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
  • Summit
  • Blog
    • Monthly Topics
  • Articles
    • Spanish Translations
  • Resources
You are here: Home / Parenting / EU031: Ten Questions with Emma Marie Forde

EU031: Ten Questions with Emma Marie Forde

August 4, 2016 By Pam Laricchia 1 Comment

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pamlaricchia.podcast/EU031.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

EU031

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. Emma shares her attachment parenting perspective throughout our wide-ranging conversation, and gives us a glimpse of unschooling in England!

Quote of the Week

“It was amazing how many of the assumptions that were challenged for me by having my first daughter. The fact that we did breastfeed for longer, the fact that she was with me most of the time—I hadn’t even anticipated how intense it was going to be, even though I kind of had some idea. It’s been being guided by them, but also working in partnership with them.” ~ Emma Marie Forde

Ten Questions for Emma

1. Can you share with us a bit about you and your family, and how you came to unschooling?

2. I’d love to hear more about your children. How do they like to spend their days? What are they interested in right now?

3. When Lily approached school age, was she curious about it? Did she have playmates going off to school? I guess Rosa is approaching that age now too. How have you talked with them about it?

4. Can you share with us a quick overview of what it’s like to unschool in England? What are the legalities? Are there active local communities for making connections?

5. I love the article you posted on your website describing unschooling. I’ll link to it in the show notes for people to read in full because you dive into so many different aspects, and include a detailed reference list, but I’d like to dive into a couple of points with you today. The first is that unschooling isn’t child-led learning, but rather a partnership. Can you explain the difference?

6. I’d also like to dive into trusting our children’s intrinsic motivation to learn. That’s so counter to the conventional belief that children don’t like to learn, that they need to be motivated through grades and rewards. How did that trust develop for you?

7. You also wrote a great article about the benefits of play. Unschooling parents are pretty savvy about children learning through play, but can you talk about some of the benefits of parent and child playing together?

8. How do you see your understanding of psychology and your unschooling lifestyle weaving together?

9. What has been one of the more challenging aspects for you on your unschooling journey to this point?

10. Looking back now, what, for you, has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

Links to things mentioned in the show

Emma’s blog: Rethinking Parenting

Emma’s FB discussion group: Radical Unschoolers Discussion Group

The book that introduced Emma to unschooling: The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart by Jan Hunt

Paula Rothermel’s paper, presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, 2002: Home-Education: Aims, Practices and Outcomes

Sue Patterson’s book: Homeschooled Teens

Pam’s review of Sue’s book: http://livingjoyfully.ca/blog/2015/11/book-review-homeschooled-teens/

Sandra Dodd’s page: Public School on Your Own Terms

UK National home ed group: Education Otherwise

Emma’s post: What Is Unschooling?

Sandra Dodd’s page, Building an Unschooling Nest and video

Pam Sorooshian’s post: Unschooling is not “Child-Led Learning”

Meredith Novak’s podcast interview: What Learning Looks Like with Meredith Novak

Emma’s post: The Benefits of Playing With Our Children

Jody Lilley’s podcast episode about play: Playing with Our Children with Jody Lilley

Dr. Allan Schore’s website

Lawrence Cohen’s book: Playful Parenting

Gerard Jones’s book: Killing Monsters

Joyce Fetteroll’s podcast episode: Ten Questions with Joyce Fetteroll

 

Episode Transcript

Read the episode transcript

Filed Under: Parenting, Unschooling Tagged With: interview, life, relationships

Trackbacks

  1. A Conversation With Pam Laricchia - Rethinking Parenting says:
    August 16, 2016 at 10:32 am

    […] out more about Pam’s work at her website http://www.livingjoyfully.ca and read the page featuring our conversation with a list of resources mentioned. You can also listen to the podcast directly […]

    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

We bring together unschooling parents to support and learn from each other as we question and explore many of the conventional beliefs around learning and parenting so that we can more gracefully navigate our personal unschooling journeys, develop strong and connected relationships with our children, and cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in our families.

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 200 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

Connect with Pam

    Glyph_Logo_png 

Welcome to Living Joyfully

Pam ... 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!

MEET A NEW UNSCHOOLING PARENT EVERY WEEK!

Pam Check out the Exploring Unschooling podcast, with more than 200 episodes in the archive.

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 © 2021 · Living Joyfully Enterprises

I use cookies to ensure that I give you the best experience on this website. If you continue to use this site, I will assume that you are happy with this. Thank you. 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