EU183: Unschooling in Context with Anna Brown

Anna Brown joins me this week for another Unschooling in Context episode!

This time we’re diving into unschooling in the context of life. And what I mean by that is, we’re exploring how unschooling eventually weaves so tightly into our lives. Which is beautiful! Unschooling IS living our lives. Yet, as challenges arise, it can also be valuable to ask ourselves, “Is it the unschooling?”

Consider this:

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many of our thoughts, while prompted by our journey to unschooling, have grown beyond unschooling. So, with this episode, Anna and I tackle some of the common questions we see in unschooling circles that, in the bigger picture, maybe aren’t really about the unschooling.

Discussion Points

When we begin unschooling, we soon find ourselves deep in deschooling territory. We question so much of the prevailing wisdom around learning and parenting and, eventually, life in general. Through our journey to unschooling we come to see life differently, don’t we?

A big part of deschooling is changing how we see and engage with our children, with lots of questions around building trusting and respectful relationships. Yet, when all is said and done, is that really about the unschooling? Even if our kids went to school next week, I suspect we’d still want to cultivate trusting and respectful relationships with them.

What about sibling relationships?

Let’s talk about issues around housework, like cleaning, chores, tidying up messes etc, whether our own stress or conflicts with our spouse or partner. I think these challenges most often stem from choosing being with our children over cleaning the house. That’s a fundamental shift in parenting priorities that we often embrace more deeply as we move to unschooling, so it’s pretty easy to conflate the two. The question is, would they go away if we were no longer unschooling?

What about bigger events, like medical emergencies or moving? Chances are, we’ve made some unschooling-inspired changes in how we approach them.

Episode transcript

Read the episode transcript