most recent bit too, I like the kind of being playful about the inner work, too, like keeping that kind of sense of curiosity and play about it as well. Because then, right, it can be easy to get kind of trapped in judgment or the external judgment and internal judgment, but if we’re more playful about it, then it can just be, “Well, I can play Minecraft if I want, and then we’ll just see. We’ll see how I feel after,” and so then there’s less judgment I think helps us along that internal work path.

CASSIE: Yeah, and YouTube rabbit holes do the same for me, as well. Watching other actors talking about stuff, and watching a whole bunch of round tables, I just physically feel myself coming back to myself. I’m like, YouTube rabbit holes are actually a good thing sometimes.

ANNA: Yes, yes.

ERIKA: They definitely can be. Thank you so much, Cassie, for spending time with us today. It was great to be able to share some of your journey with everyone, and thanks so much to everyone for listening, and we wish you a wonderful day. Bye!

ANNA: Thank you!

CASSIE: Bye.

PAM: Bye.

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This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a new episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series!

We use the word “rules,” in quotes, to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade—or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, for inquiry, for agency, and for growth.

In this episode, we’re diving into the “rule” that unschoolers don’t have bedtimes. And although it’s true that most unschoolers move away from arbitrary bedtimes set by the clock, we still all sleep! And because people are so different, what a family’s bedtime routine looks like can be unique—for different families and also in different seasons of life. We talk about some of the worries and fears that come up when thinking about sleep, as well as what sleep has looked for us over the years.

We had a lot of fun diving into this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out her website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is A Typical Unschooling Day, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of perspective and engagement.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. Listen to The Living Joyfully Podcast here, or find it in your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Welcome! I’m Pam Laricchia from LivingJoyfully.ca and today I’m here with Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hello!

ERIKA AND ANNA: Hi.

PAM: So, before we get started, we want to remind everyone that with this Unschooling “Rules” series, we use the word rules in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing. It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade or even an A+. Our goal with the series is to explore these apparent rules and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, inquiry, agency, and growth.

So, with that, in this episode, we’re diving into the rule that unschoolers have no bedtimes. That can seem a little out there when you’re newer to unschooling and first come across it, but I will say, it’s a pretty distinguishing feature for many unschooling families. And that said, it doesn’t really mean what it sounds like at first.

Through the lens of conventional parenting, it sounds like chaos and tossing bedtimes out the window in a family used to relying on rules and needing the kids to be up early for school would most likely end up that way, absolutely. Yet, through the lens of unschooling, most unschooling families truly don’t have fixed bedtimes, yet their lives aren’t forever sleep-deprived and chaotic. So, what gives?

Well, it’s about the lifestyle the parents choose to embrace with their children. It’s less about control, about adult power over children, and more about connection, living and working together as a team. As we gain experience with unschooling, we come to question hard and fast rules like bedtimes dictated by the clock. We tend to prefer to consider the context of the moment, like, is there an activity we want to do tomorrow that necessitates getting up early? And the needs of the person, are they actually tired right now?

Yet not having a rule to pull out doesn’t mean we’re all of a sudden not involved in helping our children navigate the situation. We don’t leave them to run wild until they drop. Instead, there’s a helpful perspective shift that we can make from rules to routines. So, what does that look like with bedtimes? Well, people do get tired. What if you thought of bedtime as more of a routine to help your child get to sleep when they’re tired rather than a fixed rule based on the time on the clock? Does it seem reasonable to help them listen to their bodies and follow their cues rather than try to control their bodies based on outside factors? There is so much rich learning in there and a deeper sense of self-awareness.

Another helpful aspect of thinking in terms of routines rather than rules is that, for many kids and adults, there’s comfort in routines, in knowing what to expect. And routines help with transitions. A relaxing routine to get ready to go to bed when they’re tired or a routine to get out the door so things aren’t forgotten and people aren’t rushed and miserable. Having a rule like a bedtime actually encourages us to not learn the nuances of the people we love. We just pull out the rule and insist they follow it no matter how they’re feeling or what’s going on in their lives. There’s no critical thinking, just obedience.

Not having a specific bedtime rule is about getting to know and understand our children and ourselves. When do we feel tired? How do we like to ease into sleep? We can figure that out alongside our children, which we talked about in the last episode, as well. We don’t have to know the answers. We can figure this out. We’re finally getting the chance to question these things. We probably grew up with a bedtime. We’ve certainly heard the messages that “children need bedtimes” that surround us. So, it’s really fascinating to just take a rule like bedtimes and then just start questioning it. Like, what if we didn’t have it? It could be just something fun you play with in your mind at first when you think, what the heck? That seems a little unnerving to me. What are your thoughts, Erika?

ERIKA: Oh my gosh. This rule is a really fun one to dig into, I think, because it is one that seems just so wild at first. It’s one of those that’s like, well, I would never do that. But then now, the idea of enforcing a certain time for sleep just seems so strange to me.

And I remember having a really hard time falling asleep as a child myself, and I do think I could have benefited from this kind of approach of learning some of the calming tools that we talk about now, having some sort of a relaxation routine to help me and learning how to listen to my body instead of just looking at the clock.

So, I found that the transition from when my kids were babies to now has been this gradual process of learning and growing. I observed them, saw what they needed, saw when they were tired, and how they like to fall asleep, and so on, and just used their cues as the guide. And over the years, the timing of their sleep, the location of their sleep, what helps them fall asleep, all of that has changed and fluctuated.

So, what I find so valuable about this approach and looking at sleep as this physical need rather than a prescribed schedule, is that we all learn so much more about our bodies. We get to really feel how our bodies tell us what we need. We talk about what makes sleep feel easier or harder, which is actually different for different people.

And I’ll give you a couple of examples just to think about. So, some people actually have a really hard time sleeping when it’s pitch black, while other people want to have complete darkness. I have friends who feel the safest and most comfortable falling asleep in the daytime when the sun is coming through the window. So, light is one aspect that can be different for different people.

And then there’s sound, some people fall asleep best in silence, but for many, having a sound machine or a fan going can help us fall asleep more easily. I love to have a heavy blanket over me, because it makes me feel safe and cozy, and it’s not even cold where I live, so my husband gets so hot that a heavy blanket is a terrible idea for him. So, I have my little blanket zone that’s just for me. And there are more aspects like what activities you do before you sleep or what you eat or you drink before bed, how many hours of sleep feels really good for your body, and so on.

And I just wanted to share some of these differences just to emphasize that, like with everything else we ever talk about, there is no one right way to sleep. And by opening up the possibilities and getting creative, we really can figure out what works well for us as individuals and also as a family. And so, I think that in some unschooling families, it will look from the outside like they’re enforcing a bedtime, because everyone’s falling asleep at the same time each night. But it’s just because that’s what’s working well for them at the moment.

And so, to me it’s not a matter of just like, who cares? Stay up to whatever time you want. I’m not going to help you get any sleep. It’s about thinking about the context, like what you were saying about what do we have to do in the morning, what do we need to do with our time? What do we want to do with our time? Noticing how we like to sleep and what makes us feel good. And then my role is trying to support my kids and my whole family to meet all of our different needs. And when we aren’t meeting all of the needs, then we can have conversations and try to problem-solve together. Just try something different and play with it. So, it’s always a work in progress and it’s constantly shifting as the kids are growing and as our needs change. Anna?

ANNA: Oh my gosh. Yes. And I love the reminder about how we’re all so different, you know? Because as you were going through the differences, I was thinking about my own preferences. I prefer pitch black. I also have a sound machine. I like a blanket, but I have this thing called Bed Jet that cools our heats depending on the time of the year. So, I’m a little bit of a princess. But I’ve seen these people that can just sleep anywhere. Right? But that is not me and it wasn’t my kids either.

When I think about it, part of my journey as an adult was learning to listen to and love my body, because I feel like I had a lot of messages when I was younger that really dissociated me from those cues. And I knew that I wanted my children to not lose touch with the wisdom of their bodies. In babies, we see this clear communication of being hungry or tired, and yet somewhere along the way, conventional wisdom tells us that we need to apply this strict, somewhat arbitrary schedule really, to these growing humans. So, I guess in fairness, some people do that with babies, but developmental psychologists and medical professionals agree it is really important to listen to a baby’s cues. And if you’ve been around a baby, you see they know how to communicate those cues.

And so, what it looked like for us was, we were eating when we were hungry, we were sleeping when we were tired. And as you’ve both touched on, though, that was in the context of our family of four, what made sense for the life that we were creating together.

And in the early years, David was working outside the home and needed to get up early. So, that was always a part of the consideration. Noise levels, energy, time of the night. We had this gigantic, huge, family bed, and thankfully he was a deep sleeper, but we still needed to find ways to be creative to meet the needs of everyone involved. And we did often like to go to bed together. I just have really fond memories of that time in the dark, thinking about our day, sharing the ups and downs, reading a book. That was just really precious time that I think about often, but it also meant that I wasn’t getting alone time in the evening. So, as an introvert, that was a little tricky for me. So, I would make adjustments like getting up earlier than they did, or taking time when they were playing with David. Also, just looking for ways to fill my cup throughout the day.

It just never really felt good to me to think about sending someone off to bed who wasn’t tired, just because I needed to have some alone time. I wanted it to work for all of us, and I found that, as we worked together and really caring for and honoring each other’s needs, allowed us to be creative and come up with the solutions that felt good for us all. And, like you said, Erika, it changes. There are bumps and changes along the way. But we can just kind of keep that attitude of, we’re going to figure this out.

And just kind of an aside about this, because it always comes up in these kinds of discussions, is the idea if they don’t have a strict bedtime that and get up in the morning, they won’t be able to have a job. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that from people and it does always make me chuckle, but it comes up. I get it. We have these cultural messages. My girls, and really, all four of us back in the day, tended to be night owls. So, if something was coming up that required an early start, we would talk through what we wanted that to look like. And I found over and over, they were able to show up for the things that were important to them. Sometimes it was going to bed earlier the night before. Really more often it was leaving extra room on the back end to maybe go to sleep early that night or sleep in the next day.

And my youngest, she’s 23 now, and she has worked at a lot of different jobs over the years, some that go very late into the night. Currently, she has one that has her starting at 6:00 AM most mornings, and she has no trouble adjusting. And says she has actually been enjoying the early shifts because it frees up her afternoon and evening to be with friends.

And so, I guess my point is when we listen to our bodies and learn about the nuances of how we handle things, we make adjustments that we need to do the things that we want to do. So, I think walking through any fears anyone has about that can help you pinpoint the underlying issues. Is it fear of the future? Is it not getting a alone time, not getting couple time? Whatever it is, walking through that will give you more information. And then once you’ve identified that root issue, you can find creative solutions that feel good to everyone as opposed to just, we’re going to put down this arbitrary bedtime instead of digging deeper to what’s really going on here. So, I think that kind of introspection can be really helpful.

PAM: Yeah, I just want to go back to that question of, how will they be able to get up for a job? Because you don’t have to train for years to be able to wake up. And that’s the other piece, too. They’re choosing this job or whatever the reason is to get up by a particular time, whatever it is, it’s something they’re choosing. So, it really is, I guess, surprising when you first introduce the idea, but not at all surprising soon after. They’ll figure it out.

ANNA: Right. Once you start thinking about it. And then I think the other thing I want to throw in is they’re young, so Raelin will work these really late nights and then have an early shift the next day, and I’m just thinking, I would die. She’s totally fine. So, when they’re doing things they want to do and they’re young and not our age, they have this ability to adjust and move through things when they’re tired and those pieces, but they’re learning so much about what works.

And she would say sometimes when she was younger, sleepovers, she knew they weren’t going to get sleep at the sleepover and so she didn’t want to plan anything for two days afterwards because she wanted to rest. But I love that she had that insight. She still wanted to do the sleepover, because it was fun being with her friends, but she was learning things all the time, versus if I was imposing something, she’s not learning anything except what bedtime I think is a good idea.

ERIKA: It’s kind of reminding me of the don’t borrow trouble idea, too, because you can really get caught in kind of a tunnel vision mode when it comes to things like this, especially if it is triggering the like, I never get to have time with my husband alone, or are they going be able to wake up for the things 20 years down the road, all those future fears or the fears of like, it’s going to be like this forever. And so, if we feel like those kind of fears are popping up, I think that’s a good time to step back and remember that there are seasons. Everything’s always changing.

Every time I felt so trapped in whatever the sleep situation was that was going on, it would change the next day. Like as soon as I voiced my concern of, it’s never going to change! it changed the next day. And so, remember that things do change and there are difficult seasons of sleep, but yeah, it’s all a process and a journey.

PAM: Yeah, I think that is a really cool piece, too, because we’re all learning. As you were saying, Anna, they learn, and again I’ve experienced with my kids as well that they learn what their body needs and what they like. I know I can have an extra late night and an early morning once, maybe twice in a row, and then I will need to accommodate at some point with an earlier night or a sleep in or something like that.

But they’re learning how their body ticks and how it works with sleep and what feels good and they’re gaining experience with how that changes over time, because I feel for myself anyway, I remember when I was younger, when you mentioned that, Erika, it would be bedtime. I’d go to bed and I would lie there looking at the clock. And I’d be just like, okay, I don’t want to look at the clock. I need to be asleep by a certain time. And then I’d look and that time had come and then I’d be like, oh my god. Oh my god, no, I’m going to have a horrible night.

We absorb that and we set ourselves up for feeling bad about it. I could have woken up in the morning. And been perfectly fine, but I was thinking I did not get much sleep last night. I’m going to be cranky all day. And I kind of set myself up for that. So, that was a long season when I remember looking for it to 10 o’clock. Oh my gosh. Or hearing my parents go to bed, because you went to your room and you just laid there till you go to sleep. Or I’d put my radio on for like the hour sleep timer and if it would go off, I’d be like, oh no! And you’re dealing with that all by yourself.

So that’s when we’re talking about supporting our kids and helping them, and maybe they do want to go lie down and they get to learn that rest is okay. You don’t literally need to be asleep all the time for recovery. Sometimes just some quiet time is reinvigorating. So, all these different pieces of learning about themselves and listening to the cues that their body is giving them and how it doesn’t mean that we need to be like perfect is the first word coming to mind. Like, oh, I’m tired, therefore I’m asleep, or anything like that. We can try all sorts of, I am tired and I really want to do this thing and I’m going to get more experience learning about, how do I deal with that?

So often, we discover when it’s something we really want to do and we’re excited about it, we do not feel tired while we’re doing the thing. We may be extra tired after we have our two days of recovery, after a super big event is over, things like that. So, it is just so fascinating.

And just in the interest of sharing, because you guys shared how you like to sleep, I do like some light on. So, I have some colored lights around the window in the bedroom here. I do like sound. I have some sleep headphones that I wear and I listen to an audio book. I like to have talking in the background.

ANNA: Interesting!

PAM: It’s just so fascinating and actually, here’s a case where it’s sometimes easier to do for us, but for kids, we need them to do it like the right way. Dark, quiet, this is the way you should sleep. I need all these extra accommodations. But no, no. We are all individual, unique, fun people and whatever helps us do the things that we’re wanting to do, like get some rest, get some sleep. Absolutely. Okay. So much fun to play around with.

ERIKA: I love that so much. And I love that the focus is so much more on what do our bodies feel like rather than, I mean, that’s exactly my experience as a kid too, Pam, of just looking at the clock and being like, I’m doing this wrong. I can’t turn off my brain or whatever. But having no tools to help me through the spinning thoughts. No thought about what would make this room more comfortable for me. None of that was a consideration. And so, just thinking of it more as what is my body feeling like? It’s just such a nice place to start.

PAM: Yeah. It’s so considerate. All right, thank you so much. I really enjoyed diving into another one of these unschooling rules with both of you. And I hope our listeners find our conversations helpful as they navigate sleep with their family. Wishing everyone a lovely day. Bye.

ERIKA: Bye.

View Details

In this week’s Exploring Unschooling podcast episode, we’re diving deep into a listener question submitted by Julie in Ontario. She writes,

How would you encourage parents to best unschool themselves? I’d really like to be a better example of someone who follows their passions. My husband would love to do a job more suited to his passions, but feels stuck. I feel hypocritical with my kids, because we encourage them to do what they love and talk about one day how it could lead to a career. But we aren’t living this out fully ourselves. Help! Thanks for this podcast. I love it.

As always, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer, because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any given situation that will work for everyone. Instead, our focus is on exploring different aspects of the situation and playing with the kinds of questions we might ask ourselves to better understand what’s up. We’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling and cultivating strong and connected relationships.

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and if you’re a patron of the podcast, be sure to mention that.

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Pam’s conversation with Missy on her podcast, Let ’em go Barefoot: The Unschooling (Hero’s) Journey with Pam Laricchia

EU342: Helping Kids Find Their Passion

LJ012: Baby Steps

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out her website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is A Typical Unschooling Day, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of perspective and engagement.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. Listen to The Living Joyfully Podcast here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

CALL TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Welcome! I’m Erika Ellis from livingjoyfully.ca and I’m here with Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia. Hi to you both!

PAM: Hello!

ANNA: Hello!

ERIKA: So, in this episode, we’re exploring a listener question. And before we get started, we just want to remind everyone that our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right answer,” because there isn’t a universal right answer for any situation that will work for everyone. So, basically we’re just sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling. Anna, do you want to get us started?

ANNA: I do. So, this question is from Julie in Ontario, Canada. Julie has five children, ages 10 and under, and she writes, “How would you encourage parents to best unschool themselves? I’d really like to be a better example of someone who follows their passions. My husband would love to do a job more suited to his passions, but feels stuck. I feel hypocritical with my kids, because we encourage them to do what they love and talk about one day how it could lead to a career. But we aren’t living this out fully ourselves. Help! Thanks for this podcast. I love it.”

Okay, so, thanks, Julie! We really appreciate you writing in. And this is such an interesting question.

And I would say what first came to mind for me is, “There’s plenty of time!” And I say it all the time. But most of us have a lot of deschooling to do and we can get there, I feel like, faster for our children than we actually do for ourselves. We’re really focused on that piece of it. But I found that the longer we lived this life, the easier it became to bring that this life to me, to my husband, to all of us, to really understand how it can fit in our family.

So, I am a scanner. Some people call it a multipotentialite. Basically, I want to do all the things, so I pretty quickly fell into this lifestyle alongside my children. And I will say that when my kids were young, one of my main passions was actually parenting and unschooling. So, that was a big focus area for me in terms of my personal learning and how I wanted to spend any extra time I had. I didn’t really want to do things that pulled me too far away from that or from my children. So, I would look at our environment and see what could easily fit into our life that would kind of spark my interest. I did a lot of gardening. I kept chickens and bees. Those were things that I would end up sharing with our community down the road. They were just easy things I could do alongside my kids.

We also did a lot of art and nature projects that I could easily scale to be of interest to everyone involved. New art things were interesting to me. And I learned to just play, play games, video games, board games, otherwise. What I realized is that I don’t think I ever really allowed myself to play games when I was younger in this way. I was too busy checking other people’s boxes.

And my husband, on the other hand, naturally fell into this lifestyle. Sometimes I think it was really him who led the way, so when he had a chance to leave corporate America, he did and has never looked back. He loves adventure and he really wanted to be around for our girls when they were young.

So, I think it’d be interesting to check in with your husband about what’s feeling hard for him about changing directions, because that would give you a clue if there are things that you could do as a family that would help. What’s making him feel nervous? Or again, what’s feeling hard? I like to ask that question, because that gives us a really good sense of, are there things we can change? Are there some system pieces we can do differently? Is there a different way to approach this problem?

And I like to look at things like that as a puzzle. How can we move towards this thing that we want that feels slightly out of reach? What next step can we take, which kind of reminds me of the Baby Steps episode we did on the Living Joyfully Podcast. But what step can we take towards this?

We don’t have to jump and leap there. We can just start to align our family with moving towards this place. But I also want to say that kids will still thrive in this environment, even if we’re still figuring it out for ourselves. There will be opportunities along the way to discuss everyone’s needs and work together to find ways to make this happen.

That, in and of itself, has so much value. Them seeing us learn and process and figure out new ways, that has so much value. But again, there is plenty of time. It’s not a race. There’s no perfect path, and what I’ve found is that the learning just continues all these decades later. Erika?

ERIKA: Hi, Julie! Thank you so much for listening and for your question. I did find it really interesting, too. And I love Anna’s point about there’s plenty of time, because that is so true. And I also love that you’re noticing something. You’re noticing that something doesn’t feel good and you’re open to exploring the possibilities and really figuring it out.

So, a couple things bubbled up for me when I was thinking about your question. The first was just maybe a lens shift. So, I think sometimes when we realize that things are not feeling as good as we’d like them to, we can get in this long-term view. And from there, it feels like what’s needed are these huge changes and that they need to happen now. It feels more daunting and less doable. It feels like this big, important, scary thing. Like, we just need everything to be different. Or even worse, like we need to somehow be different people in order for things to be better. And of course that feels so challenging, maybe even impossible, like where do we even go from there?

But what if the lens was just this smaller lens of, what fun thing could I do today? What fun thing does my husband like to do with me or with the kids? It could literally just be an intention to do something fun. It’s about lightening the mood and adding some playful energy. Kids are naturally mostly in that zone anyway, but adults could forget to go there.

And maybe that one fun activity could lead to another idea of something else we might like to do, and that could lead on and on to so much learning.

It could be fun, too, to just notice, like Pam was mentioning in her Helping Kids Find Their Passion episode that was on recently, to just catch yourself when you feel that little bit of curiosity about something and just comment on it. Like, “I think I’m going to go look that up.” Or, “I’d like to know more about that.” Just those little tiny examples, narrating what it feels like to follow tiny threads of curiosity. Our kids can see us doing that and see some of the ways that we can learn about the world.

I do think it could be valuable to dig into your husband’s feelings about his work. Are there ways to make his life feel better without changing jobs? Are there other ideas he has about how to use his time? There are just so many aspects of working and time management and money and all of that to dig into in order to figure out what feels the best. But there are always, I’ve found, more choices available to us than we’re usually aware of at first. And so, being really curious about what’s possible can lead to new opportunities.

And that’s not to say that it’s not challenging. It certainly can be. But I’ve found that having an abundance mindset and really trying to keep myself open to possibilities has helped us find ways to make our lives fit us better over time.

And I guess I would also just add that if trying to focus on fun or getting open and curious all feels really difficult for anyone who’s listening, if that feels very difficult, you’re not alone. There are definitely situations in life and phases in life that are just really challenging. Having a lot of young kids is challenging. Health issues can cause stress. Work stress that seems difficult to address, can be just so hard to deal with. And so, for times like those, focusing on stress management or maybe working in some somatic tools to reduce stress and anxiety, things like that, that’s where I would really want my effort to be.

And like Anna said, kids will still thrive even if we’re still figuring things out. And so, when things feel stressful and hard for me, I can allow the kids the space to do their thing while focusing my energy on caring for myself or caring for my husband when he’s stressed out, trying to reduce the impact of those stressors in our lives. Knowing that there are challenging seasons of our lives that we will move through can help put it into perspective as well.

But in any case, I think it’s always valuable to show ourselves compassion and kindness, and then doing that can help us find that next baby step that feels good.

And can I just say that I love how you used the phrase unschool ourselves? I think that’s just so beautiful, because it reminds me to include myself in the fun and the exploration of unschooling and to accept myself and my husband just as we are, the same way that I’m trying to do for my kids. So, I really loved that. Pam?

PAM: Yes. Hi, Julie! Thanks so much for submitting your question.

It has been really fun to think about. And I would like to just start at the end. You wrote, “I feel hypocritical with my kids, because we encourage them to do what they love and talk about how one day it could lead to a career, but we aren’t living this out fully ourselves.”

First, I want to encourage you to be kind and compassionate with yourself and your partner. It’s completely understandable that you don’t yet feel like you’re fully living this lifestyle, because it’s not an on/off switch. It’s a journey. It’s deschooling, as Anna was talking about. Neither one of you had an unschooling childhood, I suspect, which would’ve been filled with years of exploring things you find interesting, gaining experience with how interests ebb and flow over months and years, learning how you prefer to learn new things, finding ways to embrace your strengths and navigate your weaknesses, learning the value of not judging yourself harshly when things go sideways or even just more slowly than you were hoping.

So, that’s why we talk so often about the unschooling journey for parents. For unschooling kids, it’s really just their childhood, right? They’re just figuring this stuff out along the way. But when we come to unschooling as adults, as parents, we are just starting to explore all these things now. We do need a lot of time to work through so much of the conventional wisdom that we’ve absorbed as truth growing up, which is why, as Erika just mentioned, it’s so cool that you framed your question as ways to encourage parents to unschool themselves. Because that’s the heart of it, isn’t it?

And for me, encouraging parents to unschool themselves is about encouraging them to question what they think they know about life and learning, which is definitely no small task, which is why it can feel overwhelming. There really are so many things to question. Where do we start?

Now, I think we can get a sense of what questions to explore next by just noticing what’s starting to rub. What’s not feeling great right now? What questions are taking up a lot of real estate in my head and making it harder for me to be in the moment connecting with my kids?

Now, pretty often, when we first come to unschooling, it’s questions like, how do I know they’re learning? What about math and reading? I encourage parents to embrace beginner’s mind, because when it comes to unschooling, we are beginners. It’s really helpful to release what we think we know and instead bring that open and curious mindset as we explore the questions that come up through the lens of unschooling.

And for you and your husband, Julie, the question that’s rubbing right now is around the idea of following our passion. You wrote, “I’d really like to be a better example of somebody who follows their passions. And my husband would love to do a job more suited to his passions, but feels stuck.” So for yourself, I imagine you’re trying to get a sense of what it looks like when somebody is following their passions and first, I would encourage you to use the word interests rather than passions. Not because there’s anything wrong with the idea of passions per se, but that the energy of the word can sometimes trip us up. Passion seems to be like a super interest, giving the impression that we need to find the one or two things that make our soul sing, and that is a lot of pressure to be putting on ourselves.

So instead, let’s just take it down a notch and think in terms of interests, because interests are cool. We learned so much about the world and ourselves through exploring them. And maybe eventually, we might become passionate about some of those interests, but maybe not. And either way, we’re learning a lot and having fun along the way.

And as Erika mentioned, share what you’re doing and learning along the way with your family. For me, that was a big one because I think that’s something you’re seeing right now, Julie, that your kids are doing this thing and you guys as parents don’t feel like you are. And as Anna was saying, you’re gonna be learning it alongside. There’s plenty of time to do that.

So, it’s really interesting to see when we can share a little bit. And maybe it’s just that, “Oh, I think I’m going to go learn a little bit more about that,” just embracing those little moments when you’re starting to see a little something. “Oh look, I am curious about something. That’s interesting.” And just sharing that with your family. It helps also the kids to see that this isn’t just for kids. It’s the process. It’s not about the destination, “I have a passion.”

And what that can do also, because you talked about being a better example, Julie, what that feels like when you’re living your lives alongside each other and when everyone’s diving into their own interests and sharing their excitement with each other along the way, that’s when we can realize that we don’t have to share the same interests, but we can definitely connect with each other around that shared excitement and joy of doing something that we really like to do.

And I love what Anna shared about how her interests changed over the years to align with her family’s needs. That’s another thing. If we’re really trying to find a passion, something that makes our soul sing, that doesn’t take into account the context of our family. We can find things that are interesting for us and they can change over the years. So, when her kids were younger, your kids were younger, Anna, and needed you to be close by, you dove into things that didn’t take you away physically, things that the kids could enjoy doing with you if they were interested. Because again, there is plenty of time. This is what life looks like. It’s not like our life is on hold while we figure out what our passion is. This is life. Exploring interests and finding passions, and seeing how it all weaves through our days.

And then I just wanted to mention, as for your husband, I think it’s really the same idea. It doesn’t need to start with anything drastic. I loved the way you put that there, Erika. When you’re looking to the future, all of a sudden, I need to make big changes now to make some really drastic future change happen. So, quitting his job is not something that he needs to decide right now, but you can help him lean into exploring what he finds interesting. As his curiosity and his creativity begins to just open up more, maybe he finds some interesting aspects of his work now that he can lean into.

Maybe he comes to see work as just something he does for money to support the family when everybody, including him, pursuing their interests. Maybe he finds other ways to supplement his income that are more interesting to him, growing that and winding down his current job. There are just so many times over the years that I’ve experienced new opportunities serendipitously appearing once I have something top of mind. Once I’m now thinking, “Oh, what would I like to do? What would be fun? What am I curious about? What am I interested in?” When those questions are bubbling around in your head, you start to notice so many things around you that you really didn’t notice before.

So, the point is, if he’s feeling stuck at work right now, you can focus on making the rest of his life more fun and interesting. Let his interests weave through the family, too. Celebrate it alongside everyone else’s. Lighten and loosen things up. And then just kind of see what happens, because that’s the thing. Instead of looking to the future and trying to make a path, really, you create a wonderful path by focusing on the moment that’s in front of you. Just look for what is striking your curiosity. What are you interested in? What is your husband interested in? And do those things. Play with those things. Bring your kids along. Invite them to join you in those things.

But even if you’re doing these side by side, everybody’s doing what they enjoy and it becomes a lifestyle that we all live together, versus this is what the kids do and this is what the parents do.

ERIKA: Yeah. I feel like as you’re talking about it being a journey and so much maybe more difficult or more work for parents to unschool and deschool themselves than it ever is for the children, I was just thinking about that we have all these societal messages maybe to deal with and some beliefs that we have kind of created over the years, or been given over the years. So, maybe there are things like, am I even allowed to do something that’s enjoyable for me? Can I make these choices? Because we could end up with feelings of, but there’s these things I should be doing or I have to do. A job has to look like this and my time should be spent doing these things.

The role of the mother is that I’m supposed to be doing these things, so can I really dive into something that’s just fun for me? So yeah, starting to question all those things.

ANNA: And I think what that leads to mind for me is something that you mentioned also, Erika, which is the abundance mindset. So, I think instead of trying to solve the specific problems of how he does this or how I do a passion, it’s bringing that abundance mindset into the every day. Because you can hear this kind of deficit focus of, he doesn’t like this, we’re not sure about this, we’re not doing this. Like this not, not, not, which is the cultural message, right? That’s the message is always look at the deficits. Here are the things we needs to fix.

But it is, let’s add things. Let’s find what sparks. Let’s just enjoy these moments together. Let’s just delight in everyone else’s excitement about what they’re doing, bringing that energy of abundance and connection to each of those moments. I think that’s what opens the doors. That’s what then, like you said, the serendipitous opportunity appears and then suddenly we’re open to it.

But I think when we’re kind of tunneled in on what’s not working, we miss the magic, you know? So, I think that’s really something tangible that can happen right now is just bringing that abundance mindset to every moment for everyone in the family.

PAM: I love that. I love that. Because yeah, just as you were talking there, it was the tunnel vision. It was like, oh yeah. When there’s something we need to fix, even if it’s something with ourselves. We do. We get so focused on it. How can I fix this? How can I improve this? How can I make it better? And we definitely just get tunneled in on, I need to fix this and I need to fix this fast.

I don’t want to sit in, “Something’s wrong,” because that’s bad. All those societal judgments that end up on our plate and focusing us in, and then yes. Oh, we miss so much and we miss so many opportunities. I can just have fun watching a movie with my family. Or we can go and draw some pictures or grab the paint. And it’s just getting more and more fascinating to me how that just that shift of opening things up makes things feel lighter and looser as we were talking about a bit earlier.

And for your husband there, who’s maybe not enjoying his work, when you’re so focused on that, even outside of work, that that’s what you’re thinking about, oh my gosh. If you’re instead having fun and doing other things, that becomes a smaller portion of his day. The stuff that he’s not enjoying is a smaller portion, so it doesn’t feel as heavy. It’s a little bit lighter. He can start to pick out little things like, oh, you know, I don’t really mind this. Rather than saying, I hate my job. It just lightens things up so that we can look at things a little more closely with a little less judgment, with a little less fear. There’s probably the word.

ANNA: I just got one quick thing that came from that thing. I’s the examining our why. Just like we talk about with the kids. So, instead of this like, okay, I hate my job. It’s terrible. There’s a reason that he’s choosing to stay in it. And it may be because it’s providing the money that he needs. It may be that it’s close to the house so he doesn’t have a long commute. There’s something about it.

But if we can revisit that, it’s like, okay, I am actively choosing to do this job. I may not do it forever. It may not be meeting some of my needs, but let me think. Let me revisit why I’m doing it, because that has such a different energy and then that translates into this energy we’re talking about in the home that’s more abundant and more focused on what we can do. And again, that’s where I’ve seen just over and over again, opportunities open up from that more expansive place.

PAM: Now that you hit that why, when you’re thinking about your why and you’re opening up thinking about work, what occurred to me as you were talking about that is, you realize that work doesn’t have to satisfy so many things.

ANNA: All the things.

PAM: It doesn’t have to accomplish everything. All my life doesn’t need to be fed or validated from this work. I can open it up and get all sorts of needs met in different ways. That doesn’t have to satisfy all my needs.

ERIKA: Yeah, that, that made me think, I mean, both of you, that made me think of it’s the story we tell about it as well. So, if the story we tell about my husband’s work is it’s providing us with this and he can do this. He can’t do this. But he could do that at home, just find a way to reframe it that feels lighter and that makes everyone feel better moving forward. So, anyway, thanks again for your question, Julie. We obviously had a lot of fun diving into it. And if anyone else wants to submit a question for an upcoming episode, we would love to read it. I don’t remember the address though, Pam. Do you?

PAM: I think it’s livingjoyfully.ca/question.

ANNA: Yay!

PAM: It will be in the show notes, too.

ERIKA: Okay. Good. So, we would love to hear it. And have a wonderful day, everyone!

PAM: Bye!

ANNA: Bye!

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This week on the podcast, we’re diving into another Bringing It Home episode. We’re looking deeper at our last Unschooling “Rules” topic, that unschoolers don’t use curriculum, and exploring what it can look like to navigate lessons and adult-led activities with our unschooling families.

Unsurprisingly, there is no one right approach. It’s so much about seeing through our children’s eyes and making choices that feel good to them. A world of possibilities exists when we are open and curious!

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out her website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

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Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is A Typical Unschooling Day, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of perspective and engagement.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. Listen to The Living Joyfully Podcast here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Welcome! I’m Pam Laricchia from LivingJoyfully.ca, and today I’m here with Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hi to you both!

ANNA: Hello!

ERIKA: Hi!

PAM: In our last Unschooling “Rules” episode, episode 341, we talked about the idea that unschoolers don’t use curriculum. And yes, it can definitely be very helpful when you’re starting out unschooling to steer away from curriculum and organized adult-led activities, because when we first come to unschooling, our vision of how learning works is so often tightly wrapped up in what it looks like in school. So, staying away from that environment for a while encourages us to explore the many other ways that learning so beautifully happens.

And eventually, we realize that we don’t need a curriculum or a more structured, adult-led environment to inspire learning, because learning is always happening, at which point the need to actively look for learning begins to fade. And instead we concentrate on cultivating what we’ve discovered lies underneath, connected and trusting relationships, and supporting them in following their interests, however they want to explore them. That’s the solid foundation of unschooling.

So, if you haven’t yet listened to that episode, it’s a great lead in to this one. So, I encourage you to listen to it and then come back here.

Okay, so with this follow up Bringing it Home conversation, we want to talk about an aspect that comes up pretty regularly in unschoolers lives and that’s navigating lessons or more broadly, adult-led activities as an unschooling family. So, maybe it’s music lessons or dance or karate or so many, many, many other possibilities. It’s one thing to get comfortable with unschooling in your own home, but it can be another whole kettle of fish to bring that learning mindset with you out into the world.

And this is a topic I’m pretty passionate about, so I have three aspects I want to mention, but then I’ll turn it over, I promise. Before we dive into that, just a quick reminder, something we talked about in the “Rules” episode, which is that lessons or organized activities aren’t the only way to pursue an interest. And they aren’t objectively better than the other ways. They’re just a different way. But depending on the child, they might be a great way for them to explore their interests.

Okay, so the first aspect I want to touch on is finding a good match between the activity and the interested child. The more conventional response when a child asks to join an activity or take lessons, assuming the parents agree, is for a parent to find the closest location and sign them up. End of story.

From there, the child is expected to do the work to fit into the environment. Now, for unschooling parents, our foremost focus is on supporting our children’s learning. So, instead of expecting our children to adapt, we are willing to do the work to search out an environment that meshes well with how our children like to learn. Understanding that the atmosphere surrounding many activities is dictated by the individual adults who run them, we look for a good fit between the group’s atmosphere and the child’s personality and goals.

So, let’s just take karate as a quick example. Some dojos focus on attendance and progress their students through the belts based on the time invested. Some focus on skill development and progress their students based on proficiency displayed. Some dojos insist their students compete in certain tournaments. Some avoid tournaments altogether and so on. The big question is, what are your child’s goals? That is a great conversation to have with them as you’re approaching an activity.

And then on top of the activity itself, there’s also the teaching methods and personalities of the teachers or coaches. Do they demand obedience and cultivate a strict hierarchical environment? Do they encourage questions and cultivate a supportive atmosphere? Are they somewhere in between there? The knowledge and skills of the instructors being relatively equal, there is still a wide range of possible learning environments. Some your child may fit into like a glove, while others may turn them off the activity itself for years to come.

So, if your goal is to help them explore their interest, your best bet is to help them find the studio, dojo, group, league, or teacher that is a good match for their personality. Instead of choosing a location by geography and expecting your child to conform, take the time to explore the options, including those that may be a bit further afield, and try to find one that is a great fit for your particular child.

Okay, so the second aspect is getting ready to leave for the activity. Participating in an activity likely means a fixed time for lessons or practice or games. And this can be challenging, especially for younger children who may have a harder time transitioning to leave if they get caught up in doing something at home. And on top of that, it can also be challenging for newer unschooling parents, because they may feel like they are coercing their child to leave. What do they do if their child says they don’t want to go this week?

So, if going to an activity is becoming a struggle, take a moment to look at how you’re setting it up. If you find yourself saying something like, “It’s Wednesday. Your karate class is today. Are you going to go this week?” Just take a moment to rethink that. By asking your child each week whether they want to go to class, you’re basically asking them to revisit their decision each time. And that is a lot of work, especially for younger children.

So, in my experience, it’s easier to assume your child wants to go, because they wanted to sign up in the first place, and to do your best to help them get there. Make it as painless as possible for them.

“Hey, your karate class is today. I have your gi clean and I put your bo by the front door. We’ll get changed and leave right after dinner.” By bringing it up during the day, you have time for conversations without the added pressure of trying to get out the door. And by making sure all the supporting things are in place so that your child can just go to the activity, clean outfits or uniforms, working and available equipment, transportation and timing, all those supporting things, then they can focus on the activity itself.

Are they enjoying it? Because that’s the real question, which then leads to the third aspect I want to mention, and that is choosing to quit. When our children express an interest in an activity, it can be easy for us parents to get all caught up in the idea that, ooh, maybe they’ll grow up to do this for a living. We want to encourage them to continue.

Sometimes we’re afraid that if they quit, they’ll get behind and the opportunity to develop their interest into a career will be lost and they’re eight years old. There are a couple of things to consider here. First, if it’s not catching their interest so much that they are excitedly dedicating many hours to it on their own, then the chances of a professional career are pretty slim. Certainly, the chances of enjoying a professional career are slim. And second, quitting is not a forever decision.

When you’re doing things for enjoyment, there is no “behind.” There is just where you are. At the dojo, there are white belts of all ages. There are adult beginner ballet classes. There are adult recreational hockey leagues. And there are public swimming times where people of all ages and abilities can enjoy the water.

Or maybe we’re worried that our children wanting to quit means they will always give up when things get challenging. First off, challenges that aren’t motivating and inspiring for your child are probably not the right kinds of challenges for them, and that is great to know. But also, the choices they make today don’t define all the choices they will make in the future. The choices they make today are helping them gain experience with making choices. Over the years, they will gain lots of experience with wanting to try something, with choosing ways to try it out, and with seeing how well those paths meet their goals.

They will discover things they enjoy, things they don’t, and get a better feel for the clues that help them decide when they want to step up their game and when they want to quit. And even after they choose to quit something, for now at least, they’re still learning. How does that choice feel? Do they miss the activity? How much do they miss it? What do they miss about it? What are they doing with the time that quitting freed up? Are they enjoying that more than the activity? Less? So, so much learning.

Okay. Okay. I know I went on for a bit, but I just love how we can bring our unschooling approach to conventional lessons and activities in ways that continue to actively support our children’s learning without needing to revert to control over the way they choose to participate.

So, Anna, any thoughts?

ANNA: Oh my goodness. I love all of your insights and I think taking that time to find the best environment for your particular child really is so critical. And it can be challenging, because most classes or instructors are geared towards school children, and they tend to kind of cater to the parents versus the children.

And I remember when my youngest wanted to take piano lessons, it was so interesting to explain to the teacher that this was her experience. She wanted to be there and she was the customer. I wasn’t going to be forcing practicing, and I didn’t need him to be doing things for my benefit. And that was a very new experience for him. And it took a bit of adjustment, but we got there and she had this great experience. So, it was worth that kind of time and investment and that conversation at the beginning.

And we also ran into classes or activities that just didn’t dig deep enough and I think it’s one of the big reasons we ended up avoiding so many of these type of things. Both my girls enjoyed nature and animals and our life had a lot of experience with both, and I remember attending this nature event with a park ranger. We thought it was going to be so amazing, talking about snakes. And Afton had to correct half of what he said and it ended up just being this lecture where Afton’s correcting him and he’s saying things and I was just like, ah! Because we were getting far more hands-on and deep diving just in our backyard.

So, that really led me to realize that things that are geared towards adults but that allowed children was actually a better fit for us. So, for example, my youngest was having a deep dive into rocks and a recreation class geared at children would have been really boring for her and way below her interest level, because she was really deep diving in pursuing this. But attending the Gem and Mineral Club downtown, which is a club for adults, was perfect.

First of all, they loved having her there. And they were talking at a level that gave her new information, which she was really excited about, and they were so happy to answer her questions and share their love of the subject. And in this case, gave her a lot of new rock specimens that she just was over the moon about.

And I think it’s just so wild to see how most things designed for children just really dumb it down. Sometimes it feels like they’re trying to make it as boring and painful as possible, which I hope is not the intent, but I did watch for it, because I really wanted to facilitate their curiosity, and not have it squashed by arbitrary waiting and crowd control.

And as we mentioned last time, I always wanted to look at my motivation. Were we pursuing an outside adult-led class to facilitate their journey or because it looked better to the grandparents or checked an arbitrary box for me? And so, really honing in on what we wanted out of the experience and what things offered us the best path for that exploration and my child’s goals, like you were talking about, Pam, was so helpful in deciding what things we wanted to try.

And so, I don’t know. I learned so much about this whole world of classes from a whole different lens, because I went to school straight through and just did all those things. But what I love about what you said, Pam, is again, it’s just, take that time to really find something that works for your child and maybe scratch beneath the surface of what might normally pop up if you Google horseback riding lessons or whatever the thing might be.

So, anyway, lots to think about. But Erika, how about you?

ERIKA: Oh my gosh. I was laughing about that. I’ve had that same thought, like, are they trying to make this as boring and painful as possible? And I’m sure that’s not the case, but it is true that most people are approaching activities for children from a much different perspective than I would be. And in my area, most extracurricular activities are really marketed with language about school readiness, regardless of what the activity is. It could be ballet or karate or whatever, they will market it with what types of school skills are going to be included in these lessons.

And I’ve watched two- and three-year-olds at soccer classes at the park where it’s mostly about waiting your turn. And I totally get that. Practicing waiting your turn could be helpful if you’re going to use that skill in school. But it’s really boring for these little tiny kids. And I think now, there’s the risk of them thinking that that’s what soccer is, that soccer is boring, you know?

And so, what I love about approaching adult-led activities from an unschooling perspective is that we know there’s not just one way or one path to learn about an interest. There’s no right way to approach it. And there’s no requirement of how deep they dive or how much they achieve. It can all be so individually tailored, and that means we can also tailor our choices to each child’s individual personality.

And I know some children and some adults experience a lot of anxiety if they feel they’re being controlled or expected to do something in a certain way. And so, overly-directed activities just might not feel good to them. And that’s a big part of why my kids have not been interested in signing up for adult-led classes generally. They don’t like to be directed in that way.

But even given that, we have so many options available to us. We could do open gym sessions at the play gym instead of classes. We can do YouTube tutorials instead of taking a class with a teacher, learning by doing, learning from friends, observing an adult doing a class from a distance and just watching what it’s like for the kids in the class. We’ve done all of these things and they’re all valid options and we can learn in so many different ways. It just feels like we have this whole world of possibilities at our disposal if we’re not narrowing it down to, there’s one way.

And if we can’t find a good fit, we could even create what we’re looking for ourselves. Homeschoolers and unschoolers in my community are always putting together lower-pressure alternatives to the typical lessons and getting small groups together to participate. And so, if you can’t find what works for your child, it’s worth seeing if there’s a way to think outside the box to create something new. Just communicating what you’re looking for, what you’re wanting and needing to the dojo, to the instructor, or to the studio, that might give them the opportunity to really meet those wants and needs.

You know, saying, “We don’t want to require our kids to practice. We don’t want them to be taking home homework,” or, “We don’t need for you to be trying to impress us.” And some people in the community get so excited to be able to do it in a different way that’s not so school-skills-focused and we really just have to ask for what we want.

I also had a thought that this episode is reminding me a little bit of the Not Bringing School Home idea that was shared on the Living Joyfully Podcast recently. Like you were mentioning with that piano teacher, Anna, we don’t have to enforce practicing or homework or add any pressure to the activity just because that’s what other people are doing. We don’t have to add that urgency of progressing at a certain speed or meeting a certain bar.

Our children can determine for themselves the goals that they would like to meet. And with some activities and for some children, that will be this full-immersion, quick progress, working at it like it’s their full-time job. And for others it’s just a fun interest and they take their time and do what feels good. So, there’s not a right and a wrong about exploring our interests. And if we notice we’re looking towards a set outcome or feeling this external pressure or feeling like we’re on a certain timeline, that could just be a clue to step back a bit.

And finally, I just wanted to say, as an adult who is a scanner and I’m interested in doing all the different things, it’s been important for me to be careful not to commit myself to activities that the kids might enjoy, but also they might not enjoy. And it’s definitely happened to us in the past where now, I have people expecting me to help lead a class or run a group, and my kids were just done with it or not interested in it, and it’s really just not a good feeling. And in those cases, we worked through by just trying our best to meet all of our needs.

But there have definitely been times where I’ve regretted committing to something for myself because I would’ve been better served by being more available for what my kids wanted to do instead. But that’s just one of those things, I think, where you live and you learn. But I just wanted to mention that, as well.

PAM: Yes, live and learn. It’s fascinating. We talk a lot about how much we learn about our kids, just giving them the space and the opportunity to just make choices, but also think about how much they’re learning about themselves, the things that they love, that they enjoy, but how they like to enjoy things, how they like to pursue things, all the different possibilities. You touched on a number of them Erika, there and it is amazing. There are so many possibilities, so many different directions we can take when we’re curious about something.

I mean, the famous ballet example. I remember when Lissy was younger. “Do you really want lessons? Is lessons the thing you want to do or are you super happy to pick up a pair of ballet shoes?” You know what? You can go to a dance wear store and pick up tutus and shoes and tights and all that kind of stuff, and dance around in the living room, maybe watch YouTube videos. There’s so many ways you can play with something that is just as valid as showing up to the class.

And I think it was you that mentioned, Anna, is that class more about, okay, now I can tell people that she’s taking classes now? That is a feeling that can come up for us, certainly, in the beginning.

ANNA: We may not even recognize that. And the point that you made too, Pam, about, but are they going to push through challenges? I think that’s important to revisit, because what that’s a clue of is that I’m projecting out into the future really nothing that has to do with the class in front of me or the child in front of me.

And so, recognizing that, yes, when something matters to humans, we find a way. And so, if they’re not pushing through what you’re seeing as maybe a challenge with the class or something else, that’s really a good clue. And like you said, so much of what I wanted from these experiences for my girls was learning about themselves. How they wanted to take in information, what things sparked the interest, and I wanted them to be able to move on if it wasn’t. Because I’m also a scanner and I felt like I lost so many years being in school, doing what everyone else was telling me, that I was kind of excited they were going to have this time to really dive into these different things. So, always watching for those tapes in my head that might be projecting out and writing some story about the future that really has nothing to do with the child in front of me.

PAM: Yeah. And just one last thing to bring up again. You mentioned, Anna, the looking at activities geared for adults that might go to the depth, also the level of interest of the child. Because adults are choosing to go there. I mean, there’s oftentimes, too, where you go to rec activities and the kids are there because their parents signed them up. “I want you to take these lessons. You can have three activities a term and these are the best ones. School skills. These are going to get you the school skills that the teacher says you’re lacking.”

So, often the kids can be in activities that are geared to kids, they’ve got that lens on, that kids aren’t that capable, so we’re going to kind of dumb down the material to what grade level are they at? What words do they understand, etc. And then also the way they speak to them, the whole deal. And so, just opening up our view that it doesn’t have to be, “Okay, my child is 10. What is out there for 10 year olds?” No, what is out there for a person who loves these things a lot.

ANNA: Right. But I think, Erika, your point, you’ve said this before and so it stuck with me, this piece of, they are trying to teach these school skills. That’s why they’re doing it. Because, to me, I was just baffled by it. I’m like, why is this happening? Why are they making this so hard? Why are they making it not fun? Sit here. Don’t move. Line up here. Do this. But they’re selling it to parents as these school skills. And I’m like, oh, okay. These are not skills that I’m interested in.

ERIKA: Right. And that’s why it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s making me think of what a spectrum there is as far as how parents are approaching activities with children. Because I’ve heard plenty of parents say, “I want my kid to develop this. I’m going to put them into this activity.” And so, really, when you are doing those activities designed for children, there are plenty of children who have been just placed into that against their will, because of what the parents hope they’re going to be able to develop. And so, of course, in that atmosphere, you might feel that energy of, I don’t know, people don’t really seem to like this. It feels like they’re having to force the children to do these activities.

And so, I don’t know. I love, I guess, it’s like a lightness or a free feeling that we don’t have to buy into it. There’s not the one way, and so, we don’t have to just accept, well, I guess this is what soccer lessons are like. That’s just what it is. There are so many possibilities if we get open and curious about like, who could come help us? Who could do this in the way that would feel really fun for these kids?

ANNA: And so, right. And your point about just asking, because what I found with several people that had a specific interest that my girls were interested in, they loved not having to worry about those school things. They wanted to talk about the guitar or the art thing, or the whatever it was, from their passion perspective, so that that was a big piece of it.

But that piece that you were talking about with the kids there that didn’t want to be there. So, that, for my oldest, was a huge trigger, because she was there because she was super interested in the topic.

And so, this chattering over here, or this not focused because they didn’t want to be there, oh my gosh. She would get so upset about it, but I had to just tell her, I’m like, “Afton, they don’t want to be here. They’re just not interested in it as you are.” And so, then we would keep searching. But that’s the thing.

Bring some lightness to it. Know that there’s lots of options. Yeah. I just love that.

ERIKA: That’s where the adult groups would be a much better fit, in that case. Because all the adults are choosing to be there.

ANNA: Right, exactly. And super interested.

PAM: I love that. All right. Okay. This was so, so much fun. There are so many interesting aspects to consider when we’re approaching these kinds of activities from an unschooling perspective.

Thank you so much for the conversation and wishing everybody a lovely day. Bye.

ANNA: Yes! Take care.

ERIKA: Bye!

View Details

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a talk that Pam gave at the 2022 Canadian Online Homeschool Conference, Helping Kids Find Their Passion. Following our children’s interests and passions is one of the joys of unschooling. And truly, humans are born curious. As parents, we can give our children the gift of encouraging that curiosity, which in a conventional setting can definitely be snuffed out. And there are as many interests, and as many ways of pursuing interests, as there are children! Keeping an open and curious mindset as we support them can really help us all enjoy the adventure.

We hope you find the talk helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video on YouTube.

Learn more about the Canadian Online Homeschool Conference.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and her website.

Join Pam’s newsletter and get a free copy of her intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and if you’re a patron of the podcast, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of The Exploring Unschooling Podcast for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Learning About Our Family, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of beginner’s mind and trust.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting through the lenses of connection and curiosity. Check out The Living Joyfully Podcast here or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hi everyone! I’m really excited to be part of the 2022 Canadian Online Homeschool Conference. And I’m happy to welcome you to my session, Helping Kids Find Their Passion. I’m excited to dive in.

IntroductionBut first, a quick intro. My name is Pam Laricchia. My three kids left school back in 2002. I soon discovered unschooling and we never looked back. They are all in their twenties now.

Over the years I’ve written and published five books about unschooling—soon to be six.

In 2016, I started the Exploring Unschooling podcast. I continue to create new episodes every week, with more than 300 episodes now in the archive. It’s a treasure trove of conversations with unschooling parents from around the world about their experiences, as well as conversations with grown unschoolers.

And in early 2020 I started The Living Joyfully Network, a private, online community for parents where we have candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling.

If it isn’t yet clear, I love talking about unschooling!

Enough about me, let’s quickly go over what we’re going to talk about today.

First, we’re going to dive into the value of helping our kids follow their curiosity and dive into whatever catches their interest, to whatever depths they want to go, and how that helps them find their passion.

Then we’re going to talk about quitting and why it’s okay to let our kids quit things. In fact, it’s even better than okay.

Next, we’ll talk about scanners. Have you heard of scanners? If not, that’s going to be extra fun! This will bring a bit of a twist to our premise, but in a good way. It’s about how our kids are wired and helping them lean into that. Do we all really have one true calling?

Then we’ll dive into the importance of finding and following your interests. Unschooling isn’t just for the kids! We’ll talk about all the wonderful reasons for being open and curious, and for learning alongside your kids. It’s hard to encourage our kids to be lifelong learners if we, as adults, aren’t happily learning too.

And finally, we’ll connect the dots, weaving together a lovely picture of ways to help our kids find their passion, or passions, that hopefully makes sense and inspires you to live and learn with enthusiasm alongside your kids.

Unschooling in action!

So, let’s dive in.

Follow Their CuriosityWith unschooling, we choose not to direct our children’s learning through using curriculum. Instead, we follow their curiosity.

Not only is following their curiosity definitely more fun, it also deeply nurtures their learning. Curiosity and learning are intimately connected.

I love Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote: “I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”

Following a child’s interests truly does create a uniquely-tailored web of learning connections and knowledge that fits them so beautifully.

And truly, humans are born curious. I think the real gift we can give as parents is to not continually discourage their curiosity because it can definitely be snuffed out.

How might that happen?

Young children are insatiably curious about their world yet, as they become more mobile, we begin to dissuade them because their curiosity makes our life messy: cupboards emptied, food squished, puddles splashed, toys dumped.

They are drawn to participating in whatever the adults around them are doing because they are curious about their world. But as their excitement and exploration bumps up against their parents’ exhaustion and wish for some peace, their days gradually become peppered with noes.

“No! That’s not a toy.”

“No! Don’t make a mess.”

“No! Don’t touch that.”

Children continue to be deeply curious about their world, yet now we seem determined to stop them. And when we do this, the message we’re really giving our children is to stop being curious.

And it doesn’t get any better as our children get older. The mess becomes a bit more focused—less whirling dervish—yet we continue to shut down their curiosity and exploration.

“No, you can’t watch another episode, it’s bedtime.”

“No, I’m too busy, I can’t drive you to insert fun activity.”

“No, your friends can’t hang out here, they’ll eat all our food.”

The pull of curiosity weakens each time they aren’t given the opportunity to ask a question, to follow a thought, and to end up somewhere new. Most children ultimately get the message: their questions, their interests, their explorations, aren’t important. And eventually they stop asking. Sooner or later, they even stop asking themselves.

That’s how it can happen.

Let’s take a moment to explore what following their curiosity might look like if we don’t actively discourage it. If we choose, instead, to be open to the possibilities.

Let’s follow a few of my daughter’s interests and see how things unfold. Back in 2004, she was passionate about all things Harry Potter.

She’d listen to the Harry Potter audiobooks over and over and over, doing arts and crafts while she listened. Repairing PJs. Making pillows. Knitting. Creating vignettes of scenes from the books.

Then she picked up reading and branched out to Harry Potter fan fiction. So much reading!

There was a fan fiction author she enjoyed who began each chapter with song lyrics, which sparked an interest in music. She wanted to hear these songs.

This is probably around the time she also began getting interested in photography and taking pictures.

Her interest in music continued to grow and she wanted to see her favourite alternative bands live at shows. She was around age 12. We went to lots of shows over the years.

Alongside the shows, her interest in photography, specifically fine art photography, grew. When she was 18, she got an O-1 visa and moved to New York City to work as a photographer. She continued to go to small, alternative shows and meet musicians.

Over the next few years, she discovered she really enjoyed working with musicians as clients and her photography work began to lean in that direction.

And over the last couple of years her style has developed to mix various arts and crafts mediums into her images, like watercolour painting, stickers, and cutting out image elements to recombine them.

It’s no wonder we describe unschooling learning as a web, right?

There were many points along the way I could have discouraged her interests. So much fabric and yarn supplies for her creations. Going to shows in bars at age 12? Going to lots of shows? Travelling to see bands she liked? Moving to New York City on her own at age 18?

Yet now, looking back, we can see how those threads of interests have woven together in her current passion and joy photographing musicians for publicity shots, covers for song and album releases, and more.

But I had no idea where her interests might go at the time.

That reminds me of something Steve Jobs said in his commencement address to Stanford students in 2005 about connecting the dots. He shared a few bits and pieces from his life and how they connected, then observing:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Steve Jobs

Part of helping our kids find their passion is developing this trust that dots will connect in the future. This trust that encourages us to be open and supportive and patient as our kids create their unique collection of dots over the years.

The dots—their interests—often aren’t their passion. Maybe they’re fleeting curiosities, or month-long deep dives, or interests with longer staying power. Maybe they’re part of a winding path to their passion. And even then, as with my daughter, none are an end point, it’s part of their ever-evolving story.

And we can’t lay it out the path for them, or even guess what it might look like. If we try, those guesses can quickly become expectations that get in the way of their exploration. Of learning about themselves.

What we can see looking back is the connections they’ve made over time. Over years. How their interests and passions have woven together to where they happen to be right now. For now.

It might be for you take a few minutes this week to think about your child’s interests over the last six to twelve months.

What threads do you see connecting them?

Is there a common denominator that sits in the foundation of their various interests over that time?

What interests have fallen by the wayside?

And this seems like a great time to talk about the idea of quitting. Remember how I mentioned that those dots may be fleeting curiosities, month-long deep dives, or interests with longer staying power? It doesn’t matter which, they’re all good. They all have value. And it’s totally okay when they realize that an interest has waned.

Choosing to quit an activity is as much a learning experience as starting it.

That may be a pretty unconventional perspective, but let’s dive in and explore it.

Conventionally, quitting is akin to failure.

I love what Anna Brown shared on my podcast in episode 262 around this idea. She explained:

“We have this idea of, “But you’re on the team! You’re gonna let your team down!”

But I just want to remind everybody that we have all been on teams and in groups where members did not want to be there. And it was kind of the worst, you know? I find it’s way more of a disservice to people who actually want to be there, who are actually passionate about that team or that activity or that idea, to hang out when we aren’t happy and don’t want to be there. Because I don’t know if it’s possible to give your all to something where you really don’t want to be.

So, this idea that you’re serving the team by toughing it out is just really not the whole story.”

Anna Brown

Another one is, if you quit something before the official “end,” you have failed to finish it. Parents have been known to explain to their kids, “I paid for ten lessons, so just finish them and then you don’t have to sign up again.” It seems like a reasonable compromise. At least on the surface.

Well, consider our human tendency to fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy, which is the tendency to follow through on an endeavor if we have already invested time, effort, or money into it, whether or not the current costs outweigh the benefits. The money is already spent, so we can take it out of the current conversation altogether. Right now, is it worth the cost of your child’s growing dislike?

It’s definitely worth taking a moment to revisit your goal. If each week the lesson is an actively unhappy time for your child, is your insistence that they attend worth it? Is your goal to turn them off ballet or swimming for the indefinite future? If you’ve paid $200 for a series of ballet lessons and they’re only half finished, might you consider that last $100 as an investment in preserving their enjoyment of dance?

One of the wonderful things about unschooling is that the children have time to explore the world, including a variety of activities. But if we continue to insist that they “finish what they start,” they will more likely learn to NOT try out an activity unless they are very sure they will enjoy it: the fear of being stuck there will outweigh their curiosity to explore something new. Less exploration.

Less dots.

Or maybe we’re worried that our children wanting to quit means they will always give up, rather than rise to a challenge. Again, that’s fear talking—the choices they make today don’t define all the choices they will make in the future. The choices they make today are helping them gain experience with making choices. Not to mention, challenges that aren’t motivating and inspiring for your child are probably not the right kinds of challenges for them. That’s a great thing to learn!

Over the years unschooling children will gain lots of experience with wanting to try something, choosing ways to try it out, and seeing how well those paths met their goals. They will discover things they enjoy, things they don’t, and get a better feel for the clues that help them decide when to step up their game and when to quit and move on.

And each time they choose to quit, they’re still learning. How does that choice feel? Do they miss the activity? How much? What do they miss about it? What are they doing with the time that quitting freed up? Are they enjoying that more than the activity? Less? So much learning! And quitting is not a forever decision. Now that they better understand the environment, they may choose to go back at some point in the future.

Children who have the freedom to explore a variety of things and discard those that don’t catch their prolonged interest do not feel like failures when they choose to drop something.

More dots.

And not only that, these experiences help them better understand what they like and what they don’t like—whether it’s the activities themselves, the environments like big groups or small, highly organized or more free-flowing, and so on. All of which helps them figure out things that will be a good fit for them.

More dots help them home in on their passion.

And speaking of environments, moving on from an organized activity needn’t mean an end to learning about it. It doesn’t have to mean no more dots.

What if they just really don’t like swimming lessons? If your wish is for them to enjoy swimming and be safe in the water, instead of lessons, find the ways they do enjoy the water and explore those for now. The adventure of water parks? Playing at the beach? Jumping off the dock into the lake? A wading pool in the backyard? Lots of baths? Open your mind to the many ways there are to enjoy water beyond swimming lessons.

Joining and quitting activities is more about helping our children explore their world—the activities and environments that spark their curiosity and bring them joy. That’s where the learning is.

If they discover a passionate interest, they will doggedly pursue it, even through many challenging moments. You don’t need to teach this kind of unwavering commitment by requiring it in everything they do. Instead, help them find things that they enjoy so much that their dedication and learning flows naturally.

See how that works? Quitting is actually another way we can help our kids find their passion.

And not only that, what a great skill to bring into adulthood! How many adults do you know who feel stuck in in situations or jobs they don’t enjoy, not willing to leave because that would feel like a failure? I’ve seen it lots of times.

It’s empowering to know they have agency over their lives, at every age.

Having More than One Passion: Multipotentialites or ScannersAlright. Now that we’ve talked about the immense value of helping our kids follow their curiosity wherever it takes them and quit things when their interest wanes in support of helping them find their passion, let’s step back and question our premise.

I know you want to help your child find their passion, but is there just one singular passion for everyone?

Is everyone meant to be a specialist?

What if they have multiple interests? Multiple passions?

What if they don’t want to choose just one thing?

In her book, Refuse to Choose: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything that You Love, Barbara Sher identifies a person she calls The Scanner?someone who frequently has a multiplicity of interests, but finds it hard to create a life they love because their passions and abilities are taking them in so many different directions.

Contrary to popular wisdom, Sher tells Scanners that theirs is a unique ability, not a liability. And that they can do everything they love, they don’t have to zero in on one pursuit at the expense of all others.

Is your child a scanner? Are you?

That’s amazing too!

If you have a scanner in your family, I think you’ll have an a-ha moment or three listening to Emilie Wapnick’s TEDx talk, Why some of us don’t have one true calling.

She makes a great point in her talk that “the notion of the narrowly focused life is highly romanticized in our culture. It’s this idea of destiny or the one true calling, the idea that we each have one great thing we are meant to do during our time on this earth, and you need to figure out what that thing is and devote your life to it.”

While Barbara uses the term “scanners” and others use “polymath” or “Renaissance person,” Emilie prefers “multipotentialite.”

She has been writing and speaking with people about this idea for a while and has landed on three multipotentialite superpowers that I want to share with you.

The first is “idea synthesis,” which she describes as combining two or more fields and creating something new at the intersection. That aligns so well with our unschooling process of connecting the dots, doesn’t it?

The second is “rapid learning.” In her experience, when multipotentialites become interested in something, they dive in fast and deep.

Interestingly, I think that’s something we see often with unschooling kids because they get to choose whatever they dive into. I think the “slow learning” that she’s seeing in comparison probably has more to do with the school environment. It’s hard and slow to learn something you’re not interested in, but kids—people—who are free to choose what and how they want to learn about something learn pretty quickly!

And the third multipotentialite superpower is “adaptability,” the ability to morph into whatever they need to be in a given situation. Having had many different interests over the years, they have lots of experience with trying new things and stepping out of their comfort zones. And they bring what they’ve learned across various topics with them every time, so they’re rarely starting from scratch.

She goes on to explain:

“It is rarely a waste of time to pursue something you’re drawn to, even if you end up quitting. You might apply that knowledge in a different field entirely, in a way that you couldn’t have anticipated.”

Emilie Wapnick

More dots!

And see, through a completely different lens, quitting is still okay. In fact, it’s more than okay! Just because they quit something doesn’t mean they forget what they’ve already learned about it. Maybe that amount was just right. Maybe it’ll connect beautifully with something else they dive into in the future.

That’s the incredible mystery of life we embrace with unschooling.

Circling back for a moment, as Steve Jobs reminds us, we can’t connect the dots looking forward.

Looking forward is about trust.

However your child is wired, help them embrace it. Whether they choose to explore their world in pursuit of a singular passion or they prefer to embrace multiple interests—all at once or in quick succession—what’s important is helping them figure out how they tick and supporting them as they explore their interests and passions.

And what’s fascinating is that no matter their wiring, how we as parents support them on their journey is the same: help them follow their curiosity and let them quit when they’re ready to move on.

It’s that simple. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.

Definitely, sometimes it will be easy, like when we share our child’s interest, or when the learning that’s happening is obvious to us. But sometimes we’ll be dancing at the edge of our comfort zones, trying to move beyond feelings of judgment and exploring ways to grow.

If you find yourself stuck here, I think you may find Roya Dedeaux’s book really helpful. It’s called, Connect with Courage: Practical Ways to Release Fear and Find Joy in the Places Your Children Take You. Roya is a Marriage and Family Therapist and an unschooling mom with three kids.

I spoke with her on the podcast about the book in episode 286, if you’d like to check that out.

Find Your InterestsAnd last, but not least, it’s important for you to find your interests.

Often, we start down the unschooling path for our kids, but soon enough we discover that unschooling is really a lifestyle for the whole family.

How will our children absorb the value of lifelong learning if the adults around them aren’t also learning?

So, let’s be a shining example of being curious and continuing to learn whatever our age.

Are you exploring your interests? Asking questions and seeking answers?

If you find yourself mostly indifferent to the world around you, it’s time to find and fan that spark of curiosity. You needn’t start with an earth-shattering question, nor a big, passionate interest—that’s way too much pressure.

Just quiet things down for a while and listen. Underneath the noise, you’ll start to hear the whisperings of your inner voice.

As you go about your days, notice what catches your attention. And, rather than dismissing it, roll it around in your mind for a moment. Get curious. Is it connected to something you already know? Is it something new to you? Why do you think it caught your attention? Might you enjoy knowing more?

What questions come to mind?

When something catches our attention, instead of judging ourselves negatively, let’s lean in.

Here’s a story. When my kids were much younger, sometimes they’d watch Food TV with me. I still clearly remember one night when we were laying in my bed and watching a special on reverse engineering popular foods and they showed how to make Reese’s peanut butter cups at home. Joseph was the only child still awake by the end (I just looked at my printout of the recipe and it was the year 2000, so he was 8!) and I said, “What do you think, should we try that tomorrow?”

His answer was a happy “Yes!”

They were awesome and to this day I still make them—they are now a family classic.

That is what’s so exciting about being curious and following your interests—you never know what you might discover. With an open and curious mindset, you will see so many more opportunities for fun and connection bubbling up around you than you will by walking around judging and worrying, mostly closed off from exploring life.

I understand that, especially when our kids are younger, we don’t often have large swathes of time to dedicate to solitary deep dives, but we can find a few minutes here and there.

Maybe we read about our interest, sitting nearby our kids as they play.

Maybe we enjoy painting, or arts and crafts, and we keep a basket with our current project nearby to bring out to do alongside our kids. Maybe we also have some supplies at hand for them in case they want to join us.

As my kids have gotten older, it’s been so interesting to see how our interests and joy intertwine, sometimes even in the most unlikely ways.

Like rediscovering my interest in alternative music through Lissy’s music interest, or better understanding Michael’s passionate interest in karate through my own passionate experience with ballet growing up, or re-igniting my love of stories through Joseph’s passionate pursuit of them through all facets of storytelling.

If you’d like your kids to live an engaged and curious life, then live an engaged and curious life yourself alongside them.

Unschooling is a gift for us too.

Which means that, as we explore our interests, we can share our excitement and enthusiasm with them without any expectations that they’ll want to join us and learn the same things.

In fact, learning new things reminds us what real, engaged learning feels like, which can help us connect more closely with our children around the process.

Learning new things reminds us that learning can sometimes be challenging, which may give us space for more empathy for our child next time they get frustrated trying to figure something out.

Learning new things also reminds of how fun it is and we may be more apt to celebrate our accomplishments along the way, and those of our kids.

Even if we don’t love one of our child’s particular interests, we can still meet them in the feelings of wonder, frustration, and joy—the common threads that weave through pursuing our interests.

Giving ourselves the space to follow our interests can also be a great lens through which to explore cultural messages like, “you need to be productive,” “don’t waste your time,” and “it’s only valuable if you’re going to monetize it.”

Are these the only reasons to pursue something? No!

In his book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It, Ian Leslie describes the essence of curiosity this way:

“The most fundamental reason to choose curiosity isn’t so that we can do better at school or at work. The true beauty of learning stuff, including apparently useless stuff, is that it takes us out of ourselves, reminds us that we are part of a far greater project, one that has been underway for at least as long as human beings have been talking to each other.”

Ian Leslie

Think about that for a moment. Being curious is a deeply human thing and so many of us have lost it.

Let’s recapture that sense of wonder we see on our children’s faces.

Let’s approach our days being open and curious.

Open to new possibilities over stale patterns we follow without thinking just because that’s the way we’ve always done things.

Maybe that’s efficient, but does efficiency always need to be the goal?

What about being creative? Curiosity often leads to creativity. How else might we do this?

And it’s so fun to contemplate!

When we cultivate a welcoming, non-judgmental space that’s free from deadlines and expectations, we give possibilities time to percolate and unfold.

As Ian says, that’s the true beauty of learning stuff.

Connecting the DotsOkay, let’s try to connect the dots we’ve scattered around today.

You’re curious about how to help your child find their passion.

One valuable aspect of that is helping them follow their curiosity.

That means rather than judging or discouraging their interest in something—in anything—try to say yes more.

We can only connect the dots of their interests looking back, so, looking forward from today, we need to trust that the dots will connect somehow.

An important aspect of following their curiosity is letting them quit when they realize an interest has waned.

Quitting isn’t failure, it’s more learning. It’s homing in on their passion.

Maybe it’s just that particular environment they’re not enjoying, don’t be too quick to toss the interest. Instead find another way to explore it.

If you make them stick it out, what they’re really learning is not to try something new they’re curious about unless they’re super sure they’ll enjoy it. Less dots.

If they discover a passionate interest, they will doggedly pursue it, even through many challenging moments. You don’t need to teach this kind of unwavering commitment by requiring it in everything they do. Instead, help them find things that they enjoy so much that their dedication and learning flows naturally.

And then we talked about whether everyone is meant to have one singular passion. To be a specialist.

Maybe your child is a scanner, or multipotentialite. That’s cool too!

The idea of one true calling is highly romanticized in our culture, but not everyone is wired this way.

In her TEDx talk, Emilie shared three multipotentialite superpowers: idea synthesis, rapid learning, and adaptability.

She shared that it’s rarely a waste of time to pursue something you’re drawn to, even if you end up quitting. More dots in your child’s web of interests and learning.

And lastly, we talked about the immense value of pursuing your own interests—of living and learning alongside your kids. Unschooling is not just for the kids, it’s a family lifestyle that celebrates lifelong learning.

Fan the spark of your own curiosity and share your enthusiasm with those around you—without expectations.

No matter how a person is wired—whether a specialist, a scanner, or some beautiful mix—how we help them find their passions is the same: help them follow their curiosity wherever it leads and let them quit when they’re ready to move on.

Look at all these dots of info for you to connect in the ways that make sense to you! All because you’re interested in unschooling and supporting your kids. It’s your web of learning in action.

And as we wrap up our time together, I want to pull up into the bigger picture.

Let’s go back to the quote from Ian’s book, Curious:

“The most fundamental reason to choose curiosity isn’t so that we can do better at school or at work. The true beauty of learning stuff, including apparently useless stuff, is that it takes us out of ourselves, reminds us that we are part of a far greater project, one that has been underway for at least as long as human beings have been talking to each other.”

Ian Leslie

This isn’t just about helping our kids find their passions. There’s no endpoint.

This is about the true beauty of learning stuff.

About being human, in a world of humans.

It’s life.

Thanks for joining me today to talk about helping kids find their passion!

View Details

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing our second episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series!

We use the word “rules,” in quotes, to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade—or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, for inquiry, for agency, and for growth.

In this episode, we’re diving into the “rule” that unschoolers should never use curriculum. It can be really helpful when you’re starting out unschooling to steer away from curriculum and adult-led activities, because, when we first come to unschooling, our vision of how learning works is so often tightly wrapped up in what it looks like in school. But eventually, our focus on what they’re learning shifts to focusing on cultivating connected and trusting relationships with them and the choices they make about what activities they want to do and how they want to follow their interests just flow naturally from that connected place.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and her website.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Join Pam’s newsletter and get a free copy of her intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and if you’re a patron of the podcast, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of The Exploring Unschooling Podcast for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Learning About Our Family, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of beginner’s mind and trust.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting through the lenses of connection and curiosity. Check out The Living Joyfully Podcast here or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Welcome! I’m Pam Laricchia from livingjoyfully.ca, and today I’m joined by Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hi to you both.

ANNA AND ERIKA: Hello.

PAM: Now, before we get started proper, we want to remind everyone that, with this Unschooling “Rules” series, we use the word rules in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing. It can sometimes feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new. But we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade or even an A+. So, our goal with this series is to explore these apparent rules and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, for inquiry, for agency, and for growth.

So, in this episode, we’re diving into the “rule” that says unschoolers don’t use curriculum. And I think this is going to be so interesting to explore.

Now, when I started thinking about it, it is very similar to the first rule we explored, “Always Say Yes,” in that it makes sense as a guide for people new to unschooling. It can be really helpful when you’re starting out to steer away from not only curriculum, but also more formal adult-led programs for a while, like local rec classes or online classes, things like that. And that’s because, when we first come to unschooling, our vision of how learning works is so often tightly wrapped up in what it looks like in school. There’s an adult teacher who knows the subject and the order in which it’s best to learn it, and students who soak up the knowledge as directed.

Sure we have likely chosen unschooling because something in that process didn’t make sense to us. So, maybe our child didn’t mesh with the classroom environment of sit quietly and listen. Or maybe the high student-teacher ratio makes us uncomfortable. Or maybe we buck at the amount of seemingly arbitrary rules needed to manage a classroom of 30-odd kids. Yet, and this was definitely the case for me, I didn’t know what I didn’t yet know about how learning happens. I thought I knew how learning happens. I’ve been learning for so many years in my life.

So, the encouragement to steer clear of curriculum when we were starting out was helpful for me. Without that curriculum-based structure to fall back on, I had a little choice but to ask myself, “Well, how would my kids learn instead? So, I ended up more intentionally watching them in action, playing with them, chatting with them, hanging out together. And over time, I came to see how much they were learning as they went about their day following their interests.

Because, with unschooling, instead of following curriculum, our kids are following their interests. And if we don’t first take curriculum off the table, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll just naturally jump to that style of learning whenever our kid expresses an interest in something. “Dance? Okay. I’ll sign you up for ballet lessons.” “Soccer? Oh yeah. Let’s join the local soccer league and get you on a team. It’ll be so fun.” “Science? The Science Center has a six-week summer program. I just signed you up. Yay!” And that’s because we still think these more formal adult-led settings are the best way to learn.

But really, they are just another way to engage with an interest, not objectively better than dancing around the family room or kicking the ball around the yard or making slime at home. And the more we sink into that, peeling back those layers, the more we discover about how human beings are wired to learn, how they will naturally play around with things to figure out how they work, how human beings are just so curious.

And eventually, our focus on what they’re learning shifts to focusing on cultivating connected and trusting relationships with them. Because we know in our bones now that learning happens all the time and in the bigger picture, we can better support their efforts when our relationship is strong. And it is here that this role can start to rub. It can start to feel a bit restrictive.

If we continue to stick with the story that people like us, unschoolers, don’t use curriculum, we are apt to take interesting possibilities off the table, just because they’re curriculum-based. Instead, now that we no longer feel that learning directed by an adult or teacher is any better than learning that they pursue themselves, we can now add those bits to the big smorgasbord of learning possibilities to choose from. None is better than another except to the individual who’s interested in learning about something.

How do they like to learn? What are they looking to learn? Where might they find that kind of information? Where might they find other people who are as interested in the topic as they are? Maybe they’ve loved dancing around the house and now they want to try a class with others who also love to dance. Maybe an online class that dives into a book series they love looks interesting to them, or joining a sports team to up their game, or chemistry class, or whatever strikes their fancy.

At this point, the fundamental difference is that they are choosing the more formal environment or curriculum because they’re interested in the information that they’ll find there. It’s not about the grades. It’s about what they want to learn. And if they find the environment isn’t a good fit after all, they know they’re free to leave and try another way to dive into their interest, without any judgment. And at this point, we know and we feel how this applies to our whole family. We are a family of people who pursue our interests and aspirations in whatever ways we’re curious to explore, no matter our age. Now, we’re really unschooling! So, Anna, what are your thoughts around this?

ANNA: Oh my goodness. First, I really do love this series, because I feel like picking apart this idea that there are these hard and fast rules is so valuable, because it gets us to our “why” and all this thinking that I like to do and pick apart and see the nuances, because it really is just so unique to each family. And if we keep connection at the forefront, it makes it so much easier to navigate all these things as they come along.

So, in our family, my girls never went to school, but I did. So, I had certainly soaked up what learning was supposed to look like in a school setting. I am also a scanner though, and so I just love learning new things, and so I had that going for me. I knew that I could learn whatever I wanted to and dig to whatever depths I wanted to, so I had that experience that I think helped me along the way.

In some of the very early days, I was really attracted to the nature-based curricula and new school supplies were super fun for me at school. That was probably my favorite part. And I definitely enjoyed getting the art cabinet fully-stocked and having all these tools at our disposal.

But what I learned pretty quickly was, I was drawn to the nature based curriculum because it was what I liked. And interestingly, my girls also enjoyed nature when they were very young, but they didn’t like a book telling them what they were going to do each day. So, we had a really cool backyard with the creek and all kinds of nature and flora and fauna, and they just really preferred that exploration, being led by what was in front of us and what was happening in their lives and where their interest was drawn throughout the yard.

And then I think about the flip side, we also learned so much about bugs and fish through Animal Crossing, which is a video game that we all enjoyed as a family. We each had our own. And I found cool ideas from all kinds of different sources over the years. When I used them in a way that flowed with our days and our organic interests, everyone enjoyed it.

So, for me, it’s never been that that curriculum doesn’t have a place. It’s more about who’s driving it and how it’s used. I want to look carefully at why I felt it would be helpful. And oftentimes, when I dug in there, it was because of maybe how it would look or I can say, we’re using this. Or it would take some of the responsibility off of me, because then I’m not having to plan activities or think or follow their interests as much. We can just sit down and do the thing.

But, in the end, I found, even when I tried to find curriculum-type resources, they felt so short of what my children actually wanted to learn. It was very surface level. And what I found with mine is that they like to dive deep and learn all the things about whatever their interest was in that moment.

And so, in the end, it just really didn’t add much for us. But I do think every family is unique and every child unique, and so, it is worth exploring.

I guess I do want to add, too, this is just a personal aside, that I don’t believe that kids need worksheets to learn. I think humans like to know how information is used and how it fits in the world, and I think worksheets tend to dissociate from that. So, that was actually something we didn’t have around. We had tons of books and games and watched shows and found resources that enhanced the things that we were interested in. Our halls were lined with posters from snakes to a giant timeline of the presidents. They liked logic games and different computer games, and Raelin went through a geography phase and we found all sorts of resources for that.

There are just so many amazing resources out there, and I think probably even more now than there was when our kids were growing up. For me, it’s just really about staying connected and in tune with what might help them along their chosen path. And I think that’s the important piece for me is, they’re really seeing that path and I’m right there with them facilitating and learning alongside of them, but I’m not carving the path for them. Erika, what are you thinking about?

ERIKA: So, I thought this was a really interesting one, too, and like with that “Always Say Yes” rule, I’ve definitely seen this idea cause issues in both directions. So, on one side of the pendulum swing, parents might actively reject anything that reminds them of anything that anyone has ever done in school, which potentially limits what their children have access to. And then, on the other side, parents might value curriculum or learning that looks more schoolish and subconsciously, or even purposefully, encourage their children to make those kinds of choices.

And really, in either case, it’s not as much about what the kids are drawn to or what feels the best to them, and more about judgments of the parents and what the parents want their life to look like from the outside. So, I think for this rules episode, it’s fun to just consider where you are on that pendulum swing and what kinds of reactions you have to the types of interests that your children have.

I remember at the beginning of my unschooling journey, I was drawn to the idea of curriculum, because it seems fun to have a plan and to have activities to do, and it’s appealing to me to check off boxes. I also love school supplies, and I do think curriculum is also appealing in that same way that Anna was describing, that handing off responsibility piece, because if we’re following a plan that someone else has created, we are less responsible for the outcomes. And if we’re on that prescribed path, there can be a feeling of security that’s tied to that.

And, depending on our children’s personalities, there will be more or less push-back about doing adult-led activities. And in the case of my kids, there was just no way to direct them to do activities of my choosing. They are very focused on the things they’re interested in. And so, I recognized that very early on and focused on supporting their explorations rather than trying to direct them.

And every once in a while, we would try out a nature program or a story time or an art activity at the park. And really my experience with my kids, with all adult-directed activities is that they don’t like the feeling of being directed. And I know my kids are not the only ones that feel like that.

But some kids do like their Outschool classes or their co-op classes and their reading practice books. And some kids, we hear, oh, they love doing math worksheets. And so, I guess in those cases, I would just want to dig into a couple of questions for myself. Am I giving my kids any indication that choosing those adult-led activities is better than something else they might be interested in doing? Or am I suggesting classes and curriculum ideas, like Pam was saying, as the first thing that pops into my head when they express a new interest? And if that’s the case, maybe it would be worthwhile to expand the possibilities, give things a little more space to blossom, and get curious about what that particular child really would want to do if they were free to make a choice.

There’s definitely not a right way when it comes to learning, and so, I’m just grateful for space and the chance to give things time and for my kids to truly be able to choose what makes sense as the right next step for them as they’re following their interests.

ANNA: I think that’s such a core piece though, right? Is when it happens that, okay, they like this. They like that. Great. We’re supporting that. We’re supporting their interest in the class or the worksheet or the whatever. But I think those questions are important, because we’ve seen it. I mean, I feel like we’ve just seen it recently with some friends, too, that are just so excited about the classes that are starting up! And kids sense that, right? They see that, okay, this is really valued. And we’ve been hearing, oh, we’re just sitting around all day and oh, we’re just doing this. And so, what is that energy, and what is our body language, and what are our words conveying about learning? I think it’s just interesting to kind of explore.

ERIKA: And if it’s a certain kind of kid, the kid will see that excitement and want to do it. And then if it’s my kind of kid, they’ll see that excitement and never want to do it. And in either case, they’re not really listening to themselves.

ANNA: Right. To themselves.

PAM: Yeah. And I think it that is so interesting for us to dig into, too, because I feel there may be occasions when we get super excited about how a class or something sounds. It can be, why? Let’s dig into that. Is it because it’s something that’s interesting to us. That’s cool. And maybe we could take the class, then. But also, most of us have grown up going to school and we have that school experience and when that’s still what we reach for as learning, but now it’s in like maybe a more open environment, it’s less restrictive than the experience we had. So, that’s another piece that can be exciting for us, because it feels more open to us. It’s more open. It’s something they’re interested in. This is awesome! Yay!

But we won’t notice until we kind of dig in, because it’s just something we haven’t had much experience with until we give ourselves the ability and the choice and the space to just think, ooh, what am interested in? It could be really interesting just to think, what is something that I’d like to learn about? What am I curious about? And then, whatever pops to mind, how would I like to learn about that? And it would just be so curious to write down 10 ways that you might learn about the thing that you’re curious about learning and just look at them. It could give you a really cool snapshot of where your mind is and how we learn things, how human beings learn things.

And maybe you’ll go, you know what? I’m going to try out number seven on the list, because that might be a little bit outside of my comfort zone, but that could be cool to experience. Because that’s the thing is, when we don’t have judgment, when we’re not worried about grades, when it’s really just about us and our learning and the way we want to learn things and the things that we’re interested in learning, we can try it out. We can try it out for a couple of weeks. It’s like, oh, this doesn’t feel good, but when we have these experiences about ways to learn, we can bring that to our conversations with our kids. It helps us release some of the judgment. It helps us see the value in, “Oh, they’re ‘just’ playing.” That was in quotes, right? It is fascinating when we can start playing with it for ourselves, because now we have more experiences and we can see new things in our kids that we might not have when we had a little bit more of a tunnel vision around how human beings learn.

ANNA: Right. And I feel like we don’t even know that we have that though. So, I think the exercise you’re talking about is really important, because when you just realize, oh, I need a class, I need an expert to tell me how to do that. Oh, I need to go do it this way. It’s just so ingrained in us. It’s just so hard to even begin to question that.

But I think when we turn our eyes to our children, actually, we see all the learning that takes place in a given day as they’re physically moving objects, as they’re asking questions, as they’re exploring the world.

And so, I feel like, for me, that’s what really opened that up was just seeing how much they were learning just organically living their day. When I was trained and taught that that’s how you learn is to sit there and listen to the expert telling you. And while there were pieces of me that bucked against that, I didn’t know that we really could do it another way. And so, I think it is more ingrained in us than we think. And it’s really fun to let it go, I’ll just say, now, 20 years down the road. Oh my gosh. The power that we have to just learn anything that we want in so many different ways is such a unique time in history I think as well. So, it’s really fun.

ERIKA: Yeah. It’s exactly that. I feel like when we have the tunnel vision about the one way to learn and we’re directing them into this kind of chute of, here’s the next step, then we’re missing what we talk about so much, which is like what they actually like about the thing, too. And so, the more they get sucked into, this is the way everyone learns about this thing that you’re interested in, the less chance there is for them to take the offshoots of what they actually really are curious about.

And so, I think it’s such a special environment for a person to be able to actually be following the little threads of their own interest. I think there’s a better chance for finding new things or finding something that just so perfectly matches with who they are. That’s really exciting to think about, actually.

ANNA: I love that, because I think, like you’re talking about, it’s these different webs and there’s backtracks. So, I’m interested in dance. But I like the music. Oh, but I’m going to come back here. And, oh, I like the costumes. And, oh, I’m going to come back here. But it’s like the ballet class for the five-year-old is just going to be the ballet class for the five-year-old. You’re going to be learning these few feet positions and put a tutu on, but we have the ability to provide a richer environment where all those aspects can be explored to the depths that maybe just a quick shallow or a very deep dive that’s so unique and so much more, I think, how humans learn.

PAM: Yeah. I love that so much. That’s such an interesting thing to think about, because you’re right. When we get a topic and we want to be helpful and supportive, it’s like, okay, let’s go! Let’s sign up for the lessons, let’s do this. But when you start doing that, you’re guiding them, because in that environment, they’re told what the important part of the thing is, right. So, it’s like, oh, okay. So, I don’t get to wear a costume until maybe the end of the year when we have our performance, right?

So, they just absorb the message that, oh, that’s not really an important part of it, even though, for me, when I watched some ballet or I see a ballet, that was what I loved. And I love ballet! And, “Okay, let’s go to class.” And that gets lost and it gets pushed down. Not even anyone saying anything, but those messages come through.

So, giving the space for a little while, just to like dance with them, to see what they’re drawn to. Put ballet dance videos and all those things on and see what they do with it. See where they take it. That can give us so much more information than quickly setting them in an environment that is presupposing what their love of the thing is all about.

ANNA: Right, and I’m going to take it back to the topic, just really quick to even wrap it up. Once we’ve cultivated this environment where we’re able to explore and go and come back and do and create the web, then a curriculum doesn’t have any power. It may have use. So, then you bring in that more conventional tool that maybe is an expert or maybe is a written curriculum or is maybe some type of class and they know it’s just one option among many. They don’t weigh it any more. They get what they want to from it. They don’t feel bad about themselves if it doesn’t fit them or it doesn’t feel good.

And so, I think that’s the beauty of creating this environment. It’s not about no curriculum, no classes. It’s about the whole environment. Is everything valued and is our own unique learning path valued?

PAM: Oh yeah. I love that. I love that. When you get to that point, then everything’s an option.

Life is just so much bigger and beautiful. Oh, thank you so much to both of you for joining me. That’s a really fun discussion and I am really, really loving this series.

ERIKA: Me too!

PAM: Yay! I hope everyone else listening is as well. And remember, you can come and comment on the episode on the website where we’re sharing it on the YouTube video, on Instagram, all the different places. We would love to hear your thoughts as well. Have a great day, everyone. Bye!

ERIKA: Bye!

ANNA: Bye.

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This week, we’re back with another On the Journey episode. Pam, Anna, and Erika are joined by Living Joyfully Network member Nora McDonald. Nora is an unschooling mom of two living in Costa Rica. She shares her journey to unschooling as well as two major a-ha moments she has had in the last year.

We talk about getting to know our children better by dropping expectations and really listening to them as well as how valuable it is to drop our sense of urgency when it comes to getting through difficult moments. Nora writes so eloquently on the Network about her big realizations, her thought processes, and her challenges, and it was so fun to bring some of her insights to the podcast.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through curiosity and connection. Our theme this month is Being Intentional, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of curiosity and presence.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and her website.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Join Pam’s newsletter and get a free copy of her intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and if you’re a patron of the podcast, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of The Exploring Unschooling Podcast for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting through the lenses of connection and curiosity. Find the podcast in your favorite player here: The Living Joyfully Podcast.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Welcome! I’m Pam Laricchia from LivingJoyfully.ca and today, Anna, Erika, and I are excited to speak with Living Joyfully member Nora McDonald. Welcome, Nora!

ANNA: Hello.

ERIKA: Hi!

PAM: So, to get us started, can you give us a bit of an introduction to you and your family?

NORA: Yeah, sure. Okay. I’m Nora. I’m British, as you may hear. And I am married to a Costa Rican man called Luis. And we have two kids, Ruben who is eight, and Liam who is five. And me and Luis met in Costa Rica and we’ve sort of gone back and forth quite a lot, but we’ve spent more of our relationship in Cambridge, in the UK, but actually at the moment, we are in Costa Rica as of seven months ago. This is my third time living in Costa Rica, Ruben’s second, and Liam’s first. So, it’s a bit complicated.

So, I was going to say about how we got into unschooling, because I always like hearing about that. So yeah, I was sort of thinking about, it feels like a gradual journey towards it. I discovered gentle parenting and that kind of thing when Ruben was a baby. So, that made me feel like I was doing something slightly alternative. But that was kind of it.

And then, when I was going to have Liam, we went back to the UK from Costa Rica at that point. And so, we actually had the same doula that we’d had with Ruben. We had the same one with Liam and she is a home educator, I think still. And so, we ended up having much more conversation with her about home education than we did about babies. And so, we looked into it after that and ended up home educating and I didn’t really have a philosophy for a while. I was kind of exploring things.

Ruben has always been very anti-being taught things, so we were pretty relatively laid back. But the big dive into unschooling happened about March 2021 when Ruben was really kicking back on the very, very strict rules that we had about tablets and TV and stuff.

And so, I was kind of aware of unschooling and I was like, that always seems to make sense. So maybe I should go and see why lots of unschoolers don’t have these really strict limits. And I distinctly remember being like, “I’m never going to go that far, but at least maybe I could go and see what the thinking is.” And luckily, I had an unschooling friend, Lorna, who sent me loads of links and told me about the podcast and she was in the Network on here. So, I think I listened to two episodes of the podcast and then I was like, “Yep, this is for me,” and joined the Network.

So, yeah, I can’t believe it’s only been like a year and a half since that happened, because it’s been quite a journey and I’ve just been sinking deeper and deeper into it. And it’s completely changed my life, as I like to tell people, because it’s been so many great skills about being in relationship with other people, communicating, identifying where my beliefs come from, challenging everything, saying, is this working for me? All of this kind of stuff that we talk about has been amazing.

But yes, so, to fast forward to now, the kids are super into tablets and video games and YouTube and it’s a huge interest for both of them. Lots of Minecraft, lots of Roblox happening. And it’s actually really nice, because Liam, I think quite recently, has got up to Ruben’s level with Minecraft and Roblox, so they’re playing together loads. It’s really cool. And Ruben’s also been playing with a kid from a Network family in South Africa, so that’s been really nice.

And they also like swimming, bowling, any kind of physical fighty play, wrestling or acting, Minecraft, or any of that kind of thing. It was funny, because I was thinking about this and I was thinking about what they enjoy doing and they have a lot in common, but they’re such different personalities. So, Ruben is very sweet and caring and likes the same things and the same people. But once he likes something, he really likes it. So, he’s completely delighted if one of his favorite people would join him in one of his favorite games. He’s really into his interests.

Whereas Liam is the comedian. He has this amazing comic timing. And also, he really knows how to enjoy himself. I just so often look over at him and think he’s just the embodiment of the phrase, living your best life, because he’s great at just like chilling out and he just seems to know how to have a good time, I think.

And then I am a stay at home parent, thinking about maybe trying to do some work, but I don’t know what to do with my life. So, we’ll see. Since the kids both really like being at home, I have got quite into podcasts, which has been really fun. So, obviously the two Living Joyfully podcasts, but also anything about psychology, human relationships, history. I used to really love history and I’ve really been diving back into that, which has been super fun. And I like reading and cooking and eating. I’m quite excited about that one, because my cooking mojo totally disappeared during lockdown and it’s finally coming back. So, I’m getting back into baking stuff, which is cool.

And Luis is super into maths and science and engineering, that kind of stuff. And he just loves building things and taking things apart. And also swimming and water polo is big. He’s going back to his water polo team here, which I think he’s really happy about. And he just says he likes learning stuff when I asked him. Which is really great, because it means he’s really good at listening to me telling him all the stuff that I’ve learnt, whether it’s unschooling or any other podcast. He’s a very patient listener to the summaries that I give him. So, that’s us.

PAM: That’s the best! It’s so fun. I love that that he is a good listener, too, because that is a part of our process sometimes, is synthesizing it for ourselves so that we can share it with others. So, that’s a fun piece as well.

And I loved hearing just a bit about that technology journey. It is a pretty common one. Absolutely. Because it’s so unconventional. Even though, we’re starting to hear more stories about tech not being as vilified conventionally. I love that, because I remember when I first started reading about homeschooling and the kids first came home. I was just hearing those bits about unschooling, it’s like, okay, that sounds really curious. I mean, “I’m not going to go all the way,” but when you start learning more about it and it starts making more sense, that’s it. You don’t have to make the decision right at the beginning, right?

You don’t have to decide, “Okay, I’m doing full on unschooling. Let’s start. I’m going to go learn about it.” No, it can be, “You know what? I’m curious about this. I’m going to learn some more and learn some more.” And it’s like, baby step by baby step, I can just say, “Oh, this feels good. This is looking good.

What else you got to offer?” And then I take another step, right? Did it feel like that for you, Nora?

NORA: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, with the technology thing, it was kind of interesting, because I also did a webinar with a British psychologist called Naomi Fisher. And so, my unschooling friend Lorna was like, “Don’t do anything really suddenly,” but after I’d watched this webinar I was like, “No, I can’t. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t enforce it.” So that did happen quite quickly. But it was because I was so convinced. But there’s definitely been lots of baby steps to get to where I am now and lots to come, I think, as well.

PAM: Forever.

NORA: Yeah.

ERIKA: I love that so much. It reminds me, too, of the beginning of my journey, too, where some things were just like, “This is it. Jump right in.” And other things were like, “Well, I’ll never get there.” Then you realize it’s just this journey and it just naturally happens.

So, I have really enjoyed a lot of the a-ha moments that you share on the Network. I feel like you’re so great about sharing the process as you’re realizing things and taking us through the realizations and then how things used to feel and how they feel now. And I just think that’s so valuable for everyone. There was a story that you shared around shedding the sense of urgency that you had about like pushing through things, getting through a car ride, and other examples like that, and just how transformational it was to drop that sense of urgency. And so, I was hoping that you could tell us about that here.

NORA: Yeah, sure. Okay. Basically, we had this big change, because in Cambridge, in the UK, we didn’t have a car. I don’t drive. So, we had this wonderful cargo bike that I really miss or buses or walking. But we are in San Jose in Costa Rica, which is not the most walkable city, and there’s not much public transport that takes us where we want to go.

So, we’ve had to do cars a lot more. And the kids were even less happy about this than I was. They really hated it. We’re sort of getting there now, but especially at the beginning, they really just did not want to be in the car. And so, my first instinct was just, we have to do this. We’ve got no choice.

We’re just going to have to push through. They’re just going to have to hate it. All we can do is go as fast as we can and hope that there’s something nice at the other end. And that was how I was expecting things to go.

But luckily, because I’m in the Living Joyfully Network and there’s so many conversations about being creative, about different people’s needs, and respecting their needs and everybody’s needs being important, and probably loads of other kind of useful mindset shifts, “There’s plenty of time,” luckily, I was able to just stop and go, “What on Earth am I thinking? I can easily make this better for them.” And it just took 30 seconds for me to think, do you know what? We’ll just stop whenever they say they need to stop. So we just stopped worrying about being late for things, which in Costa Rica is fine anyway, which helps. But also I’d rather we arrive happy and slightly late and just prioritizing us being okay.

We just decided we were going to stop and we also always get an ice cream now whenever we go anywhere. So, it’s just these really simple, basic things. We’ve done stops that are like a five-minute stop at a park that we happen to be going past. And we’ve done a stop that was like an hour in a little town getting an ice cream and having a wander around. Ice creams are often involved, but it seems so simple, but it was amazing to me that I just was on this autopilot of, “We just have to push through. We just have to do it. Bad things happen and all you can do is push through them,” both for me and my kids, I think. And it was just amazing how revolutionary it felt to me to just stop and go, “Okay, no, we can think creatively about this.” We can improve the situation as much as we can. And obviously there’s a limit. But it makes such a difference, I think, as well, just the kids knowing that we are trying everything that we can to help them feel better.

And, yeah, I feel like I probably still am working on making this automatic, but I’m definitely trying to make it a habit.

So, the other example of this that I thought of was trying to get the kids comfortable going to the dentist and we found this very lovely dentist. But what I’m hoping that we’re going to be able to do is, rather than just say, okay, we’re going to go, we’re going to do everything we can to get their mouths open so she can see, I’m going to contact her and be like, “Can we just pay your fee for an appointment and then just hang out? We’ll teach you to play Minecraft. They’ll get used to the room. They’ll get used to you.” We don’t have to just push through everything.

It feels so simple now, but it’s been like this huge life mindset change for me.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. It makes such a difference though, right? Because we can just really tunnel in on, okay, this is what we’re supposed to do, have to do, how it has to look, and let’s get it over with, this bad stuff. But we can change all of that immediately, like you said, and it really just takes a few seconds to think about, okay, we can now start brainstorming and think about the different ways.

And I do love the Network for that, because I do think we’re kind of steeping in that creativity. We’re steeping in all these different ways that people have done it. And so, it really is. I think it’s easier when we have that community around us.

PAM: It really is. It’s so surprising, like you talked about the moment where you were like, “Hey, I don’t have to do that.” There are so many things where we feel like, okay, you know, life isn’t perfect. There’s going to be some things we dislike. Let’s just get through it as fast as we can.

That is just such a normal way to see something, first approach to something, and that little switch that says, “Oh, but hey, what if we didn’t?” It’s like that’s a little thought experiment that I love to play with myself. When I’m feeling stuck with something, no matter what it is, it’s like, what if it was the opposite? What if I wasn’t stuck? What if I thought that this was great. What if we could have the most fun ever on car rides? What if we love this dentist? How would I be acting then? That’s what opens it up for me. We’d be stopping when we saw something fun or we felt like an ice cream. We’d be bringing fun things to do in the car. We’d be laughing, chatting, or headphones on, whatever it is for us as individuals.

But that thought experiment is that quick shift for me that just helps me realize, oh, there’s another way to look at this. There are so many more possibilities that we can play with. I love it.

ERIKA: Yeah, I was thinking how it is kind of that mainstream paradigm thing of, there are just things we have to do. There are things we have to do and the kids better get used to that there are just things we have to do and you have to just push through. And for that to be like a lesson to teach a child, this lesson of push through. But right. I feel this kind of lightness in my head if I can just kind of open it to, but wait a second. Like you were saying like, wait a second. It doesn’t have to be this way. In any situation, there are so many different places that you could be looking for a different way to do things, something to switch up.

And so, I think being in that adult position of, but I should just be able to say the thing and they have to just push through and maybe it will somehow be more convenient for me as an adult if I could get the kids to just push through, but then if I actually look at reality, pushing through is so hard. It’s so hard to do with kids. It actually makes my life a lot harder if I don’t try to address the different needs that they have and the places that they’re uncomfortable. So, I just loved that.

ANNA: Yeah. It’s so fun. Okay, so another huge shift that you shared on the Network was around how, with the best of intentions, your priorities, the direction, leading your kids towards ideas, fun ideas and what you thought would be great, was really stopping you from knowing them and how they wanted to spend their time. And so, we just thought it’d be cool to have a discussion around that, because there’s a lot there with that piece.

NORA: Yeah, no, this felt like a really huge, multi-level a-ha moment for me. Because, as I said, I started off when Ruben was a baby, getting into gentle parenting and positive parenting and conscious parenting, whatever. There’s lots of versions.

And so, I remember getting into unschooling and reading about it and feeling like respecting and honoring your kids’ interests and doing what they want and saying yes to them and all of that, it all just seemed fine. Like I was like, yes, yes, I’m on top of that. That’s easy. That’s fine. That’s done. I know them. I know everything they were going to want to do. I was at home with them the whole time, so I was like, I know these kids.

Yeah, it took me a long time to start realizing that actually, my head was so full of these ideas of what we should be doing as a family, what children should be like, what parents should be like, what childhood should be like, what activities are better than other activities. I was totally signed up to, we should be reading, we should be outside, we should be going to groups, we should be going to museums, which is all great if that’s what your kids want to do, but really, my kids didn’t want to do any of that.

So, this sort of big realization, I think of it as a two-stage process. So, the first little a-ha moment was back in Cambridge. So, Cambridge has quite a few nice museums, so every so often I would drag the kids to a museum, because this was educational and good, but still fun. But they were never very interested in them. And so, it always felt like a bit of a flop as an activity.

So, then one day, I guess I’d been kind of reading about unschooling and processing it all, and one day it just suddenly occurred to me that there is a museum in Cambridge called the Fitzwilliam Museum, which has a room full of weapons, like swords, crossbow, armor, lots of sharp, pointy metal things. And I just suddenly was like, that’s where Ruben would like to go. That’s what Ruben’s interested in, because he really loves all kinds of fighty computer games. He likes cutting out weapons of increasing complexity by eye with scissors and with paper and just playing with them. I was like, he likes weapons. Why am I not taking him to the weapons bit?

And we actually never ended up going, but he did express interest, but it just felt like this real moment where I was like, oh, I’m starting to see these, these options more from his point of view, thinking about what genuinely interests him, not what I think kids should know about.

And then, the second a-ha moment was in Costa Rica. A few months ago, I actually walked past this bowling alley. And I was like, oh, I should suggest bowling to the kids, with zero expectations, because I did not think they would be interested. And they were both like, “Yes, we really want to go!” And I was really surprised. I thought, “Okay, fine. We’ll give it a try.” Worst thing that can happen is they don’t like it. And they loved it. And this was in a place, really loud music, loads of people. You have to wear weird shoes, it’s competitive, but it’s so competitive that you can see who’s winning. There’s a big screen telling you who’s winning. And I just never in a million years would’ve thought that they would like that. And we’ve kept going. They still like going. We’ve sort of tweaked the competitive element, so we kind of mess about with who goes when and everything, but still they keep wanting to go.

And that felt like an a-ha moment, because that was not something I would’ve thought that they would want to do. That was not something I would’ve thought they would enjoy once we got there. So, it just made me realize that I was getting so much information from that about who they were, about what they wanted to do, because I had stepped out of the way. And I’m probably still working on it, but I had mostly dropped my expectations, my ideas of what should be happening, what we should be doing. So, I got this information that they wanted to do bowling.

So, it just made me realize how much all of this noise in my head had been stopping me from truly both seeing my kids based on what I know about them, but also just giving them the chance to lead and teach me about more about themselves and give me more information. I still don’t really know why they like the bowling, but also just the difference between seeing them going and doing something that they actually wanted to do, how much easier it was to get them out of the house as well. There’s so much information that I just would not have had if I had still been like, “Okay, Monday we do this, Tuesday we do that.” It just was so useful and so now, if they surprise me, I’m delighted, because it means that I have stepped out of the way. I have given them the chance to show me something that I wasn’t expecting. And then that gives me more information to then be able to say, “I think you might like this other thing.”

And so, still doing the weapons room-type stuff. So, still saying, “Okay, I think you might like this.” And still being able to look at it from their point of view based on the information I have. But it’s like a virtuous circle where, if I’m stepping out of the way, I’m way more able to offer them stuff that they’re genuinely going to want to do. So, yeah, that’s been really fun.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. Go ahead, Pam.

PAM: Yeah, there’s so much in there, Nora. So, I’m going to start with, I love the nuance that you’re talking about of dropping expectations. So often when it’s like, yeah, you know what? It’s not helpful to have expectations that we as a family or they as a child should enjoy this, or we feel like this would be good for them, all those expectations. But there’s the piece, too, where when we can drop those expectations and stand aside and have a harder time for a while not sharing other possibilities. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t want to put anything on them. I don’t want to have these expectations, so I’m just going to let them lead and I just kind of stand back.

Yet, passing the bowling alley and going, huh, that’s really off, but it’s here by us. We could go there. And mentioning it. It’s that nuance of not having any expectations when we share something. So yeah, absolutely, knowing them, we can think of the things we think they might be interested in, and then also sharing random possibilities that are actually around in our lives as well. Not as in, oh, I need to share something every day, and they need to like say yes, no, whatever, but to bubble our lives with these other possibilities that give them the opportunity to surprise us, to choose. “Right now, I do want to try something totally new.”

It’s so different when we are more with them. And we can share things without the expectation, like not letting not having expectations have us stand back a little bit. Does that make sense? But we can lean in more without those expectations and just bubble away and discover so much more about each other.

ANNA: Right. I mean, for me what stuck out was just that attachment that we can have to, it should look this way in childhood and all of these pieces. And, like you’re saying, there’s so many nuances within this piece, but I think it does come back to the expectations and attachments.

And I love the piece about the bowling, because I think we can also fall that direction into kind of boxing our kids in a little bit. Like, oh, they’ve never liked big crowds or loud things, so I’m going to steer clear of that. And that’s, again, with love and great intention, because we’ve seen that. But I just think kids change and grow and when it’s something that sparks their interest, who knows? Maybe they saw a YouTube about bowling or one of their favorite characters was bowling. So, they’re just like, I want to see what that’s all about. And even if they hated it, they still got that information.

So, I think it is just that stepping back, but yet staying engaged, that seeing through their eyes like we talk about, because it’s just all these nuances. But I think we can easily see, for any of us, how we can kind of get on this path, and then we’ve lost sight of the children that we’re there hoping to facilitate.

ERIKA: Right. It feels like you’re just giving this space to them to be able to just be who they are and that they get to decide who they are. Because my kids surprise me all the time, exactly like how you were describing. And sometimes I’m like, what? It really can throw me.

But that’s part of the fun of our lives, being able to give enough space for them to change their mind and do something different and surprise me. And I really got so much out of when you were describing the feeling of, we all want to do this activity. That reminded me of those moments. And they can be few and far between sometimes, because the kids are so different from each other. But where we all are like, “A hundred percent we want to do this thing together,” how easy and fun those types of activities are. So, to look for those. I loved that story, too.

ANNA: And that reminds me of something, I think you said it in the Network, too, Nora, but it’s just kind of expounding on what you said, but how different it felt. You had told a story about, well, it’s hard to get them going anywhere because they like to stay in the house. So, it’s this process of getting them to go and making it fun and doing all this.

But then when you saw this delta of, when they’re leading the way, it wasn’t hard at all or it was so much easier. So, I thought that was really interesting, a thing that we can kind of watch for, you know, those energy shifts.

PAM: Yeah, I do think that is a huge shift. It was for me. The realization, when we talk about commitments and things, it’s less about figuring out a fun way to kind of cajole everybody to the place where we think they should be, for whatever reason. And then that ties in with letting them quit things when it’s not interesting to them, because what we’re really looking for is those things that they’re super excited about, where it is so much easier to do, because it’s theirs. It’s something that they want to do. It’s like night and day. Yet, we can get so attached to the things that we love or that we think that they should be doing.

NORA: Yeah, no. I was just going to say, yeah, I wrote a whole thing in the Network, a post in the Network about, “It’s so hard to get my kids out of the house. What can I do?” And I had this whole story that it was this really stressful process and I’d just spiraled into like, “This stresses me out. So, I’m stressed. So, I’m making it stressful,” on and on and on. And yeah, it turned out that mostly my kids like being at home and also, Ruben especially likes being at home, but he will dash to the car if it’s something that he genuinely wants to do. But because I’d never given them that chance to tell me what it was they would dash to the car for, then I didn’t know that it was possible. So yeah, it’s been a fun journey.

ANNA: Yeah. That’s amazing. I love it.

PAM: Yeah. I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to join us today, Nora. We really appreciate it. It’s so fun hearing little snippets of the journey that, when people think through them and can see and can communicate what their process was, I think that’s so helpful for people to hear. So, thank you so much, Nora.

NORA: Thank you for having me. It’s been super fun.

PAM: Yay! Us too! Have a wonderful day.

NORA: Bye!

ERIKA: Thank you.

ANNA: Take care.

View Details

In this week’s Exploring Unschooling podcast episode, we’re diving deep into a listener question submitted by Jessie in Colorado. She wants to explore a quote from Free to Learn that took her off guard, which is:

One proviso, though. Unschooling won’t work well if you actively avoid having your family interact with the world, with life. Shutting out the world rather than embracing it will limit your children’s opportunities to learn, maybe to the point where school is more connected to the world than home is. Inhibiting their exploration of the world around them is not helpful or supportive of learning.

Free to Learn by Pam Laricchia

Jessie wonders if being introverted or neurodivergent makes unschooling a poor fit, since social interactions can be draining. She worries that she doesn’t have the ability to provide enough interaction for her daughter and is curious about the meaning of the quote.

As always, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer, because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any given situation that will work for everyone. Instead, our focus is on exploring different aspects of the situation and playing with the kinds of questions we might ask ourselves to better understand what’s up. We’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling and cultivating strong and connected relationships.

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and if you’re a patron of the podcast, be sure to mention that.

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Pam’s book, Free to Learn

EU120: Unschooling and Autism with Erin Human

EU221: Unschooling and Neurodiversity with Tara McGovern Dutcher

EU246: Unschooling and Neurodiversity with Michelle Morcate

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

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Join Pam’s newsletter and get a free copy of her intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Become a patron of The Exploring Unschooling Podcast for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive and transcripts freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Being Intentional, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of curiosity and presence.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting, through the lenses of connection and curiosity. Find the podcast in your favorite player here: The Living Joyfully Podcast.

CALL TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Welcome! I’m Pam Laricchia from livingjoyfully.ca and Anna Brown and Erika Ellis are joining me today to explore a listener question. Hi to you both.

ERIKA: Hello.

ANNA: Hello.

PAM: Now, before we get started, I just want to remind everyone that our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the quote “right” answer, because there isn’t a universal right answer for any situation that works for everyone. So, basically, we’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling. And, Erika, do you want to get us started?

ERIKA: I do. So, this question is from Jessie in Colorado and she writes,

“My little is still a toddler, but I recently learned about unschooling and I haven’t been able to stop reading more and more. I’m currently delving into Pam’s book, Free to Learn. There is one caution in the book that took me off guard and has me worried about whether I can unschool. Pam writes,‘One proviso, though. Unschooling won’t work well if you actively avoid having your family interact with the world, with life. Shutting out the world rather than embracing it will limit your children’s opportunities to learn, maybe to the point where school is more connected to the world than home is. Inhibiting their exploration of the world around them is not helpful or supportive of learning.’I’m wondering if you could delve into what this means a little more, and if unschooling is likely to be a poor fit for folks who are introverted or neurodivergent in a way that makes socializing hard. We certainly go on lots of adventures, hikes, parks, library, etc., and going out can be fun, but interacting with new people is exhausting.We have a small friend group and I struggle to find the energy to engage with people and organizations that I don’t know well, in a way I’d want to model. The idea of reaching out and making a lot of new connections is overwhelming to the point that I do now wonder if my daughter would do better in school. I know that the socialization that happens in school isn’t ideal, but I would like her to get to interact with lots of kids and adults, and I worry about my ability to provide that. I have considered sending her to tuition-free preschool just for the experience of interacting with others without me (Sudbury schools and other paid groups are not accessible to our family, both in terms of location and money), but unschooling sounds so much better.”So, hi, Jessie, and thank you so much for your question. I’m really excited to hear Pam and Anna’s responses, too. We’re all introverts, so I know we all have a lot of experience navigating this topic.

A lot of thoughts came up for me when I read your question. First is that personality difference that you mentioned. There are just so many ways to be a human, and for someone who is introverted or who is sensitive to sound or who is overwhelmed in busy places, being out all the time in active places surrounded by people is not going to feel good. But living in alignment with that is not the same thing as shutting out the world at all. My family is introverted, but we figure out what feels good for us, the frequency of outings, the number of friends, the places that we like to go. And the key for me is listening to my kids to determine if their needs are being met.

I have a friend who is also introverted like me, but she has an extremely extroverted child. And so, that can be more challenging in moments, but there is so much learning there. They’re learning about each other’s personality differences. She can push herself out of her comfort zone at times in order to meet his social needs. And she can communicate with him about her needs, as well. And there are just so many possibilities for meeting his needs that can still feel good to her. School could be one of those possibilities. But there are also co-op classes and homeschool groups and park days, play dates at friends’ houses, online gaming, spending time with extended family, having other people take him out to do activities, and so on.

So, rather than getting caught up in a kind of nebulous future fear of, what if it’s not good enough? That’s that borrowing trouble, like Anna says, instead we can ground ourselves in trusting that we will figure it out as the needs arise. In my experience, unschooling doesn’t take away possibilities. It just gives us space and time to figure out what would feel good. And there are just endless possibilities if we stay open and curious.

And your question kind of reminds me of a recent Q&A, too, where I was talking about staying in the present moment and focusing on the current needs of your child where they are right now, rather than getting pulled into worrying about the future. Over time, I’ve found that future worry is really unnecessary, because the most pressing needs are clear. They’re the ones that are right in front of me. And my kids will let me know when things aren’t enough or they’re bored, or they’re needing something different.

For example, Oliver will say, “When’s the next time we’re going over to my friend’s house?” Or Maya will say, “I feel like we’re not going to enough places.” Or I will ask, “Would you be interested in going to the homeschool park day this week?” We just check in about what their social needs are and figure out the best way to meet those.

And I bet it could be hard to imagine what it could look like while your child is still a toddler. But online gaming with friends has been such a powerful way to meet a lot of our social needs, mine included, because the kids are free to jump in more often when they need more interaction and then to pull back when they need more quiet time or solitary time. And it has just been so helpful. I mean, we’ve had some months-long phases of, I don’t need to be around friends at all. And then when they want it, they can jump back into that world and it’s just worked so well for us.

And it can also be helpful to remember that you yourself don’t have to be the one who solves all of the problems and meets all of the needs by yourself. Solutions can come from all kinds of places, like play dates and day trips with other family members and friends. Maybe your child will become very interested in a certain activity like drama or martial arts that has kind of a built-in social circle for interaction. So, there’s plenty of time to see how it plays out and what her needs and interests will be.

And I guess I would also add that socializing with a lot of people and being out exploring the world are two separate things and people will have differing needs and desires for each of those things. I think the bottom line for me is, if I’m listening to my kids’ needs and bringing that yes energy, figuring out ways to meet those needs, then we’re good. And their lives are not going to be nearly as full of people and activities as mine was when I was their age, but what we are doing is more aligned with their personalities and how they want to spend their time. I didn’t have that option when I was growing up to find environments that fit with my personality. And so, I think we’re lucky in that way. Pam?

PAM: Oh, I love that so much, Erika. Thank you. And yes, I do appreciate your question so much, Jessie. I love the opportunity to dive into this more, because first, when I talk about interacting with the world, when I was writing that, for me, it means so much more than physical, in-person engagement.

In my mind, inhibiting their exploration of the world might look like filtering or blocking their access to information or not actively helping them as they seek out information or experiences they’re curious about.

Just like Erika was saying, there are so many possibilities to do that, but when we’re not open to that, open and curious and helping them do that, that’s more what I was talking about for not interacting with the world. It was a more esoteric definition of world, rather than physical, face-to-face exploration, because none of that is literally dependent on leaving the house, right?

For me, keeping their world small is definitely a separate thing from exploring and supporting all the ways and the frequency in which each person in the family wants to be out in public and interacting with other people, socializing. And that’s the other piece that you’ll find, as Erika was mentioning, as well. Everybody’s needs are taken into account. The family example Erika shared where the mom’s more of an introvert and child’s more of an extrovert, we can work with that. We can figure things out. We aren’t the sole responsible person for this. There are so many ways that we can pull things in. So, it’s really fun to get creative at that point.

And yes, my family includes both strong introverts and all sorts of neurodivergence, and it was so worth giving everyone the space to explore what that looks like for them and also, how the experience of that can change over time. You know, like you were saying, Erika, for months, it’s like, this is all I need, you know? And then it’s like, okay, I’m ready for a little bit more or a little bit more of this, or less of this, etc.

And, again, how we can stretch for exciting things. Sometimes we are happy to jump out of our comfort zone for bit or push on the edges of it. Because I found it was much easier for me to stretch when it was in service of something that one of my kids was super interested in doing. And that was because I could focus on their joy. I didn’t need to be seeing all the other things that might be overwhelming. I could focus on that piece. And then, we could also build in the recovery time and the relaxed time afterwards. And again, it was different depending on the child. It was different depending on the activity, where they were in the seasons of things. But that level of self-awareness is just so valuable for everyone, adults and kids alike.

When we had that or were able to pick up some of it along the way, we could bring that to the table as we figured out plans, figured out ways to move through things that worked for everyone. So, in that way, I feel like unschooling is an absolutely wonderful lifestyle for introverted and neurodivergent families, because each person is celebrated for who they are, rather than trying to change them to fit into this more conventional box.

So, I did want to mention there are a few podcast episodes where we dive into unschooling and neurodivergence that I think you’ll enjoy checking out. Episodes 120, 221 and 246. And we’ll put the links in the show notes. Anna?

ANNA: Okay. So, obviously you guys hit a lot of the points that that brought up to me, as soon as I was reading it, and I definitely identify with the question in terms of being an introvert. And it’s not really easy for me to reach out to strangers. I don’t love big, loud, crowded environments. But what I found was it was so much easier to do those things in small doses when I was facilitating my children, like you said, Pam. When you’re seeing your child light up about something, it’s the best. So, it really just makes it so much easier.

And there’s a connection that we have with our children, and that connection helps us find the ways to meet each other’s needs, even when it involves stretching our comfort zones a bit. I think the understanding that we had of each other just helped it flow, because we knew we’d figure it out. So, we could have this, okay, hmm, how are we going to do this? This part feels hard, this doesn’t. We want to do this. They just had a trust in me and I had a trust that they would also hear me and my concerns and how I was feeling about it.

And the piece, I think maybe you both mentioned it, but remembering that I don’t have to meet all the needs, as well, that helped me ground into, okay, there’s other resources available to help meet these needs. And even if it wasn’t something that David could do, maybe it’s a grandparent or a friend or someone else. And so, just being open, I found that those opportunities arose for them to be involved in all kinds of ways that I could not have predicted ahead of time.

And in terms of the school kindergarten, preschool thing that you were talking about, I really don’t believe that toddlers need to be with other toddlers, especially in a classroom environment, because there’s really not enough facilitation and it really isn’t an interest for the toddler. Toddlers aren’t interested in that. Their interest is to explore. And at that age, you’ll see a lot of parallel play and also a lot of upset, because toddlers are not so sure.

I think children want to be with their parents and learning about the world around them. And it sounds like you’re already doing that, Jessie. You all are already exploring the world. And I love Pam’s point about that quote was not about necessarily physically exploring the world. I think it was just shining a light on, we can limit our children in a lot of ways, and that limiting often happens at at home, not because of home, but because of not sharing certain resources or devaluing certain ways they want to explore things. And so, yeah, just open up that idea of what we’re talking about when we say exploring the world, because you’ll find that you just learn and grow together.

And I definitely wouldn’t be borrowing trouble about years down the road, because I truly believe and have seen, if we focus on the connection and the relationships, we’re in the best place to solve all the problems that life throws at us. And so, I just would look at your child. Are they happy? Are they enjoying life? Are they asking for something else? Are you both enjoying this time together? Things change really quickly and at each point you can pivot, make adjustments. That connection will be what helps you kind of tune in to who they are and what would help them do the things that they’re interested in.

PAM: Yeah.

ERIKA: That reminded me, too, about how it’s not a forever decision. Any decision isn’t a forever decision. So, there’s no reason right now to decide whether unschooling will work forever or not. It’s not even important to think of that.

PAM: That’s a really good point, too. We don’t need to decide now for forever. And I really liked your point, Anna, when you’re mentioning like how things will bubble up, possibilities will bubble up and that happens more when we are in that open and curious space, rather than in that smaller space where we’re not scanning, not noticing the things. And it’s not that we need to be in that space all the time, but if our child is curious about something and we’re not quite sure how we might meet that, we find so many possibilities when we just pay attention and not literally have to leave the house to be paying attention to it.

But I remember there were seasons where, when the local paper showed up, I was reading that, or I was going online just to see some things that were around us. Or if they had an interest in something, I would do some research on my own and I could find maybe a video that I could show them or a show or we’d go to the library and get some books. There are just so many possibilities.

And just being with them. I love the point of being with them and being in the moment right now, because this is what we can help with. And when you’re in the moment with them and noticing times when they’re, I don’t know, the word “bored” comes to mind, but there’s a whole conversation around that. What it does is, we can help them in those moments. We can work together. It’s not even so much us helping them as in, we have to come up with a solution. “Okay, you’re bored. Here you go, do this thing.” It’s conversations. It’s sitting with that. How are they feeling? Did they want to try something new? At those times, maybe what they want is comfort things. A show that they are very familiar with, when they’re feeling at odds and not sure what they want to do next.

There are just so many different ways to go, but when we can be with them in the moment, we can learn so much about them. We can help them move through that moment. And when you’re doing that, there’s so much less chance that you’re going to be blindsided by something coming up. “Oh my gosh! Not going to school was just a horrible choice, because their whole world was too small!” It is much more of a mindset, much more of a way of engaging with your child and just helping them pursue and enjoy the things that they’re interested in.

ANNA: Right. What that really brought to mind for me was, when we get into this thought process of way down the road, we’re so out of the moment that we really are missing the cues. We really are missing what’s happening. And so, once you get a little bit more time under your belt with your child, you’ll see that, as you stay connected, it’s this gradual growth. You’re gradually growing together, you’re learning more about each other and how you work well together and what works for how long and those type of things.

And so, then it just naturally unfolds and grows. But it’s like, if you jump way ahead, you’re just thinking, I can’t do this. But it really pulls you out of where the actual learning is about each other, which is in that moment, because that’s all that we have. And so, just watch for that. Like, “Hey, I’m getting way ahead of myself. I’m really sitting in my head and disconnecting from my child.”

Because, as we always say, we’ve said on the podcast so many times, when you start feeling that, just lean back in, lean back into the child in front of you, and then you see like, oh yeah, we’re doing great. We’re having a great time. Look at all that they’ve learned in the short two years that they’ve been on the earth.

ERIKA: Right. And when you’re thinking so far ahead, I feel like the only way to really do that is to be thinking of this kind of generic person who’s going to require these different things. Like a teenager is going to have this many friends and will have learned these things and gone to these places, or whatever it is. And so, that really is not about the child at all and the individual. And so, focusing more on the excitement of learning who this person is and how cool that is.

Everyone is so different, and so, school doesn’t make us think that everyone is so different. And I think that’s kind of a mindset shift to really realize how different every person is. And so, when you have this very young child in front of you who’s kind of just starting life, how fun and exciting is it to look at them and think, each thing that we do, I’m going to learn, Oh, they like that! They don’t like that. Ooh, this is really exciting for them! Who knew that they were going to be interested in that? And then that’s where life just gets more and more fun.

PAM: So much more fun! There was one little thing also that bubbled up for me, as you were mentioning leaning into your child, Anna, there will be seasons moving forward where the question does come up. Am I doing enough? This is what this feels like now as we dive into the question. And so, not to be afraid of that question, not to take that question as judgment. It’s like, oh, I’m failing. I’m failing unschooling. I’m failing parenting. Am I doing enough for them? But to use that as a reminder. For me, that was often a reminder that, oh, I’ve kind of drifted away. I’ve kind of disconnected a little bit, because I don’t have this hands-on experience and connection that is always telling me I’m doing enough when I’m helping them do the things that they are interested in doing. That’s just such a valuable question, because people can use that as, as such a judgment and beat themselves up over time, “I’m so worried about this,” but when you can use it as a cue, oh, you know what? Am I? Let’s go see! Let’s go talk to the kids!

ANNA: Let’s go see! Right. Let’s go see! And I love your point too, Erika, about learning about this child, because I think we do often hold this generic child in our mind, and it’s from our own experience or from how we are or from what we’ve seen on TV or whatever the thing might be.

But when you really lean in, I mean, these kids are so unique. I guarantee this child at two has strong preferences and things that really light them up and things that they just want to keep following, whether it’s trains or dogs or whatever the thing might be. And so, just really being open about that and just getting excited about it, I think just really leads the way.

And, like you said, Pam, then when those questions come up, you have, first of all, a background of connection and then you can go, okay, you know what? I do want to just lean in and see where are we now and what are they interested in now and how can I facilitate that now? And so, I love just all of that thinking, because the questions are going to come up. They just do.

PAM: They do. They really just do. And when we can not take those on as weight, but to take them on with curiosity, it leads us in so many super cool places.

Thank you so much to both of you for joining me today. I super appreciate it. I very much appreciate your question, Jessie. That was lots of fun to dig into.

If anyone hasn’t read Free to Learn yet, there will be links in the show notes or just go to books2read.com/freetolearn and you can pick it from your favorite online stores. And thank you so much, everyone. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

ERIKA: Bye.

ANNA: Bye bye.

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This week, we’re sharing a conversation Anna Brown and I had recently with Lore Blancke on her podcast, Intimate Breath. Lore came across unschooling and the Exploring Unschooling podcast and was intrigued by the similarities she found with her work as she listened. And while she’s not a parent herself, her enthusiasm was apparent when she reached out to ask about having a conversation with her on her podcast.

It was such a delightful conversation that I asked if I could share it here as well!

We dive into what unschooling is, questioning rules and social conditioning to live how we want to live, the power of feeling free to make choices, moving from power and control-based relationships to consensual and intimate ones, what it can look like to prioritize relationships, and creating a culture where it feels safe to make mistakes and to quit if something doesn’t feel good.

Lore’s website, Intimate Breath

Find Lore on Instagram or Facebook

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and her website.

Check out Pam and Anna’s new podcast, The Living Joyfully Podcast.

Join Pam’s newsletter and get a free copy of her intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and if you’re a patron of the podcast, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of The Exploring Unschooling Podcast for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Being Present, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of expectations and joy.

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This week on the podcast, we’re sharing our first Bringing It Home episode. In this series, we’re going to dive even deeper into the topics that we explore in the Unschooling “Rules” series, with an eye to showing how these concepts come up in our real lives and the many possibilities for how to approach […]

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This week, we are excited to share our first episode in our new On the Journey series! Anna, Erika, and I are excited to bring guests on the podcast to share their experiences. We’ll be talking about paradigm shifts, a-ha moments, challenges they’ve faced, and realizations they’ve made on their unschooling journey. In this episode, […]

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This week, I’m excited to share our first episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series! We use the word “rules,” in quotes, to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something […]

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In the intro, I share my new vision for the podcast: helping people figure out how to apply bigger picture unschooling ideas in their everyday lives. I want to help listeners explore how these big unschooling ideas work on a more practical level. In real life, with the real people that make up our family. […]

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This week, I’m sharing a popular episode from early 2020 with unschooling mom Marcella O’Brien. Marcella’s grown sons, Jack and Sean, have also joined me in Growing Up Unschooling episode 181. Marcella’s experience as a public school teacher and math tutor gives her a unique perspective, which led to an interesting conversation about math in […]

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This week, I’m sharing a fun conversation I had with unschooling dad Roop Bhadury. I connected with Roop through his wife Susan, who is a member of the Living Joyfully Network. She has also joined me on the podcast in episode 220. Roop and Susan live with their now three young children in Australia. It […]

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I get so many questions about “screen time” and video games and how they fit into an unschooling life, so I thought it might be helpful and fun to reshare a conversation I had with Xander MacSwan in 2018. Xander left school in the 5th grade when his parents—both professors in the University of Maryland’s […]

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This week, I’m sharing a conversation I had with Jan Fortune back in 2018. Jan home educated her four children in the UK and wrote many articles and five books on unschooling and parenting. Her book Winning Parent, Winning Child, focuses on living with children in ways that respect their autonomy. In our conversation, Jan shares […]

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It’s compilation episode time again! This week, I’m sharing one of our listener favorites from 2019, a collection of conversations with grown unschoolers in which they offer their thoughts for newer unschooling parents. I’ve woven together answers from eleven episodes featuring twelve grown unschoolers. I think you’ll find their answers helpful and enlightening wherever you […]

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This week, we’re revisiting a popular compilation episode from last year. Many people have asked me whether any former or current teachers have been interviewed on the podcast. And the answer to that question is a big YES! We have had more than 20 podcast episodes featuring guests who were or are teachers or university […]

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Anna Brown and Erika Ellis join me again this week to dive into listener questions! We talk about the fears and doubts that come up at the start of the unschooling journey, the idea of wanting to measure success, and what to do when a child is interested in a topic that seems too grown […]

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This week, I’m sharing the second part of my recent conversation with Jae Williams (you can listen to the first half here). Jae is a former teacher and new unschooling dad of two young children. We first spoke about a year ago, right at the start of his deschooling journey. It was great to catch […]

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Jae Williams is a former teacher and new unschooling dad of two young children. I first spoke to Jae when he was about two months into his unschooling journey, in episode 290. It’s been a year now and we had so much to catch up on! Jae and I talked about the inner work of […]

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I’ve mentioned the Living Joyfully Network online community here and there on the podcast over the last couple of years, sometimes sharing the theme we’re exploring that month or testimonials from members. But I feel like that doesn’t actually say much about what we get up to in this rich and vibrant community. So, for […]

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Anne Ohman is a long-time unschooling mom of two grown children. Back in 2016, Anne and I had a lovely conversation about reading that I have referenced countless times over the years. When we spoke, she was working as a library director, giving her powerful insights and amazing stories to share about children learning to […]

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This week, I’m sharing a conversation I had a few years ago with unschooling dad and filmmaker Jeremy Stuart. Jeremy directed and co-produced the documentary film, Class Dismissed, which was released in 2015. Since then, it has been screened in more than 60 countries and translated into five languages. His second documentary, Self-Taught, which explores the […]

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This week, I want to share one of my conference talks, Time to Think. So many of the questions and concerns we hear from unschooling parents boil down to the fears that bubble up when we project our current situation into the future. So, it’s not surprising that the value of bringing ourselves back into […]

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This week on the podcast, I’m sharing a conversation I had with grown unschooler Phoebe Wahl a few years ago. Phoebe is an artist whose beautiful work focuses on the themes of comfort, nostalgia, and intimacy. After first grade, Phoebe left school and dove into unschooling. She graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in […]

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Jennifer McGrail, long-time unschooling mom of four, joins me on the podcast this week. I last spoke with Jennifer on the podcast in episode 18 and her kids have grown a lot since then! Jennifer shares a family update and we dive deep into how parenting and unschooling change as teenagers transition into young adults. […]

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This week, we’re going alllll the way back to episode 7 to revisit a wonderful conversation I had with Anna Brown about parenting. I had been inspired by one of Anna’s conference talks and was so excited to dive deeper into these concepts with her. We talked about uncovering underlying needs during conflict, validation and […]

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This week on the podcast, we’re revisiting a conversation I had with Teresa Graham Brett back in 2016. Teresa is currently the associate dean of diversity and inclusion at the University of Arizona’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She’s an unschooling mom of two and author of the book Parenting for Social Change. Teresa’s background as a […]

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This week, I’m re-sharing one of my conference talks, Curious and Engaged, with you! Here’s the description: Our conventional society honours learning deeply, yet its definition has steadily narrowed over the years to checking off curriculum expectations and awarding graduation certificates. Does this restrictive view do learning justice? What if real learning is bigger than that? […]

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Back in 2018, I spoke to Summer Jean about her experience growing up unschooling. We talked about how her mom came to unschooling, how they dealt with disapproval from extended family members, how her interest in glass art came about, and some of the common questions she gets when people learn she didn’t go to […]

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Anna Brown and Erika Ellis join me again this week to dive into listener questions! We talk about navigating sibling and friend relationships, the idea of self-regulation when it comes to technology, and the journey of finding community and connection for ourselves and our children. As always, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone […]

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This week on the podcast, I’m sharing a conversation I had with Scott Noelle, unschooling dad of two, back in 2017. Scott is an author and a life coach dedicated to supporting parents who want to move away from control-based parenting methods. He founded The Daily Groove, an email newsletter and website where he shared […]

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This week, we are revisiting the first compilation episode I ever created for the podcast! I gathered clips from fourteen different episodes where I asked some version of this question: “What has been one of the more challenging aspects for you on your unschooling journey?” It is so interesting to hear a wide variety of different […]

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This week, I’m sharing a lovely conversation I had with Jessica Kane in 2020. Jessica and her husband live in Ireland and have three children. Her oldest attended school through high school, her middle son left school in grade 4, and her youngest son has never been to school. This gives her such a unique […]

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In 2016, I asked Carol Black ten questions about her unschooling journey. Her two daughters were then 22 and 26. We talked about her documentary, Schooling the World, as well as her popular essay, A Thousand Rivers. Carol approaches unschooling and parenting from a cultural lens, through which she’s made many valuable connections and insights. […]

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Anna Brown and Erika Ellis join me again this week to dive into listener questions! We talk about navigating a dyslexia/dysgraphia diagnosis, sharing unschooling information and parenting ideas with grandparent caregivers, and the mental overwhelm that can occur at the beginning of the deschooling journey. As always, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone […]

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This week on the podcast I share a talk I wrote in 2015, Walking Together: Seeing the World through Your Child’s Eyes. In this talk, I dive into some of things I’ve learned on my unschooling journey about the value of walking together through our days with our children. I touch on: ways to shift and […]

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Sara Yasner joins me on the podcast this week. Sara is an unschooling mom of three and we talk about unschooling alongside her experience going through menopause. Sara’s two sons are older now, but her daughter, Pamela, is nine. We talk about her family’s flow and how the addition of Pamela shifted things for everyone […]

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Ellie Winicour joins me on the podcast this week! Ellie, her wife Jodi, and 8-year-old Celia have always unschooled, following Celia’s interests and flow. Ellie shares some of her experience embracing pretend play and the deep connection that comes from stepping away from the mainstream adult-child power dynamic. She also shares how she has intentionally […]

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This week on the podcast I share a talk I wrote in 2014, Spinning a Web: The Art of Learning. With unschooling, learning often looks very different than what we’ve been taught to expect, so it can take a while to recognize it in action. And then it takes time to figure out how, as […]

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Anna Brown and Erika Ellis join me again this week to dive into listener questions! We talk about cocooning and connecting with young teens, the mainstream concept of productivity and how we get curious about external messages of judgment, and the idea of an “ideal unschooler.” As always, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving […]

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This week on the podcast, I am joined by two teenage writers, Isabella Watkins and Caitlin Wharton, and their mentor, Milva McDonald. The three of them share their experience creating and participating in a homeschool creative writing group. This past year, they published an anthology of short stories and poetry and they describe some of […]

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Amy Hughes, unschooling mom of eight children, joins me on the podcast this week. Over the years, Amy’s family moved from school to homeschooling to Charlotte Mason and finally to unschooling. She shares the big a-ha that led her to unschooling as well as how unschooling works in her large family. We talk about Amy’s […]

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Missy Willis, a longtime unschooling mom of two, joins me again on the podcast this week to share more about her unschooling journey. We talk about the way that unschooling leads us to question everything, from conventional parenting and education to productivity and success. And we dive deep into a few common misconceptions about peaceful […]

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Anna Brown and Erika Ellis join me again this week to dive into listener questions! We explore the idea of unschooling philosophy and strong beliefs, how gaming and unschooling might go together, and the idea of “self-directed” learning. And, as always, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer, because there isn’t […]

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Anna Brown joins me for another Unschooling in Context episode! This time, we explore unschooling in the context of boundaries, comfort zones, and capacity. This topic came up as we were diving into cultivating self-awareness in the Living Joyfully Network last month and we wanted to talk about it here too! Setting boundaries is a […]

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Robyn Robertson, unschooling mom of two, joins me again on the podcast this week. Since our last conversation in 2018, Robyn’s kids have grown! We talk about how unschooling changes when our children become teenagers. Robyn shares how supporting their interests and passions looks different now, but that the connection and relationships are still strong. […]

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Teresa Hess, unschooling mom of three, joins me again on the podcast this week to explore how her unschooling journey has helped her not only nurture her children but re-parent herself. We talk about Teresa’s spiritual view of unschooling and the upward spiral of connection and love that happens when we see children as whole […]

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Anna Brown and Erika Ellis join me this week to dive into listener questions! We explore technology and “screen time,” deschooling, connection, and validation. And as I mention at the beginning of our conversation, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer. That’s because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any […]

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This week, I’ve put together a compilation episode with answers to a question I ask many of the unschooling dads who are on the podcast: As an unschooling dad, what piece of advice would you like to share with dads who are considering or just starting out on this journey? And I love the range […]

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Sara Davidson, unschooling mom of two, joins me on the podcast this week to explore the breadth of unschooling. Sara shares her journey from controlling, conventional parenting to the connected relationships she has with her children now. We talk about many of the paradigm shifts she made along the way and how her entire view […]

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Erika Ellis joins me again on the podcast this week! On previous episodes, Erika and I have talked about unschooling book clubs and self care, but she’s back to share more about her unschooling journey. We talk about the paradigm shifts that she made during deschooling and how her and her husband’s teaching work influenced […]

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We may have been unschooling pretty comfortably for years, connecting with our kids, having fun, actively supporting them as they pursue their interests, but then our eldest approaches the teen years and all of a sudden we start to feel a bit uncomfortable. We begin to worry. Is unschooling going to work through the teen […]

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Christina Kauffman is an unschooling mom of three young kids, and she joins me this week to talk about her deschooling journey. We explore both what she’s found challenging and what she’s found surprising so far. She also shares her experience with navigating sibling dynamics. We have a lovely conversation! Questions for Christina Can you […]

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Philip Mott, a former teacher and unschooling dad to three young children, joins me this week. Philip shares how his unschooling journey began and how his experience as a teacher and what he learned about educational philosophy shaped his path. We talk about the challenges of deschooling and how ingrained our cultural beliefs really are. […]

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Fran Liberatore, unschooling mom of two and the creator behind the Instagram account Big Mothering, joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey so far. Fran, currently working on her master’s degree in early years education, shares some of her reflections about educational philosophy and practice and how she hopes to see schools […]

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Iris Chen, author of Untigering and mother of two, returns to the podcast this week to share what their unschooling lives look like right now and talk about her book. Iris talks about her family’s experience with a self-directed learning center and the path her sons took to make the choice to attend one. We […]

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This week, we’re finishing up my miniseries, In Celebration of Unschooling, sharing the draft of an as yet unpublished book I wrote a few years ago. The book looks at unschooling through the lens of parenting. In chapter 8, Childhood is Bigger Than School, I explore how we can choose to embrace the unschooling mindset […]

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I’m continuing my miniseries, In Celebration of Unschooling, sharing the draft of an as yet unpublished book I wrote a few years ago. The book looks at unschooling through the lens of parenting. This week, we’re diving into Chapter 7: Family Relationships. In this chapter, I explore moving beyond power struggles, the idea of fairness […]

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I’m continuing my miniseries, In Celebration of Unschooling, sharing the draft of an as yet unpublished book I wrote a few years ago. The book looks at unschooling through the lens of parenting. This week, we’re diving into Chapter 6: Exploring Character. In this chapter, I dive into some of the character traits being explored […]

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I’m continuing my miniseries, In Celebration of Unschooling, sharing the draft of an as yet unpublished book I wrote a few years ago. The book looks at unschooling through the lens of parenting. This week, we’re diving into Chapter 5: Cultivating Creativity. In this chapter, I dive into the widely accepted Geneplore model of creativity, […]

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I’m continuing my miniseries, In Celebration of Unschooling, sharing the draft of an as yet unpublished book I wrote a few years ago. The book looks at unschooling through the lens of parenting. This week, we’re diving into Chapter 4: The Joy of Learning. Things mentioned in the episode Pam’s Instagram, sharing highlights of the […]

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To mark the occasion of hitting 300 episodes, I decided to share the draft of an as yet unpublished book I wrote a few years ago. The book looks at unschooling through the lens of parenting and with an audience in mind who are curious, but maybe haven’t yet made the leap. And I was […]

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Episode 299! Wow. For the last few weeks, I’ve been pondering what I’d like to do to mark the milestone of 300 episodes. Maybe a compilation episode, maybe a solo episode. Hmm. I’ve been doing those regularly for the last while (which I’m loving), so I planted that seed and let it bubble around in […]

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Megan Valnes, an unschooling mom of six, joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey. Megan was on the podcast once before, way back in 2018, and it was so fun to catch up and see how her life has unfolded since then. She shares some of the challenges of having a large […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Cultivating Trust. This has been such a valuable theme to explore because trust really is foundational to unschooling—I can’t imagine unschooling thriving without trust! We begin by looking at how we can develop trust with our children, […]

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This week, I’ve put together a compilation episode exploring deschooling discoveries. One of the many things I love about the unschooling journey is how unexpected it can be. As we dive deeper and deeper into deschooling, we begin to question so many things! Things we thought were pretty much facts—about children, about learning, about relationships, […]

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Jesper Conrad joins me this week to talk about his experience as an unschooling dad. Jesper shares his perspective of their family’s decision to unschool, which began when their now 15-year-old son tried kindergarten. We talk about Jesper’s move from an office job to working from home and some of the paradigm shifts that he’s […]

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Cecilie Conrad joins me from Istanbul this week to talk about her unschooling, worldschooling life with her family. Cecilie shares about her path to unschooling, which started when her second child began attending school. We talk about how her family’s love of travel has enriched their lives and how the unschooling lifestyle fits so well […]

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Akilah S. Richards joins me again to talk about her most recent book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work. We talk about her definitions of unschooling and deschooling and dive deep into the far-reaching impacts of choosing an unschooling lifestyle. We also dive into some of the profound realizations she’s had about […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our monthly theme in the Living Joyfully Network, Embracing Cocoons and Bubbles. It is part of the human experience to have periods of introspection, of pulling inward, processing, and integrating. Our children may lose interest in their usual activities while not yet knowing what’s next for […]

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This week, I have a solo episode for you! As the back-to-school energy hits its peak this month, I thought it might be helpful to re-commit to our choice to NOT go back to school. It’s completely understandable to feel a bit off-kilter as the “back to school” messages ramp up around us—be kind to […]

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Jae Williams recently decided to leave his teaching job and stay home to dive into unschooling with his two young children. Leading up to this choice, he spent the last year immersed in podcasts and books, exploring natural learning and questioning many mainstream paradigms about children, schooling, and success. We talk about his experience as […]

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Izaak Sibley joins me this week to share his experience as an unschooling dad. He shares about his own school education, how he saw his love of learning disappear over time, and how unschooling with Q has reignited it. We talk about trusting human curiosity and how he has seen Q’s learning naturally lead in […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Sitting with Fear and Discomfort. This is something that comes up on our unschooling journey pretty regularly because, not only are we challenging lots of cultural norms around learning and parenting, we’re also giving our children space […]

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This week, I have a solo episode for you! The idea to share why I focus on joy and the unschooling journey bubbled up a couple of weeks ago and it’s been fun to put this together. And for listeners who may be newer to the podcast, I share a bit about me before diving […]

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Roya Dedeaux joins me on the podcast this week to talk about her new book Connect with Courage. Roya is a grown unschooler, a marriage and family therapist, and an unschooling mom of three, so she has lots of experience to draw from as she considers how children learn and thrive. In her book, Roya […]

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Erin Rosemond, an unschooling mom of four, joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey. Erin shares her earliest reflections on her own schooling experience and how they prepared her for embracing the idea of home educating her children. We dive deep into the ideas of interdependence, collaboration, and kindness, and how unschooling […]

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Lane Clark joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey and to dive into what she’s learned through deschooling. Lane’s journey began when her family was living abroad and felt their best option was homeschooling. When their carefully chosen curriculum didn’t feel like a good fit, she discovered unschooling and has been questioning […]

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This week, Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Play! We dive into how integral play is for learning both about the world and about ourselves. We can carry a lot of preconceived notions about play, its value, its place in our lives, even the definition of […]

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This week, I want to dive into another question that I get pretty regularly, and that’s whether I have podcast episodes with unschooling parents that used to be teachers. It’s fun to ponder the why behind the question. Does it seem like a strange leap to make? To me, choosing teaching indicates an interest in […]

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Talia Bartoe joins me again on the podcast to update us about her family’s unschooling journey. We didn’t know it going in, but it quickly became obvious that the theme of our conversation was “going deep”! Talia generously shares so much about her inner work and the shifts she’s made as part of deschooling and […]

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This week, I am joined by 20-year-old Samantha Donndelinger, who has always been unschooled. Samantha shares some of her childhood stories and reflections on growing up unschooling. We talk about how her family’s lifestyle gave each child the space to make choices and figure out their own path, and how making choices and exploring her […]

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This week, Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Validation. Diving deep into validation flows beautifully from last month’s theme of Stories because practicing validation with the people in our lives is about hearing, understanding, and accepting their stories as their truth in the moment. Our connections […]

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This week, I’ve put together a compilation episode to dive into a question that I get pretty regularly: What does unschooling look like in larger families? As we learn more about unschooling, we’re encouraged to spend time with our kids, to say yes more, to connect with them more, to explore ways to meet everyone’s […]

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Sue Patterson joins me again this week for the second part of our conversation, diving into three more listener questions. Check out part one here! Question Summaries I feel like I should be finding more friends for my kids to play with, but I’m introverted and it’s hard for me to reach out. My 12yo […]

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Sue Patterson joins me this week to dive into listener questions! And I’m sure it’ll surprise nobody that our conversation went long, so I’ve split it into two episodes—three questions each. A quick reminder, these Q&A conversations aren’t about giving anyone a “right” answer. We can’t know that because we don’t intimately know the real […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Stories. Diving into this theme has been fascinating because there are so many ways in which we tell stories as humans, with really far-reaching impacts. We talk about the stories we tell ourselves and our families in […]

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This week, I’ve put together a solo episode. This episode is geared to parents who are newer to unschooling, navigating the paradigm shifts that come with questioning so much of the conventional wisdom around learning and parenting that we absorbed growing up. Spoiler alert: there are no unschooling “rules.” But I think more experienced unschooling […]

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Blathnaid Cantwell joins me on the podcast this week to talk about her family’s unschooling journey. Initially, it was science and research that inspired Blathnaid’s parenting, but she found over time that her lived experience, as well as that of other families, helped her more deeply understand unschooling in practice. We talked about peeling back […]

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The Beck family of five—Angie, Darren, Josh, Rylie, and Ellie—are back to continue our conversation about their unschooling journey. We had so much fun chatting and sharing stories that our conversation flowed for about two hours, so I split it across two episodes. Check out part one here! This week, we talk about each of […]

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The Beck family of five—Angie, Darren, Josh, Rylie, and Ellie—joins me this week for a wonderful conversation about their unschooling journey. As you can imagine, the six of us had so much fun chatting and sharing stories that our conversation flowed for about two hours, so I’ve split it across two episodes. In part 1 […]

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This week Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Supporting Our Partners. We chose the word “partners” to represent any important adults in our family’s lives who have active relationships with our children—spouses, co-parents, significant others, grandparents, and so on. Our partners are an important part of […]

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This week, we’re diving into a question that comes up pretty regularly, not just from people new to unschooling but also from extended family and friends when they see our parenting choices in action: Won’t unschooling spoil a child? We look at four examples of parenting behaviours or actions, the typical conventional and unschooling motivations […]

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Karen Matthews joins me this week! Karen and her grown son, Tyler, own a furniture and wood craft business together. We talk about how their unschooling journey began and how following Tyler’s interests has not only been a rewarding path for him, but also for her. Karen shares some of the big a-ha moments she […]

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Siblings Laura and Allen Ellis join me this week to talk about growing up unschooling. They share how their childhood interests and experiences connect to the work that they currently do and some of the realizations they made along the way. We talk about the role their mother played in supporting their interests and providing […]

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Anna Brown joins me again this week! This month in the Living Joyfully Network, our theme is ‘Finding Our Guides.’ As I wrote about in The Unschooling Journey, our children can serve as our most valuable guides, helping us move through our fears towards joy and connection. Anna and I talk about how handing our […]

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Pam shares her essay, Unschooling Passions. Unschooling is about learning through living. As unschooling parents, we want to open up the world for our children to explore. But what if your child is passionately interested in just one thing? Doesn’t that close off his access to the world and limit his learning? I have two […]

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Julia Triman joins me to share her family’s unschooling journey. As a mom of two young children, Julia reflects on how her understanding of parenting and learning has changed through observation and being present with them. We talk about the incredible depth of her children’s play and how powerful it is that they can choose […]

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Susan Walker, who lives in the Patagonia region of Argentina, joins me this week to talk about her family’s unschooling journey and the major paradigm shifts she made along the way. We talk about her discoveries about being highly sensitive and introverted, how diving into unschooling resulted in so much personal growth, and how her […]

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Anna Brown joins me again this week! This month in the Living Joyfully Network our theme is Nurturing Our Children’s Learning. We are getting back to the basics of unschooling by observing how children learn through following their interests. Exploring learning through the lenses of curiosity and creativity, we talk about what to do when […]

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Joss Goulden, who lives in Western Australia and is mom to two kids, joins me to talk about her family’s unschooling journey. We talk about how she was inspired by her son’s brief time in kindergarten to make the choice to try unschooling, what her deschooling process looked like, and how she sees learning happening […]

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Betsey Tufano, an unschooling mother of two living in Barcelona, Spain, joins me this week! Betsey shares many details about her unschooling journey and about the importance of the internal work that she did along the way. We also discuss how her relationship with her partner has changed and deepened through their choice to unschool, […]

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This week marks the five year anniversary of the Exploring Unschooling podcast! To celebrate, I decided to dig into the podcast’s rich treasure trove of unschooling stories and highlight a handful of the many beautiful nuggets of wisdom that guests have shared over these five years. It’s been such a treat to revisit episodes as […]

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Anna Brown joins me again this week! This month in the Living Joyfully Network our theme is Seeing the Magic. As we move into the re-invigorating energy of new year, we are turning our attention to connecting with our children and finding the joy in our everyday lives with them. Anna and I talk about […]

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This week, I’m joined by Ali Walker, an unschooling mom and primatologist living in New Zealand. I have gotten to know Ali on the Living Joyfully Network, where she has shared some incredible insights about parenting and unschooling through her lens as a primate researcher focusing on the mother/infant bond. Ali details some of the […]

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Marta Venturini joins me this week! Marta lives with her husband and daughter in Portugal. We dive deep into her unschooling journey, which began when her daughter was an infant, and discuss her deschooling process and how it continued to evolve as she grew as a parent. Marta also shares how much she values the […]

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Holly Clark joins me this week, mom to two always unschooled children living on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Holly shared so many amazing snippets of their lives which all tied into the idea of choice—the choices we make as parents, the choices our children make, and our choice to support their choices! We also […]

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Daniela Bramwell joins me this week, an unschooling mom living in Ecuador. Daniela’s journey is fascinating! As a child, she was a student at an alternative free school, but, as an adult, found herself wondering if there was a better way to approach learning. She dove deep into learning about educational philosophies, including pursuing her […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about navigating family gatherings, the theme this month on the Living Joyfully Network. With the holiday season ramping up, it’s a great time to explore how we choose to engage in larger family celebrations, but the ideas are definitely be applicable throughout the year, from birthday parties […]

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Eva Witsel joins me this week, an unschooling mom and homeschooling activist in the Netherlands. Eva’s journey to unschooling is such an interesting one, as is her varied experience supporting the Dutch homeschooling community and affecting legislation there. We talked a lot about technology, following our passionate interests, supporting children as they become teenagers, and […]

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Lucia Silva joins me this week to talk about unschooling as a lifestyle and her journey so far! We talked about how her understanding of unschooling has grown over the past few years and how what she’s learned has benefited all of her relationships. We also dove into the idea of expectations and how conversations […]

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Donna Anderson joins me this week to talk about her family’s unschooling journey. We dive deep into her family’s interests, some of which are individual and many of which they share as a family. We also explore the idea of an unschooling nest, talk about some of the challenges of deschooling, and how maintaining strong […]

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Anna Brown joins me for another Unschooling in Context episode! This time, we explore unschooling in the context of consent. I think consent lies at the heart of unschooling and I’m excited to share my conversation with Anna about what that means and how it informs the ways our families move through the world. It […]

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This week, I’ve put together a compilation episode! This time, it’s a collection of responses to the question, “What is your favourite thing about the flow of your unschooling days?” If you’re newer to unschooling, these can be a great reminder of where you’re heading. And if you’re more experienced, they can be a great […]

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Kelsi Stembel joins me this week! Kelsi has two teen daughters and is a former teacher turned farmer and entrepreneur. It was a joy to hear about how both her girls have developed and learned at their own pace, honoring their unique styles, and how unschooling has been such an amazing gift for their family. […]

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Michelle Morcate joins me this week to talk about their unschooling journey and how unschooling is such a natural fit when considering neurodiversity because it’s all about facilitating our children as individuals, how they learn, and how they want to move through the world. Michelle’s excitement as an ally and advocate is contagious and we […]

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Cate and Jenna Phillips join me to share some of their wonderful unschooling stories! With six children, it was inspiring to hear about how their journey has unfolded as they prioritize relationships, follow their passions, and work together to support each other. Questions for Cate and Jenna Can you share a bit about you and […]

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Anna Brown joins me again this week! This month in the Living Joyfully Network our theme is Not Back to School. It has been a rich month of checking in with ourselves, quieting the outside noise, and focusing on our kids and the joy around us. Anna and I talk about the “back to school” […]

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Sarah Peshek joins me this week! Sarah is an unschooling mom of three and she shares the details of her journey and her parenting shifts from control to connection. Her insights and experiences are so helpful in really pulling out why this lifestyle is so amazing! How unschooling encourages us to recenter around the person […]

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Nadia Joshua joins me this week to talk about her family’s move to unschooling and her personal deschooling journey. It was delightful to learn more about her family and how they navigated moving to one income, explored the need to go and do, learned to honour both her daughters and their individual personalities, and lots […]

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Erika Davis-Pitre joins me again this week! I rebroadcast her episode, Unschooling and Diversity, earlier this year and she graciously offered to return and answer listener questions that arose from that episode. The result is this amazing episode with so many actionable steps and layers to peel back for all of us on this unschooling […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week to dive into the topic, Kids Are Capable. It’s a foundational principle of unschooling, and seems simple enough, but it’s about so much more than meets the eye! Questions for Anna Choice is a great lens through which to start looking at the idea that ‘kids are capable.’ Paying […]

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This week I’m joined by unschooling dad, Roop Bhadury. Roop’s wife Susan joined me earlier this year in episode 220. It was such a treat to get to hear about their family from Roop’s perspective but more than that we had an amazing conversation about the philosophies of unschooling and entrepreneurship, life, relationships, we covered […]

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This week, I have a lovely conversation with Jessica Kane. Jessica and her husband live in Ireland, and have three children. Her oldest attended school through high school, her middle son left school in grade 4, and her youngest son has never been to school. This gives her such a unique perspective to share! We […]

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This week I’m sharing part six of the audiobook edition of my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. Last week, we covered stages ten, eleven, and twelve, ultimately reaching the holy grail of our quest: unschooling with confidence and grace. Let’s do a quick review to set the stage for the final leg of our […]

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This week I’m sharing part five of the audiobook edition of my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. Last week, we covered stages eight and nine. And while our deschooling story to that point was working through much of the nuts and bolts of unschooling, in stages eight and nine we begin the personal growth […]

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This week I’m sharing part four of the audiobook edition of my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. Last week, we entered the deschooling phase of our journey and found ourselves on the aptly named road of trials: a series of tests and challenges that the hero faces as they begin this personal transformation in […]

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This week I’m sharing part 3 of the audiobook edition of my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. One thing I love about looking at our unschooling lives through this lens is how intimately it connects us to the human journey, which can help us feel less alone. Recognizing that yes, other people really […]

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This week, I’m sharing part two of the audiobook edition of my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. Inspired by Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey framework, The Unschooling Journey is a weave of myths, contemporary stories, and tales from my journey. It’s not a “how to” book—no two paths through the world of unschooling have the […]

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This week, I’m sharing part one of the audiobook edition of my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. Published in 2018, here’s a bit of the description: Inspired by Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey framework, The Unschooling Journey is a weave of myths, contemporary stories, and tales from Pam’s journey. It’s not a “how to” […]

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My son Michael joins me this week to talk about his experience growing up unschooling! We had a lot of fun diving into his varied interests, the threads that weave through them, and how they have helped shape the person he is today. We also talk about his experience with type 1 diabetes and our […]

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This episode was first shared in November of 2017, and I want to share it again now as the Black Lives Matter movement gains important momentum to bring Erika’s valuable experience and insights about diversity and racism through the lens of unschooling back into our conversations. Erika and her husband, Michael have four adult children—they […]

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The idea with the unschooling in context episodes is to deepen our understanding of unschooling by exploring it in the context of other, related things. In this episode, we dive into unschooling in the context of parenting and examine some of the paradigm shifts around parenting and parent/child relationships that are integral to helping unschooling […]

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This week, I’ve put together a compilation episode! This time, the lens is on parenting and the shift away from control and toward connection and engagement with our kids. I think you’ll get a lot out of this deep dive. Audio clips taken from these episodes … EU027: Ten Questions with Teresa Graham Brett EU084: […]

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Pam Sorooshian is a veteran unschooling mom of three now adult daughters. Originally broadcast as the second episode of the podcast, I wanted to bring this gem back into the light! In our conversation, Pam shares so many incredible insights from her experience. She talks about the early years of unschooling, tips on navigating sibling […]

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This week, I’m sharing the third and final part of the audiobook recording of my book, Free to Learn: Five Ideas for a Joyful Unschooling Life. This episode dives into the fourth and fifth ideas: instead of ‘no’ and living together. If you haven’t read it yet, this is an opportunity to learn more about […]

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This week, I’m sharing part two of the audiobook recording of my book, Free to Learn: Five Ideas for a Joyful Unschooling Life. This episode dives into the second and third ideas: that learning is everywhere and that choices are key to learning. If you haven’t read it yet, this is an opportunity to learn […]

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For the next while, I’m doing something a little different on the podcast. With many people sheltering in place worldwide due to the coronavirus pandemic, it’s become increasingly challenging to arrange interviews. At first that seemed curious because people are connecting online even more so during these uncertain times. But as I thought more about […]

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Liz Brady joins me this week to share some of her family’s unschooling stories. Liz and her husband live with their four boys in Western Australia. We dive into how she discovered unschooling, her parenting journey, and the gift of sharing her life with so many unique and dynamic personalities. The love and joy shines […]

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Fiona Munday joins me this week. Fiona and her husband live with their 4.5-year-old son in New Zealand and she dove into researching unschooling when her son was a baby. We have fun exploring her journey and she shares some of the wonderful insights and a-ha moments she’s already experienced—including applying the same principles to […]

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Eva Whipple joins me this week! With children ages four and two, she and her husband have always known that they wouldn’t send their kids to school. We have a wonderful conversation diving into their journey, how she discovered unschooling, what their days look like, how capable and emotionally intelligent their children are, and how […]

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This week’s episode is a special one for me. For a few months now, I’ve been percolating lots of thoughts and possibilities around building an engaging and supportive online unschooling community. Finally, it’s HERE! And Anna Brown is an integral part of it all, taking on the role of Community Advocate. We are well into […]

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Tara McGovern Dutcher joins me to talk about neurodiversity, how we are all unique in our experience of the world, and how unschooling creates an amazing environment from which our individual gifts can shine. Questions for Tara Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everyone into right now? […]

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Susan Bhadury, an unschooling mom with two children, joins me this week. She shares some wonderful stories and insights as we dive into deschooling challenges, the joys of technology, helping our children follow their inner compass, how curiosity weaves its way through their lives, and lots more! Questions for Susan Can you share with us […]

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For any parents who find themselves at home with the kids during these uncertain times, Anna Brown and I dive into the value of using this time to embrace and strengthen our relationships with our children, tips for navigating sibling conflicts, and some ideas to get your brainstorming juices flowing for fun things to do […]

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Jayn Coburn joins me this week to talk about her experience growing up unschooling. Her mom, Robyn, joined me back in 2017 so it was great to connect with Jayn! She openly shares her unschooling experience and insights. We talk about video games, learning, food controls, and touch many of the big topics that come […]

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Jason and Kim Kotecki are back! We had a great time catching up and hearing about what’s going in their unschooling lives. I love Jason’s new book, ‘A Chance of Awesome: How Changing the Way You See Changes Everything’ and found so many parallels to our unschooling lives. The lens of unschooling changes how we […]

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Nikki Zavitz joins me this week to talk about her deschooling journey. She talks about how her life as a teacher influenced her decision to unschool, and how it also created challenges in her deschooling journey. She shares stories from what she calls the “messy middle,” and the beautiful moments that come alive everyday, and […]

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Dola Dasgupta is a long-time unschooling mom with two older children and we have a fascinating conversation! She shares some wonderful stories as we dive into her journey to unschooling, deschooling challenges along the way, the value of free time, her experience unschooling in India, and lots more. Questions for Dola Can you share with […]

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Bob Mahan joins me to talk about his experience as an unschooling dad. An accountant for 24 years, he had all the bells and whistles of that career, but he didn’t enjoy it. In our conversation, he shares his journey from there to unschooling and living a life of freedom, fun, and connection. Nowadays, Bob, […]

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Marcella O’Brien joins me this week. Marcella is an unschooling mom of three boys. Her grown sons, Jack and Sean, joined me to share their experiences back in episode 181, so it was such a treat to hear Marcella’s journey. She was also a public school teacher and still tutors math which led to a […]

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Nisa Deeves and her daughter Jewel join me this week to answer ten questions about their unschooling lives. This was a lovely chat that felt like sharing a cup of tea with old friends. I love the rich tapestry of lives created by all of the unschoolers who so generously share their time with me. […]

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When we first decide our children aren’t going to go to school, it can be daunting to envision how they’re going to learn instead. The great thing is, we don’t need to re-create the ethos of school in our homes to help our children’s learning thrive in the real world. In this talk I gave […]

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Michelle Conaway joins me this week. Michelle is an unschooling mother of three and grandmother to one! She also runs the Texas Unschoolers group, coordinates their annual conference, and was gracious enough to share her journey and some wonderful stories and insights from their unschooling lives. Questions for Michelle Can you share with us a […]

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Shan Burton is a writer, an unschooling mom and a recent widow. She kindly joins me this week to talk about her unschooling life, how the idea of Lovely Chaos (her website name) came about and how embracing unschooling healed her relationships and helped her family through the loss of their beloved husband and father. […]

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Sue Patterson joins me to talk about how the idea of “perfect” can get in the way of living our best unschooling life. We touch on comparisons, tough times, the personal work involved, the gifts that these choices bring, and lots more! Discussion Points Let’s start with the genuine excitement that bubbles up when we […]

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It’s compilation episode time again! In many of my conversations with grown unschoolers, I ask what advice they’d like to share with newer unschooling parents who are starting out on this journey. In this episode, I’ve woven together answers from eleven episodes and twelve grown unschoolers. It’s so interesting to hear the things that they […]

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Anna Brown joins Pam to talk about navigating the holiday season through the lens of unschooling. As we move into the holiday season, things can get challenging. Maybe you’re deep into deschooling and questioning everything—including holiday traditions—to see how well they really fit your family. Maybe you’re the lone unschooling family and anticipating uncomfortable visits […]

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Kinsey Norris is an unschooling mom with two kids and we had a wonderful chat about her journey! She has a background in Early Childhood Education and it was fascinating to see how many seeds were planted along the way that ultimately grew into the amazing unschooling life they are living as a family today. […]

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Lucas Land is an unschooling dad with three kids, and we have a wonderful conversation about deschooling, living in another country, trusting our kids, and lots more! He also recently started a podcast, We Don’t Talk About That with Lucas Land. Questions for Lucas Can you share with us a bit about you and your […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week to dive into listener questions. Question Summaries The first question is about deschooling and moving to unschooling. She has two boys and they have always homeschooled. They’ve been looking at moving to unschooling. She’s been reading and researching and she’s feeling a little bit overwhelmed. The main focus of […]

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School’s out. Now what? Choosing to step off the conventional education path and leave school behind is often the culmination of a long, and sometimes emotional, process. But, in the bigger picture, it’s really just the first step on your new path. School’s Out is a curated collection of some of my published articles, in an […]

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Liza Swale joins me to talk about her unschooling journey and the value of connected relationships. She shares some amazing stories of trusting, being open, and following the flow. We also dive into what she’s learned about staying connected with her two children, who have very different needs and personalities, and how they prioritize connecting […]

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Erika Ellis joins me this week to talk about the very important topic of self care. Of course, we look at the topic through the lens of unschooling, dispelling some myths and letting go of some “shoulds” about how to take care of ourselves. Erika shares so many practical, easy to use tips to help […]

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It’s the 200th episode!!! What a wonderful journey it’s been! This week Anna Brown joins me for another Unschooling In Context episode. We explore the idea of deschooling and how it fits in the larger context of unschooling. We talk about language, our values, ideas that we can let go and so much more. Anna […]

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Holly Johnson is an unschooling mom with two children, and her family is currently traveling the world together! How they got to that place is an amazing story. We dive into the choice to remove a child from school, helping an anxious child, hacking their lives to suit themselves, and how unconditional acceptance and love […]

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School’s out. Now what? Choosing to step off the conventional education path and leave school behind is often the culmination of a long, and sometimes emotional, process. But, in the bigger picture, it’s really just the first step on your new path. Welcome! School’s Out is a curated collection of some of my published articles, […]

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Alex Polikowsky joins me to share an update about how her family weaves school and unschooling together. Recently, a listener posted a comment on Alex’s first podcast appearance (almost three years ago) about how much she enjoyed the episode and that she’d love to hear an update. I thought it was a great idea and […]

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Katie Patterson left school after kindergarten and grew up unschooling. She is an actress, a writer, and an all-around lover of horror. We have a wonderful conversation about her childhood, how her path has unfolded, what she loved about unschooling, and what she’s up to now. Questions for Katie Can you share with us a […]

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Renee Cabatic, the mother of two unschooled teens, joins me this week to share some wonderful stories from their lives. We dive into passions and comfort zones, college and quitting, agency and self-efficacy, and lots more. Questions for Renee Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What did your family’s […]

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Compilation episode time! This time, let’s explore the idea of stretching our comfort zones. This can come up in various ways along our unschooling journey. Often, we first encounter it when we’re actively deschooling and questioning so much of the conventional wisdom around learning and parenting that we’ve absorbed growing up. We can also find […]

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Martha Delmore joins me this week to talk about unschooling with younger children. Unschooling wasn’t on her radar before she had kids—she’s a former high school teacher—but her desire to maintain and enhance her relationships with them led her down this unexpected path. We dive into attachment parenting, when family members question our choices, the […]

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Amy Milstein’s two children have grown up unschooling. Last year, her eldest decided she wanted to go to college. We dive into how they handled the legalities of unschooling in New York, her daughter’s journey to college, and the lovely flow of their unschooling days along the way. I hope you enjoy the conversation as […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week to dive into listener questions! Question Summaries Mom hears many parents on the podcast talking about hanging out with their kids so much more now that they’re unschooling. But since she stopped limiting screen time back in January, her boys, 15, 13, and 10, play online games. Her question: […]

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Sue Patterson joins me this week to dive into five popular unschooling memes. Memes can be quick, inspirational pick-me-ups, but we don’t need to stop there—we can use them as a springboard to learn more about both ourselves and unschooling. It’s so worth doing the work. The five popular memes we discuss 1. “You cannot […]

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Amy Martinez joins me this week to talk about her family’s move to unschooling. Amy is a mother of five, who range in age from 15-29. They had time in public school, homeschooling, and ultimately moved to unschooling. Her insights on those transitions, on living in a big family, and on the connections and amazing […]

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Jen Keefe joins me this week! Jen was on the podcast almost three years ago and I really enjoyed learning a bit about how their unschooling lives have grown and changed since then. We dive into what she found challenging as they moved to unschooling, how it’s been life-changing for her as well as the […]

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I originally wrote this essay for Rosemary Magazine, for their winter issue, which had the theme, “wildschool.” I loved playing with that idea! There’s the outer wildness of living outside the structure of compulsory school. In the world, rather than in the classroom. Kids in the grocery store in the middle of the day. Running […]

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Teresa Hess is an unschooling mom with three kids and the family—Teresa, her husband, and the kids—live in a cool co-housing community on an island in Washington state. Teresa and I had a wonderful conversation about their unschooling lives, diving into the shift to peaceful parenting, the ever-deepening spiral of mothering and self-awareness, the concept […]

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Talia Bartoe is an unschooling mom with four young children who have never been to school. We have a wonderful conversation about her deschooling journey—as someone who excelled in school, she had no idea this would be in her future. Her excitement and gratitude for finding this path and for the beautiful connections that have […]

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Shannon Loucks joins me to talk about unschooling, parenting, and her new book, Love More: 50+ ways to build joy into childhood. Shannon’s an unschooling mom with two boys and she believes in the power of play and partnership as a way to bring more joy and love into our children’s lives. We dive into […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week for another Unschooling in Context episode! This time we’re diving into unschooling in the context of life. And what I mean by that is, we’re exploring how unschooling eventually weaves so tightly into our lives. Which is beautiful! Unschooling IS living our lives. Yet, as challenges arise, it can […]

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It’s time for another compilation episode! This time, let’s dive into video games. Video games are a common topic of conversation in unschooling circles because, when it comes to questioning conventional advice, this topic is a hot bed of widely varying perspectives. For me, when I find myself in that conundrum, I look to my […]

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Jack and Sean O’Brien both grew up unschooling. Sean chose to continue unschooling during his teen years and Jack chose to go to high school. Now they’re both in college and we have a wonderful conversation about the ways that unschooling has woven its way through their current college experiences. Questions for Jack & Sean […]

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Nick Bergson-Shilcock joins me this week! In a nutshell, Nick grew up unschooling and now runs the Recurse Center in New York. It’s a wonderful space for both new and experience programmers to take a sabbatical and vastly improve their programming skills. It was fascinating to hear the story of how the Recurse Center came […]

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Joan Concilio joins me to share some of her family’s wonderful unschooling stories. We dive into her journey to unschooling, the learning that happened along the way, the profound changes it brought to their lives and the deep connections that it forged. She also talks about what it’s like to live in a highly regulated […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week to answer listener questions. We talk about finding ways to live together when we have different styles and needs, considering diplomas and next steps, allowances and family money, and how learning looks different in unschooling families. Question 1 [00:00:20] How do I make a minimalist, quiet home dynamic enough […]

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Alyssa Patterson joins me this week to chat about growing up unschooling! Alyssa and I dive into her interests growing up, her choice to go to high school for a year and a half, how she came to open her own business a few months ago, what she appreciates most about growing up unschooling, and […]

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Tara Soto-Regester, an unschooling mom with two children, joins me for a wonderful conversation about her family’s journey from school to unschooling. We dive into how she discovered unschooling, her son’s transition from school to coming home, what’s surprised her along the way, her new podcast, and lots more! Questions for Tara Can you share […]

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Leah Rose joins me this week to share her unschooling experience. Turns out, our conversation had such a lovely, organic flow that we soon left the questions behind! Show Notes In our conversation,we wove our way through these ideas: intrinsic motivation the pitfalls of comparison transitioning to unschooling breaking down deschooling conversations taking the place […]

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Laura Bowman is the founder of the East Tennessee Unschooled Summer Camp for teens and previous guests have said wonderful things about their camp experience. We dive into Laura’s unschooling journey, how the camp came to life in 2010, what a day at camp looks like, the idea behind the Mentor Groups, reluctant campers, and […]

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Anna Brown joins me this week for a conversation with a twist: we’re not talking about the ins and outs of unschooling itself but about how it fits in the bigger picture. Hence the title of the episode, Unschooling in Context. It’s a topic I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but I really […]

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Heather Clark joins me this week! I first met Heather a few years ago at an unschooling conference and I love the way she and her family have slowly but surely woven an interest in travel into their lives. We dive into her journey to unschooling, the story behind embracing travel, the value of embracing […]

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It’s time for another compilation episode! This time I went with a topic rather than a particular question: the topic of learning to read naturally. Listen to ten different guests share their experiences around unschooling and learning to read. Hearing their stories in this new context—side by side—may well spark helpful new connections and insights […]

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Kelli and Rhanna Lincoln, unschooling mom and daughter, join me this week on the podcast. I had so much fun chatting with them and hearing about their unschooling lives—from both their perspectives. We talk about their journey to unschooling, living and learning with four kids (or three siblings!), their family’s RV travels, their latest business […]

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Alicia Gonzales-Lopez joins me this week to talk about her deschooling journey. We dive into how she discovered unschooling, the emotional healing that’s happened for her, what she’s found challenging along the way, connecting with our kids, what has surprised her most, and lots more. Questions for Alicia Can you share with us a bit […]

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Joan Karp, unschooling mom with three kids, joins me this week! We talk about her fascinating journey to unschooling, what she found challenging about deschooling, we dive deep into the teen years, what she most appreciates about having embraced unschooling, how her passion for sports weaves into their days, the new business they’ve recently started […]

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Ben Lovejoy, a long-time unschooling dad, joins me this week. I met Ben and his family at the first unschooling conference we ever attended. His boys are grown now and we have a lovely chat reflecting on his family’s journey, including the influence of his military background, the idea of rules versus principles, the value […]

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This week is Part 2 of my wonderful conversation with Sue Patterson about unschooling and the teen years. In this episode we talk about the later teen years, transitioning into adulthood, is there preparation needed, should we be defining success for someone else, connection and how relationships evolve and change. So many wonderful moments talking […]

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Sue Patterson returns to talk about unschooling and the teen years. We are both rather passionate about the topic and our conversation ended up lasting almost two hours! I decided to split it into two, and it actually worked out quite well, with Part 1 covering the transition into the teen years, and Part 2 […]

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This week Anna Brown joins me to answer some questions from listeners. We talk about finding friends, letting go of worry and fear of the future, the teen years, and more. I think you’ll find some helpful nuggets no matter where you are on your unschooling journey. Question 1 We are an Italian family. Here […]

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Adrian Peace-Williams joins me this week! A companion conversation to last week’s episode with her mom, Adrian and I have a wonderful conversation, diving into her childhood unschooling, her choice to go to high school, her years of traveling the world after high school, where she is now in her journey, and lots more. Her […]

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Alex Peace has been one of my unschooling inspirations for many years! She has three adult children and I’m so excited that she agreed to come on the podcast to talk about her family’s unschooling experiences. We dive into what she found to be the most challenging aspect of deschooling, building trust, stretching comfort zones, […]

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This week, please enjoy the audiobook edition of my intro book, What is Unschooling?  Written and read by me, Pam Laricchia. Here’s the description: Life in the real world is much bigger and more exciting than a school can contain within its four walls. If you’re ready to embrace life and eager to share its […]

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Kirsten Fredericks and her husband Carl have three boys—now young adults—who pretty much grew up unschooling. We have a wonderful conversation as we touch on how she found unschooling, the most challenging aspect of deschooling, supporting our children’s passions, moving from control to trust, what has surprised her most about how their unschooling lives have […]

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Max VerNooy grew up unschooling. I’ve known Max’s family for many years, online and through unschooling gatherings, and I’m so happy he agreed to chat with me about his experience growing up unschooling. We talk about the ebb and flow of his interests through the years, his time mentoring at an unschooling summer camp, and […]

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Tracy Talavera and Erika Ellis are unschooling moms who also host an unschooling book club! We dive into the flow of a typical meeting, going about choosing books, figuring out membership, what they’ve personally gotten out of being part of the book club, and lots more. Questions for Tracy and Erika Can you each share with […]

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Sue Patterson, a long-time unschooling mom with three now-adult children, joins me to talk about unschooling intentions. I love the energy of a new year, but I’m not so keen on making resolutions. For lasting change, I need something meatier. I’ve found that when I think about the kinds of changes I’d like to see in […]

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It’s time for another compilation episode! Let’s dive into how twelve unschooling parents answer the question, “What has surprised you most so far about how unschooling has unfolded in your lives?” I hope you enjoy hearing what these unschooling parents had to share! Audio Snippets Taken from These Episodes … EU036: Deschooling with Lauren Seaver […]

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Missy Willis is an unschooling mom of two children and host of the website, Let ‘Em Go Barefoot, where she shares her personal experiences, thoughts, and research around unschooling. We dive into her journey from getting her master’s in Special Ed to unschooling, what she means by the phrase “ego-schooling,” how jumping in to help our children […]

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Jeremy Stuart joins Pam for an engaging conversation about unschooling, documentaries, and life. Jeremy is an unschooling dad and video editor who also directed and co-produced the documentary film, Class Dismissed, which was released in 2015. Since then, it has been screened in more than 60 countries and translated into five languages. He’s now in the […]

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Anna Brown joins Pam to talk about navigating the holiday season through the lens of unschooling. As we move into the holiday season, things can get challenging. Maybe you’re deep into deschooling and questioning everything—including holiday traditions—to see how well they really fit your family. Maybe you’re the lone unschooling family and anticipating uncomfortable visits […]

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Vicky Bennison and her husband always unschooled their two children—now young adults. I met Vicky years ago and we’ve stayed connected online ever since. We have a wonderful conversation diving into her unschooling journey, including what she found to be most challenging, the importance of being curious ourselves, what has surprised her most along the […]

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Kim and Jason Kotecki are unschooling their three children, and they are also the brains and the fun behind escapeadulthood.com! We have a fantastic conversation, diving into their journey to unschooling, how they got into the work of fighting adultitis, how encouraging people to see their days through a more child-like lens is remarkably similar […]

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Sue Elvis and her husband Andy have eight children, seven living, ranging in age from 14 to 31. Sue hosts the podcast, Stories of an Unschooling Family, as well as a website and blog. We have a lovely conversation, diving into her family’s move to unschooling, the difference between unschooling and unparenting, how unschooling has grown […]

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Tatiana Plechenko is an unschooling mom with two children. I met Tatiana online pretty early in her unschooling journey and then had the pleasure of connecting with her in person a few times at unschooling events. We have a really fun conversation, diving into her deschooling experience, including her most challenging area, how her relationships with […]

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When I began unschooling my three children in 2002, it wasn’t long before I came across the idea that strong relationships with my children were essential for unschooling—and learning in general—to thrive. At first, I thought, sure, that’s a worthwhile goal, but what exactly does that have to do with their learning? That became clear […]

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Robyn Robertson is an unschooling mom with two children and host of the podcast, Honey, I’m Homeschooling the Kids. We have wonderful conversation, diving into her family’s early travels, their move to unschooling, figuring out what unschooling looks like for them, her favourite thing about the flow of their unschooling days, and lots more! Questions […]

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Sue Patterson, a long-time unschooling mom with three now-adult children, continues to encourage and support unschooling parents through her website and Facebook group, UnschoolingMom2Mom. In this episode, we have a great time tackling some of the common questions people ask when they are first exploring unschooling. Questions for Sue Can you share with us a […]

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Caren Knox is a long-time unschooling mom who found that, while she has been in and out of therapy over the years, nothing has been more impactful and life-changing for her than becoming a good unschooling mom. We dive into her family’s move to unschooling, when her healing journey began, her healing process and what […]

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As Jen Lumanlan puts it, “I don’t have much in the way of parenting instinct but I make up for it with outstanding research skills.” Her deep dive into parenting research led first to a Master’s in Psychology with a focus on Child Development, then to another Master’s in Education, and then ultimately to choosing unschooling as […]

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Natasha Allan-Zaky joins me this week for a wonderful unschooling conversation! We talk about her family’s move to unschooling, the challenge of embracing fun, learning piano, her biggest a-ha moment so far on the journey, and lots more. Questions for Natasha Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What did […]

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Amanda Sharma joins me this week to share her fascinating perspective as a grown unschooler who is now unschooling her own children. We dive into her experience growing up unschooling, the process of choosing unschooling for her children and family, what she’s found challenging on the journey, her favourite thing about unschooling right now, and […]

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I first met Alec Traaseth and his family when he was maybe twelve or thirteen, at an unschooling conference. I’ve enjoyed little glimpses of his life over the years through social media and I was so happy when he agreed to come on the podcast to chat about his experience growing up unschooling. We talk […]

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Wendy Hart and her husband are unschooling their eight-year-old daughter. They live in Ontario, Canada where Wendy runs a local un/homeschool group that hosts fun activities, like yesterday’s Not Back to School Beach Meet-Up! We dive into how she discovered unschooling, how she’s helping her daughter pursue her interests, her biggest stumbling block on the […]

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This week on the podcast, I’ve put together a new kind of Q&A. It dawned on me recently that I’ve written many thousands of words in email replies to unschooling-related questions over the last few years. And I suspect that, for every person who actually emailed me, there are many others with a similar question in mind. […]

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This week on the podcast, I’ve put together a compilation of sixteen experienced unschooling parents answering the question, “Looking back, what has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?” I titled this episode The Sparkle of Unschooling because the guests are talking about THE ONE THING. It’s the thing we eventually discover that we celebrate […]

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Courtney Barker and her husband Dave are unschooling their three children. Originally from Australia, they moved to Northern Zambia when their first child was 12 weeks old. Four years later they moved to Chile, and four years after that they moved to Canada. We have a wonderful conversation about their journey from school to unschooling, […]

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Jessica Hughes and her husband, Micah, have three children, ages 11 to 18. When their kids were younger, they were homeschooling with a curriculum but they eventually found their way to unschooling. We talk about that journey, what you can do when you feel caught up in everyday “struggles,” supporting your husband’s journey, shifting away from […]

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Anna Brown is back! We have so much fun diving into her family’s move to unschooling, how she developed trust in the process, what she found to be the most challenging aspect, tips for moving from conventional parenting to consensual living, stretching our comfort zones, and lots more. Ten Questions for Anna 1. Can you share […]

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Virginia Warren’s two daughters have never been to school. We have great fun diving into their journey to unschooling, her biggest stumbling block along the way, her perspective as a gamer mom, what’s surprised her most so far, what her favourite thing about unschooling is right now, and lots more! Questions for Virginia Can you share […]

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Béa Mantovani is an unschooling mom with two children. I’ve known Béa online in unschooling circles for quite a few years—she’s even translated some of my blog posts into French. We have a really interesting conversation as we dive into the twists and turns of their unschooling lives, including how she found unschooling, her biggest […]

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Iris Chen is a Chinese American unschooling mom who was born in the US, grew up in the US and Canada, and now lives with her husband and two boys in China. She’s been unschooling for about a year and began sharing her experiences on her blog at untigering.com. I’ve really enjoyed reading her posts, […]

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Maria Randolph’s unschooled daughter is now twenty, which gives her a great perspective to look back on her own deschooling, It was a fascinating journey! We talk about what she found to be one of the most challenging areas to deschool, regret and how it can get in the way, her journey through the question, […]

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Ronnie Maier has two daughters now in their twenties, who unschooled after leaving school in the early grades—plus a niece who has stayed with them part-time over the years. In a fun twist, Ronnie was the working parent while her husband Frank was the at-home unschooling parent. Ronnie has shared her family’s unschooling experience for […]

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Noah Tetzner is seventeen, left school last fall, and it was not long before he was passionately unschooling. We talk about his transition from school to unschooling, what excites him about unschooling, the podcast he’s now had time to start, his advice for new unschooling parents and lots more. Questions for Noah Can you share […]

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Zach and Heather Lake join me this week to talk about Zach’s journey from reluctant spouse to unschooling advocate. Heather has been on the podcast before taking about her deschooling journey, and after the episode she mentioned that her husband has had quite the journey as well. It occurred to me that it would be interesting to […]

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Ann Rousseau and her partner Tim have been unschooling their three boys for about six years. Ann and I have a fascinating conversation, digging into how her family came to unschooling, moving through fear and discomfort, the many ways curiosity drives their days, her documentary about her experience of alopecia, and lots more. Questions for […]

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This month, Anna Brown and I treat you to an extra long Q&A episode as we finish up the remaining questions! We dive into questions around the challenge of deschooling while holding tight to your fears, engaging with the unschooling community before having kids of your own, the decision to unschool, the transformational impact of shifting […]

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This week on the podcast, we have the first compilation episode! I gathered clips from fourteen different episodes where I asked some version of this question: “What has been one of the more challenging aspects for you on your unschooling journey?” I think it’s fascinating to hear them side by side, but I’d love to know […]

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Jen Kobrick connected with me recently and suggested an episode about the idea of unschooling in the early years—before kids reach school age. Her son is almost three and she so beautifully explained why she thought it was a valuable topic that I asked if she’d be interested in talking about it with me. I […]

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This week on the podcast I’m trying something new: a round table discussion on a single topic. Questions around food are very common as people are deschooling and contemplating releasing control over their children’s food choices and Sylvia Woodman, Jo Isaac, and Meredith Novak join me to talk all things food. I hope you find […]

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Robin Bentley is an unschooling mom who loves dancing hula, playing the yukelele, and supporting her daughter’s exploration of her interests and passions. We have a wonderful conversation about unschooling passions, including how supporting our child’s interests often ends up being a positive experience for us as well, healing our own childhood, tips and ideas […]

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Anna Brown joins Pam to answer listener questions. This month we dive into questions around managing the environment when a parent works at home, when we’re not a “perfect mom,” helping our kids learn about diversity, when you’re not into your child’s passion, and helping your children process their emotions without taking them on yourself. […]

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Erin Human is an unschooling mom of two and she joins me this week to talk about her experiences with unschooling and autism. Erin has an autistic son, and was diagnosed with autism herself as an adult. She’s also a wonderful artist and is the art director for Autism Women’s Network, as well as co-founding director […]

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Xander MacSwan left school in the 5th grade when his parents—both professors in the University of Maryland’s College of Education—decided the best thing they could do was pull their kids out of school and start unschooling. We dive deep into Xander’s passion for video games, including the difference between gaming as part of deschooling and […]

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Nikole Verde and I have a great conversation about how, with unschooling, everything’s connected. Nikole is the home ed columnist at JUNO Magazine and she’s been doing a fun series where she looks at how different topics—or subjects, from a more school-ish mindset—can weave into our unschooling lives. Eventually, we notice that all of those […]

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Anne Ohman joins Pam to answer listener questions (Anna wasn’t able to join us). This month we dive into questions around meeting the needs of multiple children with diverse personalities and needs, shifting and reconnecting with the children after challenging times, shifting away from control as a parenting tool, and what to do about children […]

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Summer Jean and I have a wonderful conversation about her experience growing up unschooling. We chat about how her mom came to unschooling, dealing with disapproval from extended family members, how her passion for glass art has unfolded, some of the common questions she gets when people learn she didn’t go to school and lots […]

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Hema Bharawaj is an unschooling mom with two children and an amazing artist. Hema and I talk about her illustrations for my new book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. She talks about the inspiration behind the images and shares wonderful stories about her own unschooling journey. Our conversation spanned almost two hours so I decided to […]

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Hema Bharawaj is an unschooling mom with two children and an amazing artist. Hema and I talk about her illustrations for my new book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. She talks about the inspiration behind the images and shares wonderful stories about her own unschooling journey. Our conversation spanned almost two hours so I decided […]

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Megan Valnes is an unschooling mom with five children and we have so much fun diving deep into her deschooling experience. We talk about finding helpful unschooling information and groups online, the parenting paradigm shifts we make as we embrace unschooling, her experience managing the diverse needs of five children, her husband’s experience as they […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown join Pam to answer listener questions. This month we dig into questions around helping a child who feels powerless and defeated, how to support a child who left school six months ago, personal hygiene choices, and the challenge of different personalities and meeting their needs. Click here to submit your own […]

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Jan Fortune home educated her four now adult children in the UK and wrote many articles and five books on unschooling and parenting. Her last book on the topic, Winning Parent, Winning Child, focuses on living with children in ways that respect their autonomy. Jan is also a novelist, poet, editor, and runs Cinnamon Press, now […]

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Alan Marshall is an unschooling dad, a professional musician, and a university professor in the music department. We dive into his family’s journey to unschooling, his eldest’s transition to junior high, ways to approach music lessons, advice for dads just starting out with unschooling, and lots more. Quote of the Week “Actually, I would discourage, […]

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Sylvia Woodman joins me on the podcast this week, sharing some of her wonderful unschooling stories. Her children, ages thirteen and eleven, have never been to school. We chat about how she discovered unschooling, ways to create an environment in which natural learning thrives, how unschooling has been healing and liberating, technology, and lots more. […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown join Pam to answer listener questions. This month we dig into questions around the challenge of meeting the needs of everyone in the family, the conventional idea that you shouldn’t do things for your children that they can do for themselves, the interplay of releasing control over food and the […]

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My guest this week is Jessica, an unschooling mom living in Germany. Unschooling is illegal in Germany, so we’ve kept everything on a first-name basis to protect her anonymity. Jessica decided even before her son was born that her child wouldn’t attend conventional schools, but she had no idea that the alternative schools that sounded […]

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My guest this week is Kelly Callahan, unschooling mom of two. Kelly is now four years into her unschooling journey, and I was excited to explore how unschooling has been weaving ever more deeply into their lives. We chat about how they began unschooling, her deschooling challenges, the connections she’s seen between unschooling and her work as a homeopathic […]

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My guest this week is Nick Hess, also known online as The Unschool Dad. He and his wife unschool their five children. We chat about about his family’s move to unschooling, what it was about unschooling that resonated with him, what he’s found challenging, and surprising, about unschooling as it has unfolded in their lives, […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown join Pam to answer listener questions. This month we dig into questions around when parents are at odds over parenting choices, ways to share information with more conventional parents, teens making connections and considering school, and ways to handle when a child calls themself “stupid.” Click here to submit your own […]

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Milva McDonald unschooled her four now-adult children starting back in 1991 and this year she published a book of essays about their experience, Slow Homeschooling. We have a great conversation, diving into her family’s unschooling journey, how music has woven its way through their lives, unschooling’s gift of time, college, and lots more! Quote of […]

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Rachel Rainbolt is an unschooling mom of three and author of the book, Sage Homeschooling. We have such a fun conversation, diving into her family’s move to unschooling, how connection and relationships are at the core of learning, technology, micro-adventures, and lots more! Quote of the Week “If you are filling in all that space […]

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Heather Lake and her family began unschooling in January of this year, 2017, and she has been blogging about the experience. I really enjoyed chatting with her about how the journey has been unfolding so far. We talk about what prompted their move to unschooling, how her relationships with her children have changed since they […]

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I take a few minutes to reflect on 100 episodes and my unschooling work, then Anne Ohman and Anna Brown join me to answer listener questions. This month we answer questions about when to share our perspectives on stereotypes etc, supporting a young adult while moving to unschooling, anxiety around technology, and helping a partner […]

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Emma Marie Forde is unschooling mom to two girls, Lily and Rosa. She’s also the founder of the website, rethinkingparenting.co.uk. Before having children, Emma was a clinical psychologist, a career that informed her choice to stay home with her own children and to choose unschooling. In this episode, Emma and I have a great chat about the […]

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I haven’t had an episode focused on my own reflections about unschooling in a while, so I thought I’d do that this week. I decided to share five of my blog posts that have really resonated with readers over the years. Here are descriptions and links to the blog posts: Who Am I and What […]

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Erika Davis-Pitre joins me to talk about unschooling and diversity. She and her husband, Michael, have four now-adult children and they enjoyed unschooling for many years. Erika continues to speak at unschooling conferences all over the US, her favourite topics being unschooling teens, the joy of unschooling, and celebrating diversity through unschooling. We dive into the […]

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Anna Brown and Pat Robinson join me to chat about ordinary unschooling. They have both always unschooled their children—Anna’s daughters are about to turn 18 and 20, and Pat’s son is 16 years old. We talk about the idea of “unschooling success stories,” the impact of the conventional “independence agenda” which starts very young in […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown join me to answer listener questions. This month we answer questions about radical validation—and what’s so radical about it, sibling conflicts, unhappy temperaments, and how the three of us have worked through challenges to get to epiphanies and personal growth. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Listener […]

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Ellen Rowland is an unschooling mom of two children, ages 12 and 13. Back in 2008, Ellen and her husband Richard decided to leave the US and move to Senegal, West Africa with their two children, ages 3 and 4 at the time. Eight years later, they moved to small island off the Turkish coast of […]

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Robert Gottlieb is an unschooling dad with two children, ages 11 and 19. He shares that they actually discovered unschooling a few times and, after a variety of school and school-at-home settings, he’s the one who eventually brought it into the family. We chat about that transition, going against societal expectations, stretching comfort zones, what […]

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Bryanna Royal is an unschooling mom with four children. And as if choosing unschooling wasn’t crazy enough, she and her husband chose to sell their home and everything in it and hit the road in an RV to travel full-time. We have a wonderful chat diving into why they chose unschooling, why they chose to move […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown join me to answer listener questions. This month we dive into the the bigger picture of buying toys, negotiating boundaries, highly sensitive children and therapy, and feeling stuck around food and health concerns. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “My priority is the connection, […]

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Phoebe Wahl is an artist whose beautiful work focuses on the themes of comfort, nostalgia, and intimacy. She left school entirely after first grade and dove into unschooling. Eventually she chose to go to college, graduating from Rhode Island School of Design in 2013 with a BFA in Illustration. We have a lot of fun talking […]

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Jan is the founder of The Natural Child Project, a website that houses a wonderful collection of unschooling and parenting articles. She also has two unschooling books out, The Natural Child and The Unschooling Unmanual, plus a children’s book, A Gift for Baby. Her unschooled son, Jason, is now in his thirties. Jan graciously agreed to answer […]

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Jennie Gomes is an unschooling mom to three young children and we thought we’d do something interesting. Jennie was on the podcast just over a year ago, episode 25, and we chatted about her deschooling journey. She graciously agreed to come back on the show to answer the same questions, but now with another year […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown join me to answer listener questions. We dive into the seeming transition from following their interests to earning a living, how passionate kids engage with the world, partnering with our children around chores, and helping a child learn something that’s challenging for us. Click here to submit your own question to the […]

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Deb Rossing and Pat Robinson are unschooling moms I’ve known online for many years and have also met in person at unschooling conferences. This episode came about because I’ve had a few listeners suggest the topic of unschooling an only child, but since I have three kids I don’t have much experience to share on […]

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Lucy AitkenRead is an unschooling mom of two that you may know her from her blog, Lulastic and the Hippyshake. Or her YouTube channel. We have a wonderful chat, diving deep into what her family’s move to unschooling has looked like, what’s been the hardest part of the journey so far, what’s been the most […]

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Scott Noelle is an unschooling dad of two, an author, and a life coach dedicated to supporting parents who want to move away from control-based parenting methods. He’s the founder of the website, DailyGroove.com, where he shares his practical parenting insights. We have a wonderful conversation diving into his wonderful PATH parenting framework, the value of […]

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Tami Stroud is an unschooling mom of six kids, ages four to thirteen. We have a great chat about her family’s move to unschooling, their journey to becoming a nomadic, sometimes expat, family, the threads that weave through the ideas of hard work, grit, entitlement, and rewards and punishment, and last, but not least, she […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “It’s in following your child’s light and joy and questions and interests and curiosities and conversations where the learning happens.” ~ Anne Ohman Listener Questions Anonymous Question [TIME: 3:36] My son just […]

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Emma Marie Forde is unschooling mom to two girls, Lily and Rosa. She’s also the founder of the website, rethinkingparenting.co.uk. Before having children, Emma was a clinical psychologist, a career that informed her choice to stay home with her own children and which eventually led her and her husband John to choose unschooling for their family. In […]

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Kelly Nicole went to school until 6th grade, when both she and her sister left for greener pastures. Her family eventually settled into unschooling and she’s now 22 and has been a professional actress for nine years. She also teaches acting and improv to kids, as well as directing children’s theatre. We have a really […]

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Dan Cadzow is an archaeologist who chose to leave his PhD program and become a stay-at-home unschooling dad of four kids. We have a great conversation that covers his path to unschooling, how he’s developed trust in the process, what the most challenging aspect has been so far, his advice for dads who are just starting […]

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Anna Brown joins me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “I think if we can just be aware that we don’t have to hold all of this weight ourself, that we can have conversations, that we can include our children, that that just helps […]

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Jo Watt is an ex-teacher and now stay-at-home mom of two unschooling girls, ages four and six. She blogs at girlsunschooled.co.uk and about six months ago she, her husband Kriss, and the girls moved from the UK to the US Pacific Northwest. We have a wonderful conversation, digging into learning to read, when people want […]

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Kerry McDonald lives and learns together with her husband and four never-been-schooled children in Massachusetts, US. She blogs on her website, wholefamilylearning.com, is a founding member of alternativestoschool.com, and is on the board of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education. We have fun digging into all sorts of things, including what it really means to learn naturally, the […]

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Zakiyya Ismail is an unschooling mom of three kids, ages 10 to 19. Earlier this year, she hosted the first Learning Reimagined Family Conference in South Africa. She also shares her wonderful insights into the unschooling lifestyle on her website, growingminds.co.za. Our conversation spans from her journey to unschooling, through the idea of deschooling parents […]

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Robyn Coburn is an unschooling mom and her 17 year-old daughter has never been to school. I’ve known Robyn for many years online and have always enjoyed her perspective. We dive into deschooling fears, sleeping patterns, tips for handling meltdowns, the differing needs of kids and teens, unschooling conferences, and much more. Quote of the Week […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “The thing about thinking unschooling is about releasing parental controls, is this: I feel there is no release at all unless the parent believes they have the power to release control.” […]

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Sophie Christophy lives in the UK and is unschooling with her husband and two children. She is a self-directed scholar and she joins Pam to chat about her personal Unschooled Master of Arts project: to explore the theory that the key to transformative social change is found via shifting parent-child education/child dynamics to a human rights model. […]

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Sandra Dodd is a long-time unschooling mom of three—Kirby, Marty, and Holly—who are now all adults. She’s also the creator of the awesome unschooling resource, sandradodd.com, and I’m thrilled to have her back on the podcast. In this episode, we talk about the changes that we go through as parents as we live this unschooling lifestyle […]

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Emma Marie Forde is unschooling mom to two girls, Lily and Rosa. She’s also the founder of the website, rethinkingparenting.co.uk. Before having children, Emma was a clinical psychologist, a career that informed her choice to stay home with her own children and which eventually led her and her husband John to choose unschooling for their family. […]

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Anna Brown and Anne Ohman join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “Unschooling is about seeing, honoring, and living in the flow of a child’s life.” ~ Anne Ohman Listener Questions Shelsy’s Question (from Florida, USA) [TIME: 3:04] I’m new to unschooling (since […]

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Teri DeMarco is an unschooling mom of three: twin 10-year-old sons and an 8-year-old daughter. I met her in person last year and when I decided to do a technology-focused episode I knew she’d be a great person to chat with! Quote of the Week “If you have a lens of ‘What is the educational value? […]

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Anna Black is a former Montessori student and teacher, now an unschooling mom to two lovely daughters in Australia. We have a wonderful conversation, digging into conventional wisdom like, “kids need to do things for themselves,” and “fewer toys is better.” We also have a great chat about how unschooling children develop their own moral compass. […]

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Pushpa is an unschooling mom of two in India. I have been reading her wonderful unschooling insights for a number of years and I love the glimpses into their unschooling lives that she shares. She’s also an experienced speech pathologist, working part-time from home. Quote of the Week “I can eloquently talk about it but […]

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Anna Brown joins me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “I like to peel back the layers, I don’t focus on addressing the behaviour, because it’s just a clue. Look at the clues for the underlying need. It’s typically things like needing food, too […]

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Sheila is an unschooling mom of three, grandmother to two, and author of Dear Grandma: Your Grandkids Are Unschoolers. Sheila and I really enjoyed speaking specifically to grandparents this week. We dive into some of the questions that they may understandably have when they find out their grandchildren aren’t going to school, like how they’ll […]

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Shannon is an unschooling mom to two great kids, and they are a Canadian family transplanted in California for seven years now—an interesting adventure all on its own! She shares her perspective on unschooling and gentle parenting on her website, breakingdaylight.org, because “happy childhoods are built on peaceful parents.” Quote of the Week “Turning toward parenting […]

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Anne Boie is an unschooling mom of four who is actively engaged in supporting the unschooling community as a producer of Lainie Liberti’s For the Love of Learning web show, the US distribution coordinator for the film, Being and Becoming, and the producer of a new online show, Youth on Subjects of the World. Anne […]

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Emma Marie Forde is unschooling mom to two girls, Lily and Rosa. She’s also the founder of the website, rethinkingparenting.co.uk. Before having children, Emma was a clinical psychologist, a career that informed her choice to stay home with her own children and which eventually led her and her husband John to choose unschooling for their family. […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “When we really hear one another and work toward understanding each other’s needs, finding the solutions that are win-win, life is just easier and more joyful.” ~ […]

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Rocco Laricchia is an unschooling dad of three young adult children and is married to the show host, Pam! In this episode we talk about how he answered the typical kid questions at work, what he found challenging and what he enjoyed about unschooling, and what he appreciates most about unschooling our children. Quote of […]

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Melissa is unschooling mom to a lively eight-year-old and, being a single parent, also works as a nanny to support them. In our conversation, she shares how they weave unschooling and her work as a nanny together, why she began an online community for single unschooling parents like her, and why her son chooses unschooling. Quote of […]

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Akilah S. Richards is an unschooling mom to two lovely daughters. She’s also an author, a podcast showrunner and host, and on the organizing team of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education. She answers my ten questions about her unschooling experience with candor and enthusiasm, and I hope you too enjoy our conversation! Quote of the […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “Today I will connect with my child, expand his world, bring joy into his life and nurture and encourage what he loves to do.” ~ Anne Ohman […]

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James and Taylor Davis both originally went to college to become teachers. Taylor did teach in an elementary school for a number of years, while James ended up playing poker professionally. Eventually, they settled in New Jersey and started down a pretty traditional path—until their first son was born. He has been their greatest teacher […]

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Grace Koelma studied primary school teaching at university, but after a year of teaching in Australia she became disillusioned with the mainstream schooling system and left. She began working as a journalist, following her passion for writing, eventually finding a way to weave together her passions for education, unschooling, and writing and starting Mulberry Magazine […]

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Emma Marie Forde is unschooling mom to two girls, Lily and Rosa. She’s also the founder of the website, rethinkingparenting.co.uk. Before having children, Emma was a clinical psychologist, a career that informed her choice to stay home with her own children and which eventually led her and her husband John to choose unschooling for their family. […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “[There is] so much you can do to support and honor their game playing by showing an interest in all of it, even if you don’t like […]

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Luminara King is a former Steiner-Waldorf teacher turned unschooling mom. She’s also the author of Unschooling – 7 Steps to Beginning the Journey and blogs at Living the Education Revolution. This week we have a great chat about her deschooling journey. Quote of the Week “I think that, as parents, we have to be very […]

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Roberto and Emily Lujano are unschooling their three children. Roberto approached me earlier this year about translating my book, Free to Learn, into Spanish. I really enjoyed working with him and wanted to learn more about his family’s unschooling experience. Quote of the Week “You are not trusting the process and you are not trusting […]

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Stuart Norman, his wife Sue, and their daughter Annabel were unschooling in the UK when they first had the idea to travel. They let it evolve in its own way—as he describes it, we “just pointed ourselves in that direction of travel and nothing else came along that got in the way of that.” They […]

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I’m happy to share the last of my HSC Adventures in Homeschooling conference talks with you, A Family of Individuals. In this talk, I focus on family relationships. In our society family harmony is a prized goal, promising an easygoing peace. It can be elusive, but we see some experienced unschooling families in action and […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “Unfortunately most people are convinced that when control fails it’s because they didn’t control enough.” ~ Joyce Fetteroll Listener Questions Aparajita’s Question Hi, I have an almost 3 […]

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Brenna McBroom is a 27yo grown unschooler. We had a fun conversation and touch on her transition from school, to homeschooling, and eventually to unschooling; finding connections as a teen; how her passion for ceramic art developed; her experience at Not Back to School Camp as both a teen and as staff; her new blog, […]

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Glenna McAulay is an unschooling mom of two daughters, and both she and her husband have a wonderful perspective on living the unschooling lifestyle within their means. We talk about the perspective shifts around money and choices that have helped us over the years, as well as share some ideas for low-cost unschooling. Quote of […]

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Jennifer Andersen is an unschooling mom of two and the founder of ourmuddyboots.com and it’s related Facebook page. I had so much fun chatting with her! We talk about how we keep learning, over and over, that learning happens everywhere; triggers that can sneak up on us; the difference between natural and contrived consequences; how […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “As we focus on this Mind Movie—the story playing in our heads—we become attached to it and want it to be real, somehow. The problem is that […]

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I’m excited to share another one of my conference talks, Curious and Engaged, with you! It may have been through an unfortunate series of events that it happens to be this week, but after all the work I put into developing conference talks, I’m happy to have a way to share the audio version, as it […]

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Jamie Maltman is an unschooling dad and avid board gamer. And in this episode, he shares with us what he loves about both these passions. We talk about how he built trust in process of unschooling, ways to stay connected as the working parent, learning through board games, and some great suggestions for new board […]

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Cindy Gaddis is an unschooling mom to seven kids—and one son-in law! She’s also the author of The Right Side of Normal, a book about understanding and honouring the natural learning path for right-brained children. In this episode, we talk about helicopter parenting and control, cultural expectations, society’s focus on being busy, family relationships, and what unschooling […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “All I am saying … can be summed up in two words: Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children […]

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This week I thought I’d try something different! I want to share one of my conference talks, Time to Think, with you. With a few months of Q&A episodes under our belt, one of the threads we’ve seen running through many of the questions is the fear that bubbles up when we project our current […]

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Carol Black unschooled her two daughters, now 22 and 26. Years ago she was in a teacher education program, but when she read John Holt’s How Children Fail the light bulb went off and she dropped out. Since then she has written some wonderfully insightful essays about unschooling, which you can read on her website, carolblack.org, […]

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Lauren Seaver is an unschooling mom to 9-year-old River. She first considered the possibility of homeschooling way back when she was in college to become a teacher. Life took some turns, but a year (and three months!) ago, the opportunity to try out unschooling arose and they haven’t looked back. I met Lauren at the Childhood Redefined […]

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Jo Isaac is a zoologist turned science writer and unschooling mom to Kai. She, ten-year-old Kai, and her husband Brett, live and learn in Melbourne, Australia. Her path of learning and unschooling has taken a number of interesting twists and turns and I really enjoyed hearing about some of them as we chat about ways we […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question to the Q&A Round Table! Quote of the Week “Worrying about the future takes us out of this moment.” ~ Anna Brown Listener Questions 1. I have been unschooling for a year and am loving it. Though […]

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Gwen Montoya is an unschooling, single mom to Jamie and Zoe. She is pretty adept at weaving her work as a digital marketing consultant. I enjoy reading snippets of their lives on Facebook, so I was excited when she agreed to chat with me about relationships and the creative ways we can find to meet everyone’s needs […]

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Alex Polikowsky is an unschooling mom to Daniel and Gigi. Her family runs a dairy farm in Minnesota, which adds an interesting dimension to their days! I met Alex when I spoke at the Always Learning Live symposium she hosted in Minneapolis a couple of years ago, and really enjoyed the brief glimpse of life […]

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Emma Marie Forde is unschooling mom to two girls, Lily and Rosa. She’s also the founder of the website, rethinkingparenting.co.uk. Before having children, Emma was a clinical psychologist, a career that informed her choice to stay home with her own children and which eventually led her and her husband John to choose unschooling for their […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question for the Q&A Round Table episodes! Quote of the Week “Whenever we are faced with particularly challenging problems, and we’ve certainly had them, I’m SO grateful for unschooling because I feel like it gives us […]

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Meredith is unschooling mom to Morgan and stepmom to Ray. Meredith has been active online in unschooling groups for years and I’ve enjoyed reading her writing for many of those. In this episode, we chat about what learning looks like with unschooling. It’s a big topic, and big episode. I hope you enjoy it! Quote […]

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Jen is unschooling mom to Joseph, soon to be sixteen. She’s also recently returned to the world of work as a Child Life Specialist. I’ve know Jen for years, having first met her online, and then in person at various unschooling gatherings. I’ve always loved her perspective on the unschooling lifestyle and I had a […]

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Teresa Graham Brett is an unschooling mom to two boys, Martel and Greyson. She’s also author of the book, Parenting for Social Change. Teresa’s background as a social justice educator brings a unique and interesting slant to her journey to unschooling. In this episode, she shares some great stories and the fascinating insights she has […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question for the Q&A Round Table episodes! Quote of the Week “Shift out of the fear by going to your child and connecting with her over what makes her light up right now in this moment.” […]

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Jennie is mom to three children, ages 6 and under, and they’ve been unschooling for a couple of years now—or more specifically, deschooling. Jennie and I have chatted on and off over that time, and she is actively working to shed the control and punishment she grew up with and not pass it on to […]

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Roya Dedeaux left school at age ten and her family began unschooling. Now an adult, she has a Master’s degree in Counseling and is a Marriage and Family Therapist Intern, as well as a lecturer at California State University. She’s also married with a wonderful child of her own, and a busy life of fun […]

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Anne Ohman is a long-time unschooling mom and Library Director at a small, rural library in New York state. She has been writing about unschooling since 1998, and has a been student of her children since they were born. She is the founder of the Shine with Unschooling community, and co-host (with me!) of the […]

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Lainie Liberti is mom to 16 year-old Miro. They backed into unschooling in 2009 through what was meant to be a one-year mother-and-son backpacking trip. Now in their seventh year of travelling, Lainie is co-producer and host of the weekly online show, For the Love of Learning: Voices of the Alternative Education Movement, and she […]

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Anne Ohman and Anna Brown, both veteran unschooling parents, join me to answer listener questions. Click here to submit your own question for the Q&A Round Table episodes! Quote of the Week “How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?” ~ Henry David Thoreau Summary of Listener Questions […]

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Dr. Carlo Ricci is a graduate studies professor in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University in Ontario Canada and dad to two daughters, ages 11 and 13, who have both unschooled and chosen to go to school over the years. His research focus and teaching includes unschooling, self-directed learning, reading, free schooling, and […]

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Jody Lilley is an unschooling mom to three children, ages five to eleven. I’ve known Jody for years through unschooling conferences, and I reached out to her to chat about play because the pictures she posts online of her children at play always make me smile so big. It’s not so much that they’re busy doing […]