Pam Laricchia's Blog, page 6

Redefining Success and Parent-Child Relationships

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a conversation I had recently for the Self Directed Podcast with Jesper and Cecilie Conrad.

It was such an invigorating conversation that I asked if we could share it here as well and they graciously agreed. We dive into the art of fostering strong, respectful, and trusting parent-child relationships, redefining success, and experiential learning—basically, cultivating the space for our children to learn through their interests and experiences, while having conversations about it all with someone who loves them deeply.

I hope you enjoy our conversation!

And if you’d like to bring more thoughtful and engaging conversation about unschooling into your days, I invite you to join me, Anna, and Erika in The Living Joyfully Network.

This month, we’re talking about Finding Our Groove and it’s been really fun and interesting to dive into. In this week’s focus call, I shared three aspects of the idea of finding our groove that I see.

One is exploring my own groove, which means learning about myself as a person: how I’m wired, my fears, my motivations, my sensitivities, my interests, how I like to engage with things, and so on—both embracing them with compassion and sometimes choosing to play with the edges of my comfort zones.

Second is helping my kids and partner find their grooves: people are different and their grooves are going to look different than mine—how they’re wired, their fears, their motivations, their sensitivities, their interests, how they like to engage with things etc.

When we try to see things through their eyes and help them pursue the things they want to do in the ways they want to do them, we help them learn more about themselves and, in turn, we learn more about them.

And the third aspect is weaving all these grooves together into the bigger picture of life as a family: we can find where our grooves connect and resonate. Maybe it’s a shared interest or a shared feeling of excitement around our passions. There’s something energizing about finding our grooves and weaving them together—we resonate at a higher level.

Gaining a deeper understanding about ourselves is a big part of this journey and something we talk a lot about in the Network. It’s a welcoming and encouraging space where you can explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and cultivate strong and connected relationships with their children.

Join us in the Network here!

* * *

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Check out the Self Directed Podcast with Cecilie and Jesper Conrad.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

EU353: Unschooling “Rules”: Unschooling is Child-Led

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a new episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series.

We use the word “rules” in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade—or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, for inquiry, for agency, and for growth.

In this episode, we’re diving into the “rule” that unschooling is “child-led.” We dig into some vocabulary to figure out why neither “child-led” nor “parent-led” are really what unschooling is about for us. We also talk about the idea of “unparenting” that can come up sometimes in unschooling conversations. And we explore what living and learning can look like outside of the control and power-over paradigm.

We had a lot of fun diving into this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTIONED ON THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop

The Living Joyfully Podcast

The Living Joyfully Network

EU148: The Value of Relationships for Learning

EU229: From Control to Connection

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Finding Our Groove, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of parenting and living.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Welcome! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and this is episode number 353 of the podcast.

I’m joined by my cohosts, Pam Laricchia and Anna Brown. Hi to you both!

PAM AND ANNA: Hello!

ERIKA: We’re back with another Unschooling “Rules” episode.

But before we dive into that, I just wanted to invite you to visit our website, livingjoyfully.ca. There you’ll find a wealth of information in our podcast archives for both this podcast as well as the Living Joyfully Podcast, blog posts and articles, links to Pam’s wonderful books about unschooling, as well as more details about coaching, courses, the Childhood Redefined Unschooling Online Summit, and our online community, the Living Joyfully Network.

You can also join our email newsletter list and contact us through our website form. There’s so much to explore. To check it out, visit livingjoyfully.ca.

And now I just want to remind everyone that with this Unschooling “Rules” series, we use the word rules in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule.

It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new. But we want to offer you space to look within to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody’s going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, inquiry, agency, and growth. So, Pam, would you like to get us started with our unschooling rule?

PAM: Absolutely. Thanks so much, Erika.

So, with this episode, we want to dive into a phrase that has been used pretty regularly over the years to describe unschooling, and that’s child-led learning. And while I get the idea behind it, if parents take it on as an unschooling rule and just run with it, it can lead to all sorts of misunderstandings.

So, to dig into how that can happen, let’s start with the idea behind it. Why “child-led?” And I think it can be a quick and effective way to describe the important paradigm shift away from learning and life as being adult-led.

Conventionally, kids are expected to follow the adults’ lead, right? Parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches. Adults know best and kids are expected to do what they’re told. The adults lead and the kids follow. With unschooling, we are shifting that power dynamic from being adult-led to being shared amongst the people in our lives, particularly our family.

But for many of us, adult-led is all we’ve ever known. As kids, we grew up enmeshed in that lens and felt pretty powerless until we became adults finally getting the power to control our days.

As we begin our journey, using the phrase “child-led” to describe unschooling reminds us to use this very different lens as we go about our days. And I think the metaphor of a pendulum to describe the journey through big paradigm shifts in general is pretty spot on. In our society, life is almost exclusively adult-led. The adults have the power. So, to break away from that paradigm and explore other possibilities, swinging that pendulum all the way to the other side to child led can be super informative. It encourages us to look at our days through a completely new lens.

What does life look like through the child’s eyes? If I don’t step in immediately to direct them (adult-led), what do they choose to do? Who are they as a whole human being?

And it is in this season that we practically discover a whole new world. I get goosebumps now just remembering that transition going, wow, we see children learning so beautifully without a curriculum. We see them making choices that make a ton of sense when we see them through their eyes. We come to recognize how truly capable they are. Our trust in them as a human being, navigating their world, grows, as does our trust in the process of unschooling. I think it really is quite amazing.

Yet, if people stay at that far opposite swing of the pendulum, adopting the idea of child-led as a rule to be followed forever or they’re not unschooling well, things can definitely get challenging.

ERIKA: Right. I do think that this rule is kind of the result of making that big paradigm shift. We can have so many a-ha moments when we start to step away from the adult-led norm. So, it’s like, wait a minute, kids do know things. And then remembering our experience as children and how we really could have had and wanted to have agency over our own lives. And so, once we start questioning that, it could feel like, yes! I want to free my children from that control. So now, they’re in charge, but it’s that pendulum swing, like you were saying. The term child led is helpful because it makes people think and it feels closer to what we’re doing in unschooling.

In the majority of schools, learning is completely directed by adults, and in unschooling, children are following their own interests, and so maybe it feels like they’re leading the way, but I think it can get confusing if we use that term to mean that we don’t have an influence as parents or that we’re not in the picture at all. The reality of unschooling can be so much richer and it doesn’t need to have the parent or the child as the leader.

ANNA: Right. And I’m so glad we’re talking about this one, because child-led, well, it kind of sounds nice, especially if you’re an advocate for children. But in practice, I think a lot is lost in translation. And like you both were saying, I think it does help people who are just starting out to wrap their heads around children not being told how and what to learn, to think about what it can look like to follow interest and how learning can look so different from the school model.

But yes, with any pendulum swing, it’s helpful to watch for it and to find a more settled spot that allows for nuance and connection. And I’ve heard people say that unschooling is the lazy way out, and I feel like this is kind of somehow related, because the vision of children just doing anything unchecked, the parent need not be involved at all. But, for me, nothing could be further from the reality of unschooling. I think it’s actually the opposite, because I definitely had moments where I was like, gosh, if I could just like plop them down with a worksheet at the table, that would be a whole lot easier. But instead, I needed to be fully engaged, listening, anticipating, connecting.

That intentionality allowed me to understand them and jump off from their interests and introduce new things to their world. And it was that interplay between all of us in the family that created the rich environment. And I think where it gets sticky is when parents get confused about their role and what that looks like, how to facilitate and be engaged without control and instead, they move to a hands-off approach thinking that’s what child-led means.

PAM: Yes, yes.

In my mind, I see a well-meaning parent sitting on top of the bob, the weight at the end of the pendulum, one hand holding the end of the string and the other hand reaching out and holding onto a children’s metal dome climbing structure. You can see tension starting to unfold across their face as it gets harder and harder to hold onto that bright yellow metal bar as gravity begins to pull the weight back down.

And if they’ve adopted the idea of “child-led” as a forever unschooling rule rather than a useful tool for a season, they are going to be hanging on for dear life, because that’s what a good unschooling parent does in their mind. And we all want that “A” still. That’s part of this whole process, as well.

To explore this tension, as Anna mentioned, let’s dive into the role of an unschooling parent. As I mentioned earlier, using the lens of child-led as we begin our unschooling journey can be so enlightening! And if the only way we know at first to interact with our kids is through telling them what to do or leaping into that teachable moment, sitting on our hands for a bit can be helpful both to give them some space to follow their interests unencumbered by our judgment, and so that we get the chance to see them in action. There’s a good chance they haven’t had a lot of space to just follow what they’re interested in in the way that is interesting to them and to be able to just change it up along the way.

But again, as the action of a pendulum so beautifully describes, we don’t want to stay there too long, because unschooling isn’t hands-off when it comes to learning. Our children’s rich learning absolutely includes engaging with us, their parents. In fact, strong relationships with our children are essential for unschooling and learning to thrive.

I think John Holt describes this so eloquently. John Holt was a classroom teacher and school reformer for many years before he eventually concluded that school and learning were never going to be a good fit. At that point, he became a fierce advocate for homeschooling, actually coining the term, “unschooling.”

But in his book, Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children, he talks about what children need growing up. He explains that children “need love, stability, consistent and unequivocal care and lasting relationships with people who are profoundly enough interested in them to look after them with warmth, gaiety, and patience.”

That was beautiful. And he packs so many important points about how the lives of parents and children weave together into this one sentence!

If you’re curious to follow that thread a bit more, I wrote a whole talk about the value of relationships for learning, exploring why connected and trusting relationships with our children lie at the heart of their learning. And in it, I dive deeper into that quote. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the episode on the website where you can read the transcript, or in your podcast player, you can listen to it in episode 148.

So, that’s definitely one of the misunderstandings that can happen when parents take on the idea of “child-led” as an ongoing rule of unschooling. By inference, they see their role as being hands-off, expecting the child to discover things on their own and waiting for them to ask for supplies or support. You’re just sitting back waiting, excited. “Oh, I can’t wait to see what they’re just going to do,” when really, unschooling is incredibly hands-on.

ERIKA: Yeah, exactly. And I love that quote from John Holt, too. People learn in relationship to others, they learn with and from others. And so, focusing on the relationships we have with our children is just so valuable.

I think it can be tricky to go from one model that we’re so familiar with of the teacher and the students, controlling parents and adults over the children to this new model. And I feel like it’s like you’ve mentioned so many times over the years, Pam, that sort of vacuum that can be left of like, what are we replacing this model with? If I’m not in charge and directing and assigning and creating these teachable moments for my kids, then what is my role? And I think at first it can seem like maybe my role is just to get out of the way and be totally hands off and just not participate.

But life is so much richer when we can actively participate in life with our kids without control and directing. And as adults, we have access to knowledge and memories and resources that our kids don’t have. And so, we can use our money and our time and our knowledge and our insights to help bring more into their lives. And the difference to me is that I’m participating in their lives without putting expectations on them of what they should be learning or what they should be interested in. So, I can suggest ideas that they would have never known about and bring new activities into their lives. It’s actually one of the most exciting parts about our lives, that they can bring new ideas to me and I can do the same for them. We’re all learning more about ourselves and about each other in our relationships and more about the world, but all in our own unique ways and styles. 

ANNA: And I think the richest environment has engaged adults, sharing and connecting. Our kids want to be connected to us. They want to feel heard and seen. And in that, we learn more about each other.

We see the myriad of different ways learning happens for each family member. We learn about different areas and opportunities for being in a family that’s connected and sharing passions from all the angles. One’s interest in photography could spark an interest in costume making for another. A favorite movie could lead to wanting to know more about that location for one, the act of movie making for another.

It’s in the connection and the conversations that we’d learn and start to create our own personal webs of learning.

Sitting back and waiting for a child to lead, I think can be confusing for everyone. There will be some kids who will have a really strong idea of what they want and how they want to get there, but it’s more common for kids to not be sure. To be curious, yeah. But not to maybe have a strictly defined interest. Sometimes we have young multipotentialites who like to dabble and have diverse interests, and how great to have a parent facilitating that, introducing and engaging without agenda. We don’t know what we don’t know. So, finding ways to expand that world is fun for all of us.

And that can be done in ways that suit the actual child or children that you have. That doesn’t need to mean mandatory museum visits and pushing our kids outside of their comfort zone because we think this is good for them. But it may mean noticing an interest in space and sharing what you know, and finding some resources or activities and seeing if they spark an interest. And they may not. And so then it’s on us to not take that personally.

We don’t want to jump on a passing comment and have them signed up for a series of classes, recognizing that so much can happen, learning can happen, just in a conversation, but I needed to be there and listen and be open to having the conversations in the first place.

What you’ll find is the more you know your child, the more trust you build, and the more interesting the conversations you can have are, and the better chance you’ll have of finding new things that you can bring into your lives.

I think another big part of this is being a person that’s curious about the world ourselves. What do I love? How can I bring those things into our space that excite me? How do I engage in the world around these interests that I have? Being an interested and curious person helps everyone in the family as they’re figuring out what lights them up and just shows a pathway to that different style of learning, because like you said, Erika, we can all be kind of stuck in the sitting in the desk with the authority figure upfront telling us what to do. So, it was a learning process for me as well.

PAM: And I think as you had mentioned, I think it was you, Erika, as well, that vacuum that we leave when it’s like, oh, I’m not directing. What do I do with myself? What do I do with my time? And absolutely, as you’re saying, Anna, finding my own interests, diving into them is definitely something that you can do in that space that’s now opened up.

If I’m not looking for teachable moments, if I am having these conversations with them, but not trying to direct them. Not trying to jump in the minute I hear dance or soccer, ah, let’s sign you up. Those conversations help us find the little bit that of soccer that’s interesting to them. Maybe it’s not literally wanting to play. Maybe it’s a location thing, a history thing. Maybe it’s something in a book that they’re reading or a game that they’re playing. And one of the characters was really into soccer and they found that interesting, so they’re just learning a little bit more about it. Doesn’t mean that they want to play yet.

But yeah, so one of the things we can do, and as you said Anna, it’s a great example for just how any human being can get interested in things and jump in and that’s part of that shift that brings both adults and children into the equal footing of unschooling. We’re all following our interests and learning new things and sharing things with each other.

I remember it was just so exciting when our kids come and share something that they’re interested in and it widened my world. So, it’s just widening our world. It doesn’t mean that we need to all of a sudden go do all the things. We don’t need to go hit all the museums and do all these field trips, because opening up the world doesn’t literally mean we need to make it wider. It doesn’t need to be more things. It’s whatever the thing is they’re interested in now. Because we are not following that curriculum that tells us, they’re this age, so we should be talking about this thing. We can talk about it when they’re interested in it.

And now we’re gonna take this a step wider, because unschooling isn’t hands off when it comes to parenting in general, either. So, we’ve been talking a lot about learning, but let’s widen that up. So, again, using the child-led lens as an ongoing rule, can lead us to presume that kids need to figure things out on their own in general, including how to care for themselves, how to be in relationships with others, with both family and friends, and how to navigate their world. There’s just so much stuff that we might be expecting them to figure out on their own if we stay with that child-led lens.

As parents, we want to be in relationship with our kids. We can validate their feelings and help them process their experiences so they can bring that understanding forward with them.

We can explore the context and circumstances of situations with them, so they start to see the bigger picture of things. We can brainstorm ideas with them as they contemplate how they want to move through a challenge, whether it’s learning-related, relationship-related, all the pieces of life. And we can do all that without judgment or expectations, without directing them. That’s the important piece. Without the expectation that, we mention there’s a soccer league, but we don’t expect that they’re going to go, “Yay! Thanks for signing me up!” They may, but like zero expectations.

So, instead, we’re supporting their learning about themselves and the world. Together, we’re navigating everyone’s needs, children and adults alike.

In unschooling circles, that hands-off approach to parenting, I think you’ll see that it’s often dubbed or, or spoken about as unparenting. Because it really does leave the child’s a flounder without help from their parents to recognize and incorporate the perspectives and needs of others, without someone to help them process their experiences and to chat about different approaches and tools they might want to try as they encounter challenges in their day. Not to mention fascinating conversations around the many ways in which people are fundamentally different from one another.

So, going back to our metaphor, I think what we’re aiming for is the pendulum to kind of settle into an equilibrium, without big swings either way, where neither adults nor children hold an ongoing power advantage. Now that said, keeping the pendulum still isn’t the goal either, because life happens and it may sway this way in that, but that’s based on the needs of the individual and the unique family members. So, if one member of the family, child or adult, is going through a challenging time, it’s natural that more of the family’s focus and energy leans in that direction to support them during that season.

The power of the family is gifted to each person as needed. We’re a team that helps each other out regardless of age. It’s not adult-led or child-led, and there is nothing hands-off about it. We are in strong and connected relationships with each other. 

ERIKA: Yeah. I love that. And right, there’s so much to learn about the world and the cultural norms and relationships and all these things, and kids can pick up on and figure out so many things on their own, but if they also have an adult there who’s open to helping them learn without judgment, it’s just such an amazing asset.

And it’s so much fun to have those deep conversations with my kids or just to help them talk through misunderstandings with their friends or try to figure out what it is at the bottom, what’s bothering them, what is the need that’s not being met? And if I continue to be a trustworthy source of information and perspective and I validate their experience and their emotions, they keep coming back to share and to work through things with me. And I really value that so much.

I think with the unparenting, more hands-off approach, it’s kind of like the “always say yes” rule that we talked about months ago. Rather than sharing the context of a situation or helping my child think through this thing that they’re wanting to do, I could just offer a blanket yes and no support. And then I really do think it’s setting them up to having misunderstandings with others or some other type of upset later.

And so, if instead I’m supporting them and giving them information about what it is they want to do, then they get the benefit of my experience and perspective, and they know that I’m there for them and we can figure out a path forward that can work for everyone. And so, when I’m thinking about the learning versus the parenting, I guess when I think of learning in my family, I think of it rather than adult-led or child-led, I think of it as excitement-based or interest-based. And then with parenting, rather than thinking of it as, parents are in charge or children are in charge, I think of the four of us as a family team, where all of the people and all of the needs matter. It’s not adults in charge or kids in charge, and it’s just a different paradigm and a different way of looking at the roles and the relationships, and it just feels really good to me.

ANNA: Yes, and that was the thing for me too. Like it just felt better. I liked that feeling. There’s four of us and my family as well, and just how beautiful it was to just hear one another and to figure things out. And it just had such a better feel to me than whenever I got caught in that kind of control paradigm, which did not feel great.

And I am really glad we’re touching on unparenting, because it is something that you can see in unschooling circles at times, and I think it can come from a lot of different places. I think parents can find themselves doing a lot of deep work when they start unschooling. And sometimes that takes them out of the moment and they’re really in their head, thinking about their own childhood and the baggage and the triggers and the things, and it’s all of these pieces, but it’s disconnected from the kids who are then out there doing their thing.

I think others can have an independence agenda. “I want you to figure it out and do it yourself,” and either of those things and others can lead to this more hands-off approach that leaves kids not really knowing how to navigate some environments or how to find what they need.

And I’m just all about information. I think that kids want to understand the broader world and how to fit into it. But, for me, that’s not about conformity, but it’s just about information. Just understanding different pieces. How do our actions impact others? What certain environments, what expectations are there? What’s happening in these different cultures of different ideas about things? With information, they can make an informed decision about how they want to proceed. Is it the right environment for them at this moment? Maybe it isn’t. What can they expect if they do go down that path or attend that event or go to that certain place?

We don’t have all the answers, but our experience is valuable and as long as I’m sharing it with the caveat of, well, this is what I saw, this is what worked for me, and trusting that they will find their own path, then both of us can feel good and stay connected as we move through those pieces.

ERIKA: Going back to the idea of sharing our own interests and passions with them as part of what we can do, I feel like that’s related to what you were just talking about, where it’s like, in the control paradigm, I might hear them say, I’m interested in this. And then I say, oh, well you know what you should do is blah, blah, blah. But in this new paradigm, I can say, oh wow. Well, when I was a kid, I did this, or I saw this video, or I am interested in this. And so, just sharing from what I’m interested in about it and then listening to what they’re interested in about it, it’s just a completely different feeling than taking what their interests are and putting my own kind of expectations and judgements on them.

ANNA: Just one quick thing, because you spoke about this early on, that it’s not just about getting out of their way, but we all know that there is a piece of getting out of their way. And I know you’ve seen it, too. It’s kind of like what you’re just saying. It’s like, yes, sometimes we do need to get out of the way. We just don’t need to leave. We don’t need to leave the building. We want to stay connected, but we want to watch for those things that you’re talking about. Like, are we saying, well if you do it this way, then you’ll get to that place. That’s so different than just like, oh, that does sound interesting.

Here’s something I did similar and what I learned about it. Let’s figure out what it looks like for you.

Because I think that’s what’s hard for people. Like how do I replace it? What’s the next thing you know? What is that gonna look like? But I don’t know. I feel like it’s natural once you start to kind of just let go of those outside paradigms. I was thinking about some things you were saying.

PAM: And we do have a podcast episode. I don’t know the number off the top of my head, but From Control to Connection, because yes, that is talking about that transition, that paradigm shift, that vacuum, that when we stop controlling, well now what do we do now? Now, that’s that move to connection to being together, to being just engaged with one another. And I’m glad you mentioned that, Anna. Some kids have a very clear vision of what they want to do.

And so, it’s really about learning about each other as individuals and what kind of support and energy they’re needing or wanting or might be interested in, not feeling judged if we hand something up and they’re like, yeah, no. Not interested. Or, “What the heck? That doesn’t make any sense to me at all.” Or any of those kinds of reactions. We just learned something more about them. It’s not that they’re wrong. It’s not that we were wrong to share it, but it’s more learning for each of us in how we can connect and support each other.

So, I find that piece so very fascinating. And is really helpful at the beginning of the journey, because I think one of the biggest things in that shift from control to connection, especially if we have been more on the control side in our relationship with them before, is this transition isn’t, you wake up the next day and you say, you know what? I’m not going to control you any more!

There will need to be a shift. And it’s an internal shift for us, because I think it comes across in tone. I think it comes across in body energy. And it will take a while for them to trust when we say, “Oh, that’s really cool. Do you want to try this?” And we’re not saying, “I really think you should do this,” right, Erika? As you were saying. And they’re like, “What the heck? Usually you tell me what I should do and then I argue and then, you know, we move forward from there.”

But that the time that it takes for us to really understand it in our bones so that it’s not coming out as an underlying energy in the things that we say. Yeah, I’m saying this, that doesn’t sound controlling, but you can hear from my tone of voice that I really want you to choose this thing.

Also for them to develop a trust in us that, oh, I can say the thing, I can say, “Oh, it’s really curious about soccer. I just learned this thing,” and you’re not going to jump at me saying, “Let’s sign you up.” Or, “I signed you up. It starts in two weeks.” That trust is something, trust isn’t a one way thing. It’s something we develop together and it’s something that we learn together. And that’s where that connection piece really comes in. And that fully and energetically can replace control in our relationship.

ERIKA: Yes. I think life is just so much more interesting when we’re all bringing our full human selves to our families, like stepping away from the role of the parent, which I think is the block to this type of connection, thinking that we’re all knowing and we’re in charge, but we can still participate and explore and engage in the world together with our children.

So, anyway, it’s been so much fun to dive into this unschooling rule with you and for all of our listeners, we would love it if you would join us in the Living Joyfully Network, our online community where we talk about so many rich topics that impact our unschooling lives. It’s such a great place to connect with other families navigating the same challenges and experiencing that same joy of connection. You can learn more at livingjoyfully.ca/network. Thanks again for joining us and see you next time! Bye.

PAM: Bye!

EU138 Flashback: The Sparkle of Unschooling

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a compilation of experienced unschooling parents answering the question, “Looking back, what has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?”

Another apt title might be Remembering Our Why, which is why we think it’s especially powerful to listen to during this back-to-school season. When we are able to tap into that choice, that reason why we are choosing to live in connected relationships with our children, that reason why we chose unschooling, we can feel so much more confident, even in the midst of all of the mainstream messages.

We hope you enjoy hearing what these experienced unschooling parents had to share!

Audio Snippets Taken from These Episodes …

EU002: Ten Questions with Pam Sorooshian

EU009: Ten Questions with Amy Childs

EU014: Ten Questions with Joyce Fetteroll

EU018: Ten Questions with Jennifer McGrail

EU022: Ten Questions with Lainie Liberti

EU037: Ten Questions with Carol Black

EU044: Ten Questions with Jennifer Andersen

EU057: Ten Questions with Akilah S. Richards

EU066: Ten Questions with Pushpa Ramachandran

EU074: Ten Questions with Robyn Coburn

EU089: Ten Questions with Jan Hunt

EU111: Ten Questions with Jan Fortune

EU130: Dismantling Shame with Ronnie Maier

EU131: Deschooling with Maria Randolph

EU135: Ten Questions with Anna Brown

Watch the video on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Navigating Unschooling Wobbles

Our new course, Navigating Unschooling Wobbles, is out now in the Living Joyfully Shop!

The back-to-school season can send even the most experienced unschooling parents into a tailspin. The excitement in the air as everyone gears up for the school year ahead makes us question if we’re making the right choices for our kids.

In this 4-week course, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia guide you through techniques to help re-ground yourself in the unschooling lifestyle. You’ll be reminded WHY you chose this path and how to get back in touch with the joy of engaged, interest-led learning.

Here’s what you’ll discover:

How to remember your original motivations for choosing unschoolingActionable ways to reconnect with your kids and see their learning unfoldTools to cultivate stronger family relationships built on trustUsing joy and curiosity as a compass to guide your unschooling daysBonus tips on finding pockets of joy and getting out of your head

You’ll come away from this course re-energized about your unschooling journey. With new insights and practical takeaways, you’ll be ready to navigate your next wobble with intention.

This course is based on a monthly theme in the Living Joyfully Network online community, specifically, Remember Your Why. It consists of the four weekly focus calls between Pam and Anna, each discussing a particular aspect of the theme, plus the weekly question we share, encouraging members to think about it through the unique lens of their experiences and family.

When you purchase the Navigating Unschooling Wobbles course, you will receive each lesson through email, one lesson per week. You will also receive links to download both ebook/PDF and audiobook editions of the course, great for those who want to quickly immerse themselves in information they’re super curious about. All the content is yours to keep forever. Join us today!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Making Choices, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of personality and priorities.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTEU002, Pam Sorooshian

PAM L: Looking back now, what for you, has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling with your family?

PAM S: The close relationships that we have. Absolutely. No other thing could come close to that. There is nothing that could come close to that. There is nothing more important than relationships. That’s it.

PAM L: That’s it. Yep.

PAM S: So, we didn’t go through awful teen years where we battled. We don’t have that kind-of-thing were the kids are like, “Yeah, I like my family, but I like them 3000 miles away.”

We just don’t have that kind-of relationships. Like I said, my kids they talk to each other constantly. I hear from them every day. I see them frequently. Our lives are still as completely fun and intertwined. The most fun we have is when we are all together. So that kind of relationship is the best part.

EU009, Amy Childs

PAM: Looking back now, what, for you, has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

AMY: Well, the most valuable thing to me has been the relationship with my kids. They’re all very smart. They all ended up wanting to go to college and they all got ridiculously good grades and honors and awards and scholarships and things like that.

I sometimes don’t even want to say that because I think a lot of unschoolers think that, ‘Oh good, if I unschool my kids then they’ll go to college and get really good grades.’ I just don’t want people to think that that has anything to do with it.

My oldest, I loved it that he got a 4.0 grade average, he was magna cum laude as a mechanical engineer but then after that he threw it all the way and went to go live on the farm and make $8,000 a year. Just because somebody gets a college degree or a fancy job doesn’t mean that they’re going to do that.

But now, I think what they would say about unschooling is that it’s not that they got into college or what they do for money, it’s that they have confidence that they know how to make a good life for themselves. And part of why I know that this is what they feel is because of this last season of working on the podcast interviewing them. It’s been really interesting to hear them talking about their self-confidence. Not that they’re always happy or always confident. They still do things that terrify them and they struggle with anxiety and depression and uncertainty and heartbreak and stuff like that.

But they have such a deep respect for their self—just a deep, inner resource that they know that they can get through anything. They can figure out anything that they have to. Not only do they believe in themselves, but they have their siblings and they have me and they have this wide world that will help them if they know how to ask for help and they know where to ask for help.

That is what’s so reassuring about who they are as young adults, for me. They just don’t feel that there isn’t anything that can’t figure out, or what to do about it or how to have a good life. And that goes back to the very first question in how we discovered unschooling. That was my original hope. If I can make resilient kids and self-aware and self-confident and know how to be happy, what do I care what else they are? What do I care if they know algebra, or if they know all that. Turns out they all know algebra way better than I do!

So, the most valuable outcome for them is their self-reliance. Well, that makes them sound really isolated. Their self reliance but also their understanding of how they fit into the world and their confidence that they fit into the world. They have a community or family or just resources with and around them.

But for me? Selfishly? My outcome is my relationship with my kids. But I got to share their growing years with them and then I get to share their years now as adults. They share questions with me, they think out loud with me, they consider me their ally, and because of that they entertain me. They’re better than TV and I don’t even really like TV.

That’s been my best outcome for me, my relationship with them. They feel very well prepared for life. And they feel sorry for us people around them who they see as not that well prepared for life. I think they sometimes see that as a result of unschooling. I think sometimes they don’t even know how or why they’re self-confident or self-aware. I attribute that to the whole attitude and lifestyle of unschooling and putting my relationship with them and believing in them as the most important part of raising them.

EU014, Joyce Fetteroll

PAM: Looking back now, what for you has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

JOYCE: Well, this is a short answer, it’s definitely the great relationships that we have. I think because I learned so much on my own outside of school I didn’t worry about the academics. I was concerned about interest driven learning being enough as we were going on, but I wasn’t worried that she couldn’t learn.

The best side benefit of unschooling is growing great relationships. She has a great relationship with her dad. They watch, talk, and do sports together. She and I have a great relationship. We talked about writing and drawing and Starbucks. What I learned with her kept the relationship with my husband strong too.

It’s just been one relationship win all around!

EU018, Jennifer McGrail

PAM: Looking back now,  what for you has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

JENNIFER: This is the easiest question for me to answer. There’s obviously so many benefits to unschooling: seeing the kids learn, to have freedom and be happy, not going through the angst I see other kids go through.

All of that is great, but far and away the best thing is my own relationship with the kids. I know regular homeschooled kids and public school kids can have good relationships with their parents, but I think unschooling and radical unschooling in particular, relationships  come first in the unschooling journey.

I have a wonderful relationship with all my kids from nineteen down to eight and I credit unschooling for that. We live and work together and operate as a family. I couldn’t imagine not having a close relationship with my kids, my teens. The societal mindset of, ‘Wait until they’re teens!’ is terrible! I am enjoying my teens so much. They’re so interesting, all the ages.

I’m finding I enjoy my kids as they get older and are able to talk and do different things. They’re are my best friends, even though society says you are not supposed to do that. They’re amazing and we have such a close relationship.

You go through different seasons, times that are harder, but you work it out as a family. The relationship is always first and I couldn’t ask for a better one with my kids.

That to me has been the most valuable part of unschooling, by far.

PAM: I love that. I found the same thing too. When we first started I had no idea of the relationships that would develop but those are going to last me a lifetime and they have been the most powerful thing that’s ever going to come out of it.

JENNIFER:  I see the focus of being the meanest parent and I wonder what those relationships will be like in the future when you’re spending your time in an ‘us versus them’ mentality.

I don’t want to be adversaries with my kids; we’re partners. Like you said, those are relationships we’re going to have the rest of our lives. I look forward to being strong when they’re adults, but I’m also enjoying the ages they are now.

EU022, Lainie Liberti

PAM: Looking back now, what for you has been the most valuable outcomes in choosing unschooling?

LAINIE: It’s the relationship I have with my son and the beautiful relationships that I’ve been able to forge with all the teens that have come into our lives. I don’t think I would have been as open and respectful and approached life on such a partnership with this group of people, including my son, of course, had I not discovered unschooling as a philosophy.

And, I have to add, the permission to be a lifelong learner. It gave me back the permission to learn to go back to the natural learner that we’re all wired to be.

EU037, Carol Black

PAM: Looking back now, what for you, has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

CAROL: People probably say this, but it’s like they always say, people on their death bed don’t say they wish they had spent more time at the office, they say they wish they had spent more time with their kids.

I really feel just the time you have with each other as a family and the time you have to be out in nature and to read books together and think and talk together, it’s just the most precious part of life. To me, that’s the most important thing.

There was a guy who made a good point about how we raise or educate our kids. He was a proponent of the idea that kids pretty much turn out to be who they are and we don’t really have that much control over them, actually. He told that to one of them and she just felt despairing because she was like, “But if it doesn’t make any difference then why does it matter how I treat my kids?” And his answer was, “Well, of course it matters how you treat your kids. You don’t get to pick how your husband turns out, but of course it matters how you treat him.”

I think that that sense that it’s not about molding your child or doing something that is going to make your child into necessarily a different kind of person, but it’s just about treating each other with respect and living together in a way that feels mutually respectful. It’s a work in progress for most of us, obviously.

Unschooling isn’t a panacea and it doesn’t solve every problem in life. The way I kind of look at it is, I think our society is way off course in a lot of ways. Of course, we’re completely unsustainable. I think the way we’re living right now is too socially isolating and fragmented and our communities have really kind of broken down and disintegrated. The levels of mental illness and depression and anxiety are really epidemic. Unschooling doesn’t solve all these problems. I see it as a transitional stage in gradually developing or rebuilding better ways to live on the earth, kind of a step in the right direction.

There’s this Lakota man who does a traditional horsemanship program with at-risk youth. What he was saying, for the Lakota people, who are maybe less far off course than we are, he said it’s taken us seven generations to get this far off course, and we have to expect it may take seven generations to get back. So, I kind of look at it that way and explain it that way to my kids and hope that they will understand whatever failures or things that didn’t work well in their childhood as this kind of transitional process.

My parents were born into a world that was racist, sexist, authoritarian, colonial, with a lot of very negative values. And we’ve tried to change a lot of those values in our lifetime. But it’s a lot of work in progress. My parents tried to raise my brother and me in ways that were more respectful and less violent than the ways they were raised. My husband and I have tried to move that process along by questioning the institutional setting for learning and trying to give our kids the respect to learn what they want to learn when they want to learn it. That’s just sort of the next step. And then this next generation will be able to see ahead. We can’t see what lies ahead but they’ll see what the next step is and then they’ll take.

I think there’s a good chance what we need to do is rebuild our communities to be both more sustainable and healthy and hospitable for children and families, and rebuild ways of living together as communities that are really more workable for both people and other species and the planet.

I look forward to seeing what the next generation is going to come up with!

EU044, Jennifer Andersen

PAM: Looking back now, what for you so far, has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

JENNIFER: Well, that is the perfect lead in to this question. There are a lot of things that I love about it, obviously. We were on a trajectory with our family to be that harried, crazy family, who went to school, did sports, played musical instruments, required it all, had expectations and it would have been busy and crazy and miserable. That’s been a great thing to not have in our lives. I’m also so glad that my kids and I aren’t forced to separate everyday and miss each other, so, all those kinds of things.

What we were just talking about, that is ultimately, at this point anyway, what has been the greatest part of being exposed to living this way. Living this way ourselves is that really understanding what unconditional acceptance and unconditional love is. At least understanding it more than I ever had to this point. Really appreciating people for who they are, and my kids especially, because if we had continued down the path that we were on, I wouldn’t even know my kids. How could I have possibly known them if they were told where they were going to be, and what they were going to think about during school hours, and then they were going to be to told what they had to play?

My son doesn’t even like sports but he would have been required to play a sport and probably required to play some instrument instead of learning the part about music that he really likes. So I wouldn’t have even known them because they would have been forced down a path of who other people thought they should be, so that really has been the greatest part of all of this, is really getting to see who my kids are. Just when I think they’re going along one way, they completely change direction and are turning into these different, awesome people who are thinking about and experiencing things so different than I do, or ever did. It’s definitely been the best part.

That of course, applies, as we were just talking about, for me, for all of life because once I could start appreciating my kids for who they are instead of who they were supposed to be, I could start doing that with myself which is not just a gift to me but a gift to my family. You know, that fact that I don’t enjoy small talk. I could finally say, “Ok that’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing. It’s just who I am.” And a million other things.

And I could start appreciating that with everybody who I meet out in the world. I really get to see people more for who they are than for who I’m forcing us to be in a relationship. I don’t know. That’s not very clear but it’s been huge, HUGE, for me.

EU057, Akilah S. Richards

PAM: I was wondering, looking back now, what for you so far has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

AKILAH: It would go right back to that liberation mindset. That all of these things I believe in as a social justice believer, as an intersectional feminist, all of these things I believe in, unschooling for me has truly been the vehicle that allows me to live that. To live my politics in that sense.

To afford that same right to my children—and not just mine, but I have more of an influence with my children in terms of what they can and can’t do. That’s the most important thing. I now get to practice liberation and I get to extend that space to my daughters.

PAM: It’s amazing, isn’t it? Coming from kids who were in school, at first, I thought if I take them out of school, what am I going to replace school with? In that first six months to a year, I realized the extent of what this was about. I loved your whole liberation mindset. It’s why we talk about unschooling becoming a lifestyle because it just permeates everywhere. It’s just an incredible way to live.

AKILAH: Absolutely.

And you just realize how many constructs were defining your actions. Those constructs are toxic and they don’t even align with who you are. It’s like, I don’t want that. I don’t want to make anybody do anything. That just didn’t dawn on me before. Now I have all of this practice and language. All this compassion, this love/harmony/partnership approach to life and living and that really empowers me. It started about helping my kids to “learn good,” and now it’s about living in harmony with my spirit.

PAM: That’s a good point. It ends up being a lot of our own work, to figure all this out but it’s just such a growth vehicle for us, as people, right? And we learn so much from them. They haven’t been so controlled. They recover so much more quickly because they are still in touch with that open mindset. Just watching them we can learn so much.

AKILAH: Absolutely. I’m sure some folks listen to you out of the space of curiosity, those who aren’t immersed in it but know what’s not working but don’t know yet what to replace it with. I would say unschooling—really, self-directed education—is a philosophy. It becomes an approach to living.

That the box of learning, which comes from the schooled mindset and the pervasiveness. You realize how naturally things can work when you use love and trust, these “woo-woo,” esoteric terms, that sound like yah, I don’t do yoga. We start to understand the practicality of these ways because trust and love are practical things. They really are.

EU066, Pushpa Ramachandran

PAM: Looking back, what has been the most valuable outcome so far from choosing unschooling?

PUSHPA: I would have to say hands down the most valuable outcome for choosing unschooling is to rediscover the joy of learning. And how learning is really the most important part of anything that you do. And how learning is constantly happening whether I decide to pin up a board on it and display it and shout out, “Oh we are learning, we are learning!”

Whether I choose to or not, it is still going to happen. I have no control over learning. It will happen no matter what I try to do or not do.

PAM: I love that! That was something that took me a while to see because I had my own expectations on what it should look like, but as soon as I got passed that, it is happening all the time. Whether or not we see it. Whether or not we even know what they are learning in the moment, they are always picking up something. It is so fun to watch, isn’t it?

PUSHPA: The biggest outcome also has been kind of trying to learn—and I am still learning to do this—not to do what you just said about what you think learning should look like and then box your child into that and get upset.

Sometimes they are not learning what you think they should be learning, but then you get surprised and you literally have to eat your own words because you realize that what you thought they were learning, not only have they learned that, they have learned above and beyond that which you have never even considered so.

PAM: I know! One thing I learned that was really valuable is to sit back and not jump in with comments, because I would direct things in places where I thought they would go, because if it was me that is where I would take it. But the places they would take it are so fascinating and different and so interesting to see, but I had to be careful not to jump in there or else I might take over or knock it off their course.

PUSHPA: I also have to say, I am human. I do make all these mistakes that I am so eloquently telling others—I definitely do not want to sound like I am preaching or anything. I can eloquently talk about it, but I do not necessarily know how to do it all the time. I am still learning how to be a facilitator rather than a director.

PAM: Yes, and I don’t want to give the impression, like you said, to anyone that we are “perfect” at doing any of this. It is all about engaging with each other and you get signals and clues and it is like, “Oh, look, I am putting a little bit too much energy into this, I can tell by their reaction it is time to step back.” Or, “I can tell by their reaction they are wanting more.” It is just about the dance of a relationship, I think that is Pam Sorooshian’s phrase.

I think it just works so well because it always is, even with my kids now as adults, you know, it is still that dance. It is still watching out for the clues of whether I should step right, left, backwards, whatever. You know, sometimes we do step on each other’s toes, but that is another clue and we acknowledge it and figure it out. So yes, it is all part of living together.

PUSHPA: If I could say one thing like at the homeschool meetup that we just had, one of the mom’s did a session on Do Nothing. That was the hardest part for most parents, to ‘do nothing’ sometimes.

PAM: Yes. We are very productivity-oriented, is what jumped to my mind. That feeling that we always have to be doing something. It’s so important to just leave that space for things to go where they are going to go or not. Like you said, we are still learning.

PUSHPA: I am still learning how to do nothing sometimes.

EU074, Robyn Coburn

PAM: And, looking back, what has been the most valuable outcome so far from choosing unschooling?

ROBYN: Well, that is a really short answer. I have a very happy daughter with no school damage and a close connection to her parents, to James and me. That is the outcome. That is it.

PAM: The relationship.

ROBYN: A very happy daughter who seems to be completely aware of the world and history and culture and science and, if she wants to find out about something, she knows how do that. She is still determining her career kind of path. The problem is not that she does not know what to do but that she has too many choices. There are so many different interests and ideas about her future that she is not yet sure which path is going to appeal to her most.

PAM: But that is okay because that is the nice thing about not feeling like you need to stick to a particular timetable, right? You were talking earlier about her being confident however things work out, you know, however they turn out.

So, being able to know that, “Oh, gee, I have all these interesting things and to be able to continue pursuing them all to see.” Then eventually, she will see, maybe she will come up with a way to combine them moving forward. Maybe one will start to stand out, but having that space is awesome.

ROBYN: Yes, as time goes on she just has seen more and more to add. (laughs)

EU089, Jan Hunt

PAM: Looking back, what has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling, for you?

JAN: Just to look at Jason and know that he is happy, very secure, that he is amazing. If something goes wrong, he always sees the humour right away. I see the humour six months later; he sees it instantly, so he is always really quick with a cute little joke. He jokes about things but in a very kind way and very helpful, that helps me to see that I was taking something too seriously or that something is not as dire as I had thought. He keeps me in perspective because he has such an incredible perspective on life and in every way. Every interaction that he has with people is just so appropriate and kind.

PAM: I love that point about the perspective, because you know what? When I think of that, it is so true. I always say that I learn from my kids, and it is still true. Mine are age twenty and up now, and still I learn from them in how to approach situations. Their perspective and ability to roll with the situation is just amazingly fun to watch, so when I start getting caught up…

JAN: And it is so important to stay calm in difficult times, because anybody can stay calm in good times. It is how we treat each other and ourselves when things are not going so well. I am still trying to learn that, and I have this wonderful teacher right here.

PAM: Exactly, right? Like you said, I love chatting with them, I love being with them, and hanging out with them; they are fun. They have such a fresh perspective on so many things in the moment and in the world and with information; how they have creatively built their unique picture of the world. Their picture and view of the world is so fascinating, isn’t it? To just hear them talk about something and share the connections and what they see and what they take from things is just so interesting.

JAN: Well, all of that went into this article, and I want to mention is again, ‘Creating a Peaceful World Through Parenting.’ He and I spent several months going over every sentence with a fine-tooth comb; we did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings, we just wanted to be heard, you know, and clear, and this is all of the things. If we had only one article on our website, it would be that one to show people how we can have peace in the world. It all comes down to the early years and the way we treat children.

EU111, Jan Fortune

PAM: Looking back, what has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling for you?

JAN: I think the biggest thing that is, is that if you relate to your children as autonomous creators of their own stories and people you can pool creative with, that relationship goes on throughout life.

So, the most valuable thing for me has been these ongoing relationships of trust and support which are now with a group of young adults who are on all different kinds of journeys. Just the fact that that goes on and on and develops and the excitement that it’s now developing with a first grandchild, it’s absolutely amazing to have that much trust and support with these incredible young people.

It’s also given all of us the mindset that the whole of life is about learning and that’s really helpful, I think, in a world where flexibility is essential. For myself, it’s meant not getting stuck in any role that’s no longer working for me because I know I can change it. It’s always possible. So, the benefits are just ongoing.

At the moment, as you said in the beginning, I’m shifting the balance of my own work from being largely editing with the press that I’ve set up to being more about my own life writing and sharing insights into writing and the writing life and the new blog on Medium.

So, unschooling has taught me that I can make changes in my own life at any age and that I will always have these amazing people in my life to share that with and that the creativity just goes on growing.

PAM: I love that. And what a shift, right, when we first start or choose unschooling we think that it’s about our kids…(laughter)

JAN: Absolutely. It’s about all of us together.

PAM: Yeah, and it’s about learning how to be a human being. Just embracing life—it’s beautiful, isn’t it?

JAN: Absolutely. I mean, I think that is the absolute crux of it. Actually, unschooling is exactly what it says on the can: we don’t need those school models, we need to talk about how we live well and we need to share that with people most important in our lives and when we do that, the magic is extraordinary.

EU130, Ronnie Maier

PAM: Looking back for yourself, what for you has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling all those years ago?

RONNIE: Relationships. Definitely. I wanted to say something more original because I’m sure you’ve had people say relationships quite a bit. Having grown kids who enjoy your company, who call you when they’re feeling sad and want to go shopping with you or have you come visit them in Minneapolis. It’s huge and it continues to be work.

Having grown kids is an interesting challenge. How much do you say? How much do you not say? It’s constantly walking this balancing beam trying not to interfere too much, trying not to give advice when they’re not looking for that. You kind of feel your way. And that’s another one where you just keep shining the light on what you’re trying to do.

Like MJ, the older one, I leave her alone a lot. She’s fiercely independent and of the two of them has more baggage with me because she was that kid who experienced, before peaceful parenting, lot more bag baggage, so I leave her alone but periodically I check in. I send her cute cat photos on Instagram. Things like that. And I check in and say, “I’ve been leaving you alone, is that what you want?” And she’ll say, “Yeah, I appreciate it.” She knows what I’m doing and recognizes that I’m giving her space that she wants.

And then, totally different relationship with Chloe, but still needing to walk that line. She and I talk almost everyday, joined-at-the-hip 1400 miles apart! But then there will be days when she gets quiet and then it’s like, ‘Okay Chloe’s having some mom-free time. I get that!’

Anyway, but the foundation that we have that allows us to do that kind of checking in with each other and trusting each other to listen if we’re getting it wrong, is gold. I could not have imagined how happy a family could be before unschooling. It’s just not something you’re told. It’s not something you lived, the bonds that you have and the fun that you have.

EU131, Maria Randolph

PAM: With your official unschooling years behind you now, looking back what has been the most valuable outcome you think from choosing unschooling?

MARIA: Oh my goodness. I have to pick just one? (laughter)

I would say the most valuable outcome to unschooling is that I was able to take my time and look at our relationship differently.

I think we have always had a fine relationship I really do. You know, I like self-improvement, but I had to do that at a younger age with homeschooling. I feel like because of that we had a stronger bond and a more respectful relationship between two humans than I think we would have had otherwise. Because I began to see her not as the child, but as a person who needed guidance but fully had her own ideas, her own thoughts whether she was verbalizing them or not.

I could give her the information and guide her in whatever it was she wanted to do and I think that has then played its part as she has gotten older. Just kind of has connected us on a level I am not sure we would have connected on before. Because I truly see her as a human fully capable of making all of her own choices and her own decisions.

EU135, Anna Brown

PAM: Looking back, what has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

ANNA: I think it really has to be time because, as I mentioned, we didn’t know how much time we would have with my oldest and really, the truth of matter is, we don’t know how much time we have with anybody.

Some people don’t like to think about that, but it’s the truth. I knew early on because of our experience with her that I wanted to enjoy every moment. I wanted to be able to live with no regrets and if it all ended tomorrow that I could say we had the most awesome time together and I’m so grateful. That’s where I wanted to be and that’s what we did. That’s what we’re still doing. I still do it today all the time because you just never know and that’s what guides my decisions and my spending time with people that I love and my doing the things that I enjoy.

How does that look? I feel like unschooling was such a big part of that. It allowed us to build these relationships and visit amazing places and explore these things that we love and, oh my gosh, the magical people we met along the way. I wouldn’t trade a second of it and I am so grateful for all those things that happened and sometimes it’s hard to be understanding.

I’m even grateful for the things that happened to my oldest because, wow, did it change the trajectory of everything. Had that not happened I wouldn’t be here today. It’s just understanding that those are the choices. I just feel like unschooling—I’m so grateful.

Oh my gosh, it goes by really fast! Bloop-bloop, it’s all over!

Even with that, so now I’m in this age where my friends—their kids are getting older and going off. A lot of them are upset and I don’t feel that at all. We have savored every stage. We continue to be grateful for the time we have together now but I’m so excited for them! I don’t have regrets about not having time or now they’re going and we’re losing time. No! We’ve had so much time and what a gift that time has been. I feel like unschooling was a gift and it helped us step off a treadmill that we were definitely on before all this happened.

It gave us, as a family, so much that I will always be grateful for.

EU352: Unschooling “Rules”: Unschoolers Are Always Happy

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a new episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series.

We use the word “rules” in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade—or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, for inquiry, for agency, and for growth.

In this episode, we’re diving into the “rule” that unschoolers should always be happy. We explore why happiness isn’t a good indicator of unschooling success, the importance of validation and presence, and the benefits that unschooling brings to navigating challenging times.

We had a lot of fun diving into this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTIONED ON THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop

The Living Joyfully Podcast

The Unschooling Journey book

EU346: On the Journey with Cassie Emmott

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Revitalizing Our Nest, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of autonomy and flow.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello! I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and this is episode number 352 of the Exploring Unschooling podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Welcome!

ERIKA AND PAM: Hi!

ANNA: Before we jump in, I wanted to encourage you to check out our Living Joyfully Shop. You can find it at livingjoyfullyshop.com. There you can find our new course about navigating conflict. It’s designed to help you gain a better understanding of how our personalities, our life experiences, and how we’re feeling in the moment can contribute significantly to the ways in which conflicts arise and unfold. And how we can move through conflicts more easily with this understanding. You can also find information about coaching calls for individuals, couples, as well as unschooling support.

And as always, we want to remind everyone that with this Unschooling “Rules” series, we use the word rules in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing. It can feel easier, I think, to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new. But we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you, and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody’s going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade. Also, they’re not going to give you an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent rules and cultivate an environment for self-discovery and inquiry, for agency and growth.

So, with that in mind, Erika, would you like to get us started today?

ERIKA: Yes, I would. I am so excited to have another rule to dive into, and this one is huge.

So, the rule that we’re talking about today is that unschoolers are always happy, or probably more specifically, that unschooling kids are and should always be happy. I think it’s so common to fall into this line of thinking that unschooling life is based on what the kids want to do and what they’re interested in, moving away from coercion and judgment. So then, life should just be great all the time. What do they have to be unhappy about?

And if for whatever reason my kids are unhappy, maybe that must mean that I’m doing something wrong. And it can create a lot of worry and fear if we don’t unpack this belief. And so, the first thought that came up for me as I was thinking about unpacking it was, this is just real life with real people.

And real life comes with all kinds of experiences and all kinds of emotions. It’s not a defect if we have emotions that feel uncomfortable. It’s just part of being alive. If my kids are living their life without school, some of the stresses and challenges that exist for some children might not exist for them or like it did for me when I was in school. But stresses and challenges will still come up. They still have hormones. They still have grumpy moods and triggers and sensitivities just like any human. And navigating relationships can easily bring up all kinds of feelings. The normal constraints of life can be frustrating, like a thunderstorm could mess with our plans to have a pool day. Or living really far away from people we love can feel so hard. Failing to beat a level in a video game over and over and over can feel enraging. And so all of those emotions and experiences are just a part of life, whether or not we’re unschooling.

And I think that being intentional about respecting our children’s wants and needs and not pushing through their consent goes a really long way toward helping them have a life that feels good and works for them, but it doesn’t mean that their lives are perfect or that they’re somehow protected from the harder parts of living, because unschooling is just real life.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. It’s so true. And I think there’s a lot of layers to peel back here, too. And so, I’m very excited that we’re tackling this as one of those kind of unspoken unschooling rules, because I think it creates a lot of bad feelings in parents and all around and even just misunderstandings. I think in part the frustration is compounded, because we are doing our best to be intentional and create a life that allows our children to shine. It’s work. And it’s often very different from what we experienced as kids.

So, when there is upset or big emotions, we can have the thought like, hey, you really don’t know how good you have it! And that’s okay. We may have that thought from time to time, but what I realized is that they don’t know the difference. They only know the life that they have.

And like you said, Erika, life can be messy. It will have ups and downs and challenges and triumphs. I wasn’t unschooling to stop them from living. I wanted them to live their fullest life and to have the space and support to be their full selves. And for humans, that means experiencing a wide range of emotions and experiences. And even when we do all the things, each of our children is on their own journey. And I had to come to terms with this when my oldest was a teen. I couldn’t take away all the pain that she was experiencing, but I could be there and I could make sure that she had space and was loved unconditionally through those darker times. So, for me, it became less about creating an environment where we were all happy all the time, but more about creating an environment where we were all loved and supported for being exactly who we are. 

PAM: Oh yes, yes, yes. I do think this is such a rich area to explore. Certainly for me, I was drawn to unschooling because it seemed like such a happier and more relaxed way to live our lives. It was a significant part of our choice to try unschooling. And my goodness, not having school control so much of our days focusing on the things we wanted to do, it just sounded brilliant.

And it was. But pretty soon, I found I needed to tease apart the meaningful difference between happier and always happy. Because, as you both mentioned, life still has stresses and challenges, and on top of that, we each have different personalities and ways of being in the world while still living together. And now, with the kids home from school, we were living together a lot more of each day. So, I feel like this was a pretty important de-schooling shift for me, from this almost utopian vision of always being happy because we were doing the things we wanted to do, to a more grounded and aware perspective that was still happier than before definitely.

But now we were embracing how much choice we truly had in our lives, which was a lot, while also recognizing that things happen pretty regularly that aren’t in our control. What we can choose is how we respond. So, we embrace everyone following their interests and not judging each other’s choices, while recognizing that we are fundamentally different people and our needs and wants are sometimes at cross purposes.

And just as I found my children’s learning faded as a useful barometer or measure of our days and the connection in our relationship became a much more helpful measure, I found that happiness faded as a beneficial indicator of unschooling “success” and joy rose up in its place. See, happiness, while lovely, was more related to circumstances in the moment, “Yay, this thing went well!” while joy felt more fundamental to me. So, looking at our days became less about how things were going and more about how things were feeling. I came to focus more on cultivating the feelings of connectedness and trust and emotional safety, and those lay in the foundation of our days beneath the activities themselves.

And I talk a lot more about this shift in my book, The Unschooling Journey, as part of stage nine, accepting our nature. I find this whole piece really fascinating, and I do think it’s quite familiar to the shift that you described, Anna, from trying to create an environment where we were all happy to creating an environment where we were all loved and supported for being exactly who we are.

ERIKA: Yeah, I love that so much. And that shift from happy to joyful, like it might sound the same, but the concepts are different, and joy really allows space for the ups and downs in a way that being always happy doesn’t.

So, now that we’ve established that unschooling life is just real life with all the emotions that that brings with it. I wanted to talk about releasing expectations and validating ourselves and our children. I think these two areas, which you both talked about on the Living Joyfully Podcast, really tie in so well with this rule.

So, if I notice myself getting uncomfortable when my child is unhappy, that’s a good sign for me to pause and see what’s happening in my thoughts. I very likely have an expectation that they should be happy and maybe some judgment pieces about myself, like maybe I’m not doing a good enough job if they’re unhappy. And there can be a feeling of needing to fix things as fast as I can so they can go back to being happy. And in times where I’m especially overwhelmed, I may even feel angry that they’re unhappy, almost like they’re doing this to me.

And so, all of those feelings and thoughts can come up and I can validate that it’s feeling hard for me. I can remind myself that this is just real life and I can breathe through their intense emotions and my intense emotions and know that it’s safe to feel emotions. I can validate my kids and their experience, not rushing them to move through it, and over time I can practice releasing that expectation that they should be happy or that I should be able to give them a life where they’re always happy.

I do think these triggering moments can get easier to navigate with practice. I can be really hard on myself. So, for me, this practice looks like reassuring self-talk. Like, you’ve got this, you’re safe. Don’t beat yourself up. They’re just humans. Just breathe through it. Let them be humans. And I also think what you were mentioning, Pam, about just remembering that people are all so different helps so much with this too, because some personalities are a little more somber. Some people feel comfortable sitting in darker emotions or are more drawn to experiencing them. And so, while that can feel hard or even trigger me as a parent, it helps to recognize that everyone is different and however we are experiencing our own lives is valid. 

ANNA: Right. And I think it can trigger all kinds of things. And just being aware that it’s a trigger, not a threat, can help me take a moment to understand it more. Am I feeling resourced? Am I hungry? What is this bringing up in me? Taking care of myself helps me be present for the big emotions without them needing to stop. And what I found is that we actually move through them faster and feel better when we slow things down and take care with the emotions that are present, and like you said, that’s validating ourselves and our kids. All the feelings are okay, their upset and our frustration. And the sooner we acknowledge and are kind to ourselves about that, the sooner we can truly connect and see that the person in front of us is a human that we love, needing support and understanding. Because again, it’s not about never feeling bad, but trusting that we will be okay, knowing that we can move through it.

Taking the time to identify our triggers, I think is an important aspect of this. That often can’t happen in the moment, but we can recognize them and promise to go back there in a quiet moment. That usually allows me to be more present with the child in front of me. When I start to peel back a trigger, sometimes it’s contextual, I’m exhausted or I’m hungry, or there’s just been a lot going on. Or sometimes it’s from further back. Maybe I wasn’t allowed to express things in the same way that they are now. Maybe I feel they aren’t being grateful, even though I’ve worked so hard to make something happen.

But those things are about me. They’re not about my children, and I don’t want to put that weight on them. I can sort through where those feelings are coming from. And then if further conversations needed, it’s coming from a grounded place in the present, not a triggered place from the past.

So, maybe I did put a lot of effort into something and it just isn’t feeling great, their reaction or what’s going on around me. But once I’ve moved through any triggered energy, I can be honest about any overwhelm I’m experiencing and we can start to solve that together. Maybe I find out they didn’t want me to do all the things that I was doing. They didn’t need that. Maybe they didn’t understand what was involved. They’re kids. They don’t understand all the machinations sometimes. But I wanted to approach these conversations with love and curiosity, not anger that’s stemming from a situation or a time that has nothing to do with this person in front of me.

PAM: Absolutely. I love that reminder so much, Anna, that how I’m experiencing their emotions is about me. Of course it’s about me. And I so remember those thoughts of, what do they have to be unhappy about? And you both shared some great thoughts around peeling back some of the layers around that. And I wanted to pull out something you mentioned, Erika, about sometimes feeling like we’re not doing a good enough job at this unschooling thing because our kids are unhappy.

On one hand is everything that we’ve shared to this point about happiness not being a particularly useful gauge, and also it can be helpful to not ignore our wonderings around whether we’re doing a “good enough” job. Because I know in my experience, if we try to ignore those feelings, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll just keep bubbling up again and again and a bit louder each time until we take some time to process through them.

So, when I was processing through those feelings of not good enough, I found it helpful to reground myself in why we chose unschooling as our family’s lifestyle in the first place, to explore my perspectives on happiness like this, and to tease apart my children’s unhappiness from my actions. Is that something I have control over? To contemplate if I can learn more about my child, about their personality and their needs through better understanding why they’re unhappy. And to brainstorm some creative new ways to lean into supporting them in their endeavors.

So, not using those feelings of “not good enough” as a sign of failure, but as a clue that it just might be time to do a check-in on our engagement and just re-energize and refresh our unschooling enthusiasm.

ERIKA: Yeah. Right. When our feelings and doubts are creeping up, I love that idea of using them as a clue rather than kind of jumping to a conclusion that everything is broken. I think using it as a clue and maybe a little signal to look into things could lead to great new places for the whole family. If we’re using our emotions just as a clue and a little trigger for us to get open and curious rather than shutting ourselves down.

And Anna, I love that part about examining our triggers and one of the recent episodes on the Living Joyfully podcast was about triggers. That was episode 21. So, that might be an interesting concept to dive into just as part of this de-schooling work around happiness.

And I think that the work that we do, all that inner work that we are doing to grow as unschooling parents can really help us navigate life’s challenges. I also think that choosing to focus on relationships can help the whole family when things get difficult, but just because we have the tools and the strong relationships doesn’t mean that hard things don’t happen. Because again, it’s real life.

And so, I thought maybe we could mention some of the ways that unschooling and connected relationships help us to navigate challenges. So, one big one for me is the trust that’s there in our family. So, whether we’re dealing with all getting sick with Covid, which happened recently, or a favorite toy breaking, or a death in the family, or facing a big change, like a new work schedule or moving into a new home, the trust that we’ve built as a family means that my kids know that I’m taking them into consideration, that their feelings are important, and that we’re all doing the best that we can to get through these situations together.

It doesn’t take away the stress of the situation, but it puts us together on the same team to navigate it. I tend to wear my emotions on my face, and so there’s no hiding when something is feeling stressful for me. But I think that having built up lots of experience with facing a challenge and getting through it, with me feeling stressed out and then moving through it, that just creates this sense of trust that the kids have in our capacity to handle difficult things. And they know that we all have hard times and we all have intense emotions sometimes, and that those will pass.

ANNA: I mean, I feel like that trust really helps me stay optimistic and centered when things go sideways. I know we’ll work through it. We just have over and over again. I know we’re going to feel better again, and that just helps me stay present in the moment without kind of projecting out or spiraling back or any of that.

And I know it helped my girls, too, because they knew we would figure it out. They knew we’d just keep at it, even if we had to take a break and come back, or it took a little bit of time, we’d figure it out. And I think all of the time and practice we get with this helps so much in our families.

But it really is important to let go of this idea that things will always be rosy, because life just isn’t that way. It’s amazing and full of growth opportunities, with all kinds of joy and magic. And it has challenges that can help us learn and grow, and it’s just all a part of it. And so, understanding that helps take some of the charge out of the times that did feel harder for me. It was in the resistance, actually, that it felt so terrible.

Accepting or even embracing those times helped the flow feel more manageable and I could cultivate more curiosity, because I feel like in that resisting, “This shouldn’t be happening,” that’s where I would get stuck and very much pulled out of the moment. Then I’m in my head about what I should be doing differently or what’s happening. And so, that just never served me as well as just like, this is life.

Here we are.

And being open and curious has been such a helpful tool for me over the years, because it allows that little bit of space like, huh, what’s this bringing up in me? What’s happening for them? And even just the, I wonder how this is going to play out. That was what I needed to say. Like, I have no idea and I wonder what’s going to happen. Because it again brought me back into the moment and being open to all of the places that it could flow, understanding that I don’t know or control that. Cultivating that mindset keeps me from spiraling down a dark path of, they’re miserable, I’m failing. This whole thing is terrible. Everything is terrible. It grounds me back in the moment and helps me look with fresh eyes, like, okay, what am I seeing? There very well may be things that I want to or end up changing, like you were saying, Pam, like it’s important to think, hey, why is this happening? Are there things that we need to shift? But it’ll be coming from this calm, connected, curious place instead of a place of fear.

And I have found for me, and I really think it’s across the board, we just don’t make good decisions from a place of fear. It very much narrows our vision and we miss a lot of context and a lot of opportunity. Cassie Emmott is one of our Network members who has also been on the podcast and she has a beautiful quote that she said, “Am I being driven by fear or being led by love?” And it’s such a great reminder that really grounds me in the moment and helps me remain open and curious and acting from that place of love and connection. And from that place, we’re learning more about each other, more about the situation. We’re taking in much more information and the energy and the feel of it is just so different.

PAM: So, so different, and I really love that quote. Cassie was on the podcast in episode 346, and it’s a brilliant conversation to go back to, especially if you haven’t heard it yet. I think it’s a great touchstone just to help shift the energy of the situation from like being out of control, from that fear tunnel vision place to the openness, I’m leading. Here we go.

And yes, I too found the strong trust that develops in our relationships with our kids was fundamental to navigating life’s challenges. We were on the same team. So often, when things happen, we don’t know what that path will look like, but we trust each other that we’ll just keep exploring until everyone is comfortable.

And I think another way that our strong and connected relationships with our children can help us navigate challenges is the creativity it encourages, right? They feel safe to not only express their needs and their wants, but also to share any thoughts or ideas that bubble up without fear of being judged or belittled. We may not end up taking on the wildest of ideas, but they can help us start thinking outside the box and come up with ways to move through the challenge that we otherwise wouldn’t have even thought of, let alone considered.

In my experience, I ended up very soon just going to my kids first, because I knew they could break me out of like, I see A, B, and C, and that’s all I see. All of a sudden, they could bring me out and we could get so much more creative. And for them not needing to be vigilant about the people around you, not needing to first filter what you are thinking of sharing based on the reactions that you anticipate from others, that cultivates an emotionally safe place for our children to just sink into the flow of their thoughts and just share whatever bubbles up. I just found it to be so great for brainstorming possibilities around challenges as we were trying to move through them.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. Go ahead, Erika. 

ERIKA: While you were both talking, I just had a thought about, if we are stuck in a fear place about them not being happy, that produces an energy where they’re not going to want to come to us if they’re upset about things in, in the same kind of open way that they can, if we’re able to release that wall that we put up against these negative emotions. And so, that open and curious and creativity happens so much better if we can sit with hard emotions with them. Then we can all be in a place where you know, they can share, I’m feeling like this and we can say, what do you think we should do about it? What would you like to do next? And start exploring ways to feel better. It’s a lot easier to do that with a parent who is not resisting the negative emotions or trying to rush a child through the negative emotions. So, I just think it creates this great environment.

ANNA: And who’s not catastrophizing and not maybe overly reacting. And not that we can’t react, we can have our reactions, but again, if it’s that open space, that emotionally safe space that you’re talking about, Pam, that’s where we learn so much more. It just shuts down so much when we get in our head and we’re off thinking, “This is terrible!” And so, yeah, I really love that.

PAM: I think the other piece in that safe space and what I think is just so valuable is, like what you were talking about, Erika, not rushing them through it. We realize it doesn’t need to be solved on our timetable, because we’re uncomfortable with it, but you know, it’s not our space right now. We’re not the one having the hard time right now.

So, giving them the space to work through it on their timetable. Because if they feel us rushing them through, it really sends the message that there’s something wrong with having those emotions. This is bad, this is not good that you’re not happy today. This is something we need to fix as soon as possible.

And so, sharing that message just makes it so much harder for them to get through, and like you said, to come next time and to realize that this is life. Like we’ve been saying. When I look back at my blog, just about every post at the bottom ends with “unschooling is life,” because where we get to. It’s not about some utopian vision. It’s not about everybody always being happy. It’s wonderful and amazing and beautiful relationships, but it’s life. And it’s being together on the same team and helping each other through it. Anyway, yeah. It’s lovely.

ANNA: Oh, I love that. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope that everyone found it helpful on their unschooling journey.

And if you enjoy these conversations, I really think you’d love the Living Joyfully Network. It’s such an amazing group of people connecting and having thoughtful conversations about all the things we encounter in our unschooling lives. You can learn more about it at living joyfully.ca/network.

And if you’ve been on the fence, you can join with the monthly subscription option, so you can check out the community, the rich archives of themes, the wonderful resources, and start to connect with the amazing people. If it’s not a fit, you can easily cancel. But I do hope you’ll check it out, because we have all kinds of amazing discussions. And I just want to bring you all into the discussions that we have like this all the time. But wishing everybody a lovely week, and thank you so much for joining us.

EU351: Bringing It Home: Navigating Technology

This week on the podcast, we’re diving into another Bringing It Home episode. We’re looking deeper at our last Unschooling “Rules” topic, that unschoolers have unlimited screen time, and exploring what it can look like to navigate technology with our unschooling families.

Unsurprisingly, there is no one right approach. It’s so much about seeing through our children’s eyes and understanding the choices that feel good to them. Having conversations that involve the whole family makes navigating technology both safer and more fun!

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

* * *

Check out our new course, Navigating Conflict, which will guide you through different aspects of conflict and give you some concrete tools to more gracefully navigate your way through conflict in all your relationships.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out her website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Context.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello, everyone! I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and this is episode number 351 of the podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hello!

ANNA: Hello!

ERIKA: Hi!

PAM: So, in our last Unschooling “Rules” episode, we talked about the idea of unlimited screen time. We talked about how the term screen time is at this point, a pretty loaded yet meaningless phrase, and that unlimited doesn’t mean hands off.

So, in this Bringing It Home episode, let’s continue the conversation and talk about ways we might approach navigating technology, particularly when a child’s tech use isn’t feeling good to the parent. And before we get started, we want to just let you know that we have released a course entitled Navigating Conflict. It will help guide you through different aspects of conflict and give you some concrete tools to help you just more gracefully navigate your way through it in all your relationships. Because conflict is not a zero-sum game where one person wins and the other person loses an equal measure. Often, we really can find win-win paths through a situation.

I also wanted to mention that the course content is available in both written and audio format. So, whichever style works better for you. So, maybe you’re listening on some days or reading on others. It really can fit into the flow of your days, whatever they look like. And you’ll find it in our shop at livingjoyfullyshop.com, so you can check it out and just see if it’s a good fit for you right now.

So, Anna, would you like to get us started talking about navigating technology?

ANNA: I would. Okay. So, I feel like in our last episode, we really focused on the higher level understanding of our language, the areas we can dig into and make sure we’re being intentional and focused on the present moment. In this episode, I think we can dig into what we can actually do, how it can look in our homes.

I mentioned this briefly last time, but whenever we find ourselves worried about how much time our kids are spending engaged with technology, instead of clamping down out of fear, we can lean in and learn more. No matter what interest area is being explored by technology, there are ways we can learn more about it and engage with our children around it.

I found it so helpful to learn the terms, especially if we’re talking about video games, levels, bosses, inventory, character names, story arcs. Understanding the specifics helped us have conversations, showed my children that I was interested in what they were diving into, and gave me so much more information about all the complexity of what they were doing.

And sometimes leaning in looks like being a listening ear. I’m sure we’ve all been on the receiving end of the very detailed information about a character or a game, or sometimes a random aspect of history. It isn’t always easy to be fully present for every power and evolution of each and every Pokemon. But those moments are when we can focus on and celebrate this thing that is capturing their interest. We can see the complexities and the thinking that goes into their engagement. Sometimes that alone is enough to calm any fears about what they’re doing and what they’re learning and how they’re engaging with it.

We miss that, I feel, if we just brush it off or oversimplify it. Really listening and taking the time to learn just makes such a difference, because it’s really about how to learn and how to engage with material, not about the material itself. The material is going to change over time, but that quest for knowledge and understanding is a muscle that can be flexed while digging into all kinds of interest areas.

And one of the ways that I would show that I was listening was to then find things outside the game that were somehow related. So, it might be Animal Crossing plushies or Zelda jewelry. “I see you, I want to celebrate and support what you love.” Sometimes, it was traveling to places that they saw on a show or finding ways that their interest came into play in other areas that maybe they weren’t aware of.

So often, we think it’s about getting them to stop the game or move away from it or move away from the show, but really, it can be about just broadening the scope and finding ways that we can all engage with the interest and end up learning so much more.

ERIKA: Right. I really have loved leaning into their interests. I’ve gotten pretty seriously into a lot of the games that my kids play and the shows that they watch. I had a long Minecraft phase and a Sims phase, and I play Roblox every day. And what that engagement does for me is now I speak the same language as them. I get it. And that makes a difference to them. Plus, it’s so much more fun for me.

And I love that too, about bringing in more things to their lives that are related to their interests. And that really only works if we’re leaning in to learn about it. Now I can think, oh, if you really like that game, you might like this. Or, let’s get the toys that go with that show so that we can play with the characters together. It’s just so much fun to help them take that interest deeper, obviously without attachment to the outcome.

PAM: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I am in the midst of my Minecraft phase right now.

ANNA: Nice.

PAM: But yes, using that lens of learning, it just brings to mind for me the image of a web and the more connections to each node, to each piece of information or skill, the deeper, richer, their understanding of the thing is, the stronger the web is. So, if there’s something they’re interested in, how cool is it if I can find related things that broaden their knowledge in the ways that they enjoy? But I need to be engaged and understand the language and understand the complexity. We think it’s so simple when we’re just watching them, play or surf around, they make them look so easy.

But when we understand it, we see so much more. When we engage with them, we see so much more. We get a richer picture of it, which helps us broaden it, as you said, without the attachments to them just wanting to dig further, but even planting the seed that they know there are more pieces in the world that might be related maybe a couple months from now they’ll be interested in.

I wrote more about this idea in my book Free to Learn. And in there I shared a couple of connection maps that I created at the time when I was exploring this, when I was like really concerned with how much game playing there was. And with my daughter, it was Harry Potter and being really into those books. So, I created these maps looking at the connections between the interests and activities that I noticed them doing as they dove into their passions. Many of which, even back then, involved screen interfaces.

So, if I left it at, “They’re using a screen,” and just put that in the middle, I’d have known so little about all the exploration and learning that they were up to. My maps would have just been a couple of dots. And I would’ve been at a loss as to other things to bring into their lives that they might find interesting. And that’s that distinction, right? Not what I wish they were interested in, but what they might actually be interested in. And the conclusion, where I would naturally go is, I just need to get them off the screens, because this is all they’re doing. This is all they’re doing! Right?

ERIKA: Exactly. And then all those things that they love would just be mysterious and easy for us to dismiss. And I love those maps, too, and looking at all those connections that they’re making.

And I want to talk about just how important connection is in all of this. I know we keep mentioning it, but it really is what makes this approach work, because by focusing on connection, like the connection that we’re feeling in our relationship with our kids, we keep communication open and we more easily see the learning and the joy that they get out of their interests. And we learn so much about our kids and what’s important to them.

And so, of course, connection is such a key in our relationships. But I think connection is also what helps us deal with our worries and fears as well. Because one of the biggest fears that comes up when we talk about screens is online safety, which we talked about in a recent Q&A episode, too. And connection really is the answer there, too, because when I’m connected with my kids, they feel safe coming to me and sharing the things that happen. If instead, I keep focusing on how they shouldn’t be spending so much time online, they’re going to want to hide things more. It doesn’t feel good to be judged.

So, being non-judgmental, showing unconditional love and connection is what helps learning thrive, and it’s what helps keep them safe as well. I think it just helps so much when my kids know that I understand them, I understand their interests, I respect the things that they’re interested in. That just helps them trust that I can help them when they’re facing a challenge.

PAM: Oh, absolutely. Connection really is so valuable when it comes to just navigating our lives together, right? And feeling judged by a parent is kind of like dousing that connection in ice water. I can just literally feel it. Just imagine when somebody judges something you do, how you shrink, right? It doesn’t feel good and it weakens that trust that they have in us.

I think it can also drown out their inner voice. Their self-talk may well become focused on fending off our judgment rather than exploring how things feel to them. So, for example, they might not hear that too muchness message until it’s loud enough to be causing more friction in their lives than it needed to. And without having someone they trust to help them process challenges and brainstorm possibilities, they may feel stuck longer. Right.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. I think the safety point is so important because yes, kids are the safest when they have strong, trusted connections. They know we aren’t judging them. They know we will help them do the things they enjoy, so they feel comfortable telling us if something doesn’t feel good or feels off and they know we’ll listen and help them find a way through. They know that I’m not going to go, “Well then you should never go on that game again!” “I told you it was terrible.” They know that, “I know you love that game. I know these are the things you love about it. This is feeling weird. Let’s solve for that.” And so, that keeps them so much safer.

Because, like you said, Pam, that’s that pushing through that feeling of being uncomfortable or too much. They can do that if they don’t feel like they have the trusted advisor, somebody else to bounce ideas off of, somebody that will support them. So bringing that calm presence to work through a problem is so important. It helps our kids feel safe and secure knowing that we’re there to help without judging them or their interests. And that just creates more connection, more safety, more security, and more learning, because we’re having those conversations.

PAM: Yeah. Those conversations are everything. And we’ve talked about it before and I’m sure we’ll dive into it deeper again, but not all kids are super talkative. Not all adults are super talkative either. You don’t need to literally talk to have conversations, like to have communication. And you don’t need to have, like we were talking about earlier, long sit-down conversations, for us to process.

It could be a few words here, a few words there. It could be paying attention and watching and seeing their reaction. Seeing how they’re engaging, seeing what’s turning them off. There are so many ways to communicate.

Anyway, there was something else that I wanted to mention too, which is how ever things look right now around this, they won’t last forever. That’s our, projecting into the future all the time. One of the big worries we might have. Their interests and passions that are accessed through a screen will likely wax and wane over the years just woven into the fabric of that rich life that we’ve been talking about.

Yes, right now technology is having a season of explosive growth as we continue to innovate and see what we can do with it. The creativity is all around us.

But when we don’t bring a good, bad, judgmental energy to it, when we shine the light on what we’re actually engaging in through that screen interface, we don’t give it that power over us that often comes from fearing something, right? And instead we can just focus on exploring and learning and coming to our days with intention.

Without power and fear in the the mix, we can explore what brings us comfort, right? Because I know sometimes I just want to relax, cocoon, and watch an old show. We can play with tech-free days and weeks for ourselves or consensually together if our kids are curious, too, and just see how it feels. We can share our experiences with our kids without them receiving that big side dish of judgment, because as we were talking about, this is new to us, too.

So, over time, conversations will bubble up around how apps and loot boxes try to keep our attention and entice us to spend money, same as we talk about commercials on TV and direct mail advertising that arrives in our mailbox. We’ll talk about ways to spot scams and how people reengage with online may well not be who they appear to be, not to scare ourselves, not to create fear and run away from it, but just to become more knowledgeable, to become a bit wiser about it, to understand it more deeply. Being hands off and leaving our kids to navigate these things on their own because we have an unlimited screen time rule can make navigating online more challenging, because they have to figure it out all by themselves. We’re just saying, yep, yep. Whatever you want. That’s that disconnection we were talking about.

And having screen time rules that apply only to the kids can also muddy the waters, right? Because we’re sending the message that they aren’t smart enough to figure it out. We think less of them we’ve gotta figured out. So, we can have our phones all the time, but you can’t use the screens till after 4:00 or whatever it is that we feel comfortable with.

Instead, together we can explore what feels good for each of us right now and be open to how that changes over time. Because it will. It really will. And things can change more fluidly if they’re not covered in that goo of judgment, like that heaviness of judgment. 

ANNA: Oh, it’s so true. The goo of judgment. It’s a surefire way to harm a relationship. And we’ve all been on the receiving end of it at one time or another, and know that it does not bring us closer to the person who’s doing the judging.

And I love the reminder that what we talk about here is so very different from a hands-off approach. I think it’s the opposite, really, because we’re so involved in tending to our relationships, to understanding and supporting one another, understanding ourselves. It takes time and commitment to be in a deep and meaningful relationship. But who better to invest that time in than our children?

And what we found was that all of the things that you mentioned about the different safety pieces or the things you were learning came up in just normal conversations as we were navigating the world together. What does this mean? What’s this popup? Why are they asking me to do this? Why does this cost Robux and that doesn’t? They just naturally came up. There wasn’t a need for big sit downs or scary talks. We’d all share the things we’d find and things that surprised us, and things that didn’t feel great. And it was all just a part of the fabric of our lives.

And so, I think that can be confusing, because like you said, I think people envision the big sit down, but it’s really, we’re all on our, back in our day, Nintendo DS yelling across the room to the other person about what we’re seeing and why is this happening and we’re having good conversations about it. I think so often, we can fall into the trap of performing as a good parent, that we for forget to engage as humans.

I feel like my kids were well served by having honest, connected relationships with their dad and with me, where we could learn from one another, share our best information, chart our individual courses from there, trusting that while we are on our own unique paths, our journeys intertwined because we want them to, because it feels better. And so, we can look beyond arbitrary rules to find what feels best to each of us, knowing that it can change, knowing that we’ll continue to be there for each other as we navigate new technologies, new relationships, new jobs, all the things that come with life, all the richness that’s thrown with life. It’s the same process of understanding ourselves, understanding each other, engaging, having conversations, just being, exploring this world together. 

ERIKA: Yes. It’s so much nicer than staying stuck in just this role of parent, and I really loved what you both mentioned about how a rule, whether it’s the unlimited screen time rule or the no screen time rule, both of those are so much more disconnecting than what we’re talking about. And I just love that and I’m still thinking about that image of the goo of judgment, Pam. I loved that. But it’s true. When we’re stuck in that place of fear and judging, it adds this layer of goo to the situation. It makes it harder for us to see clearly what’s actually happening and to be able to see what all the possibilities are from this place.

So, sharing information that isn’t about fear and judgment feels so much better. It’s fun to talk to the kids about the ways that online games are trying to get their money. We talk about it all the time. We’ve noticed those ads that can make it look like someone’s doing like a really terrible job playing the game to make you get so frustrated that you want to download it yourself. And I’m like, I could play that better than them. And, and I’m like, wait a second. They know that that’s what I’m thinking!

And that endless scroll of TikTok. We talk about that Maya comments on how easy it is to just keep scrolling and scrolling and it’s like, hmm, it’s interesting to notice and talk about.

And sometimes it feels fun to keep scrolling and sometimes it doesn’t. And so, it’s nice to be able to have those conversations and notice those feelings in ourselves. But regardless of what we are navigating in our world, there are going to be so many things to learn about how it feels to us as unique people. And I think it’s, again, so important to remember just how different each individual person is. And so, it helps me trust that we are all figuring out what works for us, and technology is just one aspect of our lives that we can each explore and figure out for ourselves.

PAM: Okay. I just want to bring back that scrolling TikTok example, because that’s a beautiful example, because in one moment, scrolling and continuing to like take that moment. “Yeah, I’m gonna keep scrolling,” is fun and is exactly the right choice in that moment. And then another time I’m scrolling on like, “Oh man, this doesn’t feel good. It’s time to stop.” There is no one right answer, right? Just like “No screen time,” or, “Screen time all the time.” None of it is right, except for the individual, but also the individual in this particular moment.

So, what we’re giving them when we’re giving them this space to explore is the space to have moments along the whole spectrum of when this feels amazing, when this feels horrible, what are my choices in each of those moments? And they’ve got so much more experience with navigating it than they would have if they have a framework or a rule over top of them that tells them, “This framework knows better than you do.”

At some point when they don’t have that framework, they’re going to need to figure out these tools for themselves.

ANNA: Right. We’re taking away that discernment, that critical thinking. And I think it’s hard, because you know why people want to do it. We want to make it perfect and make sure we’re doing the right things. But, for me, I felt like the time that my kids were at home with us and luckily as unschoolers, we do have lots of time together, that’s the time to get in those mucky places, for it to feel bad about scrolling and figuring out and then going, “Yeah, I don’t like that, and why don’t I like that? But now today I love it.” I just felt like that was such a great environment to explore and learn versus me making rules when they’re young. And then they’re out on their own and I guess what it’s bringing to mind is when I first went to college just like, woo! People went nuts!

I didn’t have a lot of rules as a child. I don’t know. I was the baby and my siblings were older. So, my parents, we had a more conversational kind of environment, so I just was way more mature, but all those people that have been controlled all that time, whoa! Because they didn’t have that time to explore that with their parents as partners. It’s just so different.

ERIKA: It’s becoming clearer to me as we’re talking about it how limiting in either direction, in either direction is and how much more you can learn without that kind of structure. Oh, I love that.

PAM: And one last thing that bubbled up for me as you were talking there, and I will catch that bubble in my mind before this ends. One of the things, too, I feel, because at least I remember processing through it a lot, is that in my role as parent, I felt like I was failing if my kid was like upset about something or didn’t feel good. If my child was doing something that in the end they came to me and said, I did not enjoy doing that, scrolling longer or whatever, I would feel like that was a failure of mine. It’s like, oh my gosh, my role as a parent is to make this wonderful childhood for my child where they’re having fun all the time.

And so, yeah, it was the work of understanding the importance and the depth of allowing them or giving them the space, especially while they’re with me, to explore the wide range of experiences that life can offer or the wide range of experiences that they are interested in exploring. Because we can also go, oh, I want my kid to experience all the things, and I’m trying to take them here, do this, this, and this.

No, what’s important is what they’re wanting to explore in the moment, because that’s where they’re going to learn the most about themselves and about the thing, because they’re gaining that wide range of experiences of, how do I want to engage with this thing? And like you said, Anna, that experience with the process is what they’re learning and how they like to engage with the process. And in having a harder time or ending up feeling bad about something, they’ve learned how they start to feel bad, and then sometimes they can start to catch that even earlier. It’s like, ooh, I’m starting to feel a little bit off. I know from experience that if I keep this up for another hour, I’ll feel even worse. And then at least then they’re making a more cognizant or intentional choice. In that moment, it’s like, no, I really want where I am right now. None of that is wrong. None of that means I’m a failure as a parent, but I’m around to chat and help them process, and I can notice.

And maybe I mention, “You look like you’re starting to feel a little squirrely. Do you want to do X, Y, or Z?” And if they say, “No, that’s okay,” It’s not like, “Darn, they didn’t listen to me.” All of a sudden, the role as a parent that we can often feel and struggle with can be really impactful in this situation, too.

ANNA: Right, because that’s that piece of like, we’re not really looking at the human engagement part of it. And one last piece that bubbled up for me when you said that is that piece of how we think we have to expose them to everything during this time that they’re with us, but really life is this long game if we’re lucky. And it may be that like they realize, okay, I spent a bunch of years cocooning and doing this. All this learning was happening. Learning about who they are, what they want, different internal aspects, things we can’t even see. And then they may make different choices later, but it doesn’t all have to happen.

And I think that’s our piece of that role of parent thinking. We need to control and mold and make sure everything’s perfect and going to turn out in this one way. And it’s like, oh, if we can just engage as humans traveling along, learning from each other, figuring things out, it just has such a different feel to it.

PAM: Oh, it really does. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. This was so much fun. And we hope everyone else enjoyed listening in on our conversation and you found it maybe a little bit helpful on your unschooling journey. We also invite you to check out our other podcast, the Living Joyfully Podcast, as well. Much more focused on relationship specifically, and when you’re subscribed to both of them, you get a new episode from us in your podcast player every Thursday. Thanks so much and wishing everyone a lovely week.

ERIKA: Bye!

ANNA: Bye!

EU350: On the Journey with Sarah McMackin

This week, we’re back with another On the Journey episode. Pam, Anna, and Erika are joined by Living Joyfully Network member Sarah McMackin. Sarah is an unschooling mom to Eamon, who just turned seven. She also runs a restaurant in Austin, TX with her husband, Ray.

We talk about Sarah’s experience unschooling an only child, we explore how unschooling and running a business mesh together, and we dive very deep into the power of play! It was so amazing having Sarah share her story on the podcast and we hope you find our conversation inspiring on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out the Living Joyfully website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Context.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello everyone! I am Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and this is episode number 350 of the Exploring Unschooling podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis, as well as our special guest this week, Sarah McMackin. Welcome to you all.

PAM: Hi!

ERIKA: Hi!

SARAH: Hi!

ANNA: Today, we’re sharing another episode in our On the Journey series where we speak to our guests about their experiences, their a-ha moments, their challenges, and what they’ve learned on their unschooling journeys. Sarah is a member of the Living Joyfully Network, and I have so enjoyed meeting her and getting to know her and her family. Sarah brings so much joy to everything she does. Her insights and excitement about being a parent and finding ways to focus on connection while running two successful restaurants in Austin, Texas is so inspiring. I am very excited for her to be here and share some of her story on this On the Journey episode.

But before we get started, I wanted to mention that we recently have been putting together an Amazon storefront, so this is a place where we can share our favorite finds and just the things that we’ve found helpful along our journey. And that could be from books, to self-care items, games, and more. It’s a super easy way you can support the work we’re doing and find some cool things along the way. You can check it out at amazon.com/shop/livingjoyfully. And, as always, we really, really appreciate your support.

So now, I’m going to turn it over to Erika to get us started.

ERIKA: Hi! Hi, Sarah.

SARAH: Hi.

ERIKA: I’m so excited to have Sarah joining us and I thought we could start maybe with you sharing a little bit about you and your family and what everyone is interested in these days.

SARAH: Sure. Thanks so much for having me on. Yeah, in my inner household it’s myself and then my husband Ray, and our son Eamon. We live in Austin, Texas. And Eamon just turned seven yesterday, but old soul. Old soul.

Yeah, so Eamon’s overarching, major passion is play and then that permeates everything. Everything that he does. Pretend play, and then it’s really manifested into video gaming and how he even engages with video games. So, basically, I mean, right now he is really into simulation games and first-person, really immersive, playing with them, making up storylines and stuff like this.

When he was five or so, I think I showed him Laurel and Hardy and that right there like sparked this thing in him with this like dynamic duo kind of mentality of like getting into mishaps and just having a sort of dynamic in which they’re engaged like with the world. He has literally taken that up and just used that in most of our play. Because him being an only child, it’s really been him and me in a big way. And so, coming from a playful parent, like my mom, it comes very naturally for me. So, that’s a lot of the day is him oscillating between his screen and video gaming and YouTubeing and watching all the stuff, the walkthroughs, other gamers doing their thing, and then rolling that in.

So typically, he likes me to be sitting with him and like engaging with the game itself. So, it’s not just the video game. Because the games that he plays are not typically like ones that have a goal. They’re just kind of these open world simulation and then let’s make up scenarios and let’s make up kind of character development and stuff like that and bring it in.

So, he’s really into that. He’s just gotten close to, over the last few weeks, gaming with one of the Network folks’ son in Denmark. So, we’re in Texas and they’re in Denmark. So, it’s a seven-hour difference. So, they’re gaming together typically two times a day, morning time here when it’s their evening, but not really morning, more like 1:00 PM, because Eamon is a night owl, just like his dad. So, he is going to sleep around 3:00 AM lately, which is also how he’s learning time. He keeps jumping into bed and saying, “The small hand was on the two,” or, “The small hand was on the three.” So, he’s sort of playing with that.

And then he wakes up around 1:00 and it’s right on with Theodor. So, the two of them are playing Fortnite right now, and they’re playing this game called Wobbly Life, which is really fun to hear him. He was always, being an old soul and being I think an only child and then unschooling, part of the reason why we unschool is because I think he was kind of overwhelmed socially with other kids, really, when he was small and he really loved just our play and the way that we work together.

So, just to watch him now at almost seven or now seven be very comfortable and open and ready for some real social engagement. I mean, now it’s like he’s just hamming it up. I mean, he doesn’t stop talking. Theodor doesn’t stop talking. And the two of them are just like at it. So, there’s this whole little friendship thing happening now socially for him, which is really interesting.

And he loves filmmaking, like making stop motions. And he’s not a big movie watcher, but it’s amazing how much he’s gleaned just from the few movies that he’s seen. And then I think YouTube, which at first, YouTube was very scary to me as a medium of like, wow, is this what we’re going to be watching? It felt like reality tv, all the time, which was just sort of foreign to my upbringing because it was like just shows and these like beautiful plots and very controlled characters and stuff. And now it’s like, oh god, what is he watching now? But he has gotten so much out of it, and I’ve sat with him and watched a lot with him, and now I’ve felt the freedom to kind of like, I could be cleaning and he’s doing that.

But the social and the comedic and the everything he picks up, he is like finding what really turns him on, and then he’s able to utilize that in his gaming, in his filmmaking, anything like that. So, shorts and stuff are now coming in to play, which again, the YouTube shorts, you’re like, oh my god, what is this doing to a brain? Are we okay? This is a scroll. We haven’t gotten into TikTok yet, but he’s doing it and the guys that he’s watching or the girls he is watching, it’s like they’re so Eamon. They’re so him. And when they’re not, he just kind of flips it, or it is, and now it’s a new aspect of him. And so, that right there, it’s just wonderful. It’s all weaving into life.

But the real passion that he has for the filmmaking part, at least what he’s said at this point, is the editing. So, he loves the filming and then he could sit for hours and he will edit till the cows come home. Music, he loves picking out like the perfect soundtrack to like any moment. Right? And even in our play, he’s got these Spotify playlists that are kind of vaudeville. They’re very jazzy and, but like with a jauntiness. Or he’s got some real intense savior kind of music, like rescue music or something. And it’s like, that’s when things go into slow-mo and we’ve got stuffies and gnomes. But it makes the play so much easier to do because you’ve got this music.

So, I just feel like the music, the video gaming, the video editing, all of it, him being able to control the scene, it’s really about that. He almost thinks in vignettes in a way, which is so interesting, like how we’re going to make this up and then the song will change and it changes the whole mood. So, he’s just playing. He’s playing with everything. And so, that would be him right now. It’s a lot of video. It’s a lot of YouTube. It’s a lot of the gaming and then the pretend play with me.

And then I guess just what we are into. So, Ray and I, yeah, we opened up a plant-based gastropub here in Austin, the same year we had Eamon, which people think is crazy. But then I’m like, well, I don’t know when else we would’ve done it. So, actually it’s really good timing that we did that, because we wouldn’t have had any time otherwise.

And so, for the first six years I’d say, we had a GM and we just had the team. And so, Ray and I divided and conquered attachment parenting with Amon, so I’ve been with him a hundred percent. We still co-sleep. We still nurse. We still do it all. And my focus was really on like playing with him in a very immersive way and that’s just it. And so, we’ve just continued that on, and Ray taking on over at The Beer Plant more.

And then recently, we sort of had a little shake up. So, COVID, in restaurants, you can imagine. So, just some things have gone just a little funky. And so, I’ve decided just in the last six weeks, “Hey, we’ve been trying to weather this. Why don’t I get a little bit more involved? I think it’s just a lot to handle for one person and maybe I think I need to get more in tune with this thing because it’s a lot of parts and it’s a lot of people.”

And anyway, so my new thing basically is like kind of getting in there in general managing from the morning and the sleep cycle has worked out so well in terms of Eamon staying up so late and sleeping in, so I can get up, get over there, come back, and be with him for a bit and then get over there again if I need to.

So, that’s kind of a new thing right now. We’re playing with sleep. We’re playing with me working more, but really having all these wonderful conversations about how life is changing a little bit. But that The Beer Plant needs my attention right now, but he does too. So, he and I like make sure that we really create like a great schedule for that. Because before this, I mean really it’s been The Beer Plant, Eamon. and unschooling, and that’s where I’m at anyway. Those are my interests and what takes up most of my time.

And we’ve got some new neighbors, which I haven’t had much social stuff. So, again, as Eamon is kind of blooming with Theodore, I feel like we’re in tandem where we’ve got these new neighbors that now are coming over once a week that we’ve like met. And I just love them. And it takes a lot to just like really love, I don’t know, like really commune with people at this age, so that’s been really fun to kind of open and develop my social aspect a little, like that social self a little bit.

And then Ray is my nighttime researcher. He’s nocturnal, so he’s at The Beer Plant every evening, just helping be a gofer and stuff like that. And then, he’s home and he just researches whether it’s health topics or state of the world or whatever. Yeah, that’s where we’re at right now. So, anyway. Yeah, I went a lot of places.

ERIKA: Wow! That was so amazing. I think that what you were sharing about Eamon, what came up for me is like, he’s seven. And what an amazing, rich, deep life he gets to have. How even a young child like that can have these really strong interests and really explore the depths of things, human emotion and human relationships and storytelling and like all these things. And I think mainstream culture will tell us that children that young, they just have to wait. You have to wait till you get older, till you can actually explore these things. But hearing all the things he gets to do at seven just gives me goosebumps. What an amazing life. You know?

SARAH: Yep. Well, when you’re in it, too, you don’t have that perspective. To me, that’s just Eamon.  And Eamon is ageless. He just really is, because he’s always been this old soul, verbal, thinking about a million things. And so, it doesn’t even strike me as it would be different, but yeah, when you step back and you just say, wow. You’re allowed to just really go to town on anything you want and all that you get back from that, it’s unbelievable. 

PAM: I love it. I do, and what struck me too was the openness of your lives in that, this friendship has bubbled up now for Eamon, and you’re noticing a friendship bubbling up for you alongside, and you’re weaving in getting more involved at the restaurant. So, for me, that’s the seasonality of life and the ability to flow as things come up, because, I mean, that is stressful that things went funky absolutely during COVID and the recovery season from that and figuring things out.

So, even when life gets funky, we have the space to let things bubble up. And as you say, we’re trying this. You’re working with Eamon to see, does this still feel like we’re connected? Are you still feeling comfortable with this? And even if it’s not big conversations. He’s very verbal, so probably you guys are literally chatting about it. But also, you can see through reactions, through emotions, through all these pieces.

They’re still communicating how things are feeling for them, and even when we choose something to try, and then we need to morph it a little bit more, it’s not wrong. Each little step is like, ooh, we’re going to try this and we’re going to learn a little bit more about how it feels, and then we’ll keep tweaking it until we hit something that feels good. And then I always add for now, right? Because these grow and change over time, don’t they?

ANNA: So much.

PAM: Okay. I have the next question and, absolutely, you mentioned your restaurant business and we just wanted to hear a little bit more about how you see running your business and unschooling fitting together into your life. If you could dive into that a little bit more, that would be so cool.

SARAH: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, gosh, the two things, they seem like they’re so similar, on this similar track. They’re like boundless. They’re never stopping. I don’t know. It’s like choose your adventure at all times, basically. And it’s about listening and growing. I mean, you open a restaurant and you don’t quite realize, but it’s like this living, breathing thing, right?

And from the backside, it’s like you’ve got so many parts. You’ve got to listen to the guests. You’ve got to listen to your team. There’s a lot of support that it needs. There’s a lot of creativity. It’s like the same thing as this unschooling, where you wake up every day and there’s no difference between Monday and Sunday, really. Except for us, it’s like volume on Friday night and Saturday night, but that’s about the only rhythm that changes. So, there’s no nine to five.

And so, for me and for Ray, I think even in the beginning, it’s funny, I sort of had this like realization about like balance and trying to strike balance. I was sort of like, you know what? The hell with balance for a little while and the restaurant’s going to take everything. It’s going to be a hundred percent for us and Eamon is going to be a hundred percent. We live in a fixer upper. It’s just perpetually a fixer upper.

You know why? Because we don’t have the time right now. Eventually we will have the time. So, I can put that aside and I can prioritize that the restaurant really needs this, or Eamon really needs this, or whatever it is. But it’s amazing when you’re present in something and also you’re in the driver’s seat, and Eamon is in the driver’s seat, too. So, I don’t mean that Ray and I are driving Eamon at all. It’s like the three of us get to kind of drive these lives and we’re driving the restaurant, but at the same time, so is everybody else that’s involved in it.

And so, it takes this like team effort and so many beautiful things come out of it and with unschooling, because everybody’s involved, everyone’s chatting. We run the restaurant the same way with Eamon. For better and for worse, we’re very relaxed people. Except for a little anxiety about stuff, but that’s behind and then very approachable, communicative. Let’s work together. It’s kind of soft and really nice. We’ve heard about cutthroat restaurants and the way that restaurants typically function, it’s like, it’s the numbers, it’s the bottom line. It’s, we’ve got managers in place and everyone knows exactly what they’re doing at all times. And this is what we do on Mondays. This is what we do on Tuesdays. We are not like that, which some people can hang with that and some people can’t. And a lot of people would be like, ah! I can’t do this! Like, you can’t run a restaurant like that.

Or, with Eamon, Eamon does what Eamon wants. We do it together. It works out so beautifully. He goes to bed when he wants, when his body’s tired. He eats when he wants, what he wants. A lot of my adult friends, it’s like, oh my gosh! I could never do it! They have school vacation and they’re like, oh my gosh! What are we going to do this week? You know? I’m going out of my mind! Where I’m like, oh my gosh. It’s the best. So, I guess the two things are. It’s not counterintuitive, but I guess so from a cultural standpoint. We’re doing both of these things in very different ways, but they’re the ways that are authentic to us, and they work out nearly, almost all the time.

Except for that footing, which again, I do think that Covid, yeah. That definitely shook stuff up. And in life you get those little missteps, too, where you’re just like, oh, things got funky, like you said, and we’re gonna get all in and just approach it just like we do every day and then figure it out. So, I guess the two, they really work so well together, the fact that I can get up and I can prioritize my day, and I don’t have to be anywhere at any time unless I’ve made a meeting time or something like that. But everything’s flexible, too.

And the flexibility piece is just so, I mean, in some ways I feel not like spoiled, but I feel so lucky, I guess would be the word, the positive word. It’s just very, very fortunate that we all, the three of us in this house, can do whatever we need to do and want to do, when we want to do it, and how we need to. And it’s going to take more of our brain power oftentimes because we’re the ones that are behind everything. We don’t have a principal or a teacher or I don’t have a boss that’s telling me, oh, Sarah, actually don’t you see that your food costs are this? I have to do that. So, it’s hyper-vigilant and you still have to sleep, which we get plenty of it, because we get to sleep when we want. So, that’s just it.

PAM: I find that interesting, too, to think about, because yes, when we feel so empowered and lucky that we have control over our time like that, but it does take energy to make the choices. We are empowered and we need to make the choices of what we’re going to do. Or even that we need a rest day or we need a rest hour, or whatever it is.

But I think that can be something too with kids with unschooling. At some point, sometimes it can feel a bit overwhelming to be making all the choices. And then it’s like, oh, just tell me what to do, etc. So, I think that is just a fascinating piece that we learn about ourselves and to be okay with, oh geez, if I just knew what to do. I don’t quite have the energy for making all these choices. Yet, I know in my case anyway, even when I kind of felt that way, I never chose that way. Because the value of having the choice in my life always, always won out. Because then I knew, oh, that’s kind of a clue that I’m feeling a little low energy. Maybe I’m starting to burn out just a touch, that this is starting to feel a little overwhelming. So, I might need a little bit more self-care. Just bring that up rather than thinking, oh no, this was all wrong and I would rather just have outside control over my schedule. I don’t know. That might have been a weird way, but that’s what bubbled up for me, because that freedom is awesome. But just acknowledging that it also takes energy, doesn’t it?

ANNA: What I loved and want to really point out, so we’re talking about unschooling a lot here, which education’s pretty conventional in our society, and we’re taking an unconventional look, a creative look. We can change things up.

And what I love is that the restaurant business, I mean, there are people that very much think there’s a conventional way to run a restaurant and that it has to look a certain way. And to me, it’s just this reminder of, you know what? All bets are off. We can change anything. And, Pam, we’ve talked about it a lot before. Once you start down that unschooling path, you really just start to question all the things. And so, really, do I have to be doing it the way that they’re saying that I need to do it?

And so, I love that you have these two things that you’re making fit authentically with you, that you’re looking at it with this new creative eye, and that you’re not getting bogged down in the, “Well, for to run a restaurant successfully, you have to do X, Y, and Z,” because it’s just not true. There’s so many ways to do things, and so, I don’t know. I love that aspect of like just bringing the lens to everything.

ERIKA: Yeah, as I was hearing you talk, Sarah, it was all these paradigm shifts jumping out at me.

You know, like the paradigm shift of, we’re not doing power-over. It’s going to be collaborative. And there is no such thing as a “have to.” We’re going to just make choices of what we want to do and these are huge paradigm shifts to make if you’re coming from a conventional place.

But I just love how all the things that we talk about with unschooling just weave right into all the other things we do. When you’re interacting with the people that you work with at the restaurant, the same principles of communication and collaboration, those same things can apply so well and really, I think could surprise people with how well it can work to come from that angle.

ANNA: Yeah, and how much better it can feel, too, because the restaurant business can have a lot of darkness to it for people. And I think part of that is the convention that’s put on it. And so, I love that you’re just rethinking all of that and it just sounds like it fits and feels so much better for everyone involved.

So, I have question number three, which kind of hearkens back to something you were talking about earlier, but on the Network, you’ve talked a lot about Eamon and his play and I loved hearing those nuances of all the things he’s into and how you’re involved with that. But I think just talking a little bit more about how that evolved and it sounds like it came pretty naturally to you. What have you learned in that process? Or has it been like you thought it was going to be, or just a little bit more about that, because I’m so fascinated by the beauty of the play that you all have.

SARAH: Oh yeah. Because it’s so big in our lives, most of the day, like I’ve said, the characters just kind of come out. And they’re in every moment. And we just know we’ve got the stuffies, a lot of it’s characters, right? And that means also that the play comes with us wherever we go.

So, I guess, the bond, and again, Eamon is an only child, so I take that stock right now. If he had siblings, he’d probably be playing with them all the time right now. And a lot of learning would be coming from that. So, families that do have more than one child would be like, that’s where that’s going. But as a mom of an only child, I could see very early on it was like our play dynamic just worked from the get-go.

So, when he was very small, of course you’re playing with two-year-olds, you’re playing with three-year-olds, you’re playing with stuff, but mainly you’re just playing together. And at the park, it was me and him. And it’s not just chase, it’s more this character thing. I could just see this within him. And not that he’s not him. He likes to even be him. But then maybe I’m a YouTuber that he loves and he lights up. He literally feels like that YouTuber is right there. So, this is where just a little bit of like, I was in drama in high school and college, not even college, I only went to high school, because it just wasn’t a thing. But I’m like, this is where you use that. This is where that improv comes in. Just have fun with it.

The closeness and bond and the being able to have it in my pocket at all times, from when he was small to even now at seven, if we’re out somewhere and I can see that he’s a little bored or maybe something is upsetting him a little bit, the playfulness that we can just tap into in a moment changes everything.

And so, there’s this constant playful energy that we’ve cultivated through having been just down on the floor with him. It’s funny, yesterday was his birthday, so for a few minutes, we all looked at some old videos. Thanks to the technology that we have. So, we’re on his iPad and we just looked at a few things when he was like three, four, or five. And there he is, he’s this little guy and we’re playing and he was already such a character and already gleaning so much stuff and he’s just there on the screen and I thought, man, we’ve been doing this for forever, like since he came out basically.

And it just has created this solid foundation for the two of us that, like right now, it’s a really busy time for me. Which I didn’t want it to be this record rip where all of a sudden it’s like, because then when I come home, I still have some stuff going on. I don’t want to lose that thing. And we’re not. We’re not losing it. Even if it’s less time that maybe we have, we don’t have all day to play. We have it in every pocket.

So, I’ll come home and I’ll come in and I’ll be Pythor from Ninjago. That’s a really good example of where he goes. He has watched just the season one of Ninjago. This was when he was about five. He watched that and the Lloyd and Pythor dynamic. I don’t know if you’re familiar at all, but if you are, their dynamic. He just took it and he ran. Okay.

So, these guys then can be mischievous but also kind and they’re good. And then he sort of brought in this whole other storyline of Kai trying to make Lloyd be the green ninja. This is a huge part of our play. That’ll just come up and we know that that’s where we’re at. So, then I’m Pythor, he’s Lloyd, and either we’re going to do jobs wrong or something, or we’re going to do whatever. There’s no start or finish. It kind of is just always there for us to tap into and then it fills his cup and then it’s like we’re off to the next thing.

And so, the play is just weaving in and out of the day. The minute he gets up, it could be we start or whatever. And I just know we can read each other so well because of it. Because when you’ve played with somebody, I think you develop together a chemistry and like a language and this whole other world template, a place that you guys go and a bond that just feels like so good, so tight.

I feel like I know him so well even though he constantly surprises me and I think vice versa. So, play, at first, I think when I just thought about like, you play with your kid. You play with your kid. It’s great. And then life goes on and whatever. You just have these like moments of play and oftentimes parents are exhausted by playing and that’s just it.

But when, when it’s not this like, “We play an hour a day,” and it’s this isolated time, when you’ve developed these like things together, it can just be in and out of the day, again. So, there’s not this scheduled time or that we have to fit it in. It’s like it fits into every single like space that the day allows, which is also just beautiful.

So. play is just incredible. If you can do even a little. Whatever it is. I mean, some people are better at a board game or something like that and not maybe the pretend, but whatever way that you can, if you can inject that into the day, I just feel like it, again, it’s like a bond that happens between you and your kid that like it, it helps with everything. Again, those moments and defusing and stuff like that. So, yeah, I love it.

And then just one last thing, I guess like video gaming, too, to me. Beforehand, before Eamon really got into it, it would’ve been like, oh, they video game. You just think of it as like, they’re playing Mario Brothers and they’re smashing each other and you’re trying to get over the obstacles. It’s like, it’s so much more than that. When you actually sit and then you’re doing it with them, they are getting a ton out of that. And we’ve bonded over that. So, again, this is a connection piece. I guess the play part is so big for a little kid. They’re tuned for it.

ANNA: Oh, I love it! And I would say I was not as great with the pretend play and so, had to work at it, but what was interesting to me is kind of what you saw. When you do commit and kind of get in there, you see all the connections, all the learning, all these things that are going on. Because I think when we’re standing back over here, oh, they’re playing with some figurines.

They’re playing over there and my daughters, they had each other, so they’re playing with their sibling. But when you’re in it, you see how the wheels are turning, where they’re connecting something from maybe something that’s happened in the family, with something they saw on a show, with something that happened out here. And that was always so fascinating for me. That’s how I could get into something that I felt like was a little bit hard for me, because I’m not as playful as that in real life.

But it was those making those connections and seeing that that got me excited about it, about being involved.

And same with video games, right? Because that surface level of video games is, oh, they’re doing Mario Kart, but when you’re playing it, you realize, one, how hard it is. Two, all the things you need to be thinking about in order to do it. And so, it does become this connection point and this common language and something you can reach to because I am all about, we can shift energy so quickly when we bring that kind of playful mindset to it, when we set that stage. So, having those things to pull from is so valuable, and I’ve just seen that so much with you and things that you’ve talked about.

ERIKA: Yeah. I have goosebumps again from that section, Sarah. That was just so incredible. It just feels like you are speaking the language of childhood with Eamon. You know what I mean? You can’t get that level of connection without being able to go there. But I think it’s hard for a lot of adults, because it takes a lot of vulnerability to be able to be someone else and pretend something and really go there with being silly. It’s kind of like you have to really step out of the role of who you are being in your real life and just give into it.

But I think it’s that being vulnerable, like that vulnerability is what then allows the children to connect with you, because it’s like, oh, she is actually going there with us and it’s just so fun. And you’re right about just like then the shared language of those characters and just knowing all of those details with each other is like, it creates such a bond. And it’s super inspiring to hear you talk about play.

SARAH: I was just thinking like, yeah, just a couple of things that have helped me to stay in the play zone. So, we have a lot of stuffies obviously, but like we’ve got some puppets, right? And so, a puppet coyote who’s like just the best big and fluffy, and that’s Kai the coyote. So, Kai will often come on, walks with us, or someone. We’ll take somebody with us on a walk, like just trying to get out in nature and stuff.

Eamon loves his walks. I love walks, too, but he’s not just going to walk and he might want to talk about everything he’s seeing. And he might be someone who’s like, oh, look at this. But if he has a character to do it in, it’s even more fun. Or he can be him, but he’s got Kai to talk to him.

So, then it’s Kai. And Kai doesn’t know anything. So, it’s sort of like, well, what’s that thing over there? And he’s like, That’s a mailbox. Well, what’s the mail? What do you mean a mailbox? What’s a mail? And he loves this. He lives to try to break down everything and just teach. This’ll be the mile walk that we do around our loop and he points out everything to Kai.

And I remember being a kid or seeing kids with grown-up teachers that come in or even like Mr. Rogers or like the old things. They have somebody, typically, or they are someone and they’re engaged and they’re real animated and they’re just talking to the kids.

Most of our play, when I think about it, I’d say half the time, it’s just talking, but we’re just doing it with this playful piece to it. So, maybe it’s not me he’s talking to, even though he loves to chat with me, but that’s like when we’re driving and we’re together. He loves having that third, that element of whether it’s Kai or it’s a little gnome we take with us. And then they can talk about anything and you can bring it on your walk.

We’ll pretend again, like the Ninjago characters, when we’re on our walk. If we see any cracks, that means that Jay’s after us, right? Because we’re Python and Lloyd, so we’re the bad guys, kind of, but they love us. So, it’s like, avoid all cracks. Come on Lloyd, let’s go! We’ve got to go! And then we just jump the cracks and sometimes he gets done and that’s the whole walk. So, it’s not the most relaxing walk. It is so fun, though. And then I’m jumping and running and I’m actually getting my exercise. So, it’s like, again, that interweaving, and voices definitely helps.

So, I wouldn’t do them here, because I’m not good at voices. But to Eamon, it’s like I am Pythor for a minute, you know what I mean? And it keeps me in character. Because if it’s just me, I get. Hi. If I was a little guy and I was just me and I’m playing, I’m going to get bored in like five minutes, literally. You know what I mean? Like, hi, Eamon. Here we go.

But if I’m using a voice and I’m this character, you can like stay in that character and then it’s fun for you and you kind of ham it up if you, if you are into that thing, which I think a lot of us have that if we just kind of allowed for it. It’s almost like you get a little tipsy or something, do you know what I mean? But you’re not, you’re just tipsy on play, where it’s like, oh my god, I’m being so silly. Is anyone hearing this? And it just develops. Just to see like what you find fun in play. If you can tap into what is fun for you as a grownup and maybe even what was fun for you as a kid.

And I don’t think I’ve had to go back that far, but some people might, just to kind of reconjure, if you can. And it might be tricky and you’ll find another bond with your kiddo, obviously. So it could be like that they’re really into science or something, and you’re really into it, and you guys just totally groove on that and that’s fine. It’s just more, if you have that playful little piece of you that wants to come out, it’s remarkable how it’s like this tool, just this thing that you have with you guys, you know?

PAM: Okay, so number one, you took it exactly where I wanted to go. It was such a paradigm shift for me, so that’s what bubbled up when you were talking, that play can just weave into our days and the things we do. It’s not, this is playtime. And now this is when I go make dinner, and this is when I go have my walk around the neighborhood for my exercise or whatever. But that play can be part of those things.

Sometimes it would be, can we continue this in the kitchen area because everybody’s getting hungry and I’m going to get us a snack? But it’s not a stopping point. Or can my character or somebody take my turn for a couple of rounds while I go grab a snack and bring it back? It doesn’t have to be one or the other. For me, that was a huge shift once my kids came home and were there all the time and we started actually hanging out together and doing things together and playing together.

So, my mind was just like, okay, I do this and then I do this, and then I do this. And it was fascinating to get more to the flow state. So, it wasn’t like start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. It was like, things could flow and we can bring pieces here and bring pieces here and it just brought such a different energy to the day.

And I just want to highlight one thing you just brought up there, too, which is brilliant, which is finding for ourselves. The idea of getting bored with play. But yeah, finding for ourselves that little thing that helps it be a little bit more engaging for us. Absolutely, just that little piece of, I’m going to filter this through a character and bring it out. I have to think about that now. I have to keep engaged and occupied, so that I can do that. So, that was just really fascinating for me.

And again, if what we’re wanting is to connect with our kids, it’s going to be through the things they love to play with. So, like you have so beautifully connected with Eamon through play, like how you saw from when he was just the youngest, youngest child, that this is what makes his eyes light up and his heart sing.

And I get goosebumps just thinking about you two just hanging out and playing together. It can be different for somebody who is more into science experiments or board games. I love the video game idea, too, because as Anna was saying, there’s just so many different pieces to it, right?

But when you engage with them, you see the pieces that make it shine. Like, like with Joseph, it was stories and characters. And I love you talking about how he’s just in an open world for the most part, and you’re bringing the story to that.

And with Joseph growing up, it was more like RPGs. He didn’t play the open world games. He wanted games with a deep story and lots of characters, so that he could sink into that and play through those different viewpoints, perspectives and see how that felt. So, yeah, it’s all about getting to know our kids, isn’t it?

SARAH: It really is. Yeah. It’s those details. When you really, really listen, pay attention. Whenever you tune in. Doesn’t have to be when they’re very, very small. You can tune in anytime, right? And just be like, wow. When you just really sit, which life goes by very quickly. And the older we get, it seems like a day goes by so fast, but just taking that little time, paying attention. It’s like, wow, those are such little gems that then just can like weave in. It’s the weaving, it’s the flow, I guess.

ERIKA: I had a couple other thoughts when you were both talking, first just about the idea of, I don’t have time to play right now, actually doesn’t make any sense. Because in any moment, I could just be playful about it or be a different character. You know what I mean? Like I could still get my things done in a playful way. And so, I like the challenge of just dropping that idea of there needs to be time to play and shifting to just being playful.

And then the other thing I was going to mention is, so my kids are 13 and almost 12, and so I think, for me, when I was growing up, that was kind of past the point of this kind of pretend play stuff. But for my kids, it is not past it and I just love that. I feel like it could be a little bit cultural too, because I see on Roblox all these role-playing games that are there and you know, teenagers are playing those still with their friends. And it’s like, do you want to do a role play? I hear them do it with their friends all the time.

And we are getting ready to go on a trip right now. And I overheard them. My heart was just bursting because I overheard them in the living room with their plushies, talking about the trip from the point of view of the plushies, working through some of the things that they’re thinking about. But just like, now this character’s asking, so where are we going to go again? And where are we going to stay? And what is it going to be like? What are we going to get to see? And then they’re just talking through all these things. It really is, I think, just the natural way that humans learn to process their lives is through play. And so, I just love like that our lives have enough space that at this age, they still are feeling free to play like that.

SARAH: I love that. That gives me hope. Because I’m like, okay, we’re at seven. And I’m going, how much longer do we have? It’s like, nope. Probably a long time.

ANNA: A long time! And I think it’s kind of like Erika was saying, too. It’s just this choice to just take a playful attitude. And I think somehow that feels easier, too, for me than like, okay, I’m going to sit down and play. But it’s like, no, we can just be playful and we can bring in characters and we can be silly and we can just keep that energy alive.

And I mean, I definitely saw that kind of pretend play for so long with my girls who are now in their mid-twenties. And there’s still a very playful energy, especially with their dad who tends to be more playful than I am. And it’s just fun to see how, I think it is kind of a natural human thing that maybe gets tamped down. I’m just thinking of like me and my Enneagram eight, just tamp down the playfulness, but it’s just so fun to see.

And the story about the kids working out the trip, like how valuable is that to be able to have that conversation in a way that maybe feels safer than saying, I’m worried about the trip, or, I’m not sure about this aspect of the trip, and so that is such a beautiful gift.

PAM: It really is. And I’ve got to say, even like you were saying, Anna, with adult kids. Yeah. I mean, Lissy will still dress up. They attract and they connect with friends in life, too, who have that energy and ways that they connect. And she had people together for the weekend for her birthday recently, and a big part of that was playing games. They still play hide and seek with the flashlight where they turn off the light. When they come home and visit, they will still have friends over and do that at night. When I get up in the morning and I see all the microwave light, all the lights are taped over.

So, it is not something that they have to lose over time. When it’s something that’s respected and valued by the people in their lives, they’re comfortable bringing it with them and they attract and find the people in their lives as friends who will also engage in that with them. So, yeah, that’s really fun to think about.

SARAH: I love that. And also, too, I know we don’t want to ever look at things that kids are doing now and be like, oh, and when you grow up, this will serve you well. But you do, you see these things in a positive way and you just say, man, like some of the more successful, happy people that I know video game. I’ll be like you video game, too! Oh yeah, I know all those games. It’s like, in your work, in your life, if you keep that playful spirit, again, you don’t have to have it to be successful, but if you’ve got it and it’s honored, just like you said, Pam, like it’s like encouraged, it serves everything when you get older as well. In your workplace people, are looking for this, a brain that thinks in a way that’s sort of like, ah, there’s a lot of possibilities. How do we want to play with this? So, it’s such a great, human trait to foster and see where that can go for you. So, again, just from an unschooling perspective. 

ANNA: Yes, because again, it’s not about it looking a particular way. We’re all going to bring different things to it. But it’s that playful, creative energy and we talk about that all the time. To bring to problems, to bring to relationships, to just have that open curiosity is part of that playfulness of figuring out different pieces.

And so, I do think it’s this incredibly useful human trait that we can all cultivate and, as always, our kids lead the way if we just leave ourselves open to that. And I think that’s just so, so beautiful.

So, thank you so much for joining us today, Sarah. That was amazing and so much fun. I hope everyone enjoyed this conversation and will be bubbling about all the things about it.

And we definitely hope that you’ll join us next time on the Exploring Unschooling Podcast. And we would also love it if you check out our other podcast, the Living Joyfully Podcast, as well. You can find it on your favorite podcast player or at podcast.show/livingjoyfully. And come join us on the Network, where we can keep talking and playing. All right, everyone. Take care. Thank you so much for being here.

PAM: Thanks, Sarah!

ERIKA: Bye!

SARAH: Thank you. Thanks, guys!

EU349: Unschooling “Rules”: Unlimited Screen Time

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing a new episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series!

We use the word “rules” in quotes to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade—or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, for inquiry, for agency, and for growth.

In this episode, we’re diving into the “rule” that unschoolers have unlimited “screen time.” We explore what that term even means, examine the fears and underlying beliefs that we carry, and share about the kinds of conversations that families have when they’re navigating technology use.

We had a lot of fun diving into this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTIONED ON THIS EPISODE

Our coaching and consulting calls

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Revitalizing Our Nest, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of autonomy and flow.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Welcome! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and this is episode 349 of the podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Anna Brown. Hi to you both.

ANNA: Hello!

PAM: Hello!

ERIKA: We have a fun Unschooling “Rules” episode for you today. And before we dive into that, I wanted to share a Living Joyfully update. If you’ve stopped by livingjoyfully.ca in the past few weeks, you will have seen our brand new website. The design has a new look and we added new areas of content as well.

Pam, Anna and I have been brainstorming all about the vision of Living Joyfully, and we realized that everything we talk about is really about relationships. Over the years, we’ve seen just how powerful the shift can be in our families when we change these paradigms and learn tools to help us in our relationships, and we want to bring that focus on relationships front and center in all that we do.

To that end, we have this podcast as well as the Living Joyfully Podcast where Pam and Anna share so many of these same ideas, but without the lens of unschooling. We also have the Living Joyfully Network, our online community, where we dive deep and learn together. And now, we’ve added individualized coaching and consulting opportunities to our offerings.

If you’re curious and would like to learn more about our relationship coaching and unschooling consulting, please visit livingjoyfully.ca/coaching. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Okay, so in this episode we’re going to talk about the unschooling “rule” that unschoolers have unlimited screen time. And first, we want to remind everyone that with this Unschooling “Rules” series, we use the word rules in quotes, to draw attention to the fact that there’s no such thing as an unschooling rule. It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you, and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody’s going to drop by your house and give you a failing grade or an A+. Our goal with this series is to explore these apparent “rules” and cultivate an environment for self-discovery, inquiry, agency, and growth. So, Pam, let’s dive into screen time. 

PAM: Yes, yes, yes. Let’s. Okay. Okay. You probably know by now from me that the first aspect I would like to talk about is language. And what is meant by the term “screen time.” So, at this point in our culture, that is a very general term, right? Because a screen can be, it can be a TV, it can be a laptop, it can be a desktop monitor, a phone, a tablet. It can be found in your house, in your car, in your pocket, maybe even in your fridge. So many of our day-to-day activities now involve screens in some ways such that the idea of “screen time” really doesn’t add much value to the conversation.

Screens are pretty ubiquitous in our lives. So, saying someone is in front of a screen is pretty meaningless. It tells us practically nothing about what they’re doing. Screens are just an interface, a way for a person to interact with technology, with a piece of hardware.

It’s what they’re using the screen to do that is interesting. What’s behind the screen? And that is an incredibly rich set of possibilities. It’s pretty much anything and everything. It can be an activity we really enjoy, like playing a video game or watching a movie. It can be a way to connect with others who also enjoy something that we love. It can be tips and tricks for improving our skills. It can be learning the history around an interest or an activity that we’re curious about, so, deepening our understanding of that it can be a way to find community, both online and off.

So, for me, instead of using the lens of screen to examine our days and whether or not my child is using one to engage with something, I am much more curious and have found it much more meaningful to know what that something is. What are they interested in? What are they exploring? What are they learning about? How are they learning about it? What tools are they using to help them move through their day? What entertains them? That’s the level at which I can actually connect with them, be in relationship with them, where I can better understand them and their interests and in turn, better support their learning, all the pieces. I learn so much more about who they are as a human being when I move beyond the screen interface and focus on what they’re using that screen to engage with.

ANNA: Oh my goodness. Okay, so you know that I love language, too. Really the three of us, this is something we enjoy, toying around with the words and thinking about being intentional about it.

So, I’m really glad this is where we’re starting, because I think that the words we choose set the energy for our actions and absolutely impact the stories we tell about our lives.

And so, think of the differences in these statements. My daughter was on screens all afternoon. My daughter watched four hours of cooking shows. Okay. That’s without me putting any tone to it, which I could have. And you can see how much more we learn and convey with just that tiny shift. If one is watching cooking shows for four hours, there’s something to that interest. There’s something there. And when we engage at that level, like you were talking about, Pam, being interested in what they’re enjoying, we learn even more about what they’re getting out of it and where it’s taking them.

We can think about screens as the interface to technology and then the next question, what is the technology bringing into our lives? Because like you said, it can be so many things. It could be about having time with friends and chatting and strategizing and solving complex problems and working as a team. It can be about exploring music or art, the storytelling, a way to dive into any particular interest. YouTube is this gateway to pretty much anything to study and just way too many to even name. I feel like it’s such an amazing time in the world where we can dive into any question or interest and go as deeply as we want or just scratch that surface for a quick answer all at the tip of our fingers.

And as someone who loves to learn all the things, I am grateful every day for technology and the myriad of screens that I have to interact with. And I really think being intentional with our language is such a great place to start, because it helps us to remain open and curious about what’s happening around us and connected to the people involved.

ERIKA: Right. Yes. I love this shift so much, because when we say our kids are just on their screens, I feel the distance that that creates. Now I’m way over here looking at them, really barely even looking at them. Maybe I’m just looking at the back of the screen they’re looking at. I’m seeing such a small sliver of what’s actually happening, and it can cause this reaction in me.

If all I see is a kid with a screen, I can think, they’re not doing anything. They’re not using their brain. They’re not being creative. But I actually have no idea what’s happening if I’m keeping myself at that distance and not letting myself see what they’re actually doing. So, challenging myself to be more specific with my language brings me that one step closer to who they are and what they love.

It puts me closer to being in connection with them. Well, it turns out my daughter was drawing on Procreate, creating a new character, or my son was playing Roblox with his friends. Or at another moment, maybe he was figuring out who that background actor was on Agents of Shield, and she was watching an exotic animal vet show.

So, that’s why it makes sense to take a pause if you’re tempted to use the word “screen time” and challenge yourself to go deeper. Really, all I have to do is think about my own life with my phone, my iPad, my computer, how many different things I use those devices for. It feels ridiculous to describe all of that time as “screen time,” and it’s the same for my kids. It’s always so much more real and more connecting to look closer and see what they’re actually interested in.

ANNA: Right. It really is. And it’s such an easy thing to do and it can really light up our kids when they see that we see them, that we’re genuinely interested and that we’re actually just naming what they’re doing and noticing what they’re doing. It’s so important.

So, a couple of the pieces that I want to touch on require a bit of introspection. So often, we find ourselves judging how our children or really anyone is spending their time. When we find ourselves doing that, I think it’s so much more about us than about them.

And one of the things that can be at play is fear. So, releasing our fear is really critical here, because when we’re projecting out into the future with fears, we’re pulling ourselves out of this moment and we are most likely harming the connection with the people in our life. It’s pretty safe to say that fear clouds our judgment, puts us into kind of this reptilian brain where we’re not using our critical thinking skills, we’re not engaging. Like you said, we’re on the other side of the room, looking over here, casting this fearful glance.

I feel like fear can be such a helpful red flag. There’s a purpose for it, but I personally just never want to act from that place instantly, unless it’s a tiger coming at me. You know? I want to use it as a clue to dig deeper, understand, where is it coming from? Time and time again, when I would dig into my fear, I would find some old wound or some outside noise from people or systems that didn’t know anything about my kids, and they definitely didn’t know anything about our life.

Processing my bits and setting aside those outside voices allowed me to tune back into my children and see what they were exploring and all that it was bringing to them and our family. And so, it is that clue of like, when I’m not noticing what they’re exploring, I’m probably in my head with some fear pieces. And so, there’s one more piece I want to talk about, but just I feel like you probably have a couple things to say about fear, too. So, I’m going to throw it back to you, Erika. 

ERIKA: I know. I do. But I think it’s connected to what I was talking about before with the feeling of the distance that can happen. It has that feeling of disconnection. Because fear is something that’s happening because of my thoughts, and we talked about this recently in the network Marco Polo group, how there are the actual things that are happening. And then the next step is the thoughts that I have about those things and then the emotions like fear come after I’ve had my thoughts. And so, a situation that feels totally safe and comfortable for one person can feel scary to another person. And so, that’s why to me it’s so valuable to unpack my thoughts and beliefs.

Is my fear about screens really a fear about what other people would think if they saw my kids on screens? Is it one of those future projections, like you were mentioning, Anna? So digging into our fears and questioning them can be so powerful in so many areas, but I think it really is so common when we’re talking about the “screen time” worries, and then it’s all about getting out of our heads and all those thoughts and back into the moment of what’s actually happening in real life. And chances are good that the fears are really just coming from my own thoughts and beliefs that I can release.

PAM: Absolutely. So many kinds of fear can bubble up in this situation. And I found that people often mention the fear that they’re doing their kids a disservice by not insisting they do other things, that screens are addictive and their kids need protection.

But again, like you were saying, Erika, those are my thoughts and I can work through them. So, for me, processing those fears encouraged me to lean into engaging with my kids around their tech use and my own as well. Noticing how over time, more and more everyday things can now be done virtually through a screen interface.

So, for example, most often I don’t need to run to the bank anymore. I can do my banking through my browser or an app. We don’t need to go to the game store anymore to get a new game. We can download it through the console or the computer, again, either way, a screen. And sometimes we can’t choose to go to the store to browse for fun. So, yes, I definitely interface with screens more than I did a decade ago, but it’s often both more effective and efficient.

I remember moments and still have these moments where I’m sitting my computer. It’s like, okay, I’m going to do something else now. And I think of, what’s the next thing I want to do? And then it’s like, oh. I’m doing that on my computer too! I’m not even moving. So, leaning in with my kids helps me see the variety of things they’re doing and helps me engage with them around both what they’re doing and how they’re feeling about it. A wealth of fascinating conversations bubble up over the months and years as we just explore and learn about tech use alongside each other, because it’s something we’re all kind of experiencing for the first time as it grows in our lifetimes.

ANNA: Right. And that piece is so important, just our own experience of it and being maybe more honest about that than letting the fear take hold and cause that to clamp down. It’s always a great idea, I think, to just take that second look when we’re feeling that little bit of grip with fear, or like you said Erika, maybe the sign is just that you’re kind of pulled apart from your kids a little bit. That that means maybe fear is involved, you know?

Okay. So, another place to dig in and peel back is the fantasy that we create around our children and family. It makes sense. And I would say that most of us have done it at some point, thought about the children we would have and the family we would create. I remember having lists of names for future children when I was in middle school. And after our children actually arrive, we can still buy into some of these fantasies, ranging from future sports star to Ivy League academic or children dressed in woolen clothes frolicking joyfully in the woods.

We create ideas around what type of activities have value based on how they fit those visions. So, if you’re holding onto the academic vision, sports are a waste of time. In the sports vision, hanging out with friends is taking away focus from the sport. You can see how those visions really tunnel us in. And that’s one thing if it’s about us pursuing a passion for ourselves, it’s quite different and way out of our lane when we’re boxing in another person based on our vision for them.

The key for me was truly understanding that my children were unique humans on their own personal journeys. And this quote from Khalil Gibran has always spoken to me and grounded me in this understanding and idea. And I think I’ve actually read it on the podcast before, but I’m going to read it again.

“Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.

They come through you, but not from you.

And though they are with you, they belong not to you.

You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies, but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

And there’s so many things about that poem, but I’m just going to take the “house of tomorrow” piece, because I think it’s related to this conversation. Because with each generation, innovation takes us to new places that the generation before doesn’t understand and often vilifies.

So, when I was a kid, many, many years ago, having a telephone in your room was the thing that was literally going to bring doom and rot our brains, like that’s what we were told. Talking for hours on the phone was pretty new when I was in high school, because I remember actually as a little kid, we had what was called a party line. So, we shared a house phone line with 10 of our neighbors. So, you’d actually pick up the phone and see if somebody was talking. And so, you never lingered on a call because so many people were using it. So, this makes me sound like a hundred years old. I am not. Just 54. And that’s how fast things change.

By high school, I had a corded phone in my room and spent many nights talking to friends until the wee hours only to have to get up at the crack of dawn for school, which I’m sure concerned my parents. They were pretty chill about things, but you could tell. Because this was the buzz that was going around the culture is that these phones are bad for these kids and they shouldn’t be on them. And the thing that’s so funny looking back is that it wasn’t even just phones. People would complain about book reading. I’d hear this. “You’re spending too much time with your nose in a book.” Like what does that even mean, when we think about it now?

So, whenever we find ourselves needing to judge how another person spends their time, we can pause and remember that it’s probably saying a lot more about us and also maybe highlighting a lack of connection or really understanding the child or the person in front of us and what it is they’re engaging with. We maybe haven’t taken that extra time. Instead, we can focus on leaning in, finding ways to connect, learning more about their interests. Why are they enjoying this new thing so much? Learning the terms to be able to have a conversation to really see them and what they love.

I focus on connection because I feel like that’s where we learn more about ourselves, more about the person we love. And oversimplifying and trying to control another person’s interest is not a means to connect, be it sports, books, or technology. Behind those simplified descriptors is a world of nuance and learning. So, understanding the richness of any area of interest is such a simple step to take for the people that we love.

ERIKA: Oh I love this part. It’s so natural to have a vision of childhood and a vision of what our family would be like, and it could be based on what we remember from our own childhoods or just things we see on social media or read about. And it can feel like there is a right way to be a child or a right way to be a parent. But when we open up to the idea that I love so much that everyone is different and that we have so many ways to find our interests and to learn, it just takes a lot of pressure off. There really is not a perfect way to be a human.

I think a lot of people are really drawn to the latest technology, because it’s the cutting edge of human creativity and there’s so much potential there, but not everyone is drawn to it. And different people have different goals and interests and ways that they want their lives to look, and that’s pretty exciting.

And it can also be challenging as a parent when our children are choosing interests that we don’t understand, or that didn’t even exist in our childhoods. And that’s, I think, where that open and curious mindset comes in so handy. And maybe putting up a print out of that poem you shared too, Anna. That was really beautiful.

PAM: Well, you know what I loved, Erika, what you said there not being a perfect way to be human. That takes me right to the people are different and my way is okay. And even different people with different ways are all okay, too. And even while that can feel overwhelming at first, it’s like, oh my gosh, like everybody’s different. Oh no! I found it more approachable when I thought about it in terms of exploring the possibilities with an eye to discovering what I’m curious about and what works for me in terms of engaging with those interests as well as with people that I love. And it changes over time as we learn and grow and change ourselves.

So, for me, it becomes the ongoing mystery of life. I know that kind of sounds cliche and all, but truly isn’t it true? Just think about it for a minute. I’m a mystery to myself and that’s why I keep connecting and engaging. My kids are grown now and it is still so fun to connect with them and hear what they’re up to.

So anyway, this leads me to all of that connecting and engaging and, especially when they were younger, it was discovering what makes their eyes light up. And not judging whether or not the act of accessing those things involves a screen. That was just a piece of the process. It wasn’t the thing. It wasn’t, they love screens. That said so little about them. Right? 

ERIKA: And so, when we’re in that connected place and actually seeing what we’re, what they’re doing, and we’re not in that fear place or that fantasy place, we’re now using language that’s connecting instead of just calling it “screen time,” now I think we’re ready to have conversations with them. And I think it can be pretty automatic at times to want to just make a rule or a proclamation, like, “No screens before 4:00,” or, “No screens until the weekend,” or, “One hour of Roblox per day, period.”

We hear about those types of rules and it can feel like they might be a good solution to our fears and concerns. But without communication and conversations, top-down rules and orders are so disconnecting. There’s such a big difference between a parent proclaiming that all screens must be turned off, and the whole family deciding together that they like how it feels when they have dinner and no one brings their devices to the table.

When we talk about not having limits on the time that our kids are engaging with their iPads or their computers, it doesn’t mean that we’re hands off. We’re staying connected. We’re having conversations when something is feeling bad, we’re talking about it and problem solving together. And when we can build trust in our relationships with our kids, they can come to us with their feelings and concerns, too.

So, like Maya has definitely told me that she wants to stop watching videos or to stop playing computer games for a while. And she knows that she can share that with me and I won’t villainize the games and the videos, and I can help her if she wants to go outside for a walk or play a board game with me instead. I can help her brainstorm things to do that are not screen-based when she wants, and I’ll help her troubleshoot when things get tricky in her games and apps too. She’s free to share all of her interests with me without judgment.

And by focusing on connection, the whole family can work together to have a rich life, rather than just me or just Josh and me as the parents like making decisions without having conversations and handing down those decisions that are really just based on my image of what our lives should look like. And so, I think it’s just a much better fit when we’re all involved in creating our family life together.

PAM: Yeah, I think that’s the crux of it for me, really. I think a rule, even one in the guise of not being a rule, like unlimited screen time encourages disengagement.

There’s the rule out there for everyone to see, so we know what’s up and we don’t need to talk about it, right? It leaves the impression that there aren’t any nuances to be had. But as you mentioned, nuances are found when real, different people are involved. When we’re engaged and supportive of each other, when we’re on a team together, we help each other navigate tricky or uncomfortable things without the judgment.

When someone’s feeling they’d like to do more things that don’t involve screens, we help them find ways to do that that feel fun and enjoyable. We don’t leap to, “Oh my goodness, we need a no screens for a week rule,” so that we can help them do this thing they want. It is okay to have a feeling of too muchness around something. I made up that phrase, but it felt so right. Those are great clues for us as we explore who we are and the things we like to do and how we like to do them.

Wanting to change things up doesn’t mean that where we are now is wrong. So there’s a quote from Sebene Selassie that has stayed with me for a while now. She wrote,

“We don’t need to make ourselves a problem to aspire to transformation.”

And that absolutely applies to our kids as well, especially as they explore how they engage with their interests and their days from food to screens to sleep, like all the things.

ANNA: And I love that too muchness because, just like you just said, it’s food, it’s screens, it’s sleep, it’s running, it’s exercise, it’s whatever. We can get into that kind of too muchness stage and then we can just start talking about how’s that feeling and what we want to do. And I think ultimately for me, and you kind of mentioned it before, this whole realm that we’re talking about at the screens, it’s about just having it be one little part of everything.

We’re having the same kind of conversations, it’s the same process, versus this boogeyman, and it’s something so big and we’re setting it aside and making separate rules about it. And I think for me, again, just that always boils down to connection and conversations for me. And that doesn’t mean big sit-down conversations with heavy energy, but light energy of checking in, sharing what’s going on with me, what I’m feeling too muchness about, listening to what going on for others in the family. Just having that be common dialogue that we talk about how we’re engaging with the world and the things around us.

I have seen families work through this and come out with some guidelines about when they do what, and I think the key for that to work is everyone being involved and also, so key, being open to things evolving, because, again, it’s not one thing that’s being restricted when we make rules around screens. Do we really want to restrict research, connecting with friends, checking the weather, looking up history of a word that you just heard that came up in a conversation? Those are just a few of the things I do daily on my phone or tab, and it would seem so strange to say those things can only happen in this pre-assigned window that we thought of last month.

And so, I think just being open to what we’re using things for, how things are evolving and just tuning into how everyone wants to spend their time. What else is happening around us? What can we bring in to enrich our lives? Those are the things that we can be exploring together so that the focus is on creating a life of using all kinds of tools and exploration.

Removing the hyperfocus on one aspect, the screen aspect, can actually remove defensiveness, misunderstanding, and open up creativity. Focusing on connection, learning about one another, building a trust that we’re all working together to create our best lives just relieved a lot of pressure around individual bits for me, because I knew we would figure things out together. I didn’t have to carry that weight and fear alone.

ERIKA: Yes. Well, I love this conversation. It was so much fun. I really enjoyed diving into the unschooling “rules” particularly and unlimited screen time. I hope you found our conversation helpful as you navigate technology with your family. And if you’d like to join in on lots of conversations just like this one, come join us in the Living Joyfully Network. You can find out more about it at livingjoyfully.ca/network. Wishing everyone a wonderful day! Bye.

PAM: Bye!

ANNA: Bye!

EU348: Q&A Deep Dive

In this week’s Exploring Unschooling podcast episode, we’re diving deep into a listener question submitted by Michelle in Texas. She writes,

I listened to the episode with Xander regarding gaming, and it really helped change my perspective, especially during this unschooling phase. The question that keeps coming for us is definitely fear-based, but for good reason, and that’s online safety. Our son loves online gaming. Fortnite is the game of choice. But we struggle with the proper level of “parental controls” and his freedom to do what he loves, which is socializing and making new friends online. He’s easily influenced by a lot of the kids he plays with, and it has become a concern with behavior/attitude/mature content/cussing, etc. I’m so curious how unschooling parents protect their kids online without having strict parental controls. Unfortunately, I can’t listen all day, but I do try to pay attention and we have lots of conversations. I just don’t feel like he hears me, or maybe I’m approaching the topic too fearfully and strong. He wants to be accepted by his peers and will do almost anything to get it, which concerns me. Long-winded, but that’s what I’m dealing with and I’m sure other parents are, too.

As always, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer, because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any given situation that will work for everyone. Instead, our focus is on exploring different aspects of the situation and playing with the kinds of questions we might ask ourselves to better understand what’s up. We’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling and cultivating strong and connected relationships.

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and if you’re a patron of the podcast, be sure to mention that.

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

EU027: Ten Questions with Teresa Graham Brett

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out her website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and learn more about what she’s up to!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Revitalizing the Nest and we’re looking at it through the lenses of autonomy and flow.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

CALL TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello, everyone! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and this is episode number 348 of the podcast. I am joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Welcome!

ERIKA: Hi!

ANNA: Hello.

PAM: So, in this episode we’re doing a Q&A Deep Dive exploring a listener submitted question. And of course, we want to remind everyone that our Q&A conversations are not focused on giving anyone the quote right answer, because there isn’t a universal right answer for any situation that will work for everyone. So, basically, we’re sharing food for thought through the lens of unschooling. And if you have a question you’d like us to dive into, check out the show notes for the link to the Submit Your Question form for a future Q&A episode or just go to livingjoyfully.ca/question. We would love to explore the questions that you are pondering right now on your unschooling journey.

And if you’d like to have these kinds of conversations more often, check out the Living Joyfully Network online community. You will find all three of us there. We have regular live calls where members share their questions and concerns, their a-ha moments on the journey, as well as everyday snapshots of their unschooling lives. The community is incredibly rich with the twists and turns of real life with wonderful families from around the world, all through the lens of unschooling. It is so inspiring, and as I said that, I got goosebumps. It’s for real. So, you can learn more about and join the community at livingjoyfully.ca/network, or you can follow the link in the show notes. We’ll be sure to put it there. So, Anna, would you like to read the question for us?

ANNA: Yes! Okay, so our question comes from Michelle in Texas and she has an almost nine year old.

“I listened to the episode with Xander regarding gaming, and it really helped change my perspective, especially during this unschooling phase. The question that keeps coming for us is definitely fear-based, but for good reason, and that’s online safety.

Our son loves online gaming. Fortnite is the game of choice. But we struggle with the proper level of “parental controls” and his freedom to do what he loves, which is socializing and making new friends online. He’s easily influenced by a lot of the kids he plays with, and it has become a concern with behavior/attitude/mature content/cussing, et cetera. I’m so curious how unschooling parents protect their kids online without having strict parental controls. Unfortunately, I can’t listen all day, but I do try to pay attention and we have lots of conversations. I just don’t feel like he hears me, or maybe I’m approaching the topic too fearfully and strong. He wants to be accepted by his peers and will do almost anything to get it, which concerns me. Long-winded, but that’s what I’m dealing with and I’m sure other parents are, too.”

Okay, so thanks for your question, Michelle. And it is a topic that comes up a lot for good reason, and I think it’s really important to tease apart and think about. I always want to take some extra steps when I see I’m being driven by fear, you know, because fear tends to pull me out of the moment, but also away from my child. And so, taking the pause and naming the fear for me can be helpful.

And then, I want to dive back into the moment with my child to understand things from their perspective to see what I might be missing. I came to understand that what kept my children safest was our strong connection. I wanted them to feel completely comfortable coming to me when things felt off or if they had questions. And I could only foster that environment by being really open and not judging what they were doing.

If they felt like I didn’t like an activity, they were much less likely to come to me if something was going on with it. It kind of pushed them into this place where they would maybe take more than they wanted to for fear that it would play into my concerns. And if they felt comfortable with me and knew that I supported what they loved about the game or the activity, then when something was off, they knew that I’d help them process, but with this eye to getting them back to what they loved.

And it sounds like you’re already having a lot of conversations and that’s really what helped us. But definitely it was important to check in about any kind of tone or agenda I might have, because I know they can sneak in, especially if we’re carrying around any fear. So, I would share my experiences and the why behind any decision I was making. If I felt uncomfortable, I’d share it, but again, with an eye to still move towards the thing we were interested in, but in a way that felt better to us both.

I think talking about the online environment and how it’s unique is so helpful. People sometimes use that space to push boundaries and try things on, and sometimes that doesn’t feel good. So, empowering our kids to say something when it doesn’t feel good or doesn’t work.

And another thought that I had was if your son is, if feeling a scarcity of connections, maybe why you’re feeling like he’ll, “do anything to be accepted,” then I might focus on broadening that community, finding more online friends to add to the mix, because scarcity, like fear, can influence our behaviors and contribute to making choices that might not be the best for us. But that’s something you can start solving for and working towards together, more abundance in the online or even in real life friend department. There is an unschooling gamers Facebook group and families on our Living Joyfully Network connect through gaming as well.

It really is just so much about the relationship and it sounds like you have a great foundation there and looking at your own fears and, are we giving information or kind of passing along and handing some weight of our fears to our kids that just might not make sense to them at all? So, I found that just keeping connection as the driver can allow us all to feel comfortable as we navigate these tricky topics.

ERIKA: Yeah. I liked this question, too. I think you’re absolutely right that so many parents are facing these same concerns about online safety and navigating that with their children, whether or not they’re unschooling. And with so many different people and different parents and different children, there are just endless ways in which those concerns are addressed.

And I really love that you’re recognizing the underlying fears that you have and that possibility that the way you’re approaching it with him might be too strong or fear-based, because I do think it’s so easy to go there. We’re definitely surrounded by stories that can ramp up our fear and our imaginations can spiral a bit out of control just thinking of all the scary possibilities and that just feels so terrible and I’ve been there.

So, I guess first, I would just say to ground yourself back into the present moment and really honestly look at the things that are actually happening rather than what might happen. He’s probably heard a lot of your concerns and fears at this point, and so, those messages are already in there. Giving some space for a while might help you see what’s actually happening. And when I say giving some space, I don’t mean just leaving him alone, but just not like jumping in with the warnings and jumping in with a bunch of questions.

There have been phases where I’ve been worried about what my kids are watching or the way they’re interacting with their friends online. Maybe things don’t feel very kind in the interactions sometimes, things like that. And there have been times where I’ll jump in, like, “What is that you’re watching?” Or, “Is everybody okay?!” in this super fear-based, loaded, emotional way. The questions by themselves are not terrible questions, but when I bring them with that loaded energy of, I believe everyone’s in danger or something bad is going on, the kids react to that energy and it creates that disconnection.

And then, they want more privacy, because they believe that I’m not understanding them and what’s going on, and so the disconnection grows. And so, the repair that works for me in that case is giving them more space and more trust. When they don’t feel like I’m jumping on every little thing, then there’s room for them to actually come to me with their tricky situations, to ask me about safety, and to ask for my help with their conflicts.

And so over the years, I’ve given them information like, we don’t know who the people are who are playing online with you. They could be anyone. They could live anywhere. And so, we’ve had some fun imagining who these people might be. And so, it’s safe. I tell them, it’s safe to play online together, but it’s also important to remember we don’t know these other players well enough to trust them with our personal information.

And it actually reminds me of when Anna started playing Adopt Me with me on Roblox, and she wanted to believe and trust everything that everyone was saying in the chat. And I had to tell her, a lot of people are scamming and a lot of people are lying. And it’s still so much fun to play, but it just helps to be aware of that. And I think it takes some practice to get really savvy online, but that practice is what the kids are getting when they have the chance to explore.

And so, our family’s use of parental controls has evolved over the years, and it’s always the result of conversations with the kids and what they’re feeling comfortable with. Most of the controls that are just kind of automatically created are too limiting, we’ve found, and so they haven’t been super helpful. The kids know how to block people on their games. They know that they can always leave if something is feeling uncomfortable, find a new server, if someone is being obnoxious.

And I think watching gaming YouTubers has actually helped them learn a lot about some of the things that people do, the scamming and the pranking and the trolling, just so that they have a better idea of what to watch out for. And, like Anna was saying, the more I focus on keeping our connections strong than the safer they feel to come to me to talk about anything that doesn’t feel right.

PAM: Okay. I love so much what you both have shared, and thanks again, Michelle, for the question. I, too, really had a lot of fun thinking about it. And in fact, our theme in the Network this month as we’re recording this happens to be connection. And a big part of deschooling is the parenting journey from using tools of control to connection in our relationships with our kids. So, that’s on my mind and I think it’s an interesting angle to explore with this question.

So, let’s just play for a bit. Let’s take a moment to pull out to the bigger picture and think about the purpose of parental controls. They’re basically rules to control an environment, whether they’re built into a technology that’s involved, or they’re rules that the parents set and expect the child to follow.

So, let’s just say you found the “perfect” set of parental controls that you envision and you turn them on. So, now what? How do you feel? What do you do next? Maybe you let out a sigh of relief, maybe your shoulders drop a little bit. Ah, you’ve controlled the environment and things just feel safer now. You know your child will no longer be able to find their way into situations online that you find uncomfortable or worrisome. Now you can relax and leave them to play and have fun, and you can go off and enjoy doing your things. I mean, that sounds pretty cool, right? That’s the goal.

But I know I will forever remember the story that Teresa Graham Brett shared on the podcast way back in episode 27, because it just so clearly showed the contrast between control and connection when it comes to our relationships with our children. And I’m pretty sure the story is in her book too, Parenting for Social Change.

But just to summarize, when her eldest was young, she decided she’d let him watch PBS Kids, because it was educational and non-violent. That meant he could have free access at any time to PBS Kids and online, he could go to the PBS Kids website. So, in that parentally controlled and safe environment, he would watch this PBS show Caillou, and there would be a point in almost every episode where he would say, “Shut it off.” So, she’d shut it off and he’d move on to something else. And she never thought much about it at the time until she began questioning her parenting choices more directly.

She started watching TV with him and quickly recognized the difference there. When she was in the mode of everything on PBS Kids is fine, because it’s not my version of violence, she was actually uninvolved. Because she had deemed everything he had access to be safe, she wouldn’t watch with him. There was no partnership. And as she described it, she had abdicated her responsibility to him because she had controlled the environment in which he had access.

When she started hanging out with him, watching with him, paying attention to who he actually is as a person, she said, oh my gosh. She learned so much. For example, she came to see that in the show, Caillou was always getting in trouble at some point in the episode, and a parent or teacher would step into chide and correct him. It was consistently at that point that he wanted the show shut off. It became obvious that he was uncomfortable with that kind of emotional violence being imparted on a child, and that was such a huge a-ha moment for her. Wow. Their definitions of violence were so different.

What she thought was safe and what was aligned with the conventional narrative of media safety differed from what he needed, which was for children to be emotionally safe. The violence that he saw was not the violence that she saw. She said that if she could point to one thing that greatly expanded her view of media access, that was the moment. And I just wanted to share how she describes that shift.

So, she said, “Being responsible for the care of a child doesn’t require control. It requires being in connection and being a partner and being a facilitator.” Now, I wanted to share that because it’s just such a clear example of the shift from control to connection on our parenting journey. Instead of controlling their environment so that we’re comfortable stepping away, with the impression that it’s all good, they can’t encounter anything that we are uncomfortable with, we can be their partner. We can connect and engage with them. We can see the person they are and help them as they navigate and process the environments that they are keen to explore.

So, bringing that back and coming to your particular situation, Michelle, you mentioned that you’re having lots of conversations with your son about what you’re seeing with his online play. You also mentioned that you don’t think what you’re saying is connecting with him, because it feels like he’s not hearing you. And I love Anna’s point about paying attention to the energy that you’re bringing to the conversations. And I just wanted to add another thought to the mix and actually it’s just an extension of what Erika was talking about, because I am sure he’s heard what you’ve been saying.

So, repeating it over and over moving forward just won’t add much value to the conversation. So, what if for the next while, your conversations with him are more focused on listening to him, letting him lead any actual conversation. What is he seeing in the interactions that he has online? How is he feeling about them?

You can hang out with him quietly just absorbing his enjoyment and trying to see what things look like through his eyes. Leaving a relaxed space, like Erika talked about, for him to just share his thoughts or not. It doesn’t have to be actual conversations, because lots of communication happens that doesn’t need conversation. I think that’s such an interesting piece.

So, maybe you’ll glean some interesting insights just as Teresa did, but I do think you’ll definitely experience a deepening of your connection as you learn more about him and he feels seen and loved for who he is right now, Fortnite and all. He will just feel so seen and heard. And instead of you directing the conversations, there’s space for him to just mention what’s bubbling up, or even just noticing his reactions to things that are bubbling up that might spark conversations later. Because sometimes conversations happening in the charged moment of something going on there, there’s not space and time for reflection and conversations about that either. Anyway, so such a great question.

ANNA: It really is. And I may have just lost it, but it is that point of, it’s the walking in the shoes and the looking through the eyes thing, because what feels scary or inappropriate to us, unless we’re connected to understand what that feels like to them, we really do miss the boat. And so, I think that was really important for me.

And also, I think there’s a piece about, again, this experimental piece of being online that you do see your kids kind of push some boundaries and try things on and language or different things, but I think because it feels safe to them, and so, then understanding that and kind of having that and then being there for it, you know? And then, yeah, we can’t sit there every single minute they’re online, but we can make some intentional choices about just exploring and listening, not coming in just with our two cents, but really hearing about it. And, I don’t know, I just think about some things that I’ve seen with Erika’s kids, things I saw with my kids. It’s such an interesting environment that they have the ability to experiment with at this age.

ERIKA: Yeah, that’s what came up for me, too, when you were talking Pam, was just that like, me putting my, “what I would do if I were them” lens on it doesn’t make any sense, because what they’re doing is figuring out who they are, figuring out how the internet works, figuring out what these different cultures of video gaming are like. There’s a lot of things that I think happen in Fortnite that to me feel like, oh, well that’s terrible. But to them in it, it’s like that’s the culture. That’s how people are having fun and that’s the way that they’re interacting. And so, sometimes I’ll say like, does that, is that fun for you? Is this game fun for you? And they’ll be like, yeah. And people seem like they’re being mean to each other. And I’m like, oh, to me that doesn’t feel fun. But to them, they know, that’s just this game. This is a roleplaying game or this, you know, we’re in these characters and this is the way we’re interacting.

And I think it’s kind of amazing, because it’s such a rich environment for being able to explore different ways of being, different ways of treating people. And like mistakes, if they were to say they made a mistake in the way they’re interacting, that’s okay, too, because they’re just learning and it’s just that rich environment for being able to learn more about themselves and how to interact with people, too.

PAM: Yeah. I think I learned so much using that lens of role playing, too. That is so fascinating and there are absolutely environments where that is the focus and you take on a personality, any kind of personality and history and whatever and play through that lens or just communicate through that lens. And it’s just such an interesting way to explore and everybody participating in it knows what’s going on or quickly learns. That’s the experience. It’s like, oh! Holy bananas. This is really crazy.

But, oh yeah! So this is what we’re doing in this culture. So many different cultures. Different environments. And that’s the great thing. They can go in and experiment and experience and say, that’s not for me. Or say, oh, I could really lean in. No, this is really fun, mom.

So, the connection and the experience is just where, in my mind, they just learn so much more about the world, about themselves, about who they might want to be, about how they can be different in different situations and different environments, and that this is okay. I feel like it’s a rich, rich environment.

So, even just figuring out, sitting there, listening, figuring out what he’s enjoying. For him to be able to start having conversations. Looking through his eyes, when you’re there, half his mind may be like, oh, is this something mom’s not going to like? Is this something she’s going to say something about?

He’s not getting the opportunity to dig deeper and say, oh my gosh, this is fun. This is fun, because … Because his mind’s already busy worried about what might happen because of what he’s doing. So, opening up that space to really just absorb and process what he’s experiencing, I think just can go a long way for him.

ANNA: Just one quick thing. Even just listening to the two of you and I’m thinking people listening to the podcast will feel it, too, like just this lighter energy of curiosity. And we’re not just saying, ignore and throw out. We’re saying like, bring that lighter energy. Because in that space, we do hear more from them.

Because, like you said, Pam, I really do think when we bring a heavy weight of an energy to something, I think they are thinking, okay, what do I do? This weight doesn’t feel good. This energy doesn’t feel good. And so, then there may be censoring pieces and they’re not being honest, because they don’t really know that energy. So, I don’t know, just listening to the two of you with this light, playful, curious energy, still is so engaged, and yet a very different environment being created.

PAM: Right.

ERIKA: Yeah. I was just thinking as Pam was talking, like my experience as a child of a mom with a lot of worry and fear, it is a constant. That’s what I’m hearing in my mind as I’m making my choices is like I’m looking at everything kind of through her lens. I think it’s hard not to do that. It’s hard not to pass some of our fears down. But I do think it’s distracting, like it distracts from who I am, what choices I make. And so, I just want to try my best and be careful and mindful of what I’m passing on to my kids in that way, because there’s just so many different ways to be, and the things that I’m afraid of are the same things that other people love doing. And so, just remembering that and keeping it light.

ANNA: But don’t you think even just saying that, just saying like, this doesn’t feel great to me, but I can see you’re enjoying it. That takes that edge off of where maybe your mom or other moms might be more like, this feels terrible, this is bad. This is worrying me. And it has that weighty feel to it, versus this like, wow, this is my experience of it. Tell me about yours.

Because I think it’s unrealistic to think that we’re never going to be worried, that we’re not going to have things that are concerning us, that we’re not going to be passing some of that down, like you’re saying. But I think the more we own it for ourselves and the more honest we are about how we are moving through the world and that we’re curious about how you’re moving through the world, I just think that really changes that dynamic a lot.

PAM: I think so. I think so. It comes back to that team. It’s like, people are different. Even if we’re related by blood, we’re different. Our ages are different, but we still all have needs and things that we enjoy doing. And when we can bring that curiosity, when I can walk in and say, that feels uncomfortable and they can reply with, no, it’s lots of fun. Rather than making a mental note that, okay, next time I hear mom coming up the stairs, I need to move to a different game or just need to move to a different room or end this conversation or whatever. And again, they’re doing that out of love, too, because they don’t want you to be upset with them.

But that means that they do feel like they need to hide things and then we can’t have conversations. And then when things go a little awry for them, they will hesitate to come and try and process that with you because they’ll feel that “I told you so” energy, et cetera. Because this will be something new to us because they’ve been hiding it on us.

So, it’s that curious energy and just being curious about our child and what they love and why they love it. I think it just brings a whole different energy to the family, doesn’t it?

ANNA: It really does.

PAM: Okay. Thank you again so much for your question, Michelle. As you can tell, we really enjoyed diving into it. And if you, listener, have a question that you’d like us to dive into, check out the show notes for the link to submit your question for a future Q&A episode or just go to living joyfully.ca/question. We would love to explore the questions that you are pondering right now on your unschooling journey. Bye, everyone!

ERIKA: Bye!

PAM: I hope you found this episode helpful on your unschooling journey. And be sure to check out the growing podcast archive. The conversations never go out of date. You can find more information about my books, the Living Joyfully Network Online Community, and the Childhood Redefined Unschooling Summit online course at my website, livingjoyfully.ca.

EU347: Bringing It Home: Staying Up Late

This week on the podcast, we’re diving into another Bringing It Home episode. We’re looking deeper at our last Unschooling “Rules” topic, that unschoolers don’t have bedtimes, and exploring what it can look like to navigate staying up late with our unschooling families.

Unsurprisingly, there is no one right approach. It’s so much about seeing through our children’s eyes and making choices that feel good to them. A world of possibilities exists when we are open and curious!

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out her website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Connection, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of trust and compassion.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. Listen to The Living Joyfully Podcast here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hi, everyone! I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and this is episode 347 of the Exploring Unschooling Podcast. And I’m joined today by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Welcome!

ERIKA: Hi!

PAM: Hello!

ANNA: On our last Unschooling Rules episode, we talked about the idea that unschoolers have no bedtimes, what that actually looks like and how in practice, it’s a lot different than that blanket statement might indicate. In this Bringing It home episode, we will continue the conversation talking about how it looks when kids stay up late and how we can navigate it in a way that works for all members of the family.

But before we get started, I wanted to remind everyone about the Living Joyfully Podcast. It’s our podcast that focuses on building strong, connected relationships in all areas of our life. You’ll find that the themes are similar to what you hear on this podcast, but without the unschooling lens, making it easier to share with people in your lives, and also as a framework of how to apply the principles to all of your relationships. We keep them in short, easy-to-digest bites, and end with some questions to contemplate. It’s been so much fun putting it out there, and we’d love it if you could check it out and share it with anyone you think might enjoy it. It’s available on your favorite podcast players, and you can also find it specifically at podcast.show/livingjoyfully.

Okay. Erika, do you wanna get us started talking about late nights and how we can navigate them?

ERIKA: I would love to. And I actually think it’s kind of perfect that I get to start us off on this episode entitled Staying Up Late because late bedtimes are very much a part of life and a part of our family discussions these days. We’re right in the middle of a season of sleep exploration.

I think one of the fun things about this topic is that there are just so many ways that bedtime plays out in different families, but I do think it’s so common to have certain phases of life or certain children who have that strong interest in staying up late. And what’s late to one person just feels like a great time to get some things done for someone else, or a great time to hang out with some friends. So, this is of course, so individual. Everyone is so different. And so for this episode, I thought it might be helpful to go through some of the big sticking points and issues that can come up when kids are wanting to stay up late, starting with, “But nighttime is time for grownups to finally relax and be together.”

And so, this was me at one point in what now feels like the distant past. The kids had been falling asleep much earlier than Josh and I for a long time. And then that natural bedtime and their sleepy cues gradually became later and later until it no longer made sense for Josh to try to stay up later than them if he had work in the morning.

And, for me, the biggest part of navigating that new reality was just realizing that these are all seasons. We had a season where he went to bed without me, and then a season where we both went to bed before the kids, but I knew that I couldn’t expect them to go to bed early forever. And so, just releasing that thought was so helpful. In particular, I think the teenage brain seems geared to late nights and late mornings.

And so, instead of fighting with what was happening or clinging to that vision of an early bedtime, I shifted my focus to figuring out a new way, new ways and new times of connecting with Josh instead. And it also helped to start doing my nighttime routine and my self-care earlier in the evening, which was a definite shift from waiting to take care of myself until the kids were asleep. That just wasn’t working anymore. And I really don’t like that feeling of getting so tired that I can’t even drag myself to the bathroom. And so, I guess it was really just being aware of the stories that I was telling about the situation and being open to shifting my routine as it became clear that they were needing something different from me and from their schedule.

ANNA: I think it is one of the biggest sticking points. We get this idea, this picture in our mind, of how nights are supposed to look, and we can spend a lot of energy and try to move everyone into that vision. Ultimately, it was realizing that part of the stress of the evenings was my own creation by trying to force or even ever so gently nudge people towards participating in my vision of the night.

But when we opened things up and let go of any preconceived notions of the solution and started turning to the needs, that’s when things started to feel easier. At that point, we could be creative. You know, both David and I were finding time in the evenings, and thinking about how the evenings were playing out in general. Thinking about food and teeth brushing, wind downs, who needed to get up early the next day? Where were we all going to sleep?

Keeping an abundance mindset about time and solutions helped us find creative ways for David and I to have time together, even when the kids were staying up later than we were. Opening everything up, I feel, allowed us to flow with the needs and find solutions that worked for everyone, and it was always evolving. The seasons that you talked about, always evolving.

PAM: Always evolving. And that opening up to possibilities beyond how I was envisioning them going to sleep was definitely key for me, too. I remember noticing that if I went into conversations about going to bed with even just the energy of getting them to commit to a plan just for that night, they were resistant. Even when they did say something like, “I just wanna finish this game or this level, or this book, or whatever, and then I’ll go to bed,” there was a good chance it wouldn’t actually happen that way anyway, because they were in their flow.

I came to see that I was actually trying to get them to predict their future flow, and that’s when it started to seem a little ridiculous. So, with that, I was able to shift to supporting them in their actual flow. So, I could share plans that were on tap for the next day without the energy of, so therefore you should go to bed soon. And they could just add that info to the mix as their evening played out.

And we’d also chat about how they’d like to be woken up if need be, or what other things that they wanted to have happen in anticipation of the plans for the next day. And eventually, I remember getting to that point where I enjoyed waking up in the morning while the kids were still all asleep.

And I’d just walk through the house to see evidence of the fun they’d gotten up to the night before, after I’d gone to bed, after Rocco and I had both gone to bed. So, sometimes it was like some dishes in the kitchen or an old game console pulled out and plugged into the TV, or blankets piled up on the couch.

I just came to see those little vignettes as lovely reminders that we are all individuals living our unique, both together and apart. It’s so interesting to get to that stage where your kids are awake and living and doing things while you’re sleeping. It’s beautiful how they weave together, right?

ERIKA: Mm-hmm. And I love seeing that evidence of fun, like you described it, too, especially like elaborate scenes with all the characters and the plushies. I just have so many good memories of that. And I love what you both emphasized about not getting stuck on the vision or that set outcome that we always talk about, like releasing that there’s this one right way. And getting creative and curious about the possibilities just helps me so much, especially in these kind of charged areas like sleep.

So, I thought maybe next we could dive into what happens when a child wants to be up late, but also doesn’t want to be alone. And this is one of those challenges that I find leads to all kinds of interesting conversations and problem-solving opportunities.

And so, as far as my experience goes, it felt like the kids and I gradually shifted later and later together as they were more interested in playing with friends online and had just more going on in their social lives. We had many nights where I would say, “I’m getting tired,” and one of them, or both of them would say, “Just a little bit longer, we’re still playing.” And so, because they weren’t comfortable with being up alone at night, I did my best to support them while still trying to be honest about my own capacity. And so, I ended up having a season of really late nights with them, which worked out pretty well. We had a lot of fun together, and I was there to hear all the things that they were exploring and talking about with their friends, and we just had late nights and late mornings together.

Well, one night, I had reached my personal point of exhaustion and I let them know that I needed to go to bed, and this time, they were really right in the middle of something super exciting. And so, rather than join me and go to bed, they agreed together that they would stay up longer than me. And so that was the beginning of a new phase of our lives. The experience that they’ve gained from listening to their bodies and figuring out about what time they need or want to wake up for the next day’s activities, what their bodies feel like when they’re tired, regular tired, or overtired. All of that I think is just so valuable and we all get to do what feels best to us as individuals, which really suits our family since we’re all so different.

ANNA: It was a lot like that for us, too. I feel like it was this gradual moving back of when they were tired and I’m a big proponent of listening to our bodies, eat when we’re hungry, sleep when we’re tired, and so, it really tested my commitment to that as we each figured out when we really wanted to sleep and even how much sleep we needed, which was different for all of us. And all of those kind of related bits that then became late mornings, early mornings, late nights, middle of the night.

But part of the conversation for me was to be honest about my capacity and narrating to show my process in the evenings. So, how my brain was feeling, and if I was getting frustrated or just too tired to play or move or think. I could talk about what was going on for me without putting anything on them, because it was different, but it was still giving them information and some language. And when they were still at an age of not wanting to be alone, that’s where we’d start the creativity again and find ways for them to maybe play quietly in the family bed or in the room if I was really needing to go to sleep. I’d put on a sleep mask and some earplugs sometimes.

I was thinking about this and it’s just so funny what a small blip of time it feels like now, but I remember how long those moments felt on those nights where it was being pushed and pushed and I was figuring out, where is my capacity? There were times early on that we had to think about David needing to get up early, so we would strategize about quieter play, being in another part of the house, doing that prep work before bed earlier so there was less commotion in that bathroom when we needed to go to bed.

And so, I was a night owl way back then. And so, staying up with them was really not hard for me. We would just all sleep in the next day. I’d get up a little bit earlier and so then I had to adjust having my quiet time, a little bit of quiet time for me, in the morning instead of late at night, which would’ve been probably my preference back then. But like you said, it is a season. And so, I just did my best to embrace that and just figure out, where is this going to take us next? What are we learning? And I love the things that you mentioned, like we’re learning so many things.

We never had the super, super late nights for anyone until my youngest was a teen and started gaming with night owls on the west coast. So, midnight for them was 3:00 AM for us. But by the time this was happening, she was in her own room and on headphones and every once in a while, we’d hear the shrieks from something happening in the game. But for the most part it really wasn’t that disruptive. And I’d just make a point to check in with her before I was going to bed and we’d have a chat and does she need any food? What does she need for her night? We also had conversations about what was happening the next day and if she felt like she would get enough sleep, or was fine pushing through and going to bed earlier the next night?

It was just this ongoing dialogue about what was going on and a process of her learning how her body worked and how it functioned best. I remember she would not agree to sleepovers with friends unless there was a cushion day afterwards, because she knew what a toll those all-nighters with the big sleepovers took for her body to catch up.

PAM: I just want to emphasize that point too, because them making choices, like pushing through tiredness, that’s all good. That’s not a bad choice. That’s not a wrong choice. That’s like, ooh, I can play around. I know I can stay up extra late. I can do it for two, maybe three nights in a row, but then yes, I need some catch up time, some extra rest time. So, things that might look like wrong decisions that our kids make, no, they’re just choices. And to let them explore. I remember how many times I was surprised in those first couple of years when they would stay up late anyway and we would go to the thing. And they’d be great. They’d have fun and they would just enjoy themselves and then they’d come and maybe crash earlier that night or whatever. It doesn’t have to be like clockwork how things unfold.

Anyway, I did want to mention that I remember being sent to my bed in my room all by myself. And it was uncomfortable for me over different seasons growing up. So, when my kids were young, there were seasons where I’d go from bedroom to bedroom, hanging out with each as they wound down and fell asleep, reading books, chatting, whatever we were into at the time.

And then there were other seasons when we’d all hang out in our bedroom watching TV and chatting, them eventually falling asleep and Rocco and I carrying them to their rooms. If they got up during the night, maybe they’d come join us or I’d go join them. Or they found me sleeping in like their brother or sister’s bedroom, and then they’d just wake me up and I’d move to their bedroom. It might be two or three different bedrooms during the night. And that worked fine for me, because I can sleep just about anywhere now.

Once we began unschooling though, and moved beyond the bedtimes, there were times when someone wanted me to stay up with them and we would just chat about it as you were both mentioning. Mostly it was that they wanted me in the same room and I’d hang out as they were doing their thing, and maybe I’d be napping here and there. They’d wake me up if they needed something or they wanted to share something exciting that had happened. Or I’d wake up when I heard the loud little noise and say, “Hey, what happened?”

And alongside that, there were times that we all found ourselves up later than usual for something fun. And as you were mentioning narrating, Anna, I’d just share how I was feeling along the way. So when I’m getting tired, I get giggly and laugh longer and at sillier things. And that was known for years as the Sleepy Giggles as we talked about it, and they thought it was pretty hilarious. They could definitely tell my behavior changed as I got tired. If I continued to stay up, I started feeling nauseated and needed to lie down.

Their bodies absolutely were different, but they understood mine pretty easily. It was unfolding right in front of them, and I was telling them what was going on. So, if things were still popping and they wanted me to be around, or I didn’t want to miss the fun of what was going on, I would just lie on the couch quietly. I started to feel better. Maybe I might fall asleep, but I was definitely still around to catch the highlights. And then as they got older, I’d say goodnight, check in, see if they needed anything and off to bed I went. Different seasons. And over time, it really was just all about the conversations, how we were feeling, what we needed, what was going on, and goodnight, have a great night!

ERIKA: I love that so much. We have experienced so much of that late night giggly time, too. Maya and I have had so much fun making each other laugh late at night. We even coined a term belirious to describe that feeling, and Oliver doesn’t quite get it. He prefers to go to sleep before he gets silly, which totally fits with his personality. And because everyone is so different, there are just so many ways that this can work in practice, the possibilities are really endless.

And so, I think it could be fun to mention some of those logistical pieces of late nights. Things like noise, light, different people having different schedules, and what can those sleeping arrangements look like? And for this, I just think the key is staying open and curious and including everyone in that problem solving process. I know sometimes as the parent, I come to my kids with the solution I think is going to work because I’m the parent, but the kids have really great ideas and thoughts about these situations, too, and so I lose out on a lot if I think my one answer is the right answer.

And there are so many things we’ve talked about in the Network that can help with creating a sleeping atmosphere for some people in the family while other people are still awake. So, things like closing doors, using blackout curtains, using earplugs or white noise machines, putting rugs under furniture and noisy chairs if the kids are scooting around in the night, using headphones for gaming, moving that activity, the gaming activity or whatever it is, to a room that’s farther away from the sleeping room, or moving the sleeping room to another room that you might not have even considered for sleeping, but it’s a little more out of the way , so now that seems perfect. And that’s just to name a few ideas.

ANNA: It just really is so amazing what bubbles up when we remain open and curious and involve all the parties. There are so many options and they’re just there if we start looking and just recognizing any resistance we might have and noticing, is that helping us find solutions or is it kind of shutting down the conversations, like you said, maybe narrowing in on one solution? Then we just have this tunnel vision. I wanted to actively set aside any resistance just to feel how it felt to be open, because my resistance comes from a place that I’m tired or I want it to be a certain way. It’s not a bad thing necessarily, but it’s just kind of checking in to understand, hey, if I set that aside, what actually opens up? And what I found was a lot.

And just remembering it’s not about one person acting in a vacuum. We talk about everyone’s needs and trust that we will keep at it until we find something that feels good. And we just get there a lot faster if we bring that open, curious mindset and everyone’s participating. From that place, I felt like we could get at the needs. So, that might be light or a need of quiet or food or the need of company. Whatever was bubbling up for the people involved, when we understand that need, that’s when the options opened up. It’s really this creative process to think about how to address noise or too much light. We miss those if we’re focused on the answer being that everyone just needs to be in bed asleep by X time.

We had friends that put up acoustic tile in their gamer’s room and it made a huge difference. I don’t mind earplugs, so that helped me, because I’m a very light sleeper. I’ve found that when kids know that we’re open to finding solutions and not trying to stop them from doing what they’re wanting to do, and they’re not trying to stop me from sleeping, we know that we’re all working in this together, then we can find these solutions that feel good.

And I know if families are newer to this, everyone may not be participating yet. They’re still a little unsure of what this process looks like, and can we trust it? But as the trust builds and all the ideas are considered and valued, that is going to change. And sometimes in the beginning, just making it fun and starting with some off-the-wall, silly ideas can just make people laugh and get them excited and they start throwing out ideas and it just sets the stage of, there’s no bad idea. We’re just here talking and trying to figure things out.

And you’re right. There have been so many great sleep conversations and breakthroughs on the Network. It is so unique to each family. And it’s definitely not a rule that all unschoolers stay up late, but hopefully, it’s about each person in the family really tuning into their body and finding rhythms that work with the life that each family is creating.

PAM: Oh, I know. I love that. And it really does just go such a long way to validate someone’s wish to stay up later. When they just feel seen and heard and trust that you’re going keep going to figure out ways to make it work for everyone, they often feel less defensive and resistant, feel like we’re on the same team. But as you mentioned, Anna, that process takes time, too, right? It takes time for that trust to build. So, maybe if sleep is your first one that you’re going into this kind of conversation with, because I knew where I wanted to get and with that understanding that, I can’t say, “Hey, you can fully trust me now. I changed my mind! We’re just gonna figure this out together.”

That is hard to trust. I can know that in my head and know that I want to get there, but I can also take my time and I can be extra giving upfront so that they can see through experience that they can really trust me. So, I think that is such an important point to help people get there if this is their first experience, that it can take some time. But it is so worth it and that’s where the relationships and the trust and the connection grow deeper and deeper over time.

And, as you both mentioned, kids really can come up with some great ideas. So, my being extra open to things, I got to start to hear, when they realize that they can share ideas, even silly ones, and I’ll be like, “Oh, that’s cool! That would be so funny.” Rather than, “Oh my gosh, that would never work,” the energy changes and then over time they feel more and more open to share things without fear that they’re going to be shut down or told that was a silly idea, or, “I don’t agree with you.” We come to see how capable kids really are and they really are open to considering the needs of others when they feel like their needs are respected too. It gets us to that team level where all our needs, all the things, our constraints, our quirks of personality, all those pieces are going to be respected and heard and woven into the mix of the ways we move forward.

And it’s not about like, let’s brainstorm and come up with one solution. It’s like, Ooh, what about this? Let’s go try this. Oh, what about this? Let’s go try this. Oh, that kind of worked, and just working through it, through the conversations. And it really became so much fun over the years to brainstorm unconventional possibilities, using the rooms in unconventional ways, setting up different environments and different spaces. For us, it was just so fun. We’re still moving our house around.

ERIKA: I just think like not getting stuck thinking we need to solve everything in some perfect way that’s just going to stay the perfect way forever. Especially with something like sleep, that’s just not going to happen. Things are going to change and we could just try different things. Even just for one night, we could try something and just see how it goes. And so, just being playful with it makes things feel so much lighter.

ANNA: So much lighter. But actually something bubbled up for me that’s not as light from Pam’s, but I do want to mention it, because it’s this idea we’ve seen in the Network and a lot of places over the years, it’s an older child that maybe wants to stay up later and maybe there’s younger siblings around.

And so, the focus is on what we’ve been talking about solving for these pieces. But really again, it’s about getting to that underlying need and maybe that older child is needing some quiet. It’s a bit more chaotic environment during the day with younger siblings. And then sometimes, as parents, we can get defensive about that, that wait a minute, but you know, this environment, whatever. But it’s like, so even things like that, just checking in. Like, hey, okay, is it that? What do they love about the late nights? Is it friends that are available? Is it quiet to think and it’s a creative time for them? And okay, how can we create that in other ways, maybe, during the day? Or how can we just honor it in the night?

But that’s that piece of just understanding each other, really being open, really looking for that underlying need. So, something you said, Pam just made me think of that piece.

ERIKA: Okay, so that brought something up for me too, which is I’ve heard the kids say things like, “I just want independence,” like, “I’m in charge of what happens right now. I’m gonna be getting food for myself and deciding what to do for myself.” So, sometimes it’s that, like a great opportunity to just do their own thing.

PAM: Yeah. And sometimes what those conversations are so useful, because the staying up late can be the solution that they’ve come to. And like you were saying, getting to that need underneath helps. It helps them recognize it. It helps us understand them better and also helps us maybe come up with like three or four different ways. So, if for a time or a week or whatever staying up late doesn’t work, maybe we can get them some quiet time on their own if that is the issue or whatever that underlying need is. Staying up late can definitely be one way, but maybe we can come up with an abundant three or four ways to meet that need, and staying up late is a choice on the platter rather than the one solution, as you were talking about, Erika.

ANNA: But we miss it if we’re just kind of tunneled in, even on this specific situation. It’s so much about just getting to know each other, having those conversations. What do you love about it? What’s fun about it? Because I think we can get so focused on even finding the solution, even when we’re doing it in this way, like being creative and we’re gonna find a solution. We’re kind of focused on that versus the learning, the learning that can happen when we’re finding out these nuances of each other and living in the family together.

PAM: Yeah. And it’s a season, right?

ANNA: I hate to say that, because I think people are like, gosh, Anna, we’ve heard it before, but it’s like, when you’re telling the things Pam, and I’m just thinking, oh, it was so long ago! It’s so quiet here now! And so, I know that sounds terrible because I really do remember how long those nights felt like. I remember just thinking, this is never going to end. I’m never going to sleep again. But you really do. It really changes so, so fast.

Oh my goodness. It has been so much fun to dive into this rich late night topic with you both, and we’d love it if you would join us on the Living Joyfully Network where we talk about this topic and many more that impact our unschooling lives. It’s such a great space to connect with other families navigating the same challenges, to feel support around that and experience all the joy of the connection as well. So, you can learn more about that at living joyfully.ca/network. So, thanks again for joining us here, and we hope to see you next time.

ERIKA: Bye!

PAM: I hope you found this episode helpful on your unschooling journey. And be sure to check out the growing podcast archive. The conversations never go out of date. You can find more information about my books, the Living Joyfully Network online community, and the Childhood Redefined Unschooling Summit online course at my website, living joyfully.ca.

EU346: On the Journey with Cassie Emmott

This week, we’re back with another On the Journey episode. Pam, Anna, and Erika are joined by Living Joyfully Network member Cassie Emmott. Cassie is an unschooling mom with four children with diverse needs. She shares her path to unschooling and some insightful reflections about parenting and deschooling.

We talk about navigating challenging seasons and large families, the depth of inner work that unschooling encourages, and the choices we make to stay present and see the joy. Cassie also shares her beautiful poem about what processing feels like on the inside versus what it looks like on the outside. It’s so wonderful having her on the podcast and we hope you find our conversation inspiring on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Mentioned in the Episode

The Living Joyfully Network

Cassie’s podcast, Connecting The Dots – Because despite appearances, the dots are not placed at random: https://cassiehubert.com/podcast/#platform-pick

And her blog of poetry and essays: https://cassiehubert.com/blog/

Cassie on Instagram: @creativeperformermum

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram, Facebook, and check out the Living Joyfully website for lots more info about exploring unschooling and decoding the unschooling journey.

Follow @helloerikaellis on Instagram.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Submit your question for a future Q&A episode, and, if you’re a patron, be sure to mention that.

Become a patron of Pam’s work for as little a dollar a month (in a wide variety of currencies) and help keep the podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling.

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Our theme this month is Connection, and we’re exploring it through the lenses of trust and compassion.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. Listen to The Living Joyfully Podcast here, or find it in your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully and this is episode number 346 of the Exploring Unschooling podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts Pam Laricchia and Anna Brown, as well as our guest this week, Cassie Emmott. Welcome to you all!

CASSIE: Hi!

ANNA: Hi!

PAM: Hello!

ERIKA: Today we’re sharing another episode in our On the Journey series where we speak to our guests about their experiences, their a-ha moments, their challenges, and what they’ve learned on their unschooling journeys. Cassie is a member of the Living Joyfully Network and I have so enjoyed meeting her and getting to know her and her family. She’s a very inspiring thinker and I just always get so much out of the ideas she shares with everyone on the Network. And so, I’m so excited to have her here for this On the Journey episode.

And before we get started, I just wanted to share. One of my absolute favorite network features is one I was hesitant about initially, and that is the live weekly Zoom calls that we call our live conversations. So, I’m introverted. I get nervous when I’m speaking in front of people, and at first, I really wasn’t sure if it would feel too strange to listen to and talk to people I don’t really know or if I would be too nervous to share my thoughts, especially in front of Pam and Anna, who I’d been listening to on the podcast and the summit for years. And so, it’s fun to realize that now that call is one of my absolute favorite parts of my whole week.

We have different types of calls throughout the month. Sometimes we have breakout rooms to chat in small group. And most of the calls are just an open discussion and we end up talking and hearing about so many interesting things. And what I’ve really noticed is that the energy of being together is just so amazing. There’s this great feeling of support and connection.

And one of the ways that the calls have helped me grow in my own journey is that I just have this confidence now that I can handle big emotions and big problems, my own and other people’s. I can move through things that feel hard at first and sit with feelings that are challenging. And since I now have so much more experience hearing challenges and hearing all different ideas and perspectives about those challenges, it’s really helped me ground into the fact that there are always so many ways to approach a situation and that we can figure things out. And so, I just really value all of the collective insight and the experience that the community has to offer and love all the connections I’ve made.

And so, if you’re curious about what the Living Joyfully Network has to offer you, I really encourage you to give it a try. You can check out LivingJoyfully.ca/network to learn more, and also feel free to message me on the Exploring Unschooling Instagram account, which you can find @ExploringUnschooling with any questions you have about it.

And now I’d like to turn it over to Pam to start us off on this On the Journey episode. Pam?

PAM: Yay! Thank you. Hi, Cassie!

CASSIE: Hi!

PAM: And I just want to echo Erika, that I, too, feel so lucky to have met you through the network and I’m really happy that you are here to share some of your thoughts and ideas. So first, to get us started, can you give us just a bit of an introduction to you and your family?

CASSIE: Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me. I’ve loved this podcast for some time, so it’s been really great and it’s been really lovely to meet all of you as well, so it’s been good.

So yeah, in our family we have me, Cassie, and Pete, and we are the grownups, arguably. And then we’ve also got Grace who is 11. Our birthdays all changed from sort of December through to March, so we’ve just had all the shift around. So, yeah, Grace is 11, Isaac’s 10, very much just, Olivia is eight, and Micah is three. And so, yeah, so that’s us lot.

And yeah, we’ve pretty much unschooled since the beginning. I had a friend who was considering pulling her kid out of school when he was quite a lot smaller and she looked at home education here in the UK and so she said, “Oh, would you consider doing it?” And my answer was, “No. I don’t like teaching children.” And that’s not true because I like teaching. I’m quite didactic, but I was like, hmm, I don’t really want to be in a classroom trying to make small people mind. It just doesn’t work. And so, I like my own and like kids I care about. And then it just went from there.

She was looking into some stuff and I ended up finding John Holt as most people seem to and it just opened a total paradigm shift. So, we went sort of that route and Pete has been with me since the beginning. I tend to do the reading and then I disseminate to him and it’s fun. We’ve gotten more kind of open as time’s gone on. I think they were so small. Grace was two when we first really considered this, so it’s still infancy really anyway. But it’s watching them grow and flourish and marking their own time and so that’s been really interesting.

So, Grace is currently, if that’s cool, I’ll share a bit about what they’re into.

ANNA: Yes, please!

CASSIE: So, Grace is into everything. She reminds me a lot of me at her age, books, the hind leg off a donkey, but also loves performing, loves making scripts, loves messing around for comic effect. She’s got cracking comic timing, always has had, and has always got some massive project on the go.

At the moment, she’s currently making about four films and several series, and she’s just decided she’s going to start a club, ironically, a school club, which is hilarious about krakens and things. And so, she’s been doing loads of editing and stop motion and she keeps diving into going a new script.

And literally this week, she’s suddenly got into baking, which she’s never been interested beyond the cakes. And so, she’s like, “I’m going to write a recipe book.” And so, she’s been doing that and she’s very sweet, very kind, incredibly good, big sister, really lovely and fun and really fabulous company. Very empathetic.

And then Isaac. So, Isaac is 10, but I should probably mention my middle two are both autistic. And that does make a big difference in our family, because Isaac is largely nonverbal. Doesn’t really talk. He sings though, and boy can that kid sing. He’s got a beautiful voice and an amazing ability to hear music and pick up melody like that.

And so, he’s also still in nappies, as is Olivia. So, it’s a very different setup to having a ten- and an eight-year-old who may be on a usual path. And so, he’s recently got into Sonic the Hedgehog and running games on his tablet, which is really fun. And it’s so funny hearing him kind of play stuff and when he crashes, he then just turns the whole thing off and flings it across the room.

And he’s very affectionate and cuddly. Loves music, loves bouncing and smushing his face to us, which is always lovely. And singing and if you sing something he’ll pick up really fast and sing it back to you for weeks. So, I used to set Psalms for church and I’d be making up a new tune and he’d just be singing it for the next two weeks, the bit that I wrote. He’s amazing like that. It’s so cool.

And he’s got loads of energy and used to escape a lot. Doesn’t so much now, but runs. See, he’s got a lot of energy, so he’s definitely kept us on our toes.

And then Olivia, who is eight now, she’s so sweet, too. She is loving dolls. Over Christmas, we got loads of dolls and she’s just been exploring looking after babies and she has a tablet most of the time and is always listening to a movie or something in the background. Currently, as of the last couple of days, she’s discovered recording herself, so she’s been doing microphone stuff, and recording herself, and all the tablets get nicked.

So, they’ve all got one and she keeps nicking them in order to use the extra storage. And so, she’s singing and recording herself. And she’s really artistic, creative. Grace is really artistic as well, likes drawing, but like she keeps tearing little characters or draws around the house, which is both not ideal but beautiful and is very affectionate and cuddly and again, also autistic. And that comes out for her more in the need to have all the lights off or all the lights on and certain things and just timings needed to be clear for her. But ever since she was a teeny tiny baby, she’s just really sweet and that’s lovely.

And then Micah. Micah is three and very loud. I call him Captain Shouty-Pants, because he loves to shout and at the moment he’s into numbers. There’s a program on BBC called Numberblocks and he’s been counting like crazy. So much fun and so funny. He’s also very dramatic, he gets it from his mum, and likes to sort of recite stories and he waits till he has your attention and then performs it for you. And he does this weird gesticulating thing, like he’s doing some kind of hammy Shakespeare. It’s so funny. And yeah, he’s very boisterous, loves to climb, fling himself across the room, build stuff. He’s really into building with Magna-Tiles at the moment, so he’s lots of fun.

And then Pete and I, what to say? Lots of things. He’s my best friend. I’m really blessed to have him. He’s an amazing dad and husband, so I’m very glad to have him in my life and the kids. He’s got back into Dungeons and Dragons more recently. He works as a chaplain at a school, so sort of a Christian school. And he’s a Christian chaplain, but he’s not like a minister or anything. He’s amazingly empathetic and carries this unschooling energy into his schoolwork and the office, and holds space for people and also gets excited about sharing faith, but it’s also the combination of that and the pastoral care. And he’s very playful and silly and we like riffing with words. So, that’s fun.

And then I’m kind of into everything all the time and oh, just all sorts. So, I’m an actor by trade and training, although for the last decade or so, I’ve very much been full-time mothering and home educating or not, and so I love performing and singing and writing songs and writing poems and just all sorts. I love anything that’s to do with people and how people tick and connecting and communicating and getting people to kind of get unstuck and all of that.

I love to bake, so the creativity comes out in loads of ways. And lately I have been deep diving into Minecraft, and I’ve currently spent a lot of the last few hours building a city out of a mountain, which has been great fun. So, I’m figuring out how to do that and it kind of plays with my design love. So, that’s a lot, but that’s kind of us. It’s a lot of us in the house, so, yeah. Hope that’s not too much.

ANNA: Oh my goodness. No, I love it so much and I think it just paints such a lovely picture and I just love it. And it kind of fits into what I want to talk about and I’m going to give just a quick background.

So, on the Network, we have a Marco Polo group, which is a video messaging app. And it’s so fun to get that glimpse into people’s homes and lives and just have that connection.

And gosh, I mean, what stood out for me from the beginning, Cassie, is just how you delight in your children, and it’s just this love and care and joy that just is so evident, and that is even in the midst of all the challenges that life throws because life throws challenges as we know. But there is just this deep connection and love and joy, and I feel like you’ve created an environment where all of your children with very diverse needs can thrive. And I just think it’d be really fun if you could tell us just a bit about some strategies or your journey as it came with that and what’s kind of helped you do that. And I know part of it is just who you are and what you bring to it, but I know you’ve had lots of learning along the way as we all have to create that environment that just feels so good.

CASSIE: Yeah. So, I’ve been thinking about it and so that I don’t give you like an epic thesis worthy of a giant document, I will do my best to nutshell it, because I have lots of words.

It’s funny. I was really thinking about this and it kind of hinges on like creativity, connection, and communication, which are starting to become my buzzwords in everything else that I’m doing as well. And it’s not deliberate. I’m not like marketing, but it’s like surrendering to who you actually have.

And I was chatting to Pete about it and just said, “Is there anything you want to add to that?” when I was sharing some of my thoughts, and he said, “Surrender.” And I think that is such a big word in so many aspects, in our faith journey, like surrendering to trusting that God’s got us, but also surrendering to who you actually have in front of you, who you’re dealing, with who they actually are, who you are at this precise moment in time, which changes, and then getting creative with how you work with that. So, I mean, there’s so many facets to this family, because, like the big diverse needs. I didn’t expect, for example, to have three kids in nappies when my youngest is three and the others are that much older. It’s fine. Do I wish at some point that they’d be in a position where they’re no longer in them? Of course. I’d love them to be free. But at the same time, to serve them in that way by loving them and just helping them is actually a different kind of joy and it’s slowed me down.

I think I was never a major stress head when it came to the kids. I think part of my actor training part of a lot of things, of just being where you are and learning how to really see where you are actually at and unpick that and ask the questions. That’s been really important. So, I came to motherhood I think with a bunch of that already, but not trying to propel us on this journey. And so, changing things up.

Sorry, this is going to go around and around because this is how my brain works. So, I hope you’re still following. Shout if it’s unclear. So, I think Pete and I joke that we get some things in place and we feel like we’ve got a rhythm and everything’s working and everyone’s needs are being met and then it’s usually about six weeks and it has to change all over again. And we just think we’ve got a pattern down or we know what we are doing.

And so, the surrender to change, which isn’t always easy, is really hard. And yet when we do and we lean into it, rather than fighting this uphill battle against what isn’t going to work anyway, it’s like, well, let’s just try this a different way and just see, and then it’ll probably change in another six weeks’ time.

I mean, it’s not as neat as that. That would be lovely.

Leaning into the dull and the mundane has meant that, where I dream of big and dramatic and life changing and world changing, has helped me to really see and helped us to really see the incredible beauty that is right in front of me. And it’s a bit like the macrocosm/microcosm thing. You know, you can walk out into a woods or a forest and go, “Wow, the whole thing!” and that is one part of it. Or you can then hone in right on the small things and and learn to delight in the beauty that is right in front of you in the teeny tiny.

And I think, whereas my heart dreams of massive stuff at the same time, it’s been a real journey for me, especially with the ongoing needs of the family, to keep looking at what’s there in the small. So, for example, Olivia started drawing on the walls. Now that I live in a rental property with landlords who aren’t wildly amenable to redecorating every 10 minutes, if at all. So, it’s that natural, very real fear of going, I don’t have loads of money. I don’t want to be repainting 95 times. This is tricky.

But then I looked at what she was drawing, and to be fair, I’ve been looking at what she was drawing anyway, so I got there quicker than that. But this was a few years ago, she was drawing these beautiful little Tinkerbell fairies and the quality of artwork was just so stunning.

And she’s not like a child-prodigy-stunning, but when you looked at the drawing, it’s just beautiful and really clear and she’s got a real style and a flare. And seeing that has meant that I could go, “Oh wow, but look at what she’s drawing.” It will probably wash off the walls eventually, and if not, we’ll have to paint before we leave. But it’s like, in doing that, I could have yelled and I have my human moments when I’m much more shouty pants myself. But instead going, she really needed to draw. And evidently the canvases I was offering her of a small piece of paper were not sufficient. She needed a big space, and so therefore, giving her that option to do that, has, I guess, taken the pressure of her needing to be a particular way.

And the same for Isaac. Just constantly being creative, finding space where they can all have little chill out spaces. Figuring out that we were all sleeping in the same room except for Isaac anyway, that maybe we needed to just move rooms and put loads of beds together, which we did just before Christmas. And so, we’re all in there because Grace at 10 and now 11, still needed us. And so, she needed to thrive and feel safe by knowing she was safe at night. And did I, again, dream that I would be sharing a family bed with a whole room like a giant dormitory? No.

I guess it’s just been this whole creative thing and respecting them as individual people and who they are and enjoying them for who they are and surrendering to the tablet stuff of giving them all a tablet and, you know, paying it off when we can. Or Olivia wanting to go to the shops and buy a doll and she got a load of Christmas money, so we took her to the shop every time and she just wanted to get all the things. And rather than going, “No, you must have one,” it’s like, okay, well we have this fund at the minute, let’s just use it for that. And her delight has been so rich and gorgeous and she’s playing with them and then she moves to something else.

And it is tricky sometimes trying to navigate lots of people in her family anyway, but lots of people with different needs. I just think keep being open to trying and trying something else and forgiving one another and apologizing when you screw up and then just being playful with it. And bedtimes went out the window a while ago, but we have a rhythm. Again, it’s just not rigid.

And I think the other big thing that I’ve been constantly working through in this whole aspect of parenting and with our kids is the need for permission. It’s a really real thing for that sense of outside permission that you’re not going to have someone turn around and tell you, “You’re doing it wrong.” And there’s so much cultural messaging around how to parent and what is the right way and what your kids should be learning. And when you don’t go to the school route, I have my wobbles and I’m going, are they going to learn anything? And then suddenly, Grace decides she’s baking, or she’s making these amazing short films and doing loads of editing and then showing them to anybody she just meets. And it’s just like, wow. And so, realizing that I don’t necessarily need permission from outside if I’m confident in the choice itself. And the same for Pete.

Just building a nest and building what we need. And at the moment, we’ve been in a long season of colds, but also of being very much in our house because it’s trickier to get out. We’ve now got some help and that that helps. But it’s still wet and horrible and everyone’s still under the weather and we are very much hibernating and surrendering the whole idea we should be going out and doing stuff is not where we’re at right now. And that’s okay, too. And maybe the reason I don’t go out and get out in the woods all the time, even though that’s what I imagined I’d be doing if I home educated my kids, I swear I was going to have a woodland life. It’s not been that at all, but it’s been a cuddle on the sofa, surrounded by toys, children bundling on you and squashing you, and then trying to Minecraft and not knock all your blocks off at the same time. And it’s been great. It’s been really fun.

And in the harder times, it’s, keep leaning back into that who they are and the delight that they give us because they’re flipping amazing. They’re really fun as well, and they’re funny and playful and silly and then I can be my playful silly self, which sometimes involves some daft dancing or weird wordplay. It’s not meant to be alliterative, but anyway. And it’s really fun. And I think that answers, but, you know,

ANNA: Right! I mean, I think what I love about that is, I do think you hit those big pieces, because surrender. I mean, that’s a beautiful word. And I think what I see is that element that’s in in you, that light in you, is really in that moment. And I think that surrender helps you be in that moment. And in that moment you are seeing the joy and the beauty, because you’re right when we’re in our head thinking about what other people are wanting for us or these other things, they’re not with these beautiful children. They’re not there.

And I think all of those things that you talked about are what get you into that moment where you can just be amazed and in awe of how wonderful they are. So yeah, I loved that so much. Thank you.

ERIKA: I was just going to pull out that six weeks at a time little thing that she had mentioned. I thought that was so great. Because it’s like, I mean, that is another type of surrender I think to just like realize, even when we feel like we’ve got it, it’s going to change again. They’re going to grow, something’s going to change, the next thing’s going to happen.

And so, just to kind of keep yourself from attaching too strongly to something that’s working, I think, has been a really fun thing to hear about.

PAM: Yeah. What bubbled up for me, and again, back to the surrender piece, and as you mentioned, Cassie, this is not what I imagined my life was going to look like back then. But that surrender piece and what you made so evident is that yes, it’s very different and it’s so amazing. Right? It’s not like I gave that up for something different, for a nebulous reason for myself. But this is also, in my experience, many times, was actually so much better and richer and just more fun than that steady path that I thought I was going to go on. So, the surrender piece, such a huge part.

But what kept me surrendering day after day was learning so many times, wow, this was even better than what I could have come up with on my own.

CASSIE: Yeah. And I think there’s dreams. Like, I still have big dreams. So, my heart still is very much in acting, but it was realizing that you can’t have two priorities. One has to always be slightly prior and it’s been the family, and I’ve said this so many times, but I’ve never regretted. I miss acting and performing and doing that whole thing like I’d miss a limb. But I’ve never missed it more than I have valued being able to be fully present with my family. And it’s like the two things can be held in tension. The desire for both the big dreams that I still have as a person on my own right and the passion that just will not die in this whole area and yet, maybe that’ll come in the future, but meanwhile I’m not giving up for something that’s just drudgery. I’m actually giving it up for something that’s so life giving and it might not be forever either. 

PAM: That’s beautiful.

ERIKA: I love that. And I was thinking, too, that step forward path that Pam was talking about. It’s so freeing to be able to think of life as more of a journey metaphor, which does not look like a predictable line, but has all of these kind of unexpected twists and turns.

So, I had a thought that I wanted to talk about, because you shared a poem that you wrote about doing deep inner work that’s so much a part of deschooling and unschooling and I was wondering if you would share it with us and maybe some of your thoughts about that aspect of your life.

CASSIE: Sure. Okay. I’ll bring it up on my phone, because I didn’t print it out yet.

That deep work that brings us out into the light,

enabling us to really see,

To know ourselves –

This work of unpicking and unpacking our story,

Of tentatively claiming kinship

With those orphaned experiences,

those parts of our childlike character we were trained to reject –

This is the work that goes unseen.

Looking as though nothing is happening,

With no obvious shoot or bloom –

But, the seeming opposite,

That of a shrinking,

Diminishing,

A reducing of capacity and strength,

Becoming more pathetic –

Is less attractive,

Even offensive,

To those on the outside.

Yet the excavation underway below the surface –

Unearthing great caverns of beauty,

Geodes of pain,

Hidden rivers of strength –

This is where the refining and reforming

is at its most ambitious.

Here, the understanding

and redefinition of beauty,

is both infant and infinite.

Re-tuning to that holy note,

Becoming more crystalline,

We begin to resonate,

Growing in clarity,

Anchored in rock.

No errand for those whose hunger for hope is quenched,

This downward, uphill struggle will break you open,

Cutting to the quick,

Where every nerve vibrates,

Raw,

And grief threatens to drown.

Yet here is where peace is found.

In the turmoil of stillness,

At the edge of the abyss,

We die.

And wake to new life,

More tender,

And more whole.

This deep work –

Which none can know,

But the one on the inside who bears witness,

And tends the wounds with love –

This work is love made flesh,

And freedom follows.

There you go. That’s the end. You can talk again.

ANNA: Beautiful!

PAM: I know. So beautiful.

CASSIE: Thank you. Yeah. What was the question again? It’s funny, so yeah, just thinking about I think many of us are really afraid to truly see ourselves. I think we’re afraid of shame or rejection. We’re afraid of actually realizing our stories are full of shame, because maybe they are. Maybe we’re ashamed of things we’ve done or things we’ve been, or how we’ve been. Maybe we don’t know how to unpack that and we can often feel powerless to change.

And I think a lot of us are content to sleepwalk and we just won’t look too closely. It’s safer this way, and yet it really isn’t safer, because you don’t know what you’re going to bump into.

I think I had someone describe it once as a bit like walking into a room filled with cluttered furniture, but with the lights off and then you’re like, but it’s safer. I can’t see what’s there. But you crash into everything. You turn the lights on, you see everything that’s there.

(Cassie shared that the reference to the cluttered room came from Aundi Kolber’s book Try Softer and her IG handle is @aundikolber.)

I think saying you turn the lights on and then you’re like, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much there,” But you’re less likely to crash in and stab yourself in the eye from something you’ve stored. And I think the nature of all work that connects us with our sense of story, whatever that is, because everyone’s had pain, everyone’s had trauma, whether it’s big or small. I’ve had some pretty big ones, like one I’ll share briefly.

We lost a baby in a late term miscarriage and so that was a pretty big one, but then there’s others like looking at my family background and stuff that was beautiful and then going, oh, but some things that didn’t quite work for me and starting to realize that now. And that’s scary, because then you go, but I had a happy childhood and in many ways I really did. But looking slightly deeper is scary, because then you have to go, but what about the bits that maybe weren’t so great? And I didn’t have a terrible childhood at all. I had loving parents and a very supportive family in so many ways.

But it’s that nature of looking deeply can be really scary. And I think when I was writing this poem, I’d been writing it because I’d been processing a whole bunch of things about so many bits and pieces, but in the process of doing that, it’s exhausting. And physically, I’ve had five babies, but four babies, and then we had a lockdown and all the things, and so, physically I’m pretty drained and exhausted and yet also all this processing takes physical energy and that isn’t visible and it’s not visible because I still haven’t unpacked half of it. And so, it’s still messy on the inside. And so, that’s still taking energy. And then it looks like, whereas I used to be the super capable person, I mean I think I just ran too fast anyway. I’d be doing millions of classes and dancing and performing and used to be able to run on all of that.

And now it’s like if I’ve had one outing in a week, I’m done for the week. And it’s really crazy how much, I think from the outside, to people who knew me more at that point, it probably looks like I’m a bit useless now, or I just want to hole up in my comfort zone. And yet the nature of really asking the questions about, well, what was that like? How do I feel about that now? Is that still who I want to be? Does bring up pain? And allowing yourself to really feel that pain is sometimes almost as scary as the fact that there might be some.

But like with grief, which has been a theme that’s run a lot through my life, you can’t circumvent it. You can hide it, you can squash it, you can suppress it, but you can’t move through it if you don’t allow it to take the space it’s going to take.

And I don’t know, with unschooling, we’ve gone off a beaten path, or at least a beaten path I’ve known growing up with my kids and what I was parented like, and in lots of ways there was a certain amount of freedom too. And they were supportive from being an actor without telling me I had to get a trade behind me. I mean, that’s a big deal for a lot of people. And yet, things like expecting certain levels of respect or putting boundaries in place that mean, well, it’s the parent’s time now and it’s the kid’s bedtime and going, well, why? Is that really an important boundary? And sometimes those boundaries really are. Maybe Pete and I haven’t spoken to each other properly all week, and so actually we need that time. So, finding someone to create that to work for us. It’s not that the thing itself isn’t necessarily a good thing, but just the nature of unschooling as I’ve dived into it more as we’ve dived into it more as our kids have grown, I have wobbles every so often that what if they’re not reading in time? What if I’m not doing it right? And yet asking those questions, taking the space, allowing myself to feel what I’m feeling, and then also just connecting.

My interest in people, especially as a performer, as an actor, like I love the story. I love getting into the head and the heart of somebody, and it’s an incredible privilege when I’ve got to do that work to stand in effectively stand in somebody else’s body and walk out their journey. And that sounds a bit weird, but it’s like you are. You are offering your body to be a conduit to tell that story, to connect with the people in the audience, whether on screen or in person. And so, you are sharing that. And you have to allow them to be them, whoever that character is. And so, you have to know where you stop or start in order to be able to tell someone else’s story without just making it all about you.

And so that was good grounding. But with parenting and unschooling, it’s been a lot of, keep asking questions. And sometimes when we are tired or we snappish or you just want to do something or, “Well, they should really eat this.” I love to cook and it really annoys me when my kids won’t eat my food. And I’m like, “But I made it particularly. Why don’t you want it?” And yet, actually, hang on a minute. Does she need to? Is it really a value judgment on my worth and my cooking skills if she doesn’t? Is it really the end of the world if they eat nothing but bread and I have a family of ducks forever? Maybe I can cook something nice. I swear at one point we did have a family of ducks. We’d just get through bread. They’d just eat bread. I’m like, “Oh, the Emmett Quackers.” It was hilarious.

I just think we do not in our culture, and I think as people we are a bit scared of story being messy.  And we’d like to wrap it in a nice bow. There’s nothing wrong with a lovely bow, but there’s no point in wrapping bow around something that’s really not actually at a point there’s some wholeness.

And yet, asking those questions, allowing yourself to sit with the you you’re not so sure you like until you come out the other side. Not necessarily going, “And I’m fixed!” at all, but going, do you know what? I like her. I don’t always like what I can do or can’t do. I get very frustrated or disappointed with my lack of energy or the fact that I feel that, what if I’m not getting my kids out enough? Or what if they’re only going to be on their tablets now forever? Of course they’re not. And then I see that they don’t but it, but I like who I’m becoming. I like the person.

It’s really funny. So, as a performer, voice is important, and that command of your voice and being able to do that. I mean, I once told someone off the stealing in my bike because I shouted at them and told them off. It was brilliant. I still have that. So, I went, “Ah, excuse me. Do you mind not stealing my bike, please!?” I just sort of yelled at him and all the adrenaline was pumping. It was hilarious.

And so, commanding voice and knowing that you can set a boundary by saying to your child, “No,” it’s very powerful. Except it gets in the way of connection and it gets in the way of that being a person. And so, when people say, well, if you just say no, I’m like, seriously? I can say no really authoritatively, till the cows come home. Believe me. I do old-school mom fantastically. I’ve played Russian matriarchs. I’m good at that. I’m not even that old, but I’ve played old ladies. It’s funny. But there’s that, do I want to do that? Or I insist on something and I watch my kid’s face fall or I watch the light go out their eyes or I get too teachery, because I like to get excited and tell you all about it and try and get you to get it with me. And then I watch Grace just switch off and glaze over and be like, “Mommy. I just want to play with the letters my way. I just want to make up words that are gibberish and then get you to say them. I don’t care what they spell.”

And it’s been challenging, but it’s been a real, again, journey of surrender, I guess, a journey of grace. And I think the idea that giving grace to yourself is a really good phrase, but it can be hard to know what that means and how to do that. And I think sometimes that means when you’re tired yet again, not feeling like you are less than for not, well get up and have a walk and it’ll make a difference. Because sometimes it will, but sometimes it isn’t what you need and it’s maybe you just need to sit and Minecraft for three hours and that’s self-care.

And it sounds really weird, but it’s something that brings you joy. And again, trusting that when you see yourself, you actually become more tender. Or you can choose to get hard and get bitter, but I think it brings you to the end of yourself. And for me, that means coming to God and going, I need, I need your love. And that encourages me to actually be kinder, because God’s way kinder with me than I ever am, and actually becoming more tenderhearted, more vulnerable, more open, which means you get hurt. But I’m so much more receptive for that. And I think that means I’m more receptive to my kids and to their pain and to their joys, and I think that. I don’t know if that answers your question.

ERIKA: I think that I love the part that you brought up about there being a physical toll from doing the mental inner work, because I have found that to be the case and it’s something where looking at me, you wouldn’t know why I have this face on right now. What’s going on? But it’s because of the internal work. And how common it is for unschooling to be a path into doing that work. And you don’t have to get there through unschooling. I think, as far as what I’ve seen, it’s pretty common for people in their forties to start looking at things on the inside and figuring out things. But I think unschooling, it almost  boosts you forward on that internal journey, because you’re questioning everything. It has started the path of questioning everything. And so, I don’t know. I liked thinking about how big of a deal it is to do that and really giving yourself some credit, giving yourself some space and kindness and compassion for that work that you’re doing.

ANNA: Yeah. And I think, too, how that work, how we’ve seen it kind of interplay with unschooling families and other people is, like you said, it’s a deepening, because you understand yourself more as you look at those dark corners and the hard things, and not just gloss over it. I think it expands our heart. I think we’re able to open to other people. We’re able to see that they have their own unique journey, because we’re not just cramming our journey into some kind of a box or some kind of a stereotype. So, I just think all of that interplay of the unschooling and being in such close relationship with people every day, all the things. It creates this environment where we can really learn so much about ourselves and the people around us. I really love that so much.

PAM: I really love the word tender. It really does speak to that feeling. And as Erika mentioned, I think one of the things that we really don’t give a lot of credence to when we’re doing that deep work, that tender work, that vulnerable work, we don’t give credit or recognize how much of a physical toll it takes, like how much physical energy it takes to think like our body needs to feed our brain to do all this processing, to ask these questions, to just see how they feel in our bones, see how they feel inside.

I just loved the imagery of your poem, because it just brought to mind how so much of that processing can feel from, from little healing rivers to deep chasms, to all those pieces and coming through the other side more tender.

And I loved your point, too, about really, it’s worth it and it’s valuable to see what grace and compassion for ourselves looks like and feels like, because the words are valuable and helpful and everything, but what does that look like? Does it look like three hours of Minecraft is self-care? And literally knowing that, not just telling yourself that, but feeling it in your bones, knowing through experience that this feels good. This deserves to be on my list of things that can help me maybe recover some of that energy from processing.

You talked before about in and out, I forget the word you used, but maybe when it’s a transition time, like I have looked at this deep stuff up close in the forest. I’ve looked at this leaf for a long time. To me, the clue was kind of, I feel like I’m circling now. I’m not really making progress as I stare at this leaf. I’m not getting any more out of it. But yeah, to transition to, you know what? I’m going to look up now doesn’t mean I’m never going to look back at the leaf. That leaf is going to be carried with me now as I look up right and see different perspectives and start putting the puzzle together in a different way.

We don’t lose that, but for me, those are the pieces where grace and compassion for myself come in. It’s not judgment of myself. Maybe that’s part of it, like understanding that all these pieces are okay. Even if, I feel like I told somebody what I was doing, I haven’t been out for a week, that they may bring judgment with that, because we do hear those stories outside of us so much. But to really lean into what it means to be us and how we tick and giving ourselves that grace and compassion instead of judgment. Imagine if we supported ourselves like we support our children. Often, it’s easier to get to through supporting our children, but oh my gosh, it is so helpful to be able to give that to ourselves, too, as part of our journey. Anyway, thank you so much for the poem. It brought up so much for me!

CASSIE: Pleasure. Do you mind if I just add one thing? I was just thinking when you’re saying about the, just telling yourself, but not necessarily believing, I think that’s also a process from outside to in often and sometimes it comes inside out. And I think we can move inside out or outside in with a lot of realizations and understanding.

But I think sometimes, I would rather work inside out when I’m trying to figure out a journey or a character, because it’s like, what’s here and then what feels more honest as I go forward. But sometimes you just get stuck and so you say, move here, say this, do this, say it in this way. And then the feeling life catches up. And I just think it’s also okay for us to remember that when we know something is true, like there’s a truth about it, but maybe it hasn’t resonated or landed with us, like the whole, “It’s okay to say this is self-care,” when you’re secretly going, “But I feel like a fraud.”

It’s like, hearing that and going, “It’s okay that I have spoken this as a truth. I know this is true. My emotions, my feeling life will catch up. They’re just not there yet.” And trusting that by doing it and by giving yourself the space to do it more, whatever it is, gradually your feeling life or your sense of the reality of it and the validity of it will catch up and then you’ll be able to fully inhabit that.

But we can’t always do that straight away. So, if we’re waiting till we really believe it before we do it, we’ll never do it. But sometimes it’s like, I know this is good for me and I’m enjoying it. It is honestly good self-care. It’s not me just being lazy.

And so, then you start to believe it more as time catches up, that’s just something I’ve found really helpful to remember as well.

ERIKA: That’s really interesting. I feel like when Pam was talking, too, and with that most recent bit too, I like the kind of being playful about the inner work, too, like keeping that kind of sense of curiosity and play about it as well. Because then, right, it can be easy to get kind of trapped in judgment or the external judgment and internal judgment, but if we’re more playful about it, then it can just be, “Well, I can play Minecraft if I want, and then we’ll just see. We’ll see how I feel after,” and so then there’s less judgment I think helps us along that internal work path.

CASSIE: Yeah, and YouTube rabbit holes do the same for me, as well. Watching other actors talking about stuff, and watching a whole bunch of round tables, I just physically feel myself coming back to myself. I’m like, YouTube rabbit holes are actually a good thing sometimes.

ANNA: Yes, yes.

ERIKA: They definitely can be. Thank you so much, Cassie, for spending time with us today. It was great to be able to share some of your journey with everyone, and thanks so much to everyone for listening, and we wish you a wonderful day. Bye!

ANNA: Thank you!

CASSIE: Bye.

PAM: Bye.