Anna Brown joins me this week to dive into listener questions.

Question Summaries

The first question is about deschooling and moving to unschooling. She has two boys and they have always homeschooled. They’ve been looking at moving to unschooling. She’s been reading and researching and she’s feeling a little bit overwhelmed. The main focus of her question was around Deschooling. Do they need it? What does it look like? How does unschooling begin?

Our second question is about parent’s intuition. She’s listened to most of podcasts episodes and a number of Q&As and understands the perspective most the guests come from, but has left some of those talks feeling uncomfortable. She says that so many times she’s heard moms speak on the podcast that it was their intuition that guided them to attachment parenting or a different way of living with their children and how their intuition led them to unschooling. Yet, when they speak of their concerns around things like technology use or food choices, it feels in the podcast that their intuition is now being dismissed. She feels that there seems to be little respect for moms having a gut instinct about how their particular child is responding to video games, etc. And there seems to be a dismissal of the parent’s intuition, but it was praised when the parent trusted it way back when.

Question three was sent in by someone with a four-year-old who’s currently in a Waldorf pre-school, and she wants to know if it’s possible to unschool when both parents are working outside of the home.

Question four asks, “Do I have to choose between my aspirations and the needs of my children? Because I think I will be a better mom and role model if I can still pursue my calling in the arts at least part time while giving my kids what they need to thrive.” There is also another aspect about anxiety and not knowing whether it was school-related.

Things mentioned in the episode

EU200: Unschooling in Context

Everything I need to know I learned from video games (article mentioned)

EU032: Choosing School with Alex Polikowsky

EU197: Choosing School, Part 2 with Alex Polikowsky

EU45: Unschooling on a Budget with Glenna McAulay

Blake Boles’ book, College without High School

EU201: Unschooling and Self-care with Erika Ellis

Episode transcript

Read the transcript