Heather Newman is a long-time unschooling mom. She and her husband have three children, and I really enjoyed speaking with her about our shared experience of bringing our children home after they’d started school, and from there, moving to unschooling. We talk about what their days looked like when the kids first came home, how Heather came to trust the process of unschooling, and how her relationships with her children changed.
Quote of the Week
“How I hated schools, and what a life of anxiety I lived there. I counted the hours to the end of every term, when I should return home.” ~ Winston Churchill
Questions for Heather
1. Can you share with us a bit about your background and your family?
2. What did your family’s choice to take your children out of school look like?
3. Did you know about unschooling already, or was it something you discovered once they were home?
4. What kinds of things did you and the kids do those first months?
5. Of your children, Ben was in school the longest—were there any activities he avoided for the first while after he came home?
6. What changes did you see in your children after they’d been home a while? Was there a big adjustment period for them?
7. As you were deschooling, what were some of the ways you enjoyed learning more about unschooling? Did your understanding grow in stages?
8. How did you build trust in the process of unschooling? When did you know it was working well for your family?
9. How did your relationships with your children change over that first year?
10. As deschooling shifted into unschooling, did you find any unexpected benefits with the lifestyle? Things you didn’t anticipate, but turned out to be wonderful?
11. What does life look like for you guys now?
Links to things mentioned in the show
Heather’s Facebook Page: Heather Newman Art
Heather’s Etsy Shop: Heather Newman Art Shop
Transcript
Thank you both for this great podcast! Our almost 14 y/o has been unschooling for almost a year and this was great for me to reflect on how things have changed, shaped up, and how she has grown.
I feel like I’m an attentive parent and ask as many questions as she’ll allow ;), but this helped me to 1) see how I can get on auto pilot now and again, 2) try new ways of offering new ideas, 3)and solidify for myself my thoughts about unschooling.
I’m grateful, ladies, for what you did here. You caused me to think! I love it.
I appreciate all your time, energy, effort, and work that went into this and many other of your podcasts I’ve listened to here at Living Joyfully.
THANK YOU
Those are some great insights, Yolanda, I’m so glad you enjoyed the episode! 🙂
Thank you so much for this conversation! It spoke to me so much, as I, too, am trying to repair the damage to my relationship with my son that came from trying more traditional parenting for 7 1/2 years. Sadly, I tried so hard to “tame” him, and he is just indomitable. He, also, refused to give in, and I appreciate so much his demands that we do things differently, as difficult as that is for us. We are still in the first few months, and although in general things are much better than before, we still have frequent slippery slides back into responding out of habit and without seeing and valuing him for who he is (especially when my husband and I are stressed out ourselves). So it is so good to hear from someone that has been in a similar situation and seen it through.
Heather, did you say it was about a year before you felt the trust was re-built? I know sometimes I am impatient and think since I suddenly started trying to do things differently he should change just as suddenly. So it is nice to hear from someone that it can take awhile… He is just 8, so maybe it won’t take as long, although I think it depends more on how long I take to truly change!
I also made the mistake of telling him that now there were no limits on screen time and that he can just do what he wants to do all the time. After several months, he still spends quite a bit of time on the screen (you-tubers and MineCraft), but has also in the last few weeks begun to do some other things and ask questions about things that he wants me to help him look up. I have faith in the learning process, but waver more in the relationship area, especially when I keep slipping back into old patterns.
Thanks!
Hi Susan,
Thank goodness for our kids who stood up and demanded to be seen! And thank goodness we listened.
Yes, I do think it took a good year before we had a solid groundwork of trust built beneath our relationship again. Which is not to say that there were never again any moments where our previous parenting actions came back into play in our interactions (because it takes a while to fully heal from 8 years of past actions), but that we had a stronger, more connected place to work from after so many months of moving towards a better life together. I had also expected the shift to happen faster, but looking back I now understand why it took a while to get there. Traditional parenting and school were a deep insult to my son’s sensitive soul and he needed plenty of time to recover.
And I do remember how easy it was to slip back into old behavior habits and thought patterns in the beginning of our shift to unschooling. Those decades of society’s training that we internalize takes time to undo! It helped my oldest son to hear my thought process about what I was trying to change. Apologies when I slipped because it’s important to admit mistakes, then talking about why I did what I did and why I was trying to change my responses. He is someone who loves to examine and pull apart ideas so understanding the internal work I was doing appealed to him. He liked talking about why we did things the way we did when he was young and why we were moving into radical unschooling. Obviously, I don’t know your son so this may not be something that would interest him at all, but it did help Ben.
Having faith in the learning process is the biggest tool in your kit and you have it for your son, so give yourself the gift of faith in your own learning process, too!