Living Joyfully

Helping parents cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in their family.

  • Start Here
  • Deschooling
  • Unschooling
  • Parenting
  • About
  • Contact
  • Podcast
    • Q&A Episodes
    • Ten Questions Episodes
    • Interviews I’ve done …
    • TUC Talks
  • Books
    • Book Clubs
  • Network
  • Summit
  • Questions?
  • Articles
    • Spanish Translations
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Parenting / Don’t Get Complacent About Unschooling

Don’t Get Complacent About Unschooling

February 28, 2013 By Pam Laricchia 4 Comments

We learn so much about unschooling and how it works while we’re deschooling. I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it? Yet in my experience, that learning is never “done”. As a parent, I am always learning: learning about myself and my children as we change and grow, contemplating how our unschooling lifestyle flows and adapts to our growing experience; learning about new topics I or my children are curious about and exploring ways I can support and expand upon them. The philosophy of unschooling is consistent—yet its implementation looks different in every family, with every child, and over time. I know I’ve said that before, but each time you read it, I think it will mean just a little bit more.

If you have more than one child, have you discovered that your interactions are a bit different with each? It’s not that you change, but how you interact becomes tailored to each child, to each friend, to your spouse.

Beyond the different topics of conversation based on their individual interests, in what ways might your interactions with the people in your family differ?

  • Do you use different vocabularies? (What words and phrases are unique to each of your relationships? Different topics from which to draw analogies and comparisons in conversation? More or less colourful language?);
  • Are some more receptive to, and appreciative of, physical contact? (Are they a hugger? Not at all? Sometimes? Do they appreciate rough and tumble play?);
  • Do some respond to you initiating conversations more often than others (And conversely, with some do you wait more to respond to their prompts?);
  • Do some like to be helped as soon as they hit a roadblock while others prefer to spend some time trying to figure things out themselves?

As you grow to know and understand your children more deeply, you can adapt yourself to their learning and communication styles to better connect with them individually. It’s about building stronger relationships. And from stronger relationships comes deeper learning.

Why is that?

Because with a strong and supportive relationship your child is comfortable approaching you to talk about things—and vice versa. With a strong relationship they aren’t worried about looking “stupid” in front of you so they’ll ask that basic question about something: more learning. They aren’t worried about feeling judged so they’ll share their thoughts about a situation so they can talk through it with you: more learning. They aren’t worried about being punished as a result of their actions so they’ll come to you to analyze situations that went awry, or, if possible, before they go awry without worrying about being threatened with punishment: more learning.

With unschooling you want to support your children’s learning as seamlessly as possible so they stay in the flow: that’s where the best learning is. How you do that is unique to each child, and may change over time. Keep learning. And don’t worry about how “life isn’t perfect and they should learn that so maybe I shouldn’t try to help so much.” Believe me, life isn’t perfect, and no matter how hard you try you won’t be able to make everything work out perfectly. Do your best. Show your love and support through your actions. Show, don’t tell.

And there’s another piece to this “don’t stop exploring unschooling” puzzle. Not only do we all grow and change over time as individuals, but each year they are a year older. Is that a bit too obvious? Probably, but I know I sometimes had to remind myself that even if I’d been unschooling for ten years, I’d never been the unschooling parent of a 15 year-old before, a 16 year-old, a 17 year-old. A 17 year-old girl. This particular 15 year-old boy. It is a different experience with each child because each child is different. The ways I connect with them are different, the ways I support their learning are different, the ways I help them process and analyze situations are different. As they get older some of the situations that arise are new to us as a family. I need to pay attention, always. To stay connected, to keep learning. About them and about myself. It keeps me from getting complacent with life. It’s living fully. Living joyfully.

 

 

Filed Under: Parenting, Unschooling Tagged With: deschooling, Feb 2013, learning, relationships

Comments

  1. Shelly says

    May 6, 2015 at 4:34 pm

    My daughter just finished her required standardized test today, and despite my hope that I was almost finished deschooling, I’m finding that I really have some more work to do. The same thing happened to me last year. Every time a standardized test and our homeschool evaluations pop up, I find myself beginning to panic about certain things. Today I’m finding myself worried about my daughter’s fluency in reading, and this is leading me to wanting to make my kids read everyday. I’m fighting this urge tooth and nail, but, as a bookworm, I’m really uneasy about the fact that- for the most part- my children don’t like to read and simply won’t do it. It’s not that they don’t have an example of someone who likes to read. I’ve always got my nose in a book- usually an unschooling one (incidentally, right now I’m working through Free to Learn a second time). My oldest daughter reads manga online, my 13 year-old daughter is obsessed with online fan fiction, my 9-year-old will occasionally read various things, and my 5-year-old is currently interested in learning and so constantly has a book in her hands, but that leaves me with 6 other kids who will not read anything that’s not on a game or a youtube video. I was really disappointed today listening to my 10-year-old read aloud during the comprehension portion of her test. She used to read above grade level, but through lack of practice, is not progressing much. I know this is my schooled past creeping up on me, but knowing that our evaluations are next week, I’m a little worried. Thankfully, our evaluator leans towards unschooling, but between most of my kids not wanting to read and wondering how I’m going to produce work samples when my kids’ learning is more activity-based, I’m a bit stressed. Sorry to rant- I’m just wondering if you have any advice that will put things into perspective for me.

    Reply
    • Pam Laricchia says

      May 8, 2015 at 9:00 am

      Hi Shelly,

      Try not to focus so much on “finishing deschooling.” It’s not a check box to tick. In fact, as part of deschooling, it’s likely that you’ll stop worrying about deschooling itself and concentrate on enjoying your days with your children because that is where the value of unschooling is.

      As for reading, here are some questions and thoughts for you to ponder.

      Why does it matter whether what they’re reading is in a book or in a game? Both are full of wonderful stories and interesting ideas. Look again at your comment, “most of my kids not wanting to read.” Do you really mean, “most of my kids not wanting to read books“? Reading is reading is reading.

      Ask yourself why you value book reading over other kinds of reading. What is at the root of your wish for your children to read books?

      If it’s the joy of a great story, what’s wrong with experiencing a great story through film? Or a video game? Or youtube? You can find great stories in all sorts of mediums.

      If it’s the skill of reading, what does it matter if the words are in a book or in a game manual or in youtube comments? You can find useful and meaningful words in all sorts of places.

      As for reading aloud, dig into that as well. Pay extra attention to your daughter and reading aloud for a while. If she reads things aloud that interest her in a day-to-day context (rather than being assigned it for a test), is she more at ease? Does she WANT to be better at reading aloud? That’s not a very common day-to-day skill, is it important to you that it “progress”? Why? Could developing that skill wait until a need arises? If a situation arises where it would be useful to her, as you say, practice will help—and at that point she’d have a reason to practice. You probably wouldn’t be able to stop her. 😉

      If these questions are being prompted by fears cropping up from the standardized testing, maybe ask yourself what’s the worst that can happen? Your evaluator leans to unschooling, so they’ll get it. If the worry is documenting activities, get creative. Take pictures. Write short narratives (like a journal) that describe what they did, what threads of interest you saw etc. Record a fun “interview” with them talking about the things they enjoy doing. There are many different ways to document their lives beyond worksheets. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Shelly says

    May 8, 2015 at 5:03 pm

    I probably wasn’t very clear in what I was ranting about…sorry! The kids that read manga, fan fiction, etc. were the kids I was counting as those who do read. I absolutely do find the value in all of those mediums. I was referring to my other children who don’t read anything, although from what you wrote I’m rethinking YouTube because I never really thought about that way before, and my 10 yr. old is constantly watching videos about how to make crane machines.
    You’re right about waiting to see if my daughter has a need to read aloud. She really is very shy outside of the house (She wouldn’t even tell her new ceramics teacher her name last week!), so that may well be a skill she’ll never need.
    And you’re also right that this freak-out was due to the test, which I’m happy to say I’ve calmed down about after reading Sandra Dodd’s approach to standardized tests. My 9 yr. old took hers today, and I approached it completely differently than I did the other day, and BEHOLD- there were no tears today because I actually stayed beside her for the entire test and was there to help if she needed it (or to tell her just to take a wild guess if she started getting worked up). If only I would have seen it two days ago…
    Anyway, thank you for being so patient with newbies like me. I’m getting there- slowly, but surely!

    Reply
    • Pam Laricchia says

      May 11, 2015 at 10:49 am

      No worries, Shelly, it’s definitely a journey. 🙂

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The Living Joyfully Network community

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children. We invite you to join our candid and wide-ranging conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling!

Learn more about the Network here!

free intro to unschooling ebook

Click the book cover to get the book from your favourite online retailer, or click the link below to join my mailing list and download the book directly!

What is Unschooling? A book about living and learning without school.

Exploring Unschooling Podcast

click to listen to the archive of all Exploring Unschooling podcast episodes

Choosing to live and learn without school isn’t as intimidating as you might imagine!

The podcast archive is now home to more than 300 episodes, filled with unschooling goodness.

support the podcast on Patreon

Have you read my books?

Free-to-Learn-Cover Free-to-Live-Cover Life-Through-the-Lens-of-Unschooling-Cover Living-Joyfully-with-Unschooling-Box-Set-Cover The Unschooling Journey Libre d'Apprendre cover Libre para Aprender cover Szabadon Tanulni cover

Journey with us to a new way of seeing your child

icon-logo

Join Anne Ohman, Anna Brown, and I in our online Summit where we share the experiences, insights, and tools that we found most helpful on our unschooling journeys. We will walk with you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Looking for something?

I've been exploring unschooling for many years now and there's a lot of content here! I've been working to tag things to help you more easily find information about the questions you're curious about right now. I'll continue to work on this.

Click a topic to explore:

college

dads

deschooling

food

grown unschoolers

learning

life

math

reading

relationships

relatives

technology

teens

work

Welcome to Living Joyfully

Pam ... an online resource for parents who are curious about unschooling. If you're passionate about exploring the world with your children, this site is for you. I'm Pam Laricchia, the author and owner of this site. Thanks for inviting me along on your unschooling journey!

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children.

Learn more and join us here!

SEARCH LIVING JOYFULLY

Living Joyfully participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the iTunes Affiliate Program. This allows me to earn a small commission, at no cost to you. I appreciate your support!

Read my Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

Copyright © 2023 · Living Joyfully Enterprises

By using this website, you agree to the use of cookies. I use cookies to provide you with a great experience and to help my website run effectively. OK READ MORE
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT