Societal norms
Before we had Dolores the only thing we'd agreed was that I'd stay home with her until the government paid for her nursery care at three. In terms of work, I thought I'd go back to teaching my weekly yoga classes when she was three months old in the evenings to top up our one person income.
Looking back on this and many other aspects of my thinking pre-birth, I am surprised at my lack of critical thought and my unquestioning acceptance of the status quo. As a person who has worked for ten years unearthing the ways in which we as women are held captive by the dominant cultural narratives and socials norms, I find it strange that my thinking didn't initially extend beyond what was being offered as standard. I even initially ticked the box for hospital birth when I filled out the form for my doctors because I'd never even considered that I could do anything else.
Home birth as a gateway drug to unschooling
I see now that choosing to home birth was the gateway drug to unschooling. It showed me a different way, highlighted the failings of the system and most importantly it connected me to my primal longing as a mother and what I wanted for my child.
I had not spent much time around babies and children. I vaguely remember my little brother breastfeeding and held my oldest best friend's five week old for a few minutes (before my arms nearly fell off, it's so much harder and more exhausting than it looks). I'm also amongst the first of my friendship group to have kids and didn't think I wanted them until I was nearly thirty for a plethora of complex reasons (until my womb shouted at me loudly whilst I walked down a corridor cradling a ream of A4 printer paper on my hip age twenty nine and suddenly, quite to my surprise, yearned for my own) and didn't feel comfortable in their presence. I didn't know how to be or what to do with them. (I see now that this is because I thought I had to be something other than myself and do something fun with them. Kids don't need you to do or be anything other than your present self. It's actually one of the best things about them.)
So, what I'm trying to say in a long winded way is that I just didn't really know anything at all about babies or kids before having my own. Not recommended. So I just assumed that the way I saw things done in the movies or out and about was the way things were done. I assumed all kids went to nursery at three and school at four.
Discovering that one year olds are still babies
And then I gave birth. I quite quickly realised that I did not want to put clothes on her, or put her down, or sleep separately, or go back to work at three months, or give her to someone else to look after, or go out in the evening. Each time we reached the point at which I'd thought I'd be handing her over, I didn't want to, it felt wrong (I'm not saying it is wrong because it isn't, babies thrive in a village of people who love them - I just wasn't ready). We'd only just mastered breastfeeding by three months and I had a baby who did not want to be put down ever. I certainly wasn't going back to work at that point.
Then I realised that one year olds are still babies, which I know may sound odd, but inexperienced me genuinely thought they might be little people by then. I then had the foresight to realise that she was going to seem smaller than I'd imagined at three and far from finding that stressful, I found myself feeling a primal longing to be around as much as I can be for as long as possible. I suddenly realised that she wasn't going to nursery at three. So we continued on planning to send her to school at four. And then as I started to meet more four years olds, I started to realise that she was still going to feel littler at four than I had expected she would. My mind started to shift.
I felt really nervous about this shift because I felt that it would be rejected by my husband and my heart would break (this was an unfounded fear because he is unbelievably supportive of responsive parenting and my choices as a mother).
When she was a baby I often listened to a podcast called Untaming - Rewild the Child, whose beautiful tagline is this:
'Prioritizing our biological norms over our social norms to enhance the lives of our children, the environment and the future.'
She shared an episode called, Why Homeschool. It piqued my interest and by ten seconds in I was sold. I felt so fired up that I wanted to go home and make a decision right away but I knew I needed to approach the subject carefully and in a balanced way (not my special skill).
Flowing with our own unique rhythms throughout the day
One of the reasons that still stands out to me today is this: flowing with our own unique rhythms throughout the day. Working in the realms of cyclical living and menstrual cycle awareness, this reason really hit me. She spoke about her children being able to have quiet moments when they felt called to, rest when they needed to, go to the toilet when they needed to and go outside whenever they wanted. As an adult, despite huge amounts of work, I still find myself repressing my basic needs and going against my natural rhythms. I wonder how different this would be had I not been on someone else's clock my whole life.
The morning rush
Another was not needing to wake them up or rush in the morning. It's a pretty unanimous experience of anyone who has ever been a kid or had one that getting out of the door to school is stressful. Imagine taking this pressure away. Imagine not having to reach a point of pent up frustration that leads to shouting about shoes or threatening to leave them behind. I hear about these two experiences often. And you might think that this would lead to kids that don't have a sense of discipline but as far as I'm concerned the modern world is far too full of discipline as it is. The world needs more people leaving the house because they want to not because they have to.
I went to private boarding school for a few years of my life (my parents were either ragingly rich or crushingly poor any nothing in between - total chaos and absolute identity crisis material) and had to be up and out by 7am seven days a week, six for school and one for church. It took me years to undo this conditioning and realise that I could do nothing once in a while.
Unschooling
This podcast began to unravel my conditioning around school and opened up conversations in our home. At first Josh was sceptical, worried about raising an outsider, concerned about her not fitting in, troubled about the idea of her falling behind her peers. We had a few minor arguments about our conflicting ideas but he remained open (he's a ridiculously balanced human being).
Then when she was nine months old I read an article about unschooling that completely changed my worldview.
I had heard of the term unschooling and I am ashamed to say that I was judgmental. I didn't know what it was and just assumed both perfectly accurately and completely unfairly that it was just not going to school or providing an education. It is both of those these but it is so much more.
Personally, I love Akilah S. Richards' description: 'A child-trusting, anti-oppression, liberatory, love-centered approach to parenting and caregiving'. It's basically gentle, natural or responsive parenting continued past school age. It's not not offering an education but rather allowing it to be spontaneous and self-directed. It is not doing nothing but rather being passive and responsive to the interests and curiosities of our children instead of getting in their way with our own ideas of what their education should look like. It is not a life without learning but rather understanding that children are drawn to learning innately and do not need to be taught in order to learn.
But I didn't understand any of that at the time. So I understand the push-back I sometimes get. My initial uninformed thoughts were that these children would not learn basic life skills, would not be exposed to important ideas and would not be able to get ahead in life. This article flipped all of that on its head and opened something up inside of me that I found hard to suppress. I felt an immediate and very deep longing to raise my child this way but also a feeling of disappointment because I never in a million years thought that those around me would feel the same and be open to the idea. I felt as though I had caught a glimpse of a life more beautiful than I had ever imagined and had had to let it drift off into the land of not meant to be.
Self-directed
We have chosen to prioritise Dolores being self-directed as much as possible throughout her life so far. Since babydom it became clear that she thrived with autonomy and became overwhelmed with direction and an excess of stimulation. We don't offer activities, suggest a constant stream of things 'to do' or interfere with her play. Toys are kept to a minimum and there are no screens.
It's so important to me that she feels she can just be without the pressure of something to do. This article showed me that unschooling is simply continuing with this mode of parenting, that feels so right to us, beyond the point at which we are culturally expected to. The term 'self-directed' is also the way I choose to speak about our educational and parenting choices. I generally like to refer to it as 'self-directed education' rather than unschooling when introducing the idea to people who are unfamiliar with it. I feel it gives a better representation of what it entails.
As the boys are largely self-directed, we have never encountered the issue of boredom with them either. Possibly when one is not regularly directed or entertained or stimulated from an external source, then children do not wait for or expect that. Moreover, as there is no emphasis on ‘doing’ something with one’s time (as children in a more routine or activity-based model are subject to), when the children find themselves sitting around, watching, listening, dreaming or simply staring out of a window, they do not regard this space as a state of boredom. I feel being quiet with oneself is so essential. So much can emerge from such a space… creativity, reflection, insight…deepening of understandings or emotional processing and integration, even if it is not outwardly visible or quantifiable in any way.
Star charts
We also made the decision early on to use a no praise, no punishment model. It's not always been easy. I find no praise easy because I see how impactful it is on her intrinsic motivation, I always think it sounds a bit like talking to a dog when I hear 'good girl' and am not really the clapping and cheering at small milestones type anyway but as she gets older and pushes more boundaries, I find it hard not to crack out the 'if you... I will...' type threats. I never thought I would but when she's drawing on the sofa, kicking me in the face or threatening to throw my precious belongings down the decking, I'm not always my best self. Nevertheless, it's what we aim for! And again, I see that unschooling will allow her to maintain her intrinsic motivation beyond school age and how incredibly valuable that would be.
I hear endlessly about star charts and I cringe at the very idea. I clearly remember a woman in the park asking me how she was toilet trained at such a young age, she asked Dolores directly if she had been given stars. Dolores looked blankly at the woman and I laughed inside at the idea of needing stars to perform a basic human function. She went to the toilet because she saw us go to the toilet and she needed to go to the toilet.
Another thing we realized was that, both, praise and blame, reward and punishment are detrimental. Of course, many would agree that punishment, shame and blame are destructive to a child. But praising and rewarding a child are often seen as kind and valuable. Yet, well-meaning as it is, when a child is praised for anything, the focus shifts away from being or doing a thing simply for the joy of it, or because it feels relevant or appropriate somehow, to an outward focus (and often dependence) on doing it for another’s approval or acceptance. External appraisal then, often becomes the guiding force for our actions and behaviours. I feel that this carrot & stick approach actually encourages a proclivity to selfish and mercenary ways of being and acting. It undermines compassionate, understanding, empathetic ways of perceiving and responding. How can it be otherwise when (through reward and punishment of some kind) we are encouraged to base our motives for action solely or primarily on whether they benefit or harm us as individuals in some way?
Agreeing to home ed
We were staying at the in-laws during a heat wave (our caravan does not do well in the extremes) when I read this article and I remember running out to discuss it over dinner. We had a very interesting and slightly heated debate about praise, self-esteem and the idea of unschooling. I even found myself welling up with emotion at the idea of being able to raise my child with a robust self-esteem not dependent on external validation. Unschooling seemed to offer this but for some reason it felt unattainable to follow this path ourselves. I felt a bit deflated.
Somewhere along the way and in spite of my endless banging on about it (I'm not very good at letting go of things I feel very strongly about), we agreed that we would home ed. I still remember the day Josh agreed. I told him it was the sexiest thing he'd ever done. Being given permission to parent the way my heart longs to is definitely my love language.
The key insight that allowed our ideologies to unite and for us to agree was that the concern about fitting in was in fact the very reason we were choosing this path in the first place. We realised that rather than it being something we disagreed on, it was our ignition for stepping off of the treadmill in the first place. We live in a very sick society, I'm not sure that can be denied. So why would we want our child to fit into that? We have both chosen paths that have allowed us to escape from social norms and the expectations of the modern world because they were making us unwell. We found our people outside of the cultural norms. We are not lonely because we are making unconventional choices. In fact, quite the opposite. I was much more lonely when I was trying to fit into places and with people who didn't share at least some of my values.
Books as elders
In the absence of people modelling the way I want to parent, books are my elders. The ideas they put forth help me to reconnect me to the wisdom of our early ancestors and to my own intuition. They ignite sparks of knowing within me and help me to carve out a way of living that feels good and right for us as a family.
Josh bought me a book when Dolores was two called Home Grown by Ben Hewitt - adventures in parenting off the beaten path, unschooling and reconnecting to the natural world. Remember when I said I was nervous about considering home ed because I felt it would be rejected by my husband? As I said, totally unfounded. Here he was remembering my early impassioned unschooling debate and buying me a book about it, without me having even mentioned it again.
Every single fear based question that I receive about home ed and unschooling is addressed within this book more beautifully than I ever could articulate.
It is the story of a family living on a subsistence farm in a remote part of Canada with two young boys who have never been to school or received an education of any kind. They are entirely self-directed and they spend almost all of their time in nature. They help their parents with chores around the farm and then they're off for whole days at a time on their own. They teach themselves to hunt, fish and trap, to make bows and arrows, they build shelters using tools, they dress their own injuries, prepare their own food, raise their own goats and end up teaching themselves to read and write of their own accord.
He poignantly shares that if his eldest son had been sent to school he would have received a diagnosis and the associated medication. Self-directed in nature with his brother, he was thriving. There's a reason for this. We spent almost our entire ancestral past as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Our physiology evolved in this context and we thrive when we return. We don't simply need to enjoy a bit of nature here and there for our minds. We need meaningful lives immersed in nature and natural ways of being in order to thrive mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Many of us feel adrift in the modern world until we remember what we're doing here. I can highly recommend the book, Losing Eden by Lucy Jones for an incredibly well researched, well written, in depth and balanced exploration of this phenomenon.
The fear of falling behind
An aspect of Home Grown that I thought was particularly smart was when he showed how readily the boys took to book learning when it was in their own interest - when they were in pursuit of their own self-directed interests. One of the biggest criticisms of unschooling is that children will fall behind their peers. Not only has this been disproven but it seems, in fact to be going the other way. I am told many universities and places of work are actively seeking home educated and unschooled children for their critical minds, work ethic, intelligence and commitment. Often when unschooled children discover their particular 'in' for arithmetic or literacy they become fervent and fanatical. They learn because they can't not. They are enthralled rather than enforced.
The boys want to get their trapping licences at age eight and ten. They are told that they will need to take a test and put together a whole heap of information. They are compelled to read, write and do the maths they need to pass the test. Unschooling is never learning for learnings sake. It is learning in context and it gives so much more meaning. Subjects are not separated out and taught independently without context but instead are explored through the lens of interests and projects which inevitably include a vast array of usually separated 'subjects'.
Freedom from enforced early years literacy
Children in Scandinavia aren't taught to read, they are simply read to and then begin reading at a variety of ages but usually around seven or eight. Many unschooled children are offered the same freedom from enforced early years literacy, invited to remain a little longer in their fascinating (and in fact absolutely neurologically and developmentally essential) fantasy world of creativity and wonder.
I recently learned in the incredible book Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta - how indigenous thinking can save the world, that there's a part of the brain called the 'nucleus basalis' which we're told starts to shrink when we're around seven years of age. Tyson shares, 'this is the part of the brain that makes learning so effortless for children and is always activated in undomesticated humans.' It has been shown that this part of the brain begins to fall into disuse after three or four years of schooling, when children are schooled out of their innate desire to be immersed in focused play.
'Loss of function in this part of the brain is not a natural stage of development - we are supposed to retain and even increase it throughout our lives. Until very recently in human history, we did.' -Â Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk
He also shares about the fact that we're an oral culture species who have downloaded a huge portion of our brains' capacities into literacy and more recently technology. The continuing domestication of the human brain and body is having many more impacts that we might realise.
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Article continues over on my Patreon page with the following topics and titles:
'He needs another year of play' - old wisdom from Anne of Green Gables of not sending kids to school until they're seven and ready
Neurotypical children being diagnosed with neurodivergence due to not being able to sit still age four
Why children don't need developmental and educational materials, they just need the woods
The benefits of unrestricted active outdoor play
Zoochosis in our schools
How many hours an expert occupational therapist advises our children spend outside in active unrestricted outdoor play - it may surprise you (it did me!)
Prioritising academia over health and well-being
Crushed by the pressure of being smart
Does my own schooling experience influence this decision
Akilah S. Richards' unschooling definition
Choosing not to take exams and being free from comparison and competition
How self-directed learning is not a method, it's innate
How we afford to unschool
Working with your kids
Too much one-to-one attention?
Multi-age playmates and 'the village' setting
Feeling richer than ever with less money and more time together
Are we domesticating our children with school? Tyson Yunkaporta shares the three known ways to domesticate young animals
Not wanting to be separated from our children
The structural inequalities that make unschooling challenging
What Patreon means to me and why I put some of my writing behind a paywall these days:
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Carly x
Reference article: https://medium.com/families-learning-together-magazine/reflections-on-anomadic-unschooling-life-e32200208d64
Photo: practice walks with the alpaca at Hideaway Wood Farm with my daughter on my back.
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