We’ve been homeschoolers for almost a decade now.  And, frankly, I can’t imagine living any differently, nor would I want to.  But, for those parents who are, in effect, being forced to choose an educational path for their children, the mere idea of homeschooling can be daunting, at best, and overwhelmingly paralyzing.  Sometimes, it is all too easy for me to “forget” the confusion and anxiety of those early years and the pressure I felt to “have it all figured out”.   But, here’s the thing.  Homeschooling isn’t a destination, an end goal.  It’s a journey, a path ..read more

My daughter recently started experimenting with lipstick.  And this has brought up all sorts of emotions for me.  She will be 14 in June. When I was in 8th grade, my mom started selling cosmetics.  I would watch her using all the products, wondering how the makeup would look on my skin.  There were several girls in my class who were already wearing makeup, but my mom had made it clear to me that makeup was off limits.  I was “too young” and my focus was to be on school, not my appearance.  (I realized later in life that her insistence on my NOT wearing makeup was ..read more

Self-directed, interest-driven learning is the way humans are designed to learn.  Consider the newly mobile child, who has just learned the skill of crawling or moving her body from one place to another.  She has achieved a new level of self-awareness that allows her to exercise her autonomy and connect what she wants with doing something to get what she wants.  She sees a toy across the room, she crawls, scoots, rolls her body to get the desired toy.  She doesn’t require coaxing, positive reinforcement, or for the parent to lay out the steps towards her goal.  She is driven by her internal de ..read more

We are not born “knowing” how to be parents.  But, we are, all of us, born with a deep-rooted need to connect, to attach to at least one person on whom our survival depends.  And, as we grow into adulthood, we continue to seek that connection, that attachment.  And, depending on how that need for attachment was met, as adults, we are either repeating patterns or breaking them.  And, as we become parents, we are either repeating patterns or breaking them. If we are not born “knowing” how to parent, then where do our ideas about parenting come from?  Well, from how we were parented, the envir ..read more

One of the fundamental principles in the unschooling philosophy is freedom….freedom to choose how to spend one’s time, to direct one’s life in the way that is most meaningful for that person.  Living out this philosophy is challenging when the dominant culture pushes back with its demands for conformity and compliance.   As I sit at the “family” computer to write this post, I can hear the gentle hum of the sewing machine coming from my daughter’s craft room down the hall.  She is making a hoop skirt.  My son just purchased a new Xbox game and has been playing it for the last two hours, work ..read more

My son has cerebral palsy.  He was born extremely premature and suffered a brain bleed during the early weeks of his life.  His official diagnosis is spastic diplegia.  As a result, we are no strangers to the therapeutic community including occupational, physical, speech, feeding and rehab.  Max’s early years were filled with endless appointments and programs.  For the first 3 years, therapists would come to our home.  But, once he “graduated” from a home program, the majority of his therapies would only be accessible through a specialized pre-school program. And, even after we started our hom ..read more

My son had a major orthopedic surgery back in 2013. At the the time of surgery, he was 9.5 years old. The surgery was necessary to address imbalances in muscle tightness and bone development in his legs and feet caused by his cerebral palsy. And, while he had endured medical treatments and surgeries while in the NICU during the first 5 months of his life, THIS was different experience. I remember the moment when the nurses wheeled him away from us, drowsy but still aware, fear filling his eyes. We tried to comfort him and let him know that we would be there for him when he woke up. H ..read more

In a culture where “doing” is prioritized over “being”, it is understandable that parenting would be measured by the same standard. There is no shortage of books, articles, and resources that reinforces this paradigm of “doing parenting”. The model is one where the focus is on what we “do” to our children in order to get a particular outcome. How to get your baby to sleep through the night. How to motivate your child to do chores. How to get your child to behave in a certain way. And, what I notice is this. When we operate from this model, we create a culture where what we “do” as pa ..read more

I begin to connect the dots between compulsory schooling and the underlying, nefarious agenda to slowly remove the rights of parents to “be” parents to their own children, and to break apart the family structure and replace it with government control.  Students are taught they have no right to their mind, their body, their time.  They have only what those in authority tell them, or “give” them.  This indoctrination begins in school, where both parents and children are led to believe that some authority always knows what is best.  If you are blind to what your rights are, then it is far too eas ..read more

I have two kids at home. And, as I witness just how different they are in their interests and in how they interact with the world, I find myself appreciating our unschooling lifestyle even more. They are free to choose how they will spend their time. They are free to follow their interests in whatever direction it takes them, without any preconceived expectations of what they might or might not learn. The result is a lifestyle where there is no distinction between living and learning. Their natural curiosity drives them to seek out experiences to satisfy that curiosity. And, because they ar ..read more