Brie Jontry is an unschooling mom I’ve connected with a few times over the years because we share the experience of having a child who is living with a chronic illness. At first glance, it might seem like you’d need to drop some unschooling principles when your child’s health is in question, so I was excited to speak with Brie about her experience.
Quote of the Week
“Unfortunately most people are convinced that when control fails, it’s because they didn’t control enough.” ~ Joyce Fetteroll
Questions for Brie
1. Can you share with us a bit about your background and your family?
2. When did Noor develop type 1 diabetes and what did the diagnosis look like?
3. What were some of the advantages of Noor not being in school during this time?
4. One of things that stood out for me was that because we hadn’t been controlling Michael’s eating habits, he was already comfortable listening to his body’s cues, which had some great advantages now that he had to manually manage his insulin levels. Was your experience similar?
5. Once we got a handle on the day-to-day management and it became more routine, I found it really important to shift our focus away from the illness and back onto all of Michael. Did you find yourself making that shift?
6. When we look at how children learn through unschooling, we see that the most effective learning happens when they have choices and control over their actions. That can seem scary when the consequences could be drastic and immediate, but even with health issues I’ve found life and learning flows so much better when I don’t take on the role of gatekeeper or director. Have you found that as well?
7. With unschooling, we talk a lot about building a trusting relationship with our children, free of judgement and shame. Have you still found that to be a valuable foundation for your days when there’s a chronic illness in the mix?
8. Let’s talk about the teen years for a moment. As kids get older, they naturally spend more time away from their parents. If diabetes management has been closely controlled by the parents, which is often the conventional parenting approach, this time out from under their gaze can seem like freedom from all of that. In that situation, I think teens often make choices in reaction to that parental control, rather than in their own best interest. What has your experience been?
9. Also, as they get older and their life expands, new fears crops up, don’t they? Like their first overnights away from home, then their first extended trips, and Michael will be driving on his own in the next couple of months. How do you move through those moments?
Links to more info
Pam’s article: In Control: Helping a child self-manage a chronic disease (published in Natural Life Magazine, Mar/Apr 2010 issue)
Transcript
Pam, my hero, I almost cried just reading the title of the podcast. My son is 3 yrs. + 11 months. He has multiple, severe, contact food allergies. I don’t feel any school would be safe for him. Exploring unschooling has helped me concentrate on the “why to” homeschool instead of the “why not to” school. This conversation is so helpful to our whole situation. Coincidentally, I’m also a single mom and my mother died 2 years ago. It’s so comforting to listen to women with so much in common.
🙂 always have my BIG purse with the epi injectors and cleaning wipes. The longest I’ve ever left anyone else in charge of him was to test drive a van around the block. (And I don’t “need a break.” Thanks for the e-mail about that blog post, Pam.) I’ve found some webinars on kids with food allergies. They have been very helpful on topics like anxiety over the condition, dealing with eating out, family gatherings, birthday parties, etc., BUT they always talk about school safety/dangers/alienation and, maybe I missed it, but I’ve never heard any mention there of homeschooling, much less unschooling. It’s almost like the mainstream in that community would see homeschooling as chickening out of sending a food allergic kid to school. Your conversation was so great! Thanks again Pam and Brie!
Thank you, Fern! I’m so glad you connected with the conversation! Yes, Brie and I both found the mainstream community around our children’s health challenges to be, well, challenging. LOL!
I love your point about how some seeing homeschooling as “chickening out.” But once you’re away from school for a while you realize that we don’t need to frame our choice in the context of school at all. It’s not a reaction to school, it’s a completely valid choice all on its own! That’s so freeing. 🙂
Very nice!
I know this is an older episode, but I was wondering if you had links or information regarding the studies mentioned about children from either very hands off families or from a very controlling family environment struggling the most and having worse outcomes? I will Google search myself, but I thought maybe you knew about these studies and could show me in the right direction? Thank you.
I’m sorry I missed this comment before, Calla! Brie shared this info with me:
“I think I was talking about Diana Baumrind, a developmental psychologist writing/researching in the 70s who found there were three primary parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. Later, others broke “permissive” down into two more categories: indulgent and neglectful/uninvolved.
On the surface, I think a lot of people mistake unschooling for permissive parenting but the unschoolers I know who’ve raised the most thoughtful, confident, self-secure, ethical kids were more in the authoritative camp. Authoritative parents are the most responsive to their children’s unique needs at different developmental stages. But, they also clearly communicate expectations.
These two links look like good summaries of Baumrind’s model and related studies:
http://parentingscience.com/authoritative-parenting-style/
https://www.thekindofparentyouare.com/articles/parenting-styles-part-i-the-baumrind-model
The other researchers who added neglectful parenting to the model are Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin.”