Pam Laricchia's Blog, page 51

Playing With Money

Money is still a rather taboo subject, even in families. But it’s another area of life skills that everyone can learn more about by digging in instead. I spent time doing my own work—asking myself “why” and “what if” questions, exploring my fear and reluctance, understanding my own goals—so that I could feel comfortable being open about money with my children. I still do as I discover new pockets of old thoughts.

So how might we explore money with them?

When the kids are young, play games together that involve money. Many video games have a currency component, and there are classic board games, like Monopoly and Life, and their digital counterparts. When they’re interested, help them open up a bank account. Log into it online with them, regularly. After they use their bank card, log in again. As they get older, balance your bank account and pay your bills when they’re around. Chat about the family budget. Ask for their input on what the next home improvement project might be. Over the years so many money-related topics nudge our lives.

Beyond understanding how money flows through our lives, understanding our personal spending habits is also a great life skill to develop. To help my children explore the area of money management, it made a lot of sense to me to give them some money to manage. For us, that was usually through an allowance.

Some parents are tempted to tie their children’s allowance to chores, likening it to work and salary, and using it as a tool of coercion, “If you don’t finish your chores by Sunday night you won’t be getting your allowance this week.” But in our case the main purpose wasn’t to coerce our children to do work around the house (I talked about chores a couple weeks ago), it was to help them learn about the world of money and spending. Be careful if you do choose to link the two. You may end up withholding their allowance so often they don’t get much of a chance to explore. In that case, the odd time they do get it, there’s a good chance they’ll be so annoyed about the chores that they spend their money in reaction to that feeling, specifically purchasing things they know you won’t like, looking to annoy you in return—there’s no real learning about money in that situation. What they’re learning in that power struggle is something else entirely.

That’s not say don’t offer to pay them to do some tasks around the house that need doing, say, those you don’t have the time to do at the moment so you’re happy to pay someone to do them, from a cleaning service to a handyman to an eager child. Just don’t hold the money hostage: make the offer, and if they choose to do the job, pay them. A simple transaction. “Thanks!” It’s a great way for them to earn extra money, especially if they’re saving for something in particular, and for you to get some additional stuff done around the house.

So, I wanted my children to have a basic amount of money to play with. Remember, the best learning feels like play. What next? Interestingly, having their own money helps remove you from the equation when they want to purchase something. That means they aren’t always asking you if they can have something—casting you in the role of judge, pronouncing verdicts of “yes” or “no”. They have the control and the choice—they do the real thinking. And the real learning.

If you’re going to the grocery store or the mall or the bookstore, remind them to bring their money (or their debit card). If they find something they’d like, help them figure out if they have enough money to pay for it. If they don’t, chat about the options. Help them figure out how long it would take to save up for it. If they’re close, you can talk about lending them the money now to cover the rest of the cost and then taking that amount out of their next allowance. If you have some leeway in your general budget, you could choose to say that and offer to pay the rest. There aren’t hard and fast rules—it’s about exploring money and possibilities together. You’re trying to help them reach their goals.

Sometimes parents have a hard time with their children making what they deem to be frivolous purchases. But what a great way for the kids to be able to play with the concept of cost versus satisfaction versus quality—before the cost of “toys” gets significantly higher! And when they choose to make impulse buys they are also getting the chance to see how they play out. Do they play with the toy when they get home? Are they still playing with it a couple days later? A couple weeks later? How does it feel when they spend money on one thing today, and find they don’t have enough for something they’d really like to purchase the next day? Is there a relationship between cost and quality? Which kinds of toys often break soon after they get home?

There are a wide range of stores to explore too, from commercial malls, to chain stores, to locally-owned stores, to dollar stores, to thrift stores; online stores and ebay and craigslist. There are so many opportunities for learning when they have the time and some money to make choices. The overall amount doesn’t matter much either—that’s dependent on family circumstances. What does matter is the freedom to explore. That’s where the learning is.

But don’t get caught up worrying that they need to learn everything as children. With the connected and trusting relationships developed through unschooling our children are comfortable asking questions at any age, and the most effective learning happens when the topic arises in their lives. Over the last year I’ve walked Lissy (19) through the ins and outs of Paypal, opening a bank account in another country, and tax-related forms. Together we’ve figured out how to transfer money online and we’ve chatted more in-depth about bills and savings and budgets and credit cards and credit ratings.

Money topics weave through our lives just like food and sleep do—they are an integral part of living. When topics come up, unschooling children are poised and ready to learn—just be careful not to avoid conversations. Fears about money can lead us to give vague answers and quickly change the topic. If you’re uncomfortable, examine that. If you don’t know the answer, learn alongside them! That’s the beauty of unschooling. Be open and share and explore and learn.

 

Why Choice is Key in Learning Life Skills

A few months ago in the post “Who Am I and What Makes Me Tick?“, I talked about some of the reasons behind my choice to extend our unschooling beyond academics. There I looked at the “why”; now let’s dig more into the “how”.

The unschooling lifestyle in support of learning life skills is a wonderful dance of everyday living, relationships, and choice:

The usefulness of these life skills shows up in the everyday living—eating, sleeping, taking care of our bodies, taking care of our stuff, maintaining our environment etc.




We live with others in both our family and our extended community, so relationships weave through everything.




And unschooling learning itself, academic or otherwise, boils down to choice. That is where the best learning is because that’s where the person’s thoughts are swirling, where their thinking is leading them: to make this particular choice. They know the motivation behind their choice and are interested in seeing how it plays out, whether it’s to mix the baking soda and vinegar, to use a particular strategy for a boss battle, or to stay awake to watch the rest of the movie.

This learning through the exploration of their environment is not so much about the individual choices themselves but about the process: our children experience the results and then incorporate them into their understanding of themselves and the world. And from that place of deeper understanding they make their next choice. And they gain more experience. And then they make their next choice, and so on. That’s the process of real learning—learning that is understood and remembered because it is meaningful to them.

Yet as parents, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment of each decision because often we envision that the choice they’re wanting to make now, “if we let them”, is the choice they’ll make again and again and again into adulthood. Our fear extrapolates this moment far into the future: “if I let them stay up late and sleep in, they’ll never be able to get up for a job”; “if I let them eat ice cream for breakfast, they’ll never want to eat eggs for breakfast again”; or around last week’s chore topic, “if I let them choose whether to help out around the house, they’ll never help.” (Sandra Dodd has an interesting collection of “if I let“ quotes on her website that she’s gathered over the years.)

The choices our children make today as they explore the world aren’t cast in stone moving forward. In fact, one of the interesting things they learn through making choices is that making different choices in the future doesn’t mean they were “wrong” before—maybe they have different goals now, or can see more options, or better predict an outcome. Through this process they gain experience that helps them get better at both analyzing situations and making choices that work out as anticipated more often. They learn a lot more about how the world works this way than through the process of following a rule. They also see how their preferences and goals change over time, and how their choices change accordingly; meaning they learn a lot more about how they work too.

Another interesting shift happens when our children know they are free to make their own choices. Their perspective moves from feeling like they are “getting away with something”, to honestly evaluating their environment, the circumstances in the moment, their goals, their options, and then making what they believe is their best choice in the moment. They take ownership and responsibility for their actions. Yet giving children choices doesn’t mean that the parents are out of the picture; instead of stating a rule, unschooling parents share their experience and perspective so it can be added it to the mix of information being considered.

Two areas of learning life skills often discussed are sleep and food but they boil down to the same idea: exploring living through choices. Some imagine chaos, yet our children also don’t explore in a vacuum—they live with their family and real limitations. There is a family budget for food. There are other people in the family that also want to eat—and sleep. There will be appointments to be kept and activities at certain times that they’ll want to get to. Reality. The big shift for parents is, instead of thinking in terms of limits which shut down exploration and learning, to think in terms of figuring out ways for everyone to meet their needs and goals: help them explore.

There is one bit I’d like to reiterate here from the “tick” post I linked to:

“If you do choose to move to an all-encompassing unschooling lifestyle, as with all unschooling learning, the key is when they’re interested. As their parent, you have an idea how your children tick and can make a good guess at what works for them—they’ve been communicating that information to you since they were born. Don’t overwhelm them with choices they aren’t interested in making. But when they are interested in trying things differently—like a change in their going to sleep routine, or in their eating habits, or in how tidy their room is, or whatever bit of life they are contemplating—be open to letting them explore. That’s when their interest is piqued and their learning is sparked.”

So back to helping them explore. As an example, one reason I hear pretty regularly for set bedtimes isn’t related to the children’s sleep itself, but to the at-home parent looking for a break in the evening. And that’s understandable. Yet a bedtime for the kids isn’t the only possible solution to meet that need. If the children are looking to stay up later and the at-home parent is looking for some quiet time, brainstorm some ideas to try to meet both those needs. Ask the kids for ideas too—that helps them begin to see the scope of considerations beyond themselves.

Maybe the spouse/partner can plan some focused board game time or story time with the kids while the other parent has some quiet time to read or take a walk or whatever they find relaxing and centering. And does it actually need to be in the evening? Maybe they’d enjoy getting up earlier in the morning to have some solitude and space for their projects. Or maybe the at-home parent discovers a rejuvenating activity they can do during the day and the children happily choose to join in—or decide to keep themselves otherwise occupied. Those are just a few ideas but I imagine you get the picture. Try something and if that doesn’t work out try something else.

I know it’s easy to say—”keep trying different things and see how they work out”—but not so easy to do. It is challenging to work things out with real people at cross-purposes. It does take a lot of time to talk with those involved, to do the work to understand our own needs and explain them, to see things from the perspectives of others and empathize with their needs, to brainstorm possible solutions, to try them out and see how things go, and to tweak it by doing the whole process all over again and again. And what works now may not work six months from now—people, children and adults, change.

But in my experience it’s definitely worth the effort, both in terms of the incredible amount of learning about living everyone is doing and in terms of the depth of your relationships.

The connected and trusting relationships that develop over the years are priceless.

 

Chores and an Unschooling Childhood

This month I’m going to delve into some of the lifestyle questions that come up pretty regularly as people learn about unschooling. They are also the ideas that can trip up those newer to unschooling because they are like advanced topics: the journey of unschooling into a lifestyle is more about how, after having seen how wonderfully unschooling supports your children’s more academic learning, you begin to appreciate and pursue the idea of extending that same approach to learning life skills: managing their environment, sleep, food, relationships, money, work etc.

But if you’re newer to unschooling, that doesn’t mean skip this month’s posts! I just want to give you a heads up that these ideas might not make much sense right now, or may seem rather overwhelming. If that’s the case, no worries, just let them pass on by. Maybe say “hmm” to yourself. And then make a note to come back and read them again in, say, three months, or six. You may find they make a lot more sense then.

So, having waved the “proceed with caution” flag, let’s talk about chores.

One of the basic pieces of this lifestyle puzzle surrounds the more conventional parenting attitude of “us versus them”, of adults expecting their children to believe their parents know best and do what they’re told. With unschooling, we are choosing to not mold our children into our image of a perfect child, but to help them explore and learn about themselves. For that to unfold more smoothly, it helps to imagine yourself as helping them do their work, rather than directing it; to think of everyone as a full member of the family.

That’s a good start, but I’ve also seen that used as a reason to insist children do chores: “You’re a member of this family and this is our house, so you need to do your part to keep it up.” In my experience, the big issue with this stance is that it’s the parent’s standard being used, not the child’s, so the child is understandably resistant.

Let’s dig into that a bit more. As parents, what’s our goal with the whole chore thing? Getting help to meet our living standard? It’s a fair question. Sometimes we do need help. But probably not as often as we think. I think far more often we convince ourselves that we’re asking our children to help us with the goal of teaching them life skills. But from what we already know about learning through unschooling, is teaching a good way to encourage learning?

There seemed to be a disconnect there, so I asked myself more questions. How long does it really take to learn how to clean a toilet? The real answer is, once they want to clean a toilet, less than five minutes. Or vacuum? Ditto. No matter how we rationalize it, chores are really about asking our children help us meet our own standard of living. Hmm …

And then I thought some more. Would me doing the bulk of the upkeep in our home be “spoiling” them? Letting them “get away” with something? Shouldn’t they be “taking responsibility” for our home? As I mulled that over, I eventually came to disagree. In fact, it dawned on me that choosing to do the work myself to meet my own standard of living is a good example for them of taking responsibility.

Huh? Not making them do chores is an example of responsibility? How? Because they know it’s my benchmarks of cleanliness that I’m looking to meet, not theirs. (If it was theirs, they’d be asking me to clean the bathroom. ) By doing the work myself I’m taking responsibility for fulfilling my own needs. But don’t do it in a vacuum! Appreciate your accomplishments: “Yay! I can see the kitchen table!” Share your intentions: “This weekend I want to tidy the great room.” Let them see the process in action—that’s how they learn.

What this perspective also did was release any expectations I had of others. It was surprisingly freeing! And it better fit with my long-term vision: to support my children as they explore their standards and discover the environment in which they feel most comfortable day-to-day. Real learning about themselves that will benefit them throughout their lifetime.

And without expectations, when I do ask for their help, they can truly choose to help me. Conversely, if they feel I’m expecting their help, saying yes would also mean worrying that it could be used against them in the future (“but you vacuumed last week”). If that’s the case, it’s more likely they’ll say no, even if they have the time and inclination. Without expectations, each moment is its own and everyone has a real choice.

“But the house is still messy! And I’m still frustrated!”

I’m sorry. So now let’s delve into that issue—it’s a different question.

As parents we can support our own standards in our home without imposing them on everyone else. Remember, we’re looking at all the members of our family as unique individuals of differing ages. Not only will adults and children likely have different barometers for judging their environment, the adults themselves will probably have different needs too. Maybe you like it reasonably tidy, and your partner likes it completely clutter-free. Or vice versa. Maybe your kids are indifferent. So if tidiness is an issue you and your partner are struggling with, first nail down exactly what’s bothering each of you. That’ll help you not only better explain your needs to each other, but also help you narrow in on possible solutions.

Let’s say you start with the general issue, maybe something along the lines of, “I’d like to keep the house clean.” From there you can ask yourself things like, is it really the whole house? Or mostly the family room where you spend most of your time? Or the kitchen? Or the bathrooms? Or the basement? Sure, it’d be nice if house elves kept them all tidy, but which room(s) is it that actually triggers your frustration? Is it mostly the tidiness that bothers you, like clutter? Or is it cleanliness, like dirty walls or dirty dishes? Why does it bother you? Does it trigger your mom’s voice in your head making you feel bad? What is actually “bad” about it? Or does the clutter truly make it hard for you to concentrate?

Once you’ve really nailed what is triggering your general “must keep the house clean” response, then you can dig into that. If it’s the stuff all over the place in the family room, what is that stuff specifically? Maybe all the stuff shows you that your kids are busily and happily playing and exploring: they are learning. Can you walk into the room and see the learning instead of the mess? If the main play room is the first thing you see when you walk into the house and it knocks you off your game immediately, can you maybe move the main play area somewhere else? A more out-of-the-way and rarely used dining room? The basement? Can you think of a way to make your children an awesome play space that will also keep the messes less conspicuous?

Can the current play space be reorganized so that it’s much easier for you to quickly tidy up? A wall of shelving or a set of plastic bins that makes tidying up easier, and maybe a bit more enjoyable. And don’t forget to look at things from your children’s perspectives too: would they be okay with you tidying up their stuff? Maybe what you see as messes is really a wonderful work-in-progress in their imagination and your “tidying” is more like “destroying” in their eyes (which would interfere with their learning). Ask them. Play with them and see how and when the messes grow. More information for you. If they are okay with your tidying up and you do so, are they excited to see a clean play space, a fresh canvas? They are learning about their environment. And you have given them a beautiful gift in that moment.

When you understand more about their needs surrounding play and works-in-progress and a fresh play space, and your real needs for some semblance of tidy in some area(s), it’s a great time to ask everyone for help—work together as a family to brainstorm ideas and figure out a path forward that works for everyone without resorting to control through assigned chores.

In my experience, when I’m tempted to reach for control or coercion as a tool (the conventional go-to answer), it usually means that I haven’t taken the time to understand the other person’s point-of-view (because if I had, I’d understand why they didn’t want to do it in the first place) or I am trying to get them to take care of my needs (it’s something I want, but I don’t want to do the work myself to get there).

As you talk with your family here and there about your needs (the real ones, the ones that go deeper than “keep the house clean”, which to them would seem a vague and gargantuan task) remember, you’re not trying to come up with expectations that you’ll hold them to. Show, don’t tell. If you guys decide to add shelving and bins to make tidying up easier, you’ve made it easier for those who want to tidy up to do so. Maybe that’s just you and your partner right now. And a tip: don’t be grumpy about it! Who would want to join in, or initiate, an activity that makes people grumpy and/or that others seem to avoid as long as possible?

“There are a lot of toys on the floor and I’m finding it distracting. Are you guys finished playing with these stuffed animals over here? Is it okay if I put them back in their box?” Lead by example: let them see you taking care of your needs. With that perspective and attitude, they won’t develop a sense of entitlement, an expectation that you’ll do everything for them, because they’ll know you’re not doing it for them, you’re doing it for you.

And sometime, maybe later when it’s no longer a charged issue, you’ll enjoy surprising them with a clean slate. Or they may excitedly ask you to do it, or to help them. They’ll see you as choosing to do it, not as you fulfilling an expectation of theirs. You’re helping them discover the joy of a tidy space. Which, if they do find it enjoyable, will naturally motivate them at some point to do it for themselves, to meet their own needs. Real learning.

And in my experience, once the topic is no longer a battleground, they’ll happily choose to help you out when they can too. Living and learning together.

 

 

A Positive Outlook Isn’t Turning a Blind Eye

Last week I talked about finding joy, that deeper sense of self that no longer seems quite so susceptible to the whims of life and luck. Yet, as I mentioned, it’s not that life no longer has disappointments or challenges, so I thought I’d talk a bit about when things go wrong. You know, those moments when maybe you act and react without thinking, or when things seem to go from bad to worse and worse again.

One tip I’ve found helpful over the years, which I believe I first heard from Sandra Dodd: remember these are just moments, don’t be tempted to paint your whole day as a “bad day”. Each new moment is a chance to do something differently. If you stay in that place of disappointment or frustration it colours your perspective as you move through the rest of your day: you view, act, and react through that filter. All of a sudden a handful of things not going perfectly becomes the world out to get you. (Note: the world isn’t out to get you.) So there’s a really good reason to take the time to put the frustrating moments into perspective and move forward fresh: your next moments aren’t tainted before they even happen.

I’ve tried all sorts of ways over the years to make that shift—you’ll discover it depends on the circumstances and the people involved. Play around and see what works for you and your family. I recall some mornings that were going off the rails because I seemed to be doing all the wrong things, trying to direct things more than the kids were comfortable with. Sometimes I would try to break the tension by joking about going back to bed to start over. I’m pretty sure we actually did it a couple times: we closed our eyes and pretended to sleep for a minute, then rolled over and yawned, saying good morning. And from there I’d consciously slow down and watch my kids more closely for clues, being careful to follow them this time, to be patient and see what was in their minds that seemed to be at odds with my approach that morning. Over the years, mounting frustration on my part has become a clue that it’s probably time to shift my focus away from myself.

What also helps me is to give just as much weight, if not more, to the good moments, or else the challenging moments seem to get all my attention, and fill my memories. The good moments certainly don’t need to be big and fancy … a couple nights ago I was picking up my son Michael at his dojo, and we ended up hanging around outside after class, chatting with a handful of the teens. The conversation eventually ebbed and I went to the car, thinking we’d be leaving, but a new topic must have reared its head because he didn’t follow, so I spent the next five minutes just watching them from the car. It was beautiful: chatter and smiles and laughter and hugs and spins. I took a mental picture, and spent a moment appreciating the people we have in our lives.

I could have been all, “Michael, we have to leave, I have groceries in the car and the ice cream is melting!” The thought crossed my mind, but which would have the most impact in the bigger picture: ice cream safe in the freezer or deepening friendships? In that moment fond memories were being created, strengthening his connections with the dojo and with his friends, learning more about their lives and their thoughts and laughing at their jokes. It’s not just the big, expectation-laden moments that help us figure out who we are and who we want to be—it’s in these small moments of flow and almost effortless connection where we find so much of ourselves. I’ve come to realize that noticing and appreciating these every day moments is so helpful in living joyfully. And that habit grew out of taking the time when we first came to unschooling to notice and appreciate the many small moments of learning in my children’s lives.

And another, at first seemingly unrelated, piece of the moments puzzle: learning about unschooling, thinking about the principles behind it, has helped me realize the importance of understanding myself. How could I ask myself to create a solid unschooling environment for my children if I didn’t understand myself well enough to make the day-to-day choices that better serve that longer-term goal?

One thing that grew out of that line of questioning was a deeper understanding of how I can make better choices. Turns out, a big part of that for me is having a positive outlook. In my extended family I’m kinda known for having a positive outlook—it’s a choice that I make. It’s not that I’m ignoring the challenges, turning a blind eye, but that I know I do my best thinking in a positive mindset.

When I’m doused in fear, my mind circles round and round and round—I can barely string three thoughts together, let alone make reasonable choices. When I have enough presence of mind to recognize that it’s happening, I am patient with myself as I move through it, not demanding myself to make quick decisions. I take the time I need to move through the fear reaction, to let the adrenaline surge fade a bit, to let my breathing get back to normal. Even with life-altering challenges, most often there is time for that. Not many are in-the-moment emergencies.

A positive outlook through challenges isn’t about convincing myself that the problem is really a blessing in disguise (though I don’t rule that out either—sometimes my mind just hasn’t caught up to reality yet). It’s about moving through the initial fear to a place where I see the other side. I likely don’t know what it looks like, or how I’m going to get there, but I see a point in the distance to shoot for: I have shifted my perspective to the bigger picture.

From there my brain begins to unfreeze. And with that positive outlook, when everything is no longer clouded in shadow, I can see situations so much more clearly. I can start brainstorming and asking questions and thinking through possibilities. I can better analyze situations. And often it’s helped me see that many times I don’t have to actually make a decision right now, that I have time to take a step and see where it leads. And then another step, and another, gathering information and experience, which help me to eventually discover my path forward.

A bigger perspective. An understanding that life’s challenges aren’t my fault, nor is the world ganging up on me (if you find your challenges are consistently the result of your actions, it’s time for a different conversation with yourself). Moving through my initial fear reaction to see there’s life on the other side. These all help me shift to a more positive outlook in times of challenges. In that mindset, my brain works so much more effectively to explore the possibilities for moving through it. And with each experience of moving through a challenge, that deeper sense of capability, of personal power, of joy, grows.

My unschooling journey has brought so much more to my life than I first imagined it could.

Finding Joy

First, what do I mean by the word joy? Certainly it means happiness, pleasure. Most people can find happiness in response to good things that happen to them or around them. Yet when disappointing things happen, they are thrown into despair. It’s tough to be at the mercy of outside events!

What I’d like to talk about is the deeper sense of joy that I found developed alongside my growing understanding of unschooling. It’s a sense of self that no longer seems quite so susceptible to the whims of life and luck. That’s important because a joyful life is not without problems or strains or challenges. As I wrote earlier this month, “somewhere along the line it dawned on me that it’s not about figuring it all out so I can finally, from that moment on, live a happy life. This process IS a well-lived life.” A joyful life.

So I thought I’d share a few of the insights that have helped me over the years to find joy more often. This process was, and continues to be, about perspective—discovering new ways to look at life. My life experiences make me uniquely me, which is different from you, but I share because you may find them helpful to toss around as part of your journey to living joyfully with unschooling.

One helpful realization I’ve had as part of moving to unschooling has been that being right is over-rated. Growing up a “good” student, that was a hard one for me to shake! But the world really isn’t as black and white as we were led to believe. Doing something is usually better than doing nothing. When you’re exploring yourself and how you dance with the world, instead of feeling paralyzed by the search for the “right” answer, think it through and go with your gut—try it out! You know what? Even if you’re “wrong” (wrong only in the sense that you change your mind later), the quickest and most effective way to learn whether something makes sense to you is to live with it for a while and see how it plays out. Gain more life experience with it. Make choices. Learn. Incorporate your experiences and make more choices. Life is a process. And there’s nothing wrong with quitting stuff.

Another big mind-shift that played a large part in finding joy more often was to stop giving the responsibility for my happiness to others. Moving to unschooling asks us to take responsibility for more and more pieces of our lives, to shift from doing what is expected of us, to making our own choices. Once I took ownership of my own happiness I stopped looking for it outside of myself. Looking inside is where it’s under my control, where I can make choices and take action. Instead of being at the mercy of things happening around me, instead of my emotions and mood being mostly a response to outside influences, I began choosing how I felt.

At first I worried that it this might put distance between myself and others but, playing around with it, the really interesting thing I discovered was that just because I didn’t take on others’ emotions, didn’t mean I ignored them. In fact, it turned out that I could sit more comfortably with them. Taking them on myself had been adding another layer, or filter, through which I saw the situation. When I stopped doing that, I found I could see their perspective of the situation more clearly and easily: I had more empathy, not less.

A third insight that grew from my shift to unschooling was an accompanying shift in my time-frame. As I changed my perspective on learning from compulsory school years to lifelong learning, I also began looking beyond the immediate impact of moments to the bigger picture. I could be in the moment, and realize that in the grand scheme of things, most things aren’t as dire as they may appear. My perspective shifted. I found I could be more present with both happiness and disappointment in those moments, but they no longer took me on an internal roller coaster ride because I didn’t equate the longer-term deep sense of joy I felt inside with the emotions of the moments I was in.

Another really helpful realization grew out of that shift to a longer-term perspective: I will always be learning. This always hits home when I look back at myself five and ten years earlier. I see how my understanding of things has changed and grown, yet I also refuse to think of my younger selves as “wrong”—I was doing my best at the time, thinking and evaluating and making the best choices I could in the moment.

Projecting that forward, I also realize that in ten years I may well look back at my perspective now and see it as inexperienced and incomplete: “If I knew then what I know now.” But we don’t. And we won’t. And angst and fear about the future that I let wreak havoc in the present only clouds my judgment. Instead, I choose to be kind to present-day me and to look forward with wonder, anticipating the experiences that will help me discover new things about the world, about me, about my family, and how we will swirl through life in the years ahead.

So as I continue exploring who I am, comfortable with the idea that I will always be learning, I only ask that I stay true to myself and do my best in each moment. That I continue walking towards the person I want to be. And my journey to unschooling has played a huge role in getting me to a place where I am comfortable with the person I am and with the idea that I will continue to learn and grow and change. And that’s a joyful place to be.

 

 

Mindfulness and Unschooling

I love the variety of words that express the concept of being mindful: observant, aware, attentive, conscientious, careful, cognizant, considerate, present, respectful, thoughtful, sensible.

Living mindfully is another skill that I picked up as I played with creating a solid unschooling environment in our home. Being mindful walks hand-in-hand with unschooling because they both call us to be observant and make conscious choices, see how they play out, and incorporate those experiences into our lives moving forward. It’s how we learn, regardless of age—from learning to walk to figuring out games to discerning our sleep patterns to improving our communication skills to choosing work. So much of unschooling is about being aware of our environment, ourselves, the people in our lives, and the ways they all swirl together.

Unschooling asks us to become more aware of our filters so we might notice more quickly when they are clouding our vision. This also helps us see situations more clearly from our children’s perspective and better understand their actions and reactions. When we meet them where they are we can more effectively support them as they explore and learn about the world.

Being attentive to the present moment helps us see not only the bigger actions playing out in front of us, but the smaller ones too. A fleeting smile of understanding on our child’s face. A quick tensing of our partner’s shoulders. A short burst of giggles from a nearby room. A momentary feeling of unease as our child attempts something for the first time. These are subtle yet important clues about our experiences. They don’t necessarily demand any action on our part, but we’ll do well to add them to our collection of observations, small puzzle pieces that may one day become part of the bigger picture of our understanding of ourselves, our children, and our world.

Being alert and mindful also helps us catch the good moments, the ones that might rush past our consciousness without acknowledgment because they don’t have a direct impact on us. A child sharing a toy with their sibling, or comforting a playmate at the park. Our spouse filling up the gas tank, or playing a game with the kids. All the small moments of caring and connection that populate our days. It’s so easy to miss those moments, or dismiss them. Yet they mean so much in the bigger picture—our world is full of small acts of kindness.

Something else I’ve learned from being mindful of my thoughts and actions is to give space for being wrong. For me, being in the moment has shown me that I cannot predict the future with any significant sense of certainty. Giving up my expectations of the next moment has meant I don’t leap so quickly into moments to try to “fix” or direct them—with my kids, or with other adults. Through giving those moments more space to lead to the next moment I have learned that there are just so many more ways things can go than I can imagine. So many beautiful ideas have blossomed over the years because I stopped myself from jumping in, because I quietly asked myself, “what if?” instead of speaking. Apparently my opinions aren’t often necessary for the lives around me to unfold beautifully.

Being attentive to my thoughts and words also means that I can be selective in what I share—meaning just the really good stuff. That has allowed me to keep my two cents much more often, and I feel richer for it! That’s not to say that I actively avoid conversation—people ask my thoughts, and conversations with my kids have been known to lead to bouncing excitement as we share our thoughts and opinions about many things. But it is in those moments when people are receptive to others’ ideas: when they seek them out. When they are connected to a larger conversation.

Think about it for a moment. How much fun is it to have people tossing their opinions at you when you haven’t asked for them? Not very. Unsolicited advice? Usually annoying. Why? Because it doesn’t match where your thoughts are—it is more distracting than anything. Your best chance in being relevant and helpful to anyone, child or adult, is when you’re responding to their thoughts and questions, joining them where they are, not indiscriminately sharing every thought you have. Take that mindful moment to evaluate whether the thought that just occurred to you is worth sharing, worth the effort the listener will need to make to move from where their thoughts are currently to connect this new one you’ve shared so it makes sense in their perspective.

Another helpful reason to strive for an attentive state-of-mind is to keep an eye out for our unthinking reactions. Those voices from the past in our head, spouting edicts and judging our actions harshly, can definitely affect our mood and our actions. Or those habits we’ve formed over the years that may not be serving us as well any more. Or fear that immediately sends our pulse racing and words tumbling out, yet we’re not sure why. Rather than let autopilot take over and responding in our habitual ways, these are moments that would be great to catch so we can re-consider the situation and choose our response to this moment based on our new perspective. What once was a knee-jerk reaction can become a choice.

What living mindfully helps us do is recognize the many choices available to us every day. If we don’t see any choices, we feel trapped. We feel like we don’t have control of our lives. Our days are an endless procession of telling ourselves we have to do this and that with no end in sight. We lash out thoughtlessly, in general frustration.

Yet when we realize that everything we do is a choice suddenly we feel free, breathing is easier, and a smile is within easy reach—even while changing our young child’s diaper for the gazillionth time. There are so many choices in there! If we take the diaper example, you could choose to not change it right now, leaving it for a while longer. What might happen? Maybe your spouse gets home soon and changes it. If not, eventually your child will probably become uncomfortable wearing it, maybe developing a rash; maybe not. Would that be frustrating for your child, and even more of a challenge for you to deal with in the end? You might choose to just wait a little while. Or you could remove the diaper and leave your child running free for a while. Maybe they’d have an accident—how hard would that to clean up versus a diaper change? Maybe you guys could play in the backyard while going diaper-free, making clean up even easier. Or maybe your child has a really messy diaper right now and outside would be an easier, and more fun, way to clean it all up: a couple buckets of warm, soapy water and sponges for you both to play with.

Maybe one of those options sounds perfect for the moment you’re in! Or maybe they all sound like more work right now and a regular-ol’ quickie diaper change sounds right. But now it’s not being foisted upon you and out of your control—you’re choosing the circumstances of the diaper change. And now there are even more choices. In this moment, would it be easier to take your child to your regular changing spot or to grab the essentials and bring them to your child?

For me, taking a moment to realize I have many options, even with the most mundane activities, and then mindfully choosing which one best suits the current circumstances, helps shift me out of any frustration I was initially feeling because now I remember the reasons why I’m making that choice. And, unsurprisingly, when I approach the diaper change (or whatever situation I initially felt trapped by) mindfully and with minimal frustration it usually goes that much more smoothly—even if my child gets frustrated in the moment I don’t react back, spiraling us deeper. When we are careful and considerate with our thoughts we see so many more options to a given situation and soon we realize we have and make a lot more choices than we often give ourselves credit for.

We control our lives; not the other way around.

Living mindfully is not only incredibly supportive of an unschooling environment, it has grown to become a wonderful perspective from which to approach my life in general. With both my actions and my relationships, with both children and adults, being fully attentive to the situation at hand, taking a moment to discover and consider the choices available, and moving forward respectfully from there, continues to bring me a level of peace and compassion that had eluded me earlier.

 

Unschooling Grows Far Beyond “Not School”

It’s pretty typical to move through adulthood staying generally disengaged from life: you do this and that and the other thing, like get a job, get married, have kids, send them to school. It’s quite easy to do—the conventional treadmill carries you along and delivers you to each stop without much effort of your part. Yet for many, there’s an inner conflict between what lives in their heart and the societal expectations in their head. Many manage to ignore it until midlife when, as children move out and things slow down, they find themselves evaluating their life so far and get tangled up in the aptly named midlife crisis. Others are drawn to examine the disconnect earlier, often following the hearts and minds of their children. No matter the path that led you to unschooling, with it you are choosing to step off the conventional treadmill. And once you’ve taken that first step it becomes harder and harder to continue down that well-worn path of convention—unschooling soon asks us to examine the deeper questions.

When we choose unschooling we likely do so with the intention of opening up the possibilities for our children, of giving them the space and the support to forge their own path through childhood. Yet as we watch them in action, often spellbound, our minds begin to stretch even more and soon we start asking that of ourselves. As unschooling parents we espouse the joy of learning, champion the idea of lifelong learning … and we begin to realize that it applies to us as well. Our perspective grows. Who am I? What is my path? What kind of parent do I want to be? It becomes apparent that even as adults we are not “done”; we can learn and change and take small steps each day towards being the person we want to become.

We see our children exploring life with zeal. We join them. They are enthusiastically vocal in celebration of even the smallest victories, and in the next moment they are struggling with frustration and deep sadness as things go awry—each experience is expressed from the depths of their soul. We begin to reawaken, to remember what it means to be so directly engaged with life. It is beautiful! And we begin to feel protective of our children, not wanting them to lose that openness, that depth of feeling, both joy and sorrow, as they get older. It begins to dawn on us that if we so eagerly want them to retain that lust for life into adulthood, if that’s what living can look like in all its glory, as adults, couldn’t we be living that too? Yes!

With that realization we are drawn to exploring ourselves, to finding that depth of engagement in life, with all its twists and turns and ups and downs. For maybe the first time we really see the value in nurturing our spirit. It stuns us. We marvel that the journey we started to fully and deeply support our children and their learning has turned so completely around and we are learning so much from them about being alive and fully engaged with life. Often we didn’t even realize we were encased in a layer of conventional goo, a dour mix of expectations and judgment and fear, until we managed to wipe some away and rediscover that the world is fresh and interesting and inspiring!

We are always learning. The learning is in the living. Looking back, I realize the biggest gift we give to our children and ourselves with unschooling is time. Time to live and to learn and to do it all again the next day, the next week, the next month. Time to cocoon, time to process, time to reflect. Time is at our disposal; it is not our master. When you first begin unschooling it can feel like such a huge leap—one day the kids are going to school and the next day they aren’t. Or they hit school age and the first day of school comes and they don’t go. It is huge! And faced with that momentous act, it’s so easy to get caught up in the idea that it must be met with equally huge goals and plans and activities.

Instead, try baby steps. Gradual, yet determined, steps toward the person you want to be in this new unschooling family paradigm. And remember to take time for reflection, for turning your thoughts and observations over in your mind, for playing with the puzzle pieces and seeing how they fit together. It is in this time of contemplation that so many connections fall into place. And don’t fret that you need swaths of alone sitting time to think—I recall many a-ha moments while doing the dishes, or in the shower, or tidying up the toys.

What else do we discover? That no matter how strongly we wish to know and understand it all right now, to have this life thing figured out—what makes us tick, what brings a smile to our face, and why fear sometimes trickles in—it is a process, a cycle. Round and round and round. As a parent, as a person, you never reach the end of learning because with each iteration through another question or challenge our children are older and more experienced, and you are older and more experienced. New things are coming into your lives and others are dropping out, all of which bring new insights. There’s always more to learn and understand—about ourselves, about others, about the world.

And somewhere along the line it dawned on me that it’s not about figuring it all out so I can finally, from that moment on, live a happy life.

This process IS a well-lived life.

 

What About College?

If you’ve been unschooling your children for any length of time, you’ve likely been asked this question. And it’s a good one! During our lifetime a college degree has been practically synonymous with getting a good job and being conventionally successful, so it’s no wonder that family and friends worry that our unconventional path may force our children to forfeit the golden egg.

And certainly we can debate the value of the conventional definition of “success”, but today let’s focus on the learning side of the college coin. In what ways can unschooling teens and young adults continue to learn? When is college a useful destination?

To this point, much of humanity’s body of knowledge has been ensconced in colleges and universities, making it the “go to” place to expand your horizons, but over the last few decades we have been witness to an incredible transition. The explosion of information, the growth of technology, and the resultant blossoming of near real-time communication between people around the globe has created an entirely new backdrop to our lives.

Society is really just beginning to embrace this exponential increase in connectedness, to wrap its head around the implications and contemplate what might be possible. A number of interesting online learning communities have been created over the last few years and they are growing and changing constantly.

For example, more and more free learning resources have been made available online, a smattering of which includes: iTunes U, Khan Academy, MIT’s OpenCourseWare, and edX, founded by Harvard and MIT, offering free courses from many universities around the world. These are wonderful resources to have access to! They are a first step in rethinking how we might support learning in this new, highly-connected world and there are definite advantages beyond the free access: the learner is in more control of both the content (they can skip around the course material) and the pace (they can move through the material at the speed that best suits them). Yet still, the focus is on bringing the typical teacher-student, curriculum-driven, learning paradigm into the online space.

Moving a step closer to a bigger-picture view of learning, TED Talks expand beyond academic topics and focus on sharing ideas for discussion and engagement. With their tagline “ideas worth spreading”, they are terrific inspiration, connecting interested learners with those passionate about their topic. With so much information available, the TED curators have created great tools, like play lists and tags, to slice and dice the data and narrow in on those ideas that speak to you.

I do love that this growth of information access seems likely to slowly, but surely, shift control of the learning process from the conventional teacher to the learner, something unschooling parents see as a key ingredient in real learning. And, in tandem, I think it will help people shift their focus and see the learning, not just the college degree. How? With more people participating in these less formal courses and learning communities, they will start showing up regularly in discussions and on resumes. We’ll see more and more people with solid knowledge and skills to use and share, gained without jumping through the typical college degree hoop. Businesses will want to find and hire them, just as colleges and universities are discovering the unique skills of homeschooled students and creating homeschooling admission policies.

Another interesting slice of the online world is focusing on all the many other ways to learn beyond college. There’s Dale Stephen’s UnCollege. From the website: “UnCollege is a social movement designed to help you hack your education. This manifesto will show you how to gain the passion, hustle, and contrarianism requisite for success — all without setting foot inside a classroom.” Granted, his target audience seems to be typical students that are looking for alternatives to the conventional college path. Experienced unschoolers likely already possess the curiosity, confidence, and grit he speaks of, yet they too may find inspiration through the blog and/or Dale’s book, Hacking Your Education, plus various in-person events.

For experienced unschoolers looking for like-minded community there’s Blake Boles’ Zero Tuition College, an “online community of self-directed learners who educate themselves without college.” There you can connect with others, including a mentoring aspect. Blake’s book, Better Than College: How To Build a Successful Life Without a Four-Year Degree, has been well-received. He also organizes an in-person gathering, Trailblazer, for self-directed learners aged 18-22+.

Or maybe learning style/unschooling or “not going to college” aren’t interests around which your teens and young adults would like to be in community. Maybe they’re more interested in continuing to gather with others, online or in person, around shared interests and passions, a mainstay of unschooling. That’s great too! People love to share their passions with others, and the internet has made gathering around interests so easy to do. Pick any interest and I’m sure you’ll find others who share it through blogs or mailing lists or forums; through Twitter or Tumblr or Facebook groups or Google+ circles. People are amazing! Not only have I learned so much about unschooling over the years, I’ve also learned incredible amounts about writing, self-publishing, online businesses, food and cooking, video games, movies and TV shows and actors, and books by my favourite authors … so many things. The web is a fantastical tool!

So what might contemplating this “what about college?” question look like in real life? I thought I’d share a snapshot of what it has looked like so far for my now nineteen year-old daughter as an example. Probably starting in earnest around age fifteen, Lissy, who had developed a deep love for photography, began exploring the possibilities for expanding her passion. Alongside her everyday exploration of photography, over the course of the next couple of years she reviewed college curricula for photography programs at institutions near and far, spoke with people in some of those programs and in the industry at large, and researched the beginning journeys of established photographers. This wasn’t a case of “you’re approaching college age so you better figure out what your next step is” but of “I’ve been immersing myself in my passion for a few years now and I want to connect in person with others as passionate as I am and expand my learning.” Note the perspective—the impetus was coming from her.

From this searching and contemplation a path forward that seemed to best mesh with her goals began to emerge and at age eighteen she chose to spend six months living in and exploring New York City to see if it met her wish for community and learning. For her, it was stellar! It fed her soul in so many of the ways she was looking for. From there we spent countless hours over the last couple months of 2012 gathering evidence and letters and all the other minutiae that make up a US artist’s visa application. During that time, in conversation with our more conventional family and friends, we likened the lawyer’s fees to college tuition—that seemed to help them make the connection that this was in support of her real learning in the world. Her application was approved for the full three years and in January 2013 she moved there. In the last year her knowledge and understanding of photography and the business world that surrounds it has grown exponentially!

Yet none of this means that college is forever out of the picture. Maybe her interests will change—one of the keys to finding joy in life is to not to feel locked into anything, to remember that whatever you do, it’s always a choice. Maybe she will encounter a program, or even just a course, that intersects with something she is looking to learn.

I think what’s important for teens, and for parents, is to see college as a tool that can be used to meet a goal; not as a goal in and of itself. College is an option on the learning platter. That’s the tack I usually take when I’m asked, just like earlier this week when an acquaintance stopped me in the grocery store and we chatted for almost a half hour, me answering his homeschooling questions, and the college question arose at one point. (He runs the venue I had used for the last few years of the Toronto Unschooling Conference. Turns out his brother had just had a child so he was looking to pass along some information. It’s fun to catch a glimpse of the ripples.)

I think it’s much less useful, and more expensive, to go to college to “figure out what you want to do in life.” Instead, when you figure out what you’d like to pursue, if there’s interesting and unique knowledge and/or community available at college, that’s when it merits serious consideration.

And if that moment comes, depending on the program, maybe your teen will need to spend some time picking up some prerequisite classes. Maybe online, or in a remedial class or two to pick up some of the skills needed (likely alongside students who did go to school and still didn’t pick them up). Maybe they’ll start at another college with minimal entrance requirements to build a student record and then transfer to the college and program of their choice. None of that means unschooling failed. Unschooling teens haven’t been doing nothing, they were busy learning other things. Other things that matter. Just because they weren’t things that could be used to check off these particular requirement boxes, doesn’t mean it was time wasted. As I mentioned in my last post, with a lifelong view of learning there is no ahead or behind, there is stuff you know and stuff you want to learn. Regardless of age. It’s life.

Have I mentioned lately that unschooling teens and young adults rock? They do!

 

What Does Lifelong Learning Look Like?

It seems helpful to talk about the concept of lifelong learning when we’re looking at the teen years because at that age the conventional push to graduate high school is incredibly strong. Conventional society has a plan for you! The implication is that mastering this first set of knowledge and skills will allow graduates to eek out a competent adult life in society. Yet marching in unison with that message is one that says if you want more, if you want to excel in life, you need to acquire the next tier of knowledge and skills, which is found at college. And then grad school. Where you choose to step off the treadmill and declare your learning “done” defines your likelihood of conventional success, as measured by their standards.

Yet with the cumulative knowledge of humanity growing at an exponential rate you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone to argue the point against lifelong learning—we all realize technology will be quite different even just ten years down the road. But to conventional society, stuck in the classroom learning paradigm of teachers and students, lifelong learning looks like continuing education classes for adults. Or maybe a stint at college as a mature student. (Funny how that age differentiator is important, isn’t it? You’re not just a regular student, you’re a mature one. You’ve taken an aberrant path.)

But which seems a more helpful way to support our teens as they move into adulthood: knowing a fixed set of information and skills targeted to the world as it sits today or knowing how to learn new things in the future?

Schools think they are teaching their students how to learn, but really they are showcasing only one of many ways to learn: in a classroom with a teacher. And with their unerring focus over the many years of compulsory education their message is clear: it is the best and only “real” way to learn. That style of learning certainly works well for some, but the majority of students are left feeling rather defeated and unintelligent. That’s a big hill to overcome in adulthood before they get to feeling comfortable and competent in their own skin.

Unschooling breathes life into the concept of lifelong learning.

Sure, the idea of lifelong learning is that learning needn’t stop after graduation. But it’s also about content too. For unschoolers, the concept of lifelong learning expands beyond conventional society’s definition of continuing to learn things as an adult so you don’t become out-of-date to mean you have your whole life to learn things. Knowledge and skills can be learned at any point in a person’s life. With that paradigm shift the importance of curriculum, of learning certain things at certain ages, just melts away. Without the artificial time line of curriculum, learning happens when it best works for the individual—not when it best works for the teacher.

So what does that look like, not being bound by a curriculum? An unschooling teen may not be able to dictate the rules of algebra on command, but their years of experience with analytical thinking puts them in great stead beside everyone else who doesn’t happen to be a math major. They may not have read fluently until they were twelve, but you can’t see any evidence of that now—in fact, in those intervening years they figured out so many other ways to learn and explore the world beyond sitting with the written word. Their creativity hasn’t taken a beating at the hands of “do it this way for full marks.” They continue to learn about and embrace the unique person they are. As teens and young adults they are incredibly interesting people to be around!

That curriculum, that fixed set of information that society assumes will launch teens successfully into the adult world, has been created with a typical person in mind. Living interesting lives and learning all they bump into in pursuit of their goals has, in essence, creates a wonderfully personalized curriculum that fits like a glove.

Why does it matter whose idea it is to learn something? Because when someone else is trying to get you to learn something, learning is hard. Your mind gropes for a connection to help this random piece of information make sense in your world. If it doesn’t click into place, you have to stuff it into your brain anyway, floating random bits of information that you hope will stay accessible until the test. That is hard. Much harder than when you are truly interested in something. In that case your mind is engaged, your existing knowledge bubbling to the surface, your brain excited to connect each new piece of information you encounter to build a bigger picture of understanding on that topic.

Unschoolers also value understanding how they learn, not just what they learn. That doesn’t mean tossing the classroom and teacher method entirely, it means placing it as one of the many options on the learning platter, no better or worse than any other options, except to the individual learner. Unschoolers have spent years figuring out how they best learn. And experiencing how that changes over time, and why. This focus on exploring the process of learning gives teens terrific skills to take with them into adulthood. When they want to learn something they aren’t at the mercy of others, waiting for the next continuing ed course to start; or worse, waiting for one to be developed. They aren’t waiting for permission. They seek out others around the world who already have knowledge and experience with the topic. You’ll find them reading blogs, joining forums, meeting up with others locally: expanding their knowledge and understanding. They are in charge of their learning.

Let’s try to sum this up. With unschooling, the act of learning is easier because the learner is interested. Learning is the byproduct of pursuing a goal, not the goal itself. Unschoolers aren’t asking, “why do I need to know this?” because an interest has led them there in the first place. Unschoolers understand that people—children, teens, and adults—can learn things when they encounter a need for them; we gain enough experience through the years to trust that our learning can safely be driven by our own experiences in the world, instead of by the time line of someone else’s generic curriculum.

I think one of the hardest things to grasp for those new to the idea of unschooling is that when we are in control of our lives, we WANT to learn. Learning is not something that we need to be forced to do. Learning is not hard and to be avoided whenever possible. Learning is FUN and an integral part of living, part of life. Learning is ”lifelong learning”. We don’t need the modifier, it’s implicit.

Five Unconventional Ideas About Relationships With Teens

One of the biggest fears I see mentioned over and over by parents is that their teens will make the same mistakes they did growing up. Parents of teens have, at this point in their lives, gained a certain perspective and feel pretty confident about the thread of actions and consequences that wove through their own teen years. Even beyond that, many imagine that if they could go back and do it all again knowing what they know now, they’d do a better job of it. Mired in what they see as the perfect vision of hindsight, their mind starts each flashback with “if only …” “If only I’d hung out with a different crowd, I would have made better connections.” “If only I hadn’t wasted my time, I could have made more money at my job.” “If only I had studied harder, I could have gotten into a better college.” These are simplistic appraisals, but given what they see as a second chance, parents are confident they can engineer a better outcome for their teen, “if only they would listen to me.” (There it is again!)

We could dig deeper and wonder why as adults we are often drawn to tell the negative interpretation of the story of our lives. Maybe it has to do with the pessimistic view of their lives many were handed by their parents? (Though it’s helpful to ask ourselves if we really want to hand that tendency to our children.) Why are we drawn to tell people all that is wrong with what we see rather than acknowledge much that is right? Does it make us feel better, smarter? It’s fascinating stuff but let’s save that rabbit hole for another day. I just wanted to plant that seed. Today let’s keep our focus on ways we can support our teens and help them write a different story—their own story. Not a shadow of ours.

Back to the rather cynical “if only” recollections. Although I am suggesting that we as parents try to avoid projecting our personal experiences too deeply onto our teens, I don’t mean to imply that we keep our thoughts to ourselves and leave them to figure out the world on their own. Far from it! Parents have experience and wisdom to share that can be very helpful. Yet to be truly helpful, it’s important that our teens receive it in the “no strings attached” spirit we intend, or else our motivation is suspect and the information understandably discounted. So the atmosphere of communication is important—the relationship.

Conventionally, relationships with teens are painted as either/or: either you focus on maintaining authority (tough love) or you avoid challenges altogether (let them run wild). Yet unschooling families have found the beauty of living inside the spectrum of those extremes. We continue to cultivate the strong and connected relationships we have built with our children over the years—it’s a relationship paradigm that serves us well no matter our children’s age. Let’s look at some of the ways unschooling parents view relationships differently and what that can look like in the teen years. Notice how they all boil down to how we relate to them: as people, not possessions.

1. We drop the expectations

Unschoolers don’t share their experiences or perspective with the expectation that their teens will reach the exact same conclusions. That’s hard, isn’t it? We know what we know! To us—for us—our experiences are fact.

For me, it’s a kind of philosophical detachment. Not a detachment as in disengagement, but in appreciation of their individuality. Almost paradoxically, when I’m not living my life through them, I feel even closer to them, because it’s not about me—their life is theirs to live—so I can detach from the outcome and drop my expectations. They are not younger versions of me but unique beings in their own right. So though the experiences I share may be helpful to them, useful pieces to the puzzle of their life, I don’t expect my stories to mean the same things to them: we are each building different puzzles.

2. We realize that the circumstances of their lives are different than ours

Speaking of different puzzles, take a moment to realize just how different their childhood has been from our own. The pace of change has been accelerating at breakneck speed over our lifetimes. This is a new thing! Comparatively, the pace of change from one generation to the next even just a few decades ago was almost negligible. What an interesting time in human history to be living! But it also means that the passing down of generational experience is more about bigger picture human issues, like empathy and morality, than any day-to-day advice to “do this and get that outcome”. The nuts and bolts of our stories are often no longer applicable because the world is changing so rapidly.

For example, even mainstream society is starting to question the typical counsel to “go to college and get a good job at a big company.” That was the conventional definition of success in the industrial age, and even deeply into the information age, but we are swiftly moving beyond that now. That advice, so adamantly passed on to us by our parents, has become hopelessly out-of-date as our teens move into the adult world.

3. We don’t presume we know better than they how they experience their lives

This can be a hard one too. We have more life experience. We remember a time when they were young children and totally dependent on us and we came through for them—here they are! Yet we can also acknowledge that we don’t always know what they are thinking and feeling, how they are experiencing and interpreting the day-to-day moments of their lives. Sure, maybe we really enjoyed camping at the lake as a family over the last long weekend, but that doesn’t mean they did. And they are not “wrong” to have disliked it. Different personalities and outlooks are just that: different, not wrong.

As I said, none of this is intended to suggest disengagement—that we don’t share our experiences, or that we leave them alone to figure out their own lives. What I hope people get out of this discussion is inspiration to listen to teens: they have intelligent information and insights about their own lives to share! Don’t discount what they say just because it’s different from your thoughts and perspective. Again, it’s different, not wrong. Instead, if you try to connect what they’re saying with what you already know, you just might create a bigger picture of the world for yourself. You’re learning too. Which leads to …

4. We don’t assume that, as parents, we’re always right

This seems to be at the crux of so much parent-teen conflict. At some point, teens are ready for more responsibility, more independence, more freedom. Yet so often parents are determined to keep them in that conventional childhood box as long as possible, the box where parents are right and their children need to do what they’re told.

With this new perspective—that their childhood environment is radically different than ours, that they are experiencing life in their own unique ways, and that our expectations are entangled with our life experiences—it is presumptuous of us to believe that our worldview will fit neatly into their lives. What was right for us (or what we imagine would have been right for us), may not be right for them.

Which leads us back to where we started:

5. Teens are people too

Just because they are our children, they are not our possessions. They are people. And just because they are our progeny, doesn’t mean we intimately understand them. We need to get to know them. And be open so that they get to know us. Build lasting relationships. And from there we have lasting impact on each others’ lives. My kids have inspired me countless times! I have learned things from them that have made me a better person. We continue to learn from each other.

From childhood, through the teen years, and beyond, everyone wins with strong, connected, respectful relationships.