By Leo Babauta
Unschoolers have an enormous wealth of resources at their disposal, for anything they want to do or learn about:
Basically everything is a possible tool or resource for learning, creating, doing, living.
But one of my favorite resources is the people you know.
By Leo Babauta
One of the more difficult, and therefore more interesting, problems in unschooling is the problem of motivation.
In other words, unschooling is just like regular life (in fact, shh don't tell, but "life" and "unschooling" are the same thing!).
The problem that many unschooling families face is: if you don't force the kid to learn certain things in certain ways, that's all well and good, but what if the kid doesn't feel like doing anything? Can they just lay around and watch TV all day? What if the kid wants to do some things but isn't motivated to work hard on them?
So how to solve this problem?
By Leo Babauta
While it's great for an unschooler to start their own business, is it hard for an unschooler, who doesn't follow a curriculum, to get a job?
Here's a great question from a reader:
So even if you want to start your own business, you might want to get a job first to build skills, learn from experienced people in the field, build up a network, etc. This is absolutely true.
By Leo Babauta
When you start out as a new unschooling family, or even if you're just contemplating it, one of the biggest obstacles are not "how to do it" or "will this even work" but the other people in your life.
Your family and friends can be incredibly negative about the idea of homeschooling/unschooling.
And that's perfectly understandable, actually. Anytime we do something that's very out of the mainstream, we face resistance from others. Especially when it comes to raising kids, which is a hugely emotional issue for most people.
Why do other people react so negatively? Consider:
By Leo Babauta
It seems that many parents here in the U.S. (and very possibly in other countries) are worried about how much their child is learning by a certain age. Does my kid know everything that a 2nd grader should know? Is my kid learning as fast as other 3-year-olds? Does my sister's kid know more than my kid does?
I think the traditional school system encourages this (there are non-traditional schools that break away from it). Schools have decided that all kids need to know X, Y, and Z by age 6, and then U, V, and W by age 7, and so on. How does this get determined? Who are these oracles of education who know exactly what our kids need to know by age 18, and can predict what the future will be like at that time? It's impossible. None of us could have predicted what 2013 was like in 1999, and we certainly don't know what the world will be like in another 10-15 years.
So I've stopped worrying so much about learning X by a certain age. I've also decided it's pointless to compare my kids to any other kids. What's the point? Life isn't a race. It doesn't matter who learns what by any age -- what matters is that we're preparing our kids for life, and that they have the tools to be happy and do what they want as adults.
That's what matters.
Lots of families happen upon unschooling at, or around compulsory school age. Some families start to unschool after their children have attended traditional schools. But what happens when the kiddo is much younger? How do you unschool a kid that is far from compulsory school age? Turns out, it's not much different than what you may already be doing.
First, take a minute to relax. Notice how much your little one has learned already. In these three years, he has learned to walk, run, talk, express complex emotions, climb, roll, jump up and down, count, converse, and a whole bunch of other things. That's fantastic! I'll bet that you didn't do anything super special for this learning to happen. It just did.
New unschoolers, especially those with young kiddos, will read about all the awesome cool things other unschoolers are doing. And they will panic because they may or may not be "doing enough." There is lots of pressure to expose your kiddos to new things. To figure out what their passions are and to explore them. But what if your three year old is hooked to youtube or video games or both? What if he doesn't ever want to leave the house (like my kiddo)? Don't panic. Video games and youtube videos are excellent sources of information. Young kids will be exposed to letters, numbers, words, language.. Not just english but any languages they may stumble upon. Chase loves to watch French Umizoomi episodes and signing time!
Young kiddos probably won't enjoy museums or going to the library or much of the whole wide world right now. They are still very young, and their world is a bit small and mostly revolves around you. As they grow, so will their world and comfort level. Don't focus on all the things you aren't doing with your kiddo (finger painting, swim lessons, toddler story time at the library) and focus on the things you are doing with them. Focus on the things they love doing. Then do more of it, and watch the learning happen at a rate that will blow your mind.
By Leo Babauta
Two nights ago, I came home and my 7-year-old daughter Noelle could barely contain her excitement.
"Daddy, mommy said she'd help me start my own Youtube channel tomorrow!"
She was practically jumping up and down.
It made my heart leap, to see this kind of excitement in her. This is exactly what you want to see as an unschooling parent -- when your kid is excited about something, you encourage it. You cherish it. You do what you can to let it bloom.
By Leo Babauta
Unschooling might be seen as a luxury -- usually at least one parent stays home to homeschool their younguns.
Eva was a teacher when we decided to homeschool our kids, but we made the conscious decision to scale back our lifestyles so that she could quit and focus on homeschooling. It was something we both wanted, and so we figured out a way to do live on one income.
We are lucky, I'll admit. But lots of other families could probably do this if they wanted. Others can't. So in this post, I thought I'd start a discussion of some of the options.
Here are some possibilities (not exhaustive obviously):
By Leo Babauta
This blog was started as a way for me to grow the conversation around unschooling, and besides my own (obviously brilliant) posts, I hope to wrestle some from Eva and the kids.
And from you guys. Especially if you're already unschooling (as a parent or student), and even more especially if you are an adult, were successfully unschooled and have a great story to share.
So, if you are or were an unschooler, and you'd like to share your story or thoughts on what works or ways you overcame certain challenges or how you got to college or what college was like for an unschooler, etc. etc. ... please post it here on Unschoolery!
Here's how:
By Leo Babauta
The question of college is one of the top 3 questions people ask when they first hear about unschooling (including me):
Well, more on math soon, but today let's talk about college.
I'd actually like to answer two questions today: can they go to college, and should they go to college?