Yes!! You’re feeling an incredible swirl of both excitement and trepidation: you’ve decided to try unschooling. Your kids are not going (back) to school.
Basking in the relief of a choice made, it feels like a satisfying end to an often stressful journey.
But soon a new question starts circling your brain:
Without school, what will you actually do all day??
Phew. It’s a great question. And now we have some seriously fun stuff to talk about!
To help get you in a relaxed and open mindset (much better for your learning), try thinking of your days over the next while as a season of Saturdays. If you find yourself waking up and thinking, “It’s Monday, time to get the kids back to learning,” try to catch yourself before you put that filter firmly in place: “Oops, I forgot, it’s Saturday!”
What would you do with your children if it was Saturday? Weekends are typically a time to relax and follow the flow of the day rather than an imposed schedule. Would your kids enjoy sleeping in? What a wonderful part of the transition away from imposed schedules: sleeping as much as their bodies would like. Or are they early risers? Now they can savour the beauty of early morning without the pressure of getting dressed, fed, and out the door. Or are they a mishmash of both? Now they can learn about themselves, discovering their own unique patterns for sleep.
Are there places you and your kids have always wanted to visit (or visit more often) but you haven’t had the time? Now you do! The museum? The science centre? The art gallery? Cool! But remember, you don’t need to lead your children through them, making sure they see all the exhibits. (If you’re tempted, take a moment to think about what it really means to “get your money’s worth”—is it quantity or quality?)
Instead, follow their curiosity! Look at the map with them, chat about what they’d like to see and do, let them navigate you around—if they want to. If they are engaged and excited at a particular exhibit, let them stay as long as they want. (Hint: the best learning is happening there!) If you only hit three exhibits that day, that’s totally great. It’s not a competition. If you breeze through them all in a couple of hours, that’s fine too! You hit breadth instead of depth.
Both are perfectly appropriate: you are following their interests and seeing their minds in action. For me, the fun over time is in seeing how each visit is uniquely its own. And as I got to know my kids better, I started seeing connections between how a visit played out and the other things that were happening in their lives. It’s all connected. It’s all learning.
How about something a bit closer to home? What about playgrounds? Maybe explore a different one in your town each week. Hiking trails? You can go every week or two and see how things change as fall (or spring) arrives. Or rainy season. Find the things that catch your children’s attention and follow up over time. Would they like to try bowling? Or laser tag? Or trampoline? The bonus is that family places are much less busy during the week—most of the kids are in school! We even scheduled our vacations in the off season: lower cost and less crowded.
If you live in the city, take trips beyond the suburbs and explore farms and parks. Take a horse-drawn carriage ride. Visit a pumpkin patch in October. If you live rurally, take trips into the city and explore the attractions. Walk the streets and admire the tall buildings. Take a subway ride. Explore the world around you, not just the one outside your door.
Tired yet? Haha! I have given you a pretty wide range of ideas to help kick start some conversations with your kids, and I’m sure you guys will come up with many more! (Another great thing to do with your kids now that they’re home and you’re not watching the clock: talk.) It’s pretty unlikely that they are going to be interested in all of these things—certainly not all at once. But don’t be stressed if your children aren’t interested in even a handful of them. We’re all uniquely ourselves—find out what your kids are interested in.
That leads nicely into this really important piece of the deschooling journey: getting to know your children. Understanding them is the foundation from which you will explore the world together. What are they doing when you see their faces light up? What do they ask to do regularly? What new things would they would like to try? What brings them joy? What engages them so completely that they don’t notice time passing? Do those things often.
Bring in related things you think they might also enjoy. Do they have a favourite show or YouTube channel? Would they like make some art related to a character? Or if they like a certain movie, might they enjoy watching the gag reel or the short making of documentary? You don’t necessarily need to ask them, just let them know it exists and see if they are drawn to it. Just be careful that these are things you think they will enjoy, not things you wish they would enjoy. (Like that math workbook with the cute critters on it you were eyeing at the checkout—keep deschooling!)
And if they aren’t drawn to something you give to or show them, don’t fret—you’ve just learned something new about them. Maybe your guess was off a bit for now, or maybe they were busy and it will catch their attention next week, or next month, or next year. Their world is still a bit bigger because now they know that such a thing exists.
And don’t forget about home—life can be fun and interesting there too! What do your children enjoy doing in their PJs? Board games? Card games? Red light, green light? Playing video games? Colouring pages? Crafts? Puzzles? Building forts with couch cushions and blankets? Carving snow sculptures after the big storm? Playing catch? Hula hooping? Making their own playdoh? Slime? Watching YouTube videos? Kicking a ball around outside? Frisbee? Reading stories together? Playing hide and seek? Tent in the backyard? Watching movies? Somersaults and handstands? Playing online games? Baking cookies? Acting out TV shows? How could I forget Lego?
The possibilities are vast.
Whatever they enjoy, do those things with them. Bring bits of the world to them that you think they’d find interesting.
Remember, it’s Saturday! Relax and enjoy your time together.
I remember when my daughter’s preteen friends would comment to her about how boring her life must be without school. What do you think? Does it sound like life without school will inevitably be boring? I don’t think so.
As you dive into all this fun living (and learning!) with your family, don’t forget to take some time yourself to continue learning about unschooling. The challenge at this point is probably that you’re feeling overwhelmed. There is so much information coming from so many places:
observing and engaging with your kids;
contemplating memories dredged up from your school career;
reading/listening to more and more about unschooling and the kind of parenting choices that support the lifestyle;
hanging out with like-minded people to see how they approach things;
philosophical meanderings about how you want to live your life; and
questioning, well, everything!
How are you going to connect it altogether to paint yourself a cohesive picture of unschooling?
Well, how do you like to learn?
Do you learn things more effectively through writing? Like to journal? You can pick out a beautiful notebook (or decorate one yourself if you feel so inclined) and fill it with observations and thoughts and ideas as your family moves through deschooling. Or maybe you’d like to create a blog or social media account, either a private one for your family’s eyes only or a public one where you share the ups and downs of your journey with others.
Or do you like to process information more visually? Like taking pictures? You can create photo essays, grouping them through the threads you see in the images. For yourself or for sharing with others.
Or do you lean toward verbal processing, enjoying conversations with others on the same journey? You can find local unschoolers and meet up to chat at park days or coffee nights, you can attend an unschooling conference or gathering, or you might approach some unschoolers you’ve met online and see if they are interested in connecting more directly, maybe on WhatsApp or Zoom.
Maybe it’s an eclectic mix of all of these, but figuring out how you like to learn is a worthwhile step in deschooling. It helps you discover the vast array of ways that people learn outside school, opening you up to all the ways you might support your children’s exploration and learning.
And that’s where the real fun of unschooling is.
The key right now is building strong relationships with your children. Getting to know them well. Being open and curious, and allowing them to better understand you as well. Try to consistently move forward towards unschooling, while being careful not to make so many changes in quick succession than your family loses its footing—you don’t want to pull the rug out from underneath them.
If you’ve just pulled your kids from school, or decided to stop pushing your school-at-home schedule, it’s likely that your priority right now will be exploring how they will learn without being told what to learn and how to learn it. For unschooling to work well in your family, you need to understand and become comfortable with how people learn outside school.
If your child is in school burnout, it can be so helpful to recognize all the learning they are still doing, even as this season is likely all about learning themselves: their comfort activities, what activates their nervous system, their favourite foods, how they like to fall asleep and so much more.
A tip: during this season of Saturdays, beyond not pulling out workbooks or sitting them in front of an online video lesson, be careful not to take a natural moment and turn it into a “lesson.”
Why?
Because it interrupts their brain, the way they are thinking and connecting pieces together in that moment, and makes it about the way your brain is processing what’s happening. What they are getting out of a moment may be very different from what you are getting out of it. And that’s okay. Perfectly okay. People are different.
Instead of jumping in and risking taking over, focus on your child. Try to notice the clues they are giving you—by observing what their next action or comment is, you can often discover what they are taking in and focusing on. Figure what they are seeing and learning. This is what I mean when I say “see through their eyes”—which I say pretty often. By doing this over and over and over you will begin to see how human beings learn without coercion and outside direction. Observe your children carefully. Not only will you begin to see unschooling learning in action, you will also get to know your children better. Lovely!
And remember, this process takes as long as it takes. Stop as soon as you catch yourself trying to direct their activities, or trying to entice them into “just an hour a day” of reading or writing in a journal. The key word here is entice. If you offer to read to them and they happily join you, great! If you think they really might enjoy a journal of their own to write or draw in, take them out to choose one, or surprise them by bringing one home the next time you go out.
Deschooling is about discovering your motivations and expectations, and then being careful not to put them on your children. Help them discover their own! It’s not the end of the world if you catch yourself slipping into the role of teacher—just stop, regroup, and start again. Observe instead of direct. I did warn you that you’ll have most of the deschooling to do, yes? Haha. But I promise there is so much fun in the observation! Children are amazing learners when they are immersed in their interests and passions. And so are we.
One thing that can often trip up a parent during this season is how passionately a child can want to dive into an interest that has been restricted up to this point. Most often I see parents worry about “too much” YouTube or video games. The key here is that whatever the activity, it has been restricted. Once it is no longer restricted, there’s a good chance they will take advantage and indulge to their heart’s content: and that may take some catching up!
Another consideration is that they may worry that this reprieve is only temporary and try to fill as many hours with the activity as possible in anticipation of losing that freedom when you eventually change your mind. Especially if you’ve been back and forth about it before. It will take time to build trust with them that this freedom won’t be revoked. As they begin to trust that they are free to choose to play or watch any time, and they fill up on what they felt they were missing while the activity was restricted, they will begin to feel safe and free to make other choices.
If you find yourself in this situation, maybe ask yourself some questions surrounding the issue. Would I be worried if their passion was reading? Or a sport? Is it the time spent that concerns me the most? Might this be their life’s passion and they’re happily putting in their 10,000 hours? Might readers become writers? Gamers become programmers? Movie watchers become directors? Do I only feel comfortable if I think of this time as training for a career? What did you put many hours into as a child? Did it become your career? If not, was that time wasted? (I put countless hours a year over thirteen years into ballet and dance yet I didn’t become a professional ballerina in the end. Time wasted? No way. It was my window to learning about myself.)
Are your children engaged and happy and challenged? Do they work hard to figure things out and progress? Even through frustration? Isn’t that pretty cool?
There’s also the possibility that this is their learning tool of choice for now and you won’t see their passion wane over time, maybe for a long time. But the great thing is, alongside their playing or watching, you’ll be spending lots of time with them, observing them, chatting with them, helping them explore their interest. So if it doesn’t begin to fade with time, it’s very likely that by then, you’ll have gotten to a point where you’re comfortable with it as a learning tool.
Anything can be a window to the world. And to learning about themselves.
As you examine your motivations, your expectations, your understanding of learning and living, it’s conceivable that you will start to question the myriad of rules that surround us every day. This can be a great source of questions to ponder yet, if the process gets tiring, it can be tempting to throw your hands up in defeat and declare your “family rules” null and void. Please try to avoid that. I think there’s a good chance it would be akin to the abrupt removal of the rug underfoot I mentioned earlier. That won’t be fun either. It will likely be messier.
Yet hard and fast rules are better examined—at least once somebody balks. Dinner at 6pm? Bedtime at 9pm? Why? What purpose does it serve? Is there another way to accomplish that purpose? Talk about the rules, share your thoughts, listen intently and respectfully to theirs (in relaxed moments, not when the energy of power struggles is in the air).
One thing that might help is to shift your perspective from rules to routines. Let’s peek at bedtime. People get tired. Is the goal getting to sleep when tired? Might circumstances change day-to-day? Do they for you? Are you sometimes really tired at 8pm? Other nights not until 10pm? 12am? What would be different if you thought of bedtime as more of a routine to help your children get to sleep when they are tired, rather than a fixed rule regarding the time on the clock? Does it seem reasonable to help them listen to their bodies and follow its cues, rather than try to control their bodies based on outside factors? No matter your answers, it’s better to know what you think and act from that place rather than to blindly follow societal rules you absorbed growing up.
Another helpful aspect of thinking in terms of routines rather than rules is that for many kids (and adults!) there’s comfort in routines, in knowing what to expect. Routines help with transitions: a relaxing routine to get ready to go to sleep when they’re tired; a routine to get ready to go out the door so things aren’t forgotten; a calming routine to move through frustration when it bubbles up etc. It’s all about getting to know and understand your children. And yourself.
Be patient. Deschooling is a time of stretching and growing and analyzing and crying and playing and learning and observing and laughing and exploring and being together with your family. It’s challenging and it’s beautiful. It’s work and it’s play. It’s life.
Remember to enjoy the moments.
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“I cannot overstate the positive effect that being in the Network has had on myself and my family! It’s been invaluable in terms of learning about and discussing unschooling, but it’s SO much more than that. The focus on how we can best show up in relationships and the emotional support around that has changed the way I approach all of the relationships in my life. I have a much clearer idea of who I want to be, what I want to offer to others, as well what I want to receive from others, and how to discuss that with them. Parenting feels much less fraught - I’m not spending my time trying to work out what I ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be doing. Instead, I can track a path that works for me and my family - which means everyone’s needs are more likely to get met, and we’re all happier and more relaxed.” ~ Nora McDonald
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