Unschoolery

When Should You Start Unschooling?

By Leo Babauta

When should the unschooling process start? Can and should you start at preschool age if you have a young child?

There's no right answer to that, of course, as there are never any "right" answers in unschooling. It's all about figuring out what works on your own -- though your experiments can be informed and inspired by what others are doing.

And so I'll share my thoughts here, along with what we did, with the idea that you'll figure out your own answer through experimentation and discussion among your family.

The first thought to share: unschooling starts at birth. Unlike school, which starts at a legally mandated age and involves the trauma of leaving your child with strangers while he cries (I had to do this several times), unschooling doesn't have a defined start. That's because unschooling is the same as living.

Unschooling means you learn to tie your shoes, you play games, you explore nature, you learn to talk to your family members about various things, you break and fix things, you are curious about new things. This happens when you're a baby, a toddler, an old person, and everything in between. So the answer, if you have a young child of 2-4 years old, is that you've already been unschooling.

The second thought to share: you can start in small doses. This goes against what I said above, but if you want to "start unschooling", you don't have to do it wholesale. You don't have to yank your kid out of school or preschool immediately. You can do it after school, in the evenings, on weekends, during breaks. What you do could be anything, but basically you can do fun things and learn together with your child and start teaching him or her to be autonomous.

Do it a little bit at a time, and gain confidence that you can do it and you and your child like it, and then transition to all the time if it works out.

The third thought to share: the sooner you start the discussion in your family, the better. An important part of the unschooling process involves a group discussion. It means talking about these ideas with your spouse or partner, with the child, with your parents and siblings, with others who care about the kid's education. They don't all have to be on board, but it definitely helps, and even if they aren't on board, perhaps you can start educating them slowly.

Involve as many people as you think necessary in the discussion, in helping to do research, in learning together. Even if you don't actually start unschooling (whatever your definition of that is), you can start thinking about it, talking about it.

What We Did

If you'd like to know our story, here it is in brief:

  1. First, two of my kids from my previous marriage decided not to be unschooled. I offered it to them but they were already in school and enjoyed going, so they stayed in school. Even though I wish I could have done unschooling with them, I totally support their decision, and they've turned out completely fine and I love them to death.
  2. Second, two of our kids who were unschooled (the older two), were already in school -- grades 4 and 6, I believe. We talked with them and they agreed to give homeschooling a try (we didn't start with unschooling), and we took them out of school. There was a large transition period, for all of us, when we moved from believing in the ways of school to figuring out what we could do if we abandoned school's methods and ideas.
  3. Third, our younger two kids (who are now 7 and 9 years old) never went to school. They were in preschool (actually it was just daycare) when we decided to homeschool the two older ones, and we just stopped sending the younger ones to daycare. We all stayed home, and did things together. Again, we started homeschooling in the beginning, but soon after transitioned to unschooling. So they started at preschool age, but life wasn't really much different for them -- being a young kid and doing "unschooling" are really the same thing. The main difference was that they stopped going to preschool and were no longer destined for the classroom.

That's our story and we're sticking to it. It's not what you have to do, by any means, but maybe it'll show you that various paths are possible, even within one family.

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My daughter just finished attending public school as a mid year freshman. There was a series of many events that brought us to this point, including opening our minds outside of traditional learning. After 5 months of exploring other educational methods, including unschooling, my daughter felt like unschooling would meet her needs best. My husband and I are both new to unschooling and even the homeschooing concept, but feel very confident in our daughter's choice. Luckily, I recently found a 2/3 part time job working from home and my husband has worked from home for years. Diana, I can't imagine supporting my daughter if both of us were working full time. It is important for us to support her often during the first year of transition as she discovers herself and becomes more independent. I understand it can take up to 1 - 2 years for a new unschooling teenager to really grasp the unschooing methods. Which is why I was to be very available for her. Even though my daughter is starting unschooling late in her journey of learning, we feel it is better late than never. There is also a ton of teen support out there.....visit www.unschooladventures.com for really cool teen and young adult opportunities!

Hi Leo, I have an only child, a girl, who is 4. I am a SAHM, don't know if I always will be (it's been a financial crunch but we make it work because we think it's important.) She just started a Waldorf inspired preschool, just 3 days a week, for 3 hours. All play based. I wanted to put her in this particular school because it is a play based, freedom, artistic program, but also so she can be around other kids. My husband and I have always been interested in homeschooling, and then unschooling her, but I have big reservations because she is an only child. Any thoughts? She has so much fun at this preschool but loves it at home too.

Hai Leo, thanks for sharing.

I have question about how about the parents life? Does it work on parent with full time job?

i just find a post here that can give you the answer you are looking for:

http://unschoolery.com/stayhome

I have the same doubt, I am a freelance designer, working from home but i have to focus on work as well, i have a nanny taking cara of her but still i'd like to know how to get better at this ... cause i guess i need to be more involve ....

Hi D, thanks for your reply. I have a suggestion for you, maybe you can read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Its about time management and strong focus, and change focus for each interval.

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Read Next

Can You Unschool if Both Parents Work?

On Unschoolery

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):

What About Learning?

On Tynan

Right now I'm staying up with my cousin who's a senior in high school. It's midnight on Sunday, and she's busy finishing up her homework for the weekend. There's a roll of tape on the coffee table, along with pink ribbons, a glue stick, cutout pictures from glamour magazines, and a bunch of construction paper. For her weekend psychology assignment, she has to make a book using a vocab word as the header for each page.

I rant about school every once in a while here, but the truth is that it had been a long time since I'd really experienced what school was like. I dropped out in 2001, twelve years ago. Usually I visit my cousins during school vacations, but they're in school this time, so I've had the chance to live vicariously, help with homework, and remember just why I disliked school so much.

My cousin's project, as best I can understand, and as best she can understand, is essentially busy work. She had to spend an hour or so writing some paragraphs that were related to psychology. Then she spent four or five hours finding pictures, cutting them out, printing the paragraphs, cutting them out, arranging construction paper, pasting, and binding. It's insane.

Her younger sister, a sophomore in high school, asked for help with biology. Some of the material was really relevant and useful stuff, but that material was buried in a bunch of cruft. Some questions were so ambiguous that you would have to read them two or three times just to understand what they wanted you to answer. Some questions were made difficult not to simulate real-life situations, but just because the underlying material was too intuitive and basic in its natural useful form. Then others covered material that was so insignificant that it is guaranteed to be forgotten within a week, and would have to be relearned from scratch if my cousin ever were to become a biologist.

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