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Joyce is a long-time unschooling mom, and creator of the wonderful unschooling website, joyfullyrejoycing.com. She has been answering unschooling questions online for many years, in fact, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t looking forward to reading her responses!
Quote of the Week
“Radical unschooling is about understanding human needs and getting to know each child’s particular needs and how that child needs those needs met.” ~ Joyce Fetteroll
Ten Questions for Joyce
1. First, can you share with us a bit about you and your family?
2. You’ve been active answering questions on Quora.com, tagged as a top writer there for 2016. I was reading your bio and I loved your answer to the question, “What is unschooling?” Can you share your answer with us?
3. What was one of the more challenging aspects of your journey to unschooling?
4. I love that you’re drawn to sharing your insights into children and unschooling through the Q&A format. Here’s one you’ve tackled: “What did you make available or do with your child to help them learn to read? I keep hearing about playing games, putting labels on furniture. I have asked my 7 yo son if he would like to do that. He says no.”
5. Here’s a question that touches on the value of learning through experience: “How do you help your child learn gratitude?”
6. Another common question when it comes to living together closely in an unschooling home is, “How can I get them to do their chores?”
7. Developing a deep trust in children is a process. I loved this question: “Even if your children are happy and joyful, how can you know whether they are learning without measuring it?”
8. Here’s a seemingly simple question, but it hits a big truth about living unschooling. “Is it bad for children to eat their meals while watching TV?”
9. Your answer to this question has been viewed over 5k times on Quora and was featured on Slate.com. I love how unschooling helps us see how children live and learn and grow naturally, which often looks very different than with children in school. The question was: “How do you raise well-behaved children?”
10. Looking back now, what, for you, has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?
Links to things mentioned in the show
Joyce’s website: joyfullyrejoycing.com
Joyce’s blog: joyfullyrejoycing on tumblr
Joyce on Quora: her Quora profile
Facebook groups: Unschooling Mom2Mom and Radical Unschooling Info
... an online resource for parents wanting to live joyfully with their children through 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!
Oh, Joyce, thank you so much for sharing your mealtime-TV-watching experience. I have felt for YEARS that we were doing it “wrong” – we should have conversation while eating together, right? But both of us are introverts, and were single into our mid-30’s, and were used to eating (and, in DH’s case, sometimes watching TV) while we ate. And so we continued after we were married. Like you and your DH, if we didn’t read/watch something, we would have an awkwardly silent meal.
But after DS got past the pre-school years, I started thinking, man, he is going to be one messed up dude when he grows up b/c his parents don’t talk while they eat! Which is stupid on two counts. First, DS usually eats at different times than we do, and second, we are all home all the time and talk to each other all day!
Isn’t it dumb how we worry about traditional conventions like this (which I normally don’t do – if you knew me you’d be surprised that I had any tiny bit of concern over the issue). Anyway, thanks for validating our “weirdness.” 😉 I shan’t worry about it anymore.
Love the epiphany, Emily!
So nice to hear that Joyce’s experience resonated with you. 🙂
I’m glad it let you enjoy what you love with out guilt! 🙂
I think parents are just desperate to have physical demons to protect their children from. TV (and sugar and “junk” food and so on) make easy enemies. Parents feel they’re being good parents when they’re protecting their kids.
But those things are all just easy scapegoats.