Luminara King is a former Steiner-Waldorf teacher turned unschooling mom. She’s also the author of Unschooling – 7 Steps to Beginning the Journey and blogs at Living the Education Revolution. This week we have a great chat about her deschooling journey.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I think that, as parents, we have to be very careful because there is a real tendency to jump on any interest they have, and just run away with it.” ~ Luminara King
QUESTIONS FOR LUMINARA
Can you share with us a bit about you and your family, and how you came to unschooling?
You’ve written a book called, Unschooling – 7 Steps to Beginning the Journey. You have a great chapter about learning and I love how you describe becoming an unschooling parent as training to be a Zen Master. You wrote, “You learn the delicate art of allowing and following the flow of your child’s learning; knowing when to offer up ideas and when to step back.” That stepping back can be hard to figure out as you move to unschooling, can’t it?
You have a fun intro to unschooling video on your website and in it, you mention how Lego was a catalyst in your journey to unschooling. What happened there?
I love your blog post about embracing averageness. I think that’s such a valuable shift that can help us parents shed expectations that we might still carry about who our children “should” become in the future. Because that can interfere with how we see them today, can’t it?
You’ve mentioned you have a college degree. What’s your perspective on college nowadays?
One of the hot topics around unschooling is “screen time.” I put that in quotes because I think the phrase itself is part of the problem. It lumps together so many different activities and part of deschooling is teasing all that out. What has your experience been on this topic?
Recently you published a post on your blog titled, “I’ve had enough of justifying our unschooling life.” And you mention this idea in your book too, in a chapter on dealing with other people’s negative reactions. What are some tips you can share for dealing with those moments?
What has surprised you most about your unschooling journey so far?
THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Pam,
I really enjoyed listening to this episode. It was so lovely to hear you and Luminara chatting together about unschooling. Although Luminara is my friend, I learnt new things about her and her unschooling journey thanks to your questions and interesting conversation. Thank you for your podcast!
Glad you enjoyed it, Sue! It was a very fun conversation. 🙂