Cindy Gaddis is an unschooling mom to seven kids—and one son-in law! She’s also the author of The Right Side of Normal, a book about understanding and honouring the natural learning path for right-brained children. In this episode, we talk about helicopter parenting and control, cultural expectations, society’s focus on being busy, family relationships, and what unschooling looks like in larger families.
Quote of the Week
“Where did childhood go? Time and space to just be, play, explore, create, wonder, feel, discover. It’s so important to the well-being of a person, which is so closely connected to happiness.” ~ Cindy Gaddis
Questions for Cindy
Can you share with us a bit about you and your family, and how you came to unschooling?
Often we talk about deschooling as being time to recover from time spent in school and to shift away from seeing learning through the conventional school lens. All very true, but it doesn’t really seem to do justice to all the cultural paradigm shifts that are wrapped up in there, does it? I’d love to dive deeper into some of those shifts today. First up, helicopter parenting. Parents have good intentions, but they can find themselves controlling every aspect of their children’s days. How does that perspective shift as we move to unschooling?
The next shift I’d like to talk about is around socialization. It’s a question we’re often asked by others when they learn our kids don’t go to school. We can easily point out how there are lots of opportunities for children to engage with other children, with other people, outside of school, but it’s bigger than that, isn’t it?
Another shift on the deschooling road revolves around the conventional tendency to keep kids busy, scheduling their days with extracurricular activities. This seems to be wrapped up in “being a well-rounded person for college applications” and the “over-achiever mentality as the definition of success.” How does this perspective shift as we move to unschooling?
The shift to unschooling also encompasses big shifts in how we look at family relationships. One of the big ones for me was around the idea of fairness. Did you find that a valuable shift as well?
I also wanted to ask you about what your unschooling days looked like with a larger family. There’s the idea that you need more control the more children you have. What has your experience been?
What tips would you share for larger families starting to move to unschooling?
Links to Things Mentioned in the Show
Growing Without Schooling magazine
Pam’s talk: A Family of Individuals
Cindy’s websites: therightsideofnormal.com and cindygaddis.com
Episode Transcript
... 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!
I am a soon to be 63 year old who is the mother of three sons and four grandchildren. Cindy spoke about the way I would have liked to have schooled my sons. I have been an early childhood practitioner for many years and have been a student of an approach to learning birthed from Reggio Emilia, Italy. The respect for the child, the listening to what children are interested in and supporting them in those interests – these are part of the Reggio Emilia-inspired philosophy that very much resonates with me. It is inspirational to me to hear people who carry this philosophy on into the learning approaches with older children.
Many experts in the early childhood field will write or speak about approaches to learning that work best for young children, implying that at five or six years old, children learn differently so our teaching approach to learning must change. I disagree with this implied belief and think there needs to be more questioning and studying on this point.
Thank you Pam for your podcast, newsletter, books, etc. for showing there is a more organic way to learn – that learning emerges from exploration and curiosity of our world – at all ages.
Hi Terry, thanks for sharing a bit about your experience! I love this: “learning emerges from exploration and curiosity of our world – at all ages.” So true. 🙂
I totally agree, Terry, about this type of learning benefiting all ages. Thinking of my teens specifically, starting at high school age (around 14), my teens would spend 6-8 hours a DAY pursuing what they fell in love with. Interestingly, none of them particularly took a class, though they found resources, to learn what they needed. With my teens, their pursuit of their interests often was really a college education at the high school level more than anything. They were immersed in applying what they loved into something meaningful versus studying it for the sake of studying it. For instance, my third child spent all his high school years teaching himself computer programming by programming things he wanted to program. This also involved math. After finishing his computer science degree, I asked him if he learned anything new at college, and he said minimally.
Compare this to their schooled peers who have to endure a generalist education. If they do find a subject they love, they don’t have time to delve more into it, but have to put their additional time and effort into the classes that are “harder” for them. Thus, it’s not only a generalist education, but a weakness-based one at that. Schooled peers’ time at night is also often taken up with additional homework or activities that look good on resumes. And then from this, they are supposed to figure out what they want to do with their lives. Crazy!
When some formal general learning was pursued by my teens, it was to shore up skills (quality) versus huge chunks of time schools require in various subjects (quantity) pursued for the sake of the general knowledge supposedly gained. My teens might have spent 4-5 hours a week doing this type of thing. It was enough.
Good stuff to think about!