On this episode of Exploring Unschooling, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about the immense value of celebrating interests. As humans, what we are interested in really makes us who we are as individuals. When we celebrate and show interest in the things that our children and partners love, our relationships deepen. Our loved ones feel seen and understood when we take the time to learn more about their interests and share in their joys. We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey and in your relationships!

Spinning a Web episode 323 – Pam’s talk about how learning can look in unschooling

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

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. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

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?

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

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

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.

PAM: Hello everyone, I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and today I’m joined by my co-hosts Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hello to you both! 

So, in this episode, we are going to be talking about the value of intentionally celebrating our child’s interests, because there can definitely be more to that than meets the eye. But before we dive in, I would like to take a moment to invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network.

There is just so much value in walking alongside others on our journey, particularly on more unconventional journeys like unschooling, because we don’t see a lot of it happening in our everyday life. Because while everyone’s journey is unique, many of us face similar obstacles and challenges and that is where the power of community shines in feeling seen and heard. In the network you will learn from the experiences of other parents who are on similar journeys.

You can draw inspiration from their a-ha moments. You can gain insight from the unique and creative ways that they navigate both their own and their family’s needs every day. It’s just so fun. I know my kids are all adults. I still love going in there and seeing what people are doing because it’s the energy, it’s the creativity, it just opens things up for me every time I visit. So, to learn more and join us just follow the link in the show notes or go to livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on community in the top menu. We look forward to welcoming you. And Anna, would you like to get us started on celebrating interests?

ANNA: I would, thank you so much. I love thinking about the ways to celebrate the people in our lives, especially our children. I have a favorite quote from our friend Anne Ohman. Years ago, we made it into a bumper sticker. And so, I’m going to read that to you. 

“Today I will connect with my children, bring joy into their lives, nurture and encourage what they love to do, and celebrate them for being exactly who they are.” 

And celebrating our kids and what they’re interested in is such a great place to start because we really can feel misunderstood and even judged if someone makes light of or disregards something that we love and we can feel so seen and supported when they show interest in it and in us.

Because a big part of who we are is made up of the things that we love and the things that we do. When someone criticizes something we love, it feels like they’re criticizing us. The thought process is kind of, I love this thing, they’re saying I shouldn’t or I shouldn’t be doing it, is there something wrong with me? And it starts to sow that seed of doubt and it disconnects us from our inner voice. 

When the people in our lives celebrate our interests, it makes a difference in cultivating our inner voice and learning to trust ourselves. It’s also just a great way to learn about our kids or our partners. As we lean into learning more about their interests, we see what draws them into it. So instead of thinking well they just love video games, what kind of games? What is it about the games? Is it the art, the music, the story, the action, the excitement of it? Learning the lingo and what’s going on helps us celebrate and have that deeper conversation with them. And really that goes for all kinds of interests.

I have this young friend who’s into hobby horses. So yes, this is an actual thing. There is a World Hobby Horsing Championship. It’s in Europe. The hobby horses are these elaborate handmade, that in itself is art, beautiful kind of horse heads on a stick. The events involve people riding these hobby horses over jumps and obstacles. It gets so athletic. It’s like, who knew this? I did not.

But I love learning about it and seeing the joy that it brings to her and really this whole community of people across the world that are into this thing that I didn’t even know existed. It’s fun, right? The art of it’s beautiful. The athleticism is beautiful. The joy from the kids is beautiful.

But sometimes if someone has an interest that maybe is a little bit harder for me to understand, I look at them. Because they’re important to me, right? This is a person that I care about. And so I get excited about their excitement. I can join that fun energy of someone doing something that they love. That excitement is contagious if we just open ourselves to it, even just a tiny bit.

Because I truly want people in my life to feel loved and celebrated. And it’s such an easy gift to give. And I have just found it deepens those connections in such a beautiful, beautiful way.

ERIKA: Oh, I love that so much. I feel like people’s interests are so important. It’s so core to who they are as people. And so, if we can see that and say, I see what you love and I appreciate that you love it. It feels so good. It feels like being seen. It feels like being understood. And I love that part that you talked about with the lingo.

Because that has been so huge for my relationships with my kids to be able to speak the same language that they speak about the things that they love. So, it’s things like learning about the characters, learning about the stories, being interested when they’re sharing about the things that they love so much. And I see that when I am able to remember the little details about the things that they’ve told me in the past, how much that helps them feel connected to me and like I’m with them, that I support them. And so, I just really do put a huge value in learning about their interests and celebrating their interests. 

And I remember, I think it was a recent network call that we had where one parent shared that they had played Minecraft along with their kids, which was kind of challenging because it’s hard to dive into Minecraft as a new Minecraft player. And especially if your kids are quite advanced and you’re just kind of trying to figure it out.

A lot of these interests might not make a lot of sense to our brains. Maybe they’re things that I would never choose to spend time on if it were up to me. But what it showed was that taking that little bit of time to be like, okay, I’m in here, show me what to do.

You know, really giving it a try was just such a connecting moment for them. And so I just love that. Even if it feels a little bit out of our comfort zones, even if we don’t quite understand it, I think there’s just so much value in making that time to try to learn that little bit more and show interest.

PAM: Yeah. And I think for me, when I think back to when the kids first came home from school, I had that mindset of not so much judging the interests, but varying the value that I placed on them, right? Video games were at the lower end of something that yeah, you like that thing. That’s great. You enjoy it. But, I couldn’t lean into celebrating it as much as something that looked more, whatever, you know, I can’t even come up with a word for now, like it was more culturally valued.

So because, we’ve talked about before, the values and the things that were the way we are placing things in our life, in our context, are those from outer voices or from inner voices? So that was a really helpful step, just taking the time to recognize where I might be judging things. And when I first came home, I was still looking through the lens of subjects, like is Minecraft math?

Then I can tick off the math box when they’re playing Minecraft or, you know, that kind of stuff. So it was really beautiful to be encouraged, not only to celebrate their interests, but as you were saying, not judging them at all, like this is something interesting to you. Therefore it’s interesting, just full stop there.

I don’t need to justify it before I can celebrate it. I can just go right to celebrating it, right? And absolutely you just learned so much about who they are as a person, what they’re loving, what they’re loving about it.

Because in so many things, there are different aspects of it. And maybe one side’s challenging, maybe one side’s not so fun, but the stuff that they are getting out of it makes it worth coming back to it again and again. So it’s just so interesting and so fun after a few months, a few years to look back and see how their interests have kind of morphed and changed.

And you can start to see the thread that kind of goes foundationally. Oh, there’s also that aspect that shows up in this interest that just may seem totally random looking back if we’re just looking at what the literal interest is. But when we have those conversations, we learn that language, we know the bits and pieces that are exciting them.

We can really see what is foundationally them, because we can see that bit attracting them to all sorts of different interests.

ANNA: Yes, it’s so fun. And I think that’s a really good point. Because if we’re just looking at the interest kind of at surface value, we are missing that it’s building blocks to other things, right?

And so, again, it may be that the art or the music that’s attracting them to this particular video game, and maybe that morphs into actually doing some physical art or some digital art or into making music or to understanding different things about it. But we can really stuff that down if we’re judging it, if it’s coming with this judgmental lens, because the judgment’s so surface level, right? It’s really up here.

It’s not getting excited and understanding what’s lighting them up about it. We really only see those things in looking back a very long time, really. So there’s a trust piece, which I get can be hard because, well, it’s a trust piece.

But I just think about how many adults I work with, adults I know in my family, I’m thinking of my brother and in more extended family that really had these strong, passionate interests that didn’t fit the mold of what people thought they should do. And so they pivoted from that and did the more conventional thing that they were supposed to do. And it’s decades later, where they’re thinking, I hate this.

Why am I doing this? Why do I have this job? And it seems dramatic that it’s coming from this, but it is, had someone seen them and seen how art was such an important part of their life, and had really gotten excited and maybe brought more of that in, what a different path that would have looked like.

So I do feel like if we can shut off that part of our brain that’s judging or thinking, how does it look to the outside and just get curious. I mean, here we go again. I feel like we always talk about the same thing, but just create space, just get curious.

I think you’ll see all these interests, how they weave together and how it’s all a part of growth. And my friend Pat always says, you can take any interest and really see the whole world from it. I think you even have an article, don’t you, Pam?

Everything can come from one thing. And that really opens us up, I think, as parents to recognize it. So we’ll link that too in the show notes, because I think it’s a really valuable paradigm shift. It can be this really specific interest of hobby horsing that leads to, geography and horses and sewing and this and that and art and all the things from this one, what would seem a very niche interest.

ERIKA: Yeah, I love that. Once you have that belief of, okay, we can learn anything through any interest that they have, then it makes it so that everything’s valid. And I’m not going to be afraid to support any interest.

And so I’m just imagining how cool would it be if all parents could just be encouraging their kids in the thing that right now the kid is the most interested in? How powerful that could be? Because there’s a reason why that particular interest is speaking to them so strongly right now.

There’s a reason why they keep bringing it up and keep wanting to do it. It’s doing something for them. It’s working with their brains and their personalities.

And it’s kind of reminding me of when we talk about being true to ourselves. And so if you get that chance to really listen to what you are interested in as a person, individual, unique person with your personality, you learn so much more about yourself. And then everything that happens from that point is more aligned with who you are.

And so if we give our children that chance, they can really dive deep into this thing that they love the most. Okay, now they’re meeting other people who are interested in the thing they love the most. They’re making connections that work better for them.

They’re able to learn better because when you’re learning something you love. Learning happens more easily and naturally than if we’re trying to pull ourselves away to something that people think we should be doing. And so I think if we can really just sink into all interests lead down a path that can be valuable for that individual person, then we can stop judging our kids and just lean into supporting them to go down that path.

PAM: Yeah, I love that so much. It’s beautiful. And I think that’s the next step that I want to make sure to repeat, that you both talked about it.

But just to be really intentional that celebrating interest isn’t just about going okay, I’m so glad. It can be so much more. It can be in the conversations, or if they’re not much of a chatter. It’s in just observing when they’re watching that favorite show doing that favorite activity, which parts of it, light them up more like when you really see them light up what’s going on in that moment? They’re still communicating to you, even if they can’t sit down and nail off for you that this is my favorite part. Maybe you have those conversations, but it’s okay if you don’t.

But finding those pieces that light them up and then getting creative, where might that also exist in other places? Maybe it’s really close. Maybe it’s something that might be quite different from that, but might give that same sense of that same energy, or that same piece.

And it can just be so fascinating if we share that without expectation or judgment, to see if that connects, do they even want to try it? How does that unfold? If they don’t like it, yes, or no, or maybe, we’re learning every moment, right?

And they are learning too, because they’re like, Oh, do I? No, I don’t want to do that. They took a moment to consider that.

So helping them explore their interest in interesting ways can be so helpful. That is the learning that is so fun to just see in action. Because yes, even when they’re super frustrated, they will come back to it if it’s meaningful, right?

If it’s something that’s really speaking to them. And just to see them putting those pieces together and they’re exploring the window. Yes, passions are a window to the world, and that is how they’re putting together their web of learning, the context around this thing that is really interesting to them, right? So like, if it’s a particular game, you can get more of exactly the same kind of game, but you can also get a game that also has this aspect of it and try that out.

And being there with them and just like, It’s so fun!

ANNA: It’s just so much fun. It is and I love that piece of, are there ways we can find that bring this interest in? I mean, from little things like finding a plushie of a game that maybe is not easy to find and we have to figure out how to ship from Japan, a plushie from a game that they love. Or, oh, it’s this aspect that they really enjoy, the video game symphony stuff, that was really fun, because it’s something that they enjoyed, this music piece, and it was music they knew and that they had enjoyed. So, those are things that they may not know exist in those moments. 

And again, having no attachment to it, but just saying, “Hey, I saw this, and it kind of reminded me of this thing you love.” And they may say yes or no, we don’t have to have attachment to that. But it’s fun to just think of, how can we boost somebody up along their journey? How can we add things to it that make it fun? 

And something you said, Erika, that I wanted to pull out to is, that piece of when we’re doing something that we’re really interested in, that’s really important to us, we will actually push harder to learn something that’s maybe trickier, or that we’re struggling with a little bit more, but it’ll have a very different flavor than if somebody is forcing us to do something that isn’t clicking with us, right? Because then it just feels arbitrary. “Why am I having to do this? It makes no sense.” 

But if it’s like, Oh, I really want to understand how to put these pieces together to make this thing that’s so important to me that I want to take to this comic con or this place or this thing, so different.

And so I think watch for that, because sometimes we’ll hear feedback from parents, but they get so frustrated. And I’m like, right, they’re working through those pieces. How cool is it for them to figure out how to handle the frustration of that and practice that and try to move through it and see all those opportunities. We always want the kids to stick with things, but we don’t want them to stick with it if it’s something we’re not judging as okay to stick with. And so, letting go of all that and just celebrating and looking at your child or partner, anybody in front of you.

Everybody really feels great when they’re seen and heard around these things that they love. So yeah, I hope people can feel the energy of it because I think it just really, it’s fun.

ERIKA: It’s so fun. And okay, so this part is less fun, but it came to mind, which is let’s not take over their interests. Because that can happen, especially if we get very excited about celebrating their interests. We may think we know the part that they like the best, and we get really excited to push them down that path, because it’s so great and fun.

But then maybe that’s not what they actually want to do. Or maybe we’re pushing them faster than they would have gone on their own. And so, I think there’s nuance to this, supporting their interests. And I have definitely swung too far to that side sometimes with my excitement. And so like, it’s all about being attuned to what they’re showing us. And so, I want to meet their energy. I don’t want to drive them forward with what I think about their interests. 

And then I was also thinking about, you know, just financially supporting their interests. Sometimes that could come up as a bit of a rub, if it’s something that we’re not seeing as valuable. And so, again, I think it would just be about realizing there’s value in this for them, and making the decision to support an interest, even if it doesn’t quite make sense to us, can really pay off in the long run. And so, seeing it more as like investing in them and their own development along their path, rather than, oh, I’m just, you know, such a fan of whatever horror video games and so I really want to buy all of them, which I don’t really want to. But separating my own taste and my own opinions about things from the things that they’re really loving.

PAM: Yeah, that is a big part of it. And I find that when we are diving into that, that’s such an important piece to separate out, our feelings from it, and not jumping ahead, so when we’re really excited about it, and we jump in and energetically take over, because we’re excited. Not only are we happy that they’re interested in something, we literally share this interest, and this was our path, and we want to help them go through that. But that’s what I love about the metaphor of the web of learning. We’re trying to get them to jump. We’re trying to put our web on top of their web, or life, a better word.

And so, on their journey, that might be four or five points out, where for us, that maybe was just one or two, or in our excitement, maybe three, because we just want them to know where we’re going. “Isn’t that awesome?” And yeah, that we can often stifle the interest, because we’re not letting them make their connections the way it makes the most sense to them.

So, we can be stepping on their learning. And maybe that can be a lens at first that helps most to bring your energy to it, because in celebrating their interest, you’re celebrating their learning. And so, then, yes, on the opposite side, knowing that we can also stop their learning, when we start putting it through a filter of what we kind of agree with, don’t agree with, or like, oh, this is gonna cost a little bit, or will take up more time, which I don’t feel comfortable with.

And then I’ll just rationalize it or justify it rather than leaning in getting open and curious, bringing my context piece, maybe I don’t have a lot of time right now, or money, or whatever it is. But instead of putting the kibosh on it, or saying not right now, we can lean in, because maybe even just talking about it, and celebrating the idea of it can help keep the energy moving forward on it and they’ll also be picking up the context of everything. It’s a window to the world, just navigating through something that we want to do. We learn so much doing that as well, don’t we?

ANNA: Yeah, oh my goodness. But yeah, making it about us, that’s a really important one, because I get excited. But it doesn’t need to be about me. If I want to pursue it, I can do that separately. It really is, like you said, kind of matching their energy, really letting them take the lead. Because like you said, Pam, they’re putting pieces together in a way that makes sense for their brain, not necessarily a way that makes sense for my brain.

And so, I can be excited about watching that process. That’s how I could tone that down a little bit. It’s like, oh, I’m curious to see where they’ll go with this, or what that will be. And that would allow me to have my excitement, but not start lawnmowing their way through so that they’re like, wait a minute, what’s happening here? 

And oh gosh, there was one other thought that you were saying. So, this is a little bit on the darker side too, but watching for maybe we’re not criticizing an interest, but are we celebrating in line with what we want them to do, right? And so, just watching for that. I think that is important because, oh, this interest, this we could get behind because everybody’s going to love the pictures from this or the idea of what this is. This is conventional or accepted.

Watching for, are we really celebrating all those moments? Are we looking to them and what is actually bubbling up for them and being excited, whether it looks like a photo op or not? And I think that can just be an important thing to kind of check in ourselves because it’s nice when they have a hobby that then the grandparents will like. And I want to make sure they’re feeling seen about all the pieces that are interesting them.

PAM: Well, thank you so much to everyone for joining us. We hope you enjoyed our conversation about celebrating interests. And maybe you have some ideas, a little spark of getting a little curious about what your kids are into and just the fun of just creatively trying to come up with what else might be interesting for them. 

And we also hope you consider joining us in the Living Joyfully Network to dive into these kinds of ideas and conversations with other kind and thoughtful unschooling parents. It will add a depth and richness to your journey that I really do feel you’ll deeply appreciate. And we are excited to welcome you to learn more and join us. Just follow the link in the show notes or go to livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on the community tab in the menu. We also invite you to check out our Substack When School Isn’t Working. It’s also a great resource to share with friends who are feeling stuck and might just be open to considering these ideas. We wish everyone a lovely day. Thanks so much, you guys!

In this episode, we’re sharing a conversation that Pam had with Lucy AitkenRead in 2017. At the time, Lucy unschools her two children and blogs at Lulastic and the Hippyshake. Pam and Lucy talked about her family’s move to unschooling, the hardest parts of her journey, the most surprising bits, as well her husband’s journey to unschooling.

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family?

How did you discover unschooling?

What has your family’s move to unschooling looked like?

Can you share a bit about your husband’s journey? Was unschooling new to him? If so, how did you help him learn more about it?

What’s been the hardest part of your unschooling journey so far?

What has surprised you most about your journey so far?

You recently started a group and website called Parent Allies. I’d love to know the inspiration behind it and a bit about your plans!

John Holt’s book, How Children Learn

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s book, Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children

Lucy’s blog, Lulastic and the Hippyshake and her YouTube channel.

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

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. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

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?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

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

PAM: Hi everyone, I’m Pam Laricchia from livingjoyfully.ca, and today I’m here with Lucy AitkenRead. Hi Lucy!

LUCY: Hi Pam! How you going?

PAM: I’m going very well. Just to let everyone know, Lucy is an unschooling mom of two kids, and I have been following her adventures online for quite a while now, including her family’s experiences living in a yurt in New Zealand, and now their travels back to the UK. So, I’m really looking forward to diving into her unschooling and deschooling experiences at this point on her journey.

LUCY: Yes, of course. So, I’m Lucy and I’m married to Tim. And he is a Kiwi, but we spent most of our early marriage in London, where I’m from. And that’s where we had both of our daughters: Ramona who is now six, and Juno who is four. We lived really happily, living quite a normal life I suppose, in London, until a couple years ago when we decided to sort of up sticks and move to a forest in New Zealand, where we now live in a yurt.

PAM: That is so awesome Lucy. And I’m sure you’re going to share some amusing stories from that time as we go through this.

LUCY: Well yeah, it’s quite interesting for me, because I guess, deep in my heart, I’m a bit of a socialist, and I always really held onto the idea of school as being a really important common good, and that my children would definitely go to school. We would support that school. Because education is something that every child deserves, and people who are able to input into their local schools, it’s a really great thing that we should support. Basically, I had a really strong belief around that.

And then I had my children, and my first child Ramona really took me on a huge learning curve, I guess. She’s a child who is just incredibly spirited, and I believe that her spirited nature caused me to ask a lot of questions about how I wanted to raise my children.

When our second child Juno was born, we sold everything in our London home and we sold our London home, and we packed our bags into a VW camper van and we went traveling around Europe. And someone had given me John Holt’s How Children Learn, you know, which is always a slippery slope when you pick up a John Holt book, I think.

So, I was kind of reading this probably a little skeptically, but also knowing that I was already raising Ramona in quite a radically different way to how I thought I would. I guess my mind was already beginning to open about some of these ideas about raising children respectfully, for sure.

But then we went to a forest kindergarten in the Black Forest, in Germany, as part of our big trip around Europe, which we were doing. We’d set aside six months to do that. And then we got to this forest kindergarten, and I was reading How Children Learn, and I think it just was like a potent combination for my mind.

I was reading John Holt, and seeing all of these children around me, basically just unschooling in the great outdoors. There are teachers there, and they’re well trained teachers, but they see themselves much more as facilitators for a child’s own learning. And yeah, it was just so incredible to see it in real life in action, exactly what John Holt is talking about. I guess that was the moment when I knew that we would be unschoolers, and that all these ideas I held about school weren’t actually necessarily going to be the reality for my family.

And so, then we ended up back in New Zealand with our kids, and even though Ramona was only three at that stage, and Juno was a tiny baby, we rocked up in New Zealand and immediately attended an unschooling camp. And there were 150 people there, and we just kind of arrived and we felt like we’d found our people. This is a community that we wanted to stay within and raise our children within. So, I guess that’s the story.

PAM: How did you hear about the camp? Was it just random?

LUCY: I googled it, yeah. I actually googled “unschooling NZ,” and instead of any websites coming up or any groups or resources, there was just an event detailing where to turn up and how much to pay. And we were like, “Okay, let’s do it.” Google had spoken. (laughter)

PAM: And that is such a nice introduction—actually in person. I know when I first came across unschooling, it was all online. There wasn’t like local gatherings that I knew of. All those connections came so fast and made so much sense, at the point that I was there. But definitely seeing it in action would be a nice introduction, right?

LUCY: Yeah, it was really, really cool. And there were definitely a few moments where we were like, “Oh! That’s interesting!” It wasn’t at all like, “Oh we do everything exactly this way.” It wasn’t at all like that.

But it was the community that really inspired us, I guess. We really just felt at home within the way that adults were interacting with the children, because that was something we really felt certain about at that stage. We really knew that we wanted to be parents that interacted with our children in a really respectful kind of democratic way, I suppose. And that is what we saw there.

And that was probably the magic for us, that made us go, “Ah! Yeah, this is something we’re going to really dive into.” And now we actually go to between four and five unschooling camps a year. They’re a really important part of our family’s unschooling framework, I guess. And all of that. Just a whole massive group of people just being in their element for a few days and every season. We make it happen come hell or high water.

PAM: That’s awesome. And you mentioned there too that already before you even came across John Holt etc., that your parenting was less mainstream, right? So, you were kind of already primed for that. You noticed the difference in the relationships even just at camp, even if some of the details still weren’t … ready for you.

Because it really is a journey, isn’t it? I remember at first I would read about unschooling and I’d think, “Well, you know, it’s super cool. So much of it makes sense. You know, this little bit … I don’t think we’ll do that. I don’t think we’ll be doing that.” But as the months went by and I learned more and more and I understood why they were doing that, it really was a journey. Because it’s like, “Oh, of course I’m going to do that!” Right? (laughs)

LUCY: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I see it a lot. Like with my writing, I’ll be writing about some sort of specific and then people will really kind of grab hold of that specific and be like, “I can’t see how that can possibly work, da da da da da.” And it’s like, well I guess it really does only work when you look at the whole picture. It’s sort of like people really want the detail, but, I mean, the devil is in it. The devil in the detail.

It’s not really so much about the very specific practical details as much as the big picture of the life you’re trying to lead, which is one where you’re not making decisions based on fear, but you’re making decisions based on connection. And having that overall philosophy is what makes then the details make sense.

PAM: So true.

LUCY: I don’t know if I made sense. (laughs)

PAM: It did! Absolutely. Because, if you look for the details too quickly, I think there’s a tendency to kind of interpret them like the rules of unschooling, right?

LUCY: Yeah.

PAM: “Tell me exactly what you do each day and I will do that.” But it might not work in your family. Because it’s all about how the individuals relate to each other, and how the individuals like to pursue their interests and everything. So, what my day looks like isn’t going to look like anyone else’s, right?

LUCY: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

LUCY: Yeah, yes, basically nothing changed, I guess. We just kept on just living our life. And that’s the thing that, you know, because we’ve never been to school, we just keep living our life, and nothing has really changed much at all. So, the life that we were living with our children age one and three is now pretty similar to age six and four, really.

I guess they’re way more vocal in what they want to do. But we still just go about living our lives, all of us ticking away, following our little hopes and dreams each day. Yeah, there’s not been any momentous shift I don’t think, since that camp. It’s just been living each day as it comes to us.

PAM: So you just kind of kept on keeping on. That’s awesome.

LUCY: Kept on keeping on. Yeah.

PAM: Yeah. Have your kids mentioned school at all?

LUCY: Ramona does sort of every now and then mention school. And it’s nearly always when there’s been a bit of time in our life where we’ve been quite farm-bound, for whatever reason. She’s an incredibly social kid, and I think sometimes when we drive past a playground she’ll see the hundreds of kids kind of just running around there, and she’ll think, “Oh, I’d do really well in that situation.”

So, we tend to work really hard at getting her enough of that social interaction. And when that’s going really well, she doesn’t mention school, or she knows that she’s getting all her social needs met. And every now and then when she does pop out with this sort of question about school, I can almost always look around us and see that we maybe dropped going to something, or we’ve been a little bit caught up with all our farm chores and haven’t quite managed to meet up with as many people as we usually do, or that sort of thing.

And one of her best friends started going to school for a couple of weeks, and she was quite intrigued by school at that point, which was really interesting for us. It was somebody that we live on the farm with, and they’re an unschooling family, but their boy wanted to give it a go. And so, they did, and that was really interesting, because I guess we had to ask ourselves the question, would Ramona go to school if she wanted it?

And we sort of did a bit of soul searching about that, around that time. And then he decided it wasn’t actually all that. You know, he liked having a lunch box and he liked having play dates after school, and his mum realized that both of those things could be done outside of a school context. And he didn’t like being told what to do, when, and where. And he really quickly just went back to being at home on the farm. And then that moment just kind of disappeared. But it still was an interesting one, to figure out whether, in your unschooling family, you would be willing to support a child going to school.

PAM: Yeah, when it first gets mentioned, it can knock you off a bit, just because you feel like, “Well, what am I not doing? What’s wrong? Am I failing? Am I not doing it right?” So, it takes that soul searching—that work to get past that reaction—and realize, this isn’t personal.

But, like you said, it’s a great clue to start looking around, you know, and you see that that question—it might be just the solution that they see to a need that’s missing. Right? Like you said. Maybe it’s a need for some more social interaction, and they’re not going to come to you: “Mom, I need more social interaction.” But she may see in her mind that playground full of kids at school and think, “School is a good solution.” And then come at it that way.

So, I think the first thing is to look around, like you do, and see if there’s any clues to what need they’re trying to fill with that. Because then from there, you can say, “Well maybe the need is, literally, to check out school.” Maybe. But it might not be. There might be a million other ways to meet whatever it is that they want. It’s a hard time, but it’s so interesting, and when you can get past that initial fear, it’s a big release to do that soul-searching, figure that out, because you’re in a stronger place, aren’t you?

LUCY: Yeah, definitely. And I think it might—who is it—it might be Peter Gray. Let me have a little bit of a think about that. But someone speaks about this idea that if a child really wants to go to school and they don’t get to go to school, they might forever feel like school was a club that they weren’t allowed in. And that is probably something to worry about more than your child actually going to school and you being merely kind of phlegmatic about it.

I kind of came to two conclusions, I suppose, with this whole soul-searching period. And that was: I really felt like six is too young to make a decision to put yourself into a situation that so drastically impacts your family’s circumstances, and your own well-being. And I do think that school really does impact a child’s well-being. And I guess I decided that I wanted to try and protect Ramona from that, for as long as I could, until she made it really clear that it is school that she’s after. I would try to meet her needs as much as I could, and then, if it still is school, I would support her to do that, but I would do it in a way that supported her as a person, without making all of the school’s toxicness something that impacts her. So, I’d be very nonchalant, shall we say, about testing and exams and homework. You know, all of that stuff I’d just hold really lightly, but support her in going to school, if it really was the need that she had to do that.

PAM: Yeah, and I think that’s such an important point, because you’re so right about the atmosphere, the environment, and the effect that it can have on a child. And to realize that it can be such a different experience for a child if we choose not to bring all that home, right? If we don’t buy into, “I need to be on top of them at home to study,” and to use the grades as a judgement of them, and everything. Rather than, just, it’s a place they go for a few hours, and did they have fun? And supporting them if they’re like, “Mom, I have a test this week. I’d like to study. Can you help me study?” or something. Of course, you’re going to help them—

LUCY: Totally.

PAM: Yeah! Because I can see, if we’re still feeling resentful about their choice—like it was a choice against us—how we could so easily, “Well, you chose school, you have to finish your homework.” You know, to make it as bad as it can be, in hopes that they’ll leave. But that’s just going to hurt!

LUCY: Yeah, and I guess that’s why I really like to take the school out of unschooling, you know. And I suppose it’s why I talk more about this other concept, which we might address later on—because for me, it’s not about education or even learning actually, but it’s more about the relationship that you have with your child. So, if there’s any one thing that you’re totally hung up on, it’s a good sign that it’s moved away from being about the important partnership you have with your child and it’s become an unhealthy fixation or something, do you know what I mean?

PAM: Yeah, yeah. We talk on our Q&A episodes so much about whenever there’s an issue, go back to the relationship. Does this feel connecting, or disconnecting? And choose the actions that feel connecting. Because no matter the environment, you’re right, it really does all boil down to relationships. And you know what, during my deschooling—though that keeps going—but that realization.

Because, at first, my kids left school, and it’s like, “Okay, so I’m replacing the learning that they’re not getting at school.” But, the realization after a few months that it’s not really about the learning. Because the learning’s going to naturally happen if I keep the relationships strong and connected; everything’s going to flow from there. So, I love that point.

LUCY: Okay so, unsurprisingly my husband is a teacher by trade, and I say unsurprisingly because I know a huge number of teachers in the unschooling world.

PAM: So many. (laughs)

LUCY: Yeah, it’s like as if their experience in the classroom, you know, actually is the thing that opens their eyes and says there has to be a better way to treat our children and for our children to learn in a really joyful way.

So, Tim is a teacher by trade, and he did that for quite a few years, but these days he focuses more on a bit of youth work. Which, for him, is what it was all about. It was being able to help young people find their way in the world by having really healthy connections and relationships with them.

So, yeah, teacher by trade, and he really gets the learning stuff, for sure. Like we check in, not formally, but just by nature of the whole thing, once or twice a month about little interesting learning points that have happened with Ramona and Juno. And I guess that his teacher training makes him do that perhaps more than me. So, he’ll point out something that Ramona’s done, which is such a classic learning point, but that she’s come to it completely by herself using an everyday situation. Yeah, so he’s completely on board with the learning side of it, and I guess both of us are still on this learning journey about living democratically and consensually with our children.

We’re both trying really hard to read as much as we can and talk together as much as we can. And I guess the challenge is constantly how in a family of four you can all feel as though your needs can be met, and that it can be win-win for everyone.

PAM: Yeah, I think the parenting side of the journey, that we’re always learning because they’re always getting older.

LUCY: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right.

PAM: There’s always something new.

LUCY: Yeah, I do like to think though that every bit of learning you’ve done paves the way for the next bit of learning. And, right now, with the kind of really incredibly amazing and opinionated and determined six-year-old, I’m thinking about how much this is paving the way for those incredibly opinionated and determined teenage years. (laughs)

We’re going to be just like so radically on board with everything they want to do by the time they’re teenagers, because we’ll have developed this sort of trust and acceptance. So, I’m quite excited about the future really, or maybe that’s just incredibly hopeful.

PAM: Well, I’ll just share my experience a little bit. The groundwork that you’re laying now and those first couple of years of really doing all this work to figure out the ways we all communicate our needs—it’s even about figuring out our needs, because we’re not used to that. Even as adults, to be able to just reasonably say, “I’m tired.” Or, to really bring ourselves to the moment without being manipulative about it.

LUCY: Yeah.

PAM: Yeah, to just bring all our stuff lightly, like you were talking about before, and finding ways to work through them and find those kind of win-win-win opportunities for us to move forward.

And I must say, by the time my kids got to their early teens and through their teen years, it was never argumentative. It was never issues that way at all. Mostly it was me stretching my comfort zones. (laughs)

Because they knew themselves so well, and the trust that we had together. Like, I knew they weren’t making choices or wanting to do things that they didn’t think they were capable of doing. There’s the way to put it. They were choosing things for reasons of their own, that made sense, and that they felt ready to do. So, when I was ready to stretch my comfort zones and help them accomplish those things, we were never at odds. It was all finding ways for myself to support them in ways that I was also comfortable enough with.

When my daughter was 13 and wanted to go into clubs for shows, for me to be comfortable I just said, “Sure, I’ll go with you.” You know? So, we did that. But yeah, it never felt like butting heads, let’s put it that way. So, I think you’re right. That was a long way to say you’re right, you’re building an amazing foundation. (laughs)

LUCY: (laughs) No, I always absolutely love hearing from people who have older children and who have been through those teenage years, because we talk about those teenage years as if it’s some kind of impending horror show I suppose.

And, I mean, I suppose mine was a little bit of a horror show for my parents, but I had an incredibly different upbringing. But I really believe it doesn’t have to be that way. I really believe that this partnership that we’re developing with our kids now is something that lasts your whole life long, and one of the things as well I think that unschooling has done for me—it’s made me trust everyone a lot more.

My children have asked that of me, but it’s something that I can extend now to everyone. I’ve become much, much, much less controlling about all these different situations. Like I can remember in the early years of our marriage, I would be texting everyone trying to get them in the right place at the right time, and kind of guessing what people’s needs were, and trying to kind of preempt how we could get them met. And I would just never do that now. I just sort of sit back and see how I could support someone to get their needs met, or, perhaps I can’t, and just need to trust that they’re making good decisions for themselves. And that’s something that you know extends from my children to my in-laws to my neighbor. It kind of is a really cool stance for all relationships, I think.

PAM: I just love that Lucy. And what’s really funny is I’m writing a book about the unschooling journey, and this is what I’ve been writing about this week!

LUCY: Oh, cool.

PAM: Yeah, that point where you realize it’s about being human, and it applies to everyone. And you lose that need to try and control other people “for their own good because you know the best way things will work out so smoothly.”

Because, after you do it a few times, isn’t it just amazing all the places that the ways things end up working out, like even better than we could have imagined at first, right? And tried to control it to A, but B was so much more awesome!

LUCY: I know! Like seriously, I talk about this a huge amount. Like the ridiculousness of taking a step back and just being like, “Look, I’m not going to get involved in this, I’m just going to see what happens.” And then the thing that happens is so much more better than anything you could have planned for. Yeah, it’s actually, it feels serendipitous. But maybe it’s because it’s the way the world is meant to work. You’re not meant to be hung up on everybody else’s choices. (laughter)

It sounds so obvious when we’re talking about it, but it’s really not obvious. And I think I had quite a few anguished years because I felt that I had an important role to play in lots of other people’s lives.

PAM: Oh no, I totally can remember just the uptightness back then, of trying to make sure everything worked out. That there needed to be Plan XYZ, and we need to follow it, and if we didn’t I was getting myself so frustrated and worked up. But anyway, anyway. (laughs) I guess we don’t need to talk about that forever. But it’s such a huge part …

LUCY: We probably can.

PAM: Yeah, exactly. I mean we could share a million stories I’m sure. But …

LUCY: (pauses)

PAM: Or was that it? (laughs)

LUCY: Oh, well, that’s been like a definite shift.

The hardest challenge? Probably it’s not the hardest thing but the challenging thing has been: I guess unschooling has taken me on a journey to sort of ask questions about all sorts of different things and to really try and dismantle institutionalized thinking. And it’s a journey that I’m really appreciative of, but it’s been a journey that has definitely shaken the ground beneath my feet a little bit.

I was raised in a church, and I was raised in the Salvation Army, which is a really beautiful social justice loving movement of people, but it’s also quite regimented, or ordered, at least. And it’s been interesting for me to sort of look at institutions that I’ve been raised in, that have always provided a sort of structure to my life, and just try and hold on to the really good and beautiful parts of those things while really asking questions about the healthiness of other parts of it. And I guess what it comes down to is this sort of imperialist history of the human race, which is quite a big deal. Maybe we shouldn’t really go there. (laughter)

But when you look historically, the last hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, we’ve been living in an incredibly controlled hierarchical society, that is really, really unhealthy. And I guess that was an unexpected challenge for me, was to become a bit of an anarchist. I mean, not quite an anarchist, but to just want to dismantle some of those structures in society that I don’t think are very healthy. And move away from those that have had a really important role in my life. So yeah, that’s probably been the biggest challenge, I think.

PAM: I think that’s a great one, because when we start, we don’t realize how far reaching it’s going to be, do we?

LUCY: No.

PAM: No, it’s amazing once you start realizing that choice is important. Not only for learning, but then for living. And when you start to see, you start to knock up against all these places where, like you said, the systems where we don’t have choice. And you start questioning every single one, don’t you, by the end of it?

LUCY: Yeah and I think I just say to myself, “Lucy, you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water.” (laughs)

PAM: Yup.

LUCY: So, you know, with the church, I guess where I’m at now is holding on to really healthy spirituality, which is really beautiful and really important, I think, whatever your spirituality is, for your well-being. And community and all that sort of thing. So, holding on to that. And then kind of letting the rest of it blow away. So yes, I say that a lot. “Don’t throw away the baby out with the bath water, Luce.”

PAM: That is such a great point, that was something that helped me. Because feeling uncomfortable with something didn’t automatically mean to reject it. Which I think lines up with your “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” phrasing. And to be able to hold my discomfort alongside my positive feelings about choice and whatever, so that I could dig deeper.

Like, when you can hold them both together, that’s when you can start to tease out the pieces that are helpful, like you were saying, alongside the pieces that aren’t working for me anymore. Because automatic resistance or knee-jerk “noes” aren’t much more useful than blindly following things either, right? Because you don’t understand yourself better through that process. We talk about that with our kids, right? Try not to automatically say no. Maybe you can say yes, but also, “Say yes more with your kids,” doesn’t mean always say yes. Because there’s no thought or consideration in that either, right?

LUCY: Yeah, but we so want black and white answers, don’t we?

PAM: I know, we do!

LUCY: (laughs)

PAM: Those rules are so easy, right? (laughs)

LUCY: Yeah, we just want it there in black and white. We just want to be able to go, like, “This is how it goes, this is the rule, this is what I need to do in this situation.” Yeah, but it’s just not really how we are, and it’s not really how the world should be. We need to kind of learn to operate in those gray areas, and to be flexible and fluid and resilient, and not need that sort of sturdy ground under our feet, but to feel really comfortable just floating in the chaotic unknown gray substance. (laughs)

PAM: Yeah, and like you said before, going back to the relationship, right? When you don’t know—yes, no, I have no rule to follow. Okay, let’s look and see foundationally how that is going to impact that relationship. Because, when it comes down to it, school years, childhood, those are just a flash of a lifetime right? And these are relationships that we’re going to have for our whole lifetime. They will always be our child. We’ll always be their parents, no matter the age, right? So that relationship is a lifetime thing. So, it’s so useful to keep that as your guide.

LUCY: Yeah.

LUCY: Okay. The most surprising thing has probably been how unsurprising it has been, in the sense that it’s just been a life lived, I guess. And I think like maybe a few years ago when we were at the start of this unschooling journey, I think I imagined that with a six-year-old and four-year-old we would be rammed with projects and activities and it would be like a non-stop kind of educational life that we were all living together. And actually, I think that’s been the surprise, that it’s not. It’s just—we just wake up, and we do our thing.

And we have really fun days. We have those epic days of non-stop projects and making and learning, but we also have a huge number of just little bits and bobs in the day, da da da. And I think that’s the thing that is surprising for others when they sort of see our lives in action. (laughs)

We just have a really slow, really simple life that we’re just trying to live with as much time and space and patience and freedom every day. And I just think that the key to that is to not really be doing loads and loads and loads and loads of stuff. So that’s probably been the most surprising thing about it, is how unsurprising it’s been.

PAM: I love the way you describe that, because that was a huge revelation for me too. The concept of time. Time and space. When I write about unschooling, I use that phrase so bloody often. (laughs) Time and space. Because we are so used to go, go, go, go. I had no clue how much actual time and space we need; that we would take if given the opportunity.

LUCY: Yeah.

PAM: Right? To process, that down time, which we used to think of as “lazy,” or not doing anything productive, et cetera. How valuable and important that time is. I had no clue. (laughs)

LUCY: Yeah, and, you know, it might feel like it takes an hour for everybody to put their shoes on, so you can go out to the woods—I’m speaking from experience from this morning.

And that hour is really important because if you feel like you’ve got an hour for everybody to find their shoes and put them on, you’ve got space then for the trauma that happens when you can’t find socks with the right seams in the right place. You’ve got time to validate that person’s feelings and hug them until they’re ready to move on from that moment. You don’t have to snap at people to get them to hurry up, and you don’t have to forget things because you’ve all rushed out the door too quickly. You can definitely have all the snacks you need, you can definitely have the right socks with the right seams, and you can definitely all have the space you need to be patient with each other.

And increasingly I see—perhaps it’s in contrast because we’re here in England at the moment, and I’m quite busy with lots of different work things, and we’ve got hundreds of people it feels like to catch up with while we’re here, like friends and family. And so, at the moment, we are kind of a little bit like go, go, go, and it’s in such stark contrast to our life in the yurt, which is just basically no, no, no. (laughs)

Just like slow, slow, slow I should say, actually. It’s just really, really slow. And here I find myself having a quickening of the breath and a kind of, “(gasp) We don’t have time for me to validate all of these emotions!” And I realized how much of my parenting comes down to basically not really doing very much, but just being really present with your children and having the time to let them feel everything they need to feel, and connect with them in all those down times.

PAM: Yeah, that patience to be with them, right? Like you were saying, validate. Because that patience keeps your connection with them, and they see, through your patience, that you see them.

LUCY: Yeah.

PAM: Right? Because if we’re trying to rush them through things, they really don’t feel seen. Like I’m just putting myself in those spots. When I feel rushed through things, you have to kind of close off part of yourself, don’t you? Because you don’t have the time to feel whatever it is that’s coming up. Yeah, that’s brilliant.

LUCY: Cool. So yeah, ParentAllies.org is the website, but there’s also a Facebook page and a Facebook group. And the group is probably the bit that I’m most excited about, because there’s a real community rising up around this idea. And the idea is taken from social justice movements, where in every rights movement so far there’s been a group of people who are in the sort of dominant group but have chosen to stand next to the marginalized group and advocate for them and support them and be people who will just show solidarity and do whatever they can to allow this group to have their rights met.

You’ve seen it in the Civil Rights movement, and in all sorts of movements over history. I’ve come to believe that children are one of the last marginalized groups in society; groups where it’s really socially accepted to basically marginalize them. You have conversations on Facebook where people are just like, “Yeah I don’t like kids.” And they’re almost proud or cool to sort of say it. And I really believe that there’s quite a systemic marginalization of children too, just in things like not having steps in public toilets so they can reach the taps or reach the toilet without having to climb over this grim thing. So those are a couple of little examples.

And the idea is that parents are invited to be allies to their children, to advocate for their needs and to show solidarity with them, and see their role as one where they’re partnering with their child to make sure their rights are fully honored and upheld.

On the website we are putting out lots of resources for people who are in different situations to share how they are allies to their children. And this is where it’s really exciting for me, because it’s moving right out of the education sphere. And I guess the root of the concept of parent allies, for me, came because I’ve been writing about unschooling for five years or so, and every time I write about unschooling in terms of respecting children, I have a lot of teachers and mums and dads of children who are at school say, “Well, how can I do this at home?” or “I feel like I do this, but my children do go to school.”

And so, by talking about parents as allies, we’re moving out of learning. We’re moving into the whole of life, whether you’re at school or not at school. Whoever you are in the world, you can be an ally to your child. So, the website is meant to be a resource for people who are choosing to be that.

And the Facebook group is a really, really supportive group where people can come in and they can ask for advice. You have to ask for advice—we don’t just give it willy-nilly, because I guess I’ve identified that that is a bit of a problem in our world. We’re so quick to give advice, rather than simply hearing someone’s story, or hearing someone’s problem.

So, there’s a tag where you can just say #solidarityplease, and that’s where you can come and you can talk about something that’s been bothering you or something you’re finding really hard, without getting any advice. You just get people saying, “Love to you” or “You’re doing really well” or, just showing solidarity. And then you can also ask for advice. And you can also get a high-five. You can go into the group and you can be like, “High five! I did really well with my kid today because this has been a bit of a struggle and I realized that in my role as an ally I need to help her and get this need met.” And then, you know, they’ll give details, and then everybody will say, “High five! High five!” (laughs)

And it’s sort of like, I guess it meets needs. It meets those needs of the parents to be heard, and in a way that is also respectful to their children. And it is a way to receive advice if you’re struggling with how to be an ally.

I think so often we have—I don’t really know what it is—maybe it’s a thing to do with human nature, but so often parents will think that they’ve got a problem that can only be solved with a punitive or disrespectful measure. They think, “Oh my kid doesn’t like brushing their teeth,” for example, “So the only thing I can do is hold them down and clean their teeth.” They sort of put up their own barriers and they say, “There’s no other answer. I’m mostly a respectful parent but, in this situation, I have to coerce my child.”

And the idea of the group is that we kind of crowd-source solutions. So very often people go in there and they’re like, “My child doesn’t want to clean their teeth.” And then we can say, “Oh I’ve been there and this worked for me, and this worked for me.” Because something I’ve found with parenting and problems is that answers one, two, and three don’t work, but four and five and six and seven and eight and nine might work. And I really think that in our role as an ally to our child, we can find the patience to look for four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine. Because it’s so important to us to remain connected and remain in partnership, and to respect their rights, that we’re willing to dig deep for those creative solutions. (sigh) That’s a little bit.

PAM: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And I love the idea of expanding it to all parents, and even the “come get a high-five” deal. Because it’s still an unconventional way to parent, right? If they tried to share that with like a more conventional friend or whatever, they would get the side-eye, like “What the heck did you—just tell them to brush their darn teeth!” (laughs)

LUCY: Yeah, “My child’s got a really creative urge to paint on the walls, so today I dedicated a whole part of the wall so my child could literally just paint the wall. Can I get a high-five?” You can imagine having that conversation with a conventional parent, and them just being like, “You let your child paint on the wall?!?” Whereas in the group, everybody is like, “Rock on! You’re amazing that you could come up with a solution for that urge!”

PAM: Yeah, that works for everyone. Because, as we were talking before, when we were talking about school, there are ways. If that’s a necessary part of your life, there are ways to still respect and nurture and care for your relationship with your child. Just because school is part of the picture doesn’t mean all your relationship has to be about control.

LUCY: Exactly. And I used to find myself writing to unschoolers, and unschoolers at heart, and what I mean by that is people who loved all of this rights, respecting, freedom-loving stuff, but did, for whatever reason, have to send their children to school. and I guess that is really why I tried really hard to come up with a term to describe all of the people that are wanting to live this way with their children, whether their kids are at school or not.

Because certainly we need parents and teachers within the education system—which I believe is incredibly coercive and oppressive—we need people in there standing up for children and saying, “You know what, it is a child’s right to go to the toilet when they need to go to the toilet.” You know, we need allies within the education system.

My kids are having fun, by the way. (laughs) I’m sure you can probably hear them, and it sounds horrible and terrifying, but they’re all gleeful sounds. (laughs)

PAM: (laughs) No, that’s lovely. Oh, and, I was going to mention, Emma and I, we do a book chat every couple of months, and we’re reading the Childism book.

LUCY: Oh, cool.

PAM: I forget her name—I’ll put it in the show notes [Elisabeth Young-Bruehl]. And I’ll have links to your Facebook group and your website, and all that stuff as well. I think that’s awesome. People are going to have a lot of fun checking that out.

LUCY: Oh, cool.

PAM: And I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. It was a lot of fun to finally get to chat with you Lucy.

LUCY: Yeah, totally. I feel kind of like, you know, we’re basically friends now, rather than people who know a little bit about each other from the internet. (laughs)

PAM: Yeah, exactly! Yeah, I was very much looking forward to chatting with you.

LUCY: Yeah, it’s been really lovely to be on here. Thank you so much for having me.

PAM: Yay! And before we go, where is the best place for people to connect with you online?

LUCY: I would probably say YouTube. People find me really personable on YouTube for some reason. It’s kind of a new channel, and I’ve been writing for seven years but only doing YouTube for a couple of years. But I think people find videos really helpful in a way that perhaps writing isn’t so. So, I’m on YouTube with my channel Lulastic and the Hippyshake. And I update that really regularly, like every single week, whereas other parts of the internet I’m slightly more like I pop in and pop out.

PAM: Awesome. I will definitely have the link to your channel there as well.

LUCY: Cool.

PAM: Thank you very much and have a great day. Have fun with the kids!

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, There’s Plenty of Time.

It’s amazing how so many things that come up in our days can feel like emergencies, like they need to be solved as soon as possible. Taking a moment to consider whether the situation at hand is a true emergency can help us release so much of the time pressure that we’re feeling. Reminding ourselves that we have plenty of time gives us more space to explore the root of the issue. And with that space, we can imagine the possibilities with a curious, creative mindset.

We hope you enjoy today’s episode and that it helps you in your relationships and on your unschooling journey!

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

Want the full collection of Living Joyfully Foundations podcast episodes as an audiobook (and the transcripts edited into an ebook)? Find them here in the Shop!

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. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

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?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

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

PAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are thrilled you’re here and interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.

And in today’s episode, we are going to talk about the idea that there is plenty of time. Now, it has been such a helpful tool for me over the years when navigating challenges with the people I love, and I believe I first heard about it from you, Anna!

It’s amazing how so many things that come up in our days can feel like emergencies, like they need to be solved as soon as possible. I think taking a moment to consider whether the situation at hand is a true emergency can help us release so much of the time pressure that we’re feeling. Reminding ourselves that we have plenty of time gives us more space to explore the root of the issue, rather than throwing Band-aid after Band-aid at it just to quickly solve it. “I gotta get this, I gotta move through it.” It’s so fascinating just to consider having plenty of time.

ANNA: Yes. Oh my goodness. So, it has been one of my main mantras for a very long time. Our society likes to operate with this extreme sense of urgency about everything and I get caught up in that really easily. I feel like time pressure is just a huge trigger for me that kind of sets me on this path of not thinking and just being really stressed out.

And the thing is, I like to get things done. I like to check boxes. I like moving on to the next thing, and that can have its place. I can be super productive. But what I found was that carrying that sense of urgency around all the time did not help with my relationships at all. It takes time to navigate things in a relationship, and if you stop and take a breath, you can ask, is this really urgent? Is it an emergency? Does this need to be solved right this second? And often, you’ll find the answer is, no. It does not need to be solved right this second. I can calm down.

PAM: Right? And I find that even when we recognize that it’s not an emergency, I feel that time pressure can trigger our need to perform, if that makes sense. As I was thinking, it’s like, okay, yes, this is not emergency, but then boom, I still want to perform well. I want to solve it quickly and efficiently. I want to get an “A” in problem-solving, to be productive, because those are strong cultural messages we hear so often. But are they actually helpful goals in and of themselves, particularly when other people are involved?

Another question that I found very useful to ask myself is, are we looking for future approval or validation about how we handle the situation? That’s that performance piece, maybe from a person that we anticipate telling about the situation in the future. Are we looking at that more than we’re looking with care and compassion to the other person in front of us who’s involved?

And yes, being someone who jumped straight to problem solving for many years and still works on it, another consequence I found was that solving a problem quickly was often shorthand for implementing my solution, which relationship-wise, often meant pushing through the other person’s consent. And maybe not even obviously pushing through it, but more so by not even slowing down to ask them for their thoughts and ideas. Instead, just presenting my solution with an energy of, “Of course this makes sense and you’ll agree. Let’s do it.”

But I came to see that that approach definitely took a toll on my relationships, on my connections with the people in my life. Their trust in me dwindled because they felt less seen and heard by me over time, because I wasn’t asking them what they thought. I wasn’t asking them for their ideas. I was just saying, “Oh yeah, look, this happened. We can do this instead. Let’s go.” Just pulling them along with my energy.

ANNA: Exactly. And as you’ll hear us say so many times, everyone wants to feel seen and heard. So, anything that’s short circuiting that is going to be an issue. And that’s the thing. When we are holding speed and efficiency and production ahead of people and connection, it’s going to take a toll. Period. And again, I like to be efficient and get things done. So, this isn’t about just stopping all the things, but for me, it’s about being aware of the energy I’m bringing into a situation.

And if another person is involved, am I taking the time to really hear them and understand them, especially if we’re talking about our most important relationships? It’s key to avoiding conflicts and misunderstandings to give ourselves time to really hear one another. And I’m one who likes to fix and solve and to be fair, I have some very good ideas, Pam.

PAM: You do. You do. 

ANNA: But no one wants to be dragged along, even for my really good idea. And so, remembering what we’ve talked about in the past on the podcast, how different everyone is. We see and process the world differently. So, my really good idea might be a really good idea for me and not for the person I’m in relationship with. But if I push through their consent with this intense sense of urgency, it ends up just leaving us feeling so disconnected.

PAM: Yes. And when I’m feeling time pressure, particularly self-imposed time pressure, I’ve found that I am much more apt to take that conventional straight-line path from A to B to solve the problem, because it feels like a race against the clock to me. But when I can realize that that’s happening and remind myself that there’s plenty of time, I feel more expansive and free to be curious. I feel I have the space to more creatively navigate a challenge, because you know what? And that’s fine, too. If it was just me, I could take my straight-line, A to B and do it and move on, but as I chat with the other person or the people that are involved, I can give them that space and just slowly map out what’s going on. There are signposts of everyone’s needs.

Maybe there’s lines of trees representing the constraints that we’re discovering. Maybe environmental constraints, maybe time constraints, maybe capacity constraints. Maybe there’s hills for aspects that feel a little bit harder. And flower gardens or some beautiful art in spots that we’d like to pass by if it works. And from there, once we kind of start to fill in that map, we can more fruitfully begin exploring paths through the space of the challenge that hit most of the need sign posts, navigate around many of the hills, and maybe even take some time to stop and soak in the view of a sunflower field in bloom.

I know, maybe that sounds a bit sappy. But in my experience, our lives are so much richer when we give ourselves the time and space to be open and curious about the situation, to chat and ponder a bit more to get creative.

ANNA: Yes. I love that image. Honestly, I can feel my body slowing down just thinking about it. And so, I think finding what helps you stay present in the moment and slow yourself down. Even to notice the sense of urgency and slow it down. So, what kind of imagery, what kind of breathing, what kind of things in the moment help bring you down? And again, that mantra of, “There’s plenty of time,” this vision of a map of all the possibilities we have, like whatever that is.

And I think another aspect of peeling back the layers related to this is to look at where is the sense of urgency coming from? What is its purpose? Who is it serving? And asking those questions really helped me kind of deconstruct this a little bit, because the truth of it is, when we’re rushing from task to task, there’s very little time to question anything.

And I think sometimes we think that sense of urgency is coming from within us, but I don’t think it is. I think we’ve been trained to rush, to value efficiency and productivity above all else. And I think humans naturally want to connect, and the two just don’t really work well together.

So, the question for me becomes, do I want to sacrifice or harm my relationships so that I can be a better producer for society? And I would argue that people in strong connected relationships actually bring more to the world and end up producing the most amazing things. And so, how this looks in practice for me is, when I find myself feeling frustrated or trying to rush someone along to my chosen outcomes, I just stop and I take that breath and I say, “There’s plenty of time.” And I feel it. The energy instantly changes.

And if I’m still struggling, I will ask myself, “Where is the sense of urgency coming from? Is it even real? And is it helping? Because even if we feel there is some real time constraint, there is some real thing that’s driving it, is it helping me make the choices in the moment? Is it helping the two of us get through this situation? Because if it’s not, we still need to set it aside, even if it’s a real thing, because we’re not getting anywhere.

And, as I mentioned, so often this applies to our relationships with both kids and adults. Rushing a child out the door frustrated or pushing a partner to get something done on a timeline without regard to their experience of it, it just doesn’t feel good to anyone. So, reminding myself there’s plenty of time just grounds me back in that moment.

Because the truth of it is, if we’re five minutes late, if we miss the thing altogether, if the project doesn’t get done, the world does not end. Most likely, a year later, it’ll be hard to even remember what the issues were. But if we continually push past the people in our life, if we push them along this arbitrary timeline, it will absolutely impact the relationship, and that’s something I want to avoid.

Again, back to priorities from episode one, I want to keep my relationships as the priority. And if what’s being handed to me by society is in conflict with that, then I want to question it and ultimately set it aside.

PAM: Yes, exactly. With relationships as my priority, I want to use that lens as I navigate my days. And it’s fascinating to discover how often cultivating connected relationships is at odds with the societal messages that we hear or even just infer from how people are moving through and navigating their days all around us.

ANNA: So true!

PAM: The immense value given to having power and influence over others, the call to create strong boundaries to protect ourselves from others, the importance of being productive members of society at the expense of others, it is just so interesting to think about how relationships, while talked about so often as being an important part of our lives, in reality, are often expected to take a backseat.

So, with that, here are some questions you might want to ponder as you explore the idea that there’s plenty of time.

Our first one is, when you imagine the idea that there’s plenty of time in the context of a disagreement with a friend, partner, or child, how does it feel? Just bring that idea, that lens of plenty of time in. Does it feel expansive? Does it feel overwhelming? Does it feel just plain wrong? “No, I don’t have time.” “Why?” is a great question to ask yourself at that point. What is it that’s making me feel like I don’t have time in this situation?

The next question is, do you recall a time when an issue bubbled up again and again because you didn’t take the time up front to more fully understand it? I find things can bubble up and we can solve them. We can put that Band-aid on them. But if we don’t take the time to get to the root of things and really find out what the underlying need is, or play around with the process through which we move through things that come up regularly in our lives, we can just see it happening again and again.

ANNA: I think that one can help people that have the efficiency piece, because really it is more efficient to take the time and deal with it and to actually figure out how we want to move through it, versus the plugging the holes or the Band-aids that we end up having to revisit and revisit and revisit the same challenges.

PAM: Exactly. Exactly. It is so interesting to think about that, that we think we’re being efficient, we think we’re being productive, but so often, maybe it bubbles up over and over, but maybe it has relationship implications that I have to spend time with later. So, you can start to discover that it’s really a choice of, where do I want to put my energy in the process? In the space up front or into the, going through it again and again.

Okay. Okay. Question three. Where in your life do you feel time pressure? What if you could release that, how would that feel? I think that could be a big one, too. And if you release that, how would that feel? And where is it coming from? Is it something that I am putting on myself? Because so often, it’s something that we’re doing.

ANNA: So often, it’s something we’re putting on ourselves that again, we kind of think is coming from somewhere else, maybe our job, or maybe school, or maybe something else.

But really when we look at it, it’s our interpretation of that that’s putting this super intense sense of urgency and time pressure on it.

PAM: Yes, yes. And sometimes we’re just feeling that we have to bring somebody else’s framework or approach and be the voice of them, whether that be society or a boss or a teacher, and that I have to be them now, because they’re not here to say it, but is that how I really feel?

All good stuff. Okay. Our last question. Can you think of a time when feeling time pressure interfered with coming up with a creative solution to a challenge? And this is one I just would love people to think about, because what I discovered over time is that even when it is just me, it can be so useful to take the space not to just go with A to B, the first thing that comes to mind.

I have found there are so often more creative ways that that feel even better, that may be even more fun. There are so many possibilities. So, when I just let myself play with these things, take that time pressure off myself of something that I need to do, like the bathroom thing. It’s like, just do the damn bathrooms and get it done. I can tell myself that story, but it’s so much easier or so much more fun when I can just give myself some space to play with it.

ANNA: Yeah. And I think the time allows us to bring in the context that we talk about so much, because if we’re just going point A to point B, we’re really missing a lot of context around us. And then that can inform us, because again, maybe it helps us make a decision that saves us some work down the road or that keeps a relationship intact that we might be running over. And so, taking that time for ourselves to take in that context, to me, just makes it easier, more fun, and a lot of times, even more efficient.

PAM: Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Thanks so much for listening, everyone, and we will see you next time. Bye!

In this episode of Exploring Unschooling, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about navigating all the needs in our unschooling families. Navigating all the needs can be one of the biggest puzzles of parenthood. In many cases, we’re going from only being responsible for ourselves, to then being in partnership with someone else, to then adding children one by one. And as the children are growing, they each have their own ideas and their own personalities and their own needs. And so, the number of needs that exist in our family at any given time is just increasing as we have more children.

In our conversation, we talk about some common challenges that come up, how to approach problem solving with curiosity, and ways to have conversations with our family that move us from trying to control and direct to collaboration.

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

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

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. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

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?

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

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

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.

ANNA: Hello! I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully and I’m joined by my co-hosts Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis.

PAM AND ERIKA: Hello! Hi!

ANNA: Happy to have you both here. Before we get started, I wanted to encourage you to check out the Living Joyfully Shop where you can find Pam’s books, coaching options, and information about the Living Joyfully Network. Also, check out our Substack, When School Isn’t Working, at whenschoolisntworking.substack.com.

It’s a great resource to share with friends who are feeling stuck and when you’re hearing those stories about kids being upset or crying or things not working and people just feeling at their wit’s end. It’s just a good place for that and we would love to have you join us there.

Today on the podcast, we’re talking about navigating all the needs. This is a big topic and I’m excited to have the chance to dig into it today. Erika, would you like to get us started?

ERIKA: I would! I love this topic, too, and it’s been a monthly theme on the Living Joyfully Network which was really fun. So basically, I see navigating all the needs as one of the biggest puzzles of parenthood. In many cases, we’re going from only being responsible for ourselves, to then being in partnership with someone else, to then adding children one by one. And as the children are growing, they each have their own ideas and their own personalities and their own needs. And so, the number of needs that exist in our family at any given time is just increasing as we have more children.

I only have two children, but it can still present so many interesting challenges, because as we’re always saying, people are different, and that includes our kids who we may have even assumed would be like us, but then they turn out to have quite different needs than we do. So I wanted to give a couple of common examples of just where the idea of navigating all the needs might come up and then I’m excited to see what nuances we dive into in our conversation. 

One that seems to come up a lot is when some of us may like to go out of the house to do activities and others don’t as much or as often and so what can we do then?

And another is with sleep. People have different needs for how long they sleep, what time they sleep, the conditions for sleep, and this can be a real puzzle in families. 

And finally another example that comes to mind was during that time of early childhood when we have babies and toddlers and how to fit in the care needs of the adults when the children just have so many seemingly constant care needs. Just the basics like eating, showering, rest, and movement. Sometimes it can just feel overwhelming to try to figure out these kind of challenging moments. 

And what I like about the kind of deep processing and thinking that we do here on the podcast and in the Network and really just on my unschooling journey overall is that kind of processing invites me to slow down, get curious, and really assume that there are ways to figure it all out. Everything can’t always happen at the same time, but there will be solutions that we can find that will address all the needs the best that we can.

And so, I think coming in with that kind of mindset really helps when it starts to feel like there’s just too many competing needs. So, those are my initial thoughts.

PAM: Good ones. I love your examples. Those are pretty common ones that we hear about and see in the Network all the time.

And, for me, and when I’m thinking back to the transition to unschooling, the idea of meeting all the needs, at first it could just feel overwhelming. It’s like, how on earth? Someone needs to kind of judge which needs we’re going to meet and which ones we can’t meet and here’s the most effective slash efficient way to meet those needs. 

And we really feel like we’re doing our best for the people that we love. And it can feel very disappointing, disconcerting when people don’t appreciate all the work we did to think all that through and figure this out. That was a lot of work right there. That’s really when my mantra for myself of being open and curious came in. And it was encouraging to hear from other unschoolers who were further on the journey than I. It is possible it can be done. And so, I’ll try it and see. It was making that shift to being open and curious.

Open to it doesn’t mean me not thinking it through at all. I can have ideas that consider everyone who’s involved and also the bigger picture context that I see that others might not see, etc. But as we were talking about in the last episode people can’t read our minds. If I just show up with a plan that’s the most effective and efficient, then how are you going to get buy in? When people don’t know what’s going on. And when the kids are younger, then maybe that’s your partner. Anybody else who’s involved. 

The communication holds the clues, even if they’re not verbal from our kids. The resistance, the crying, all those pieces are communication to tell us when something that we’re trying to do is or isn’t working and helping. So being open and curious was so helpful just to be open to seeing and hearing other people’s perspectives and what their needs are. 

And sometimes it’s helping them sort out what the actual need is. “I want to do this.” Why? What’s going to be really fun about that? And we can join them in that excitement rather than trying to shut things down right away. If we want to navigate all the needs we need to be open to hearing about them and to actually find or try to find the root of it.

Because maybe I want to go here, I want to go to the park. And if you can get more into the details of it, then it can be a lot easier to find that common ground where we can meet that need. 

Like you were saying, Erika, maybe it’s not right now, maybe it’s okay if we do it in the evening when someone else is home to stay with someone who doesn’t want to go. Just being so curious about, what does that really mean to you? What would feel good about doing that thing? So that we can meet that need. 

Getting to the need rather than the action that someone’s proposing that would meet the need. There’s a distinction, a level, a depth to it. So once we can start getting to the needs themselves and then get curious. Oh, what if we did this? What if we did that? And just being totally open to the yes, no, maybe, like what if we did that? That was one of the things I managed to keep going forward with because, oh my gosh, kids really are capable.

They really are capable of understanding that piece, what they would love the most about this. And being able to share that kind of information and to be able to hear from us even if it is disappointing. We can’t make that work right now. We don’t have the car or whatever, whatever. We’ll need to save up a bit of money. Whatever the thing is but it can really be a conversation. And that’s why we love using the word navigate. Right? Because it’s not, let’s figure out the answer.

It’s not the answer. You may eventually come to a path and you’ll take the next step on the path and it might tweak what you know along the way before you ever get to the end of whatever the moment is. But yeah, for me, it was so much about the shift to being open and curious with our kids and having those conversations.

ANNA: Okay, so many things have bubbled up. I think a big piece was what you said, Erika, was the slowing it down. Because I can be about efficiency. But efficiency is usually me jumping to an outcome. So, that was another big piece, bringing open and curious. Letting go of whatever outcome. 

Because you know my brain when I hear a problem. So somebody’s telling me they want to do this, they want to do that. I am trying to solve the puzzle because I like to do that. But I’m often locking in on a particular solution and it’s not flexible at that point. And so that was a big piece of me just letting go. I don’t know how this is going to play out. We have a lot of competing needs but I’m going to slow down. We’re going to dig in a little bit like you were saying Pam. Get to what’s underneath of it. 

Okay what’s at the playground? Oh you’re actually just wanting to fly this kite or do this particular thing. We can do that right out here in the street in front of us or in the backyard. Okay, you’re not wanting to go because you want to still play your game on your device. Okay, we can bring that with us or we can set up something. 

Once we have those conversations, things open up. Two other things that bubbled up, one was creativity. I think when we slow down and have that open and curious mindset, that’s where the creativity comes in and kids are so creative. Because I would sometimes get stuck on maybe what seems fair or something that would be in my mind about it and their solutions I’m thinking hmm, does that really work? But they were both happy with it. So it was okay. Why am I inserting anything into this?

But when we’re all creatively listening to what the roadblocks are for each person, we get a chance for everybody to be creative. Yeah, I’m okay to wait till tomorrow. Can we then add this thing to it if we do it tomorrow? Yes, we can do that and then this time we can get this. So, that creative problem solving, collaborative energy I really loved. 

And I think another big big piece was the mindset shift to trust. For me, I had to have this deep abiding trust that we could solve it, that we could figure out a way that we could all feel comfortable. And again, it might take a little bit of time. It might not be right in that moment, but that trust is so important. 

What I found in our family was me having that trust suddenly fostered that trust in everybody. Even when we bumped up against something that felt like there’s no solution, if I was feeling a little low and wondering if we were going to get there, they would say, we’re going to figure it out! And so I loved that it was just the energy of we’ll just keep at it. We’ll figure it out. We may have to step away for a minute and come back depending on what it is but there is room to trust that we can find solutions that feel good to everyone.

And so, that’s the problem-solving piece of when you have those competing needs but I think you touched on too, Erika, that just sometimes it’s young kids and how do we take care of ourselves and all of those pieces and that’s a little bit different but I think the slowing it down, creative energy, trusting that there’s plenty of time and that we can find it, calms me enough to then see the moments where I can take care of myself or the moments where we can create a little bit more space around something. Anytime I’m getting worked up and tight or too far ahead of myself it actually just compounds whatever is happening in the moment that’s feeling stressful.

ERIKA: Yeah, if we get too caught up in seeing the finish line, we can picture how it would work, we have the vision of that. And if we get stuck there, then we can’t see all the other possibilities that really could get us to the same place. With the little kids situation, I think a lot of parents really try to just do it all themselves and not ask for help, because that’s the vision. And they should be able to do it. And so, just little things like, there are lots of ways that we can solve this problem. There are ways that we haven’t thought of yet. 

Getting creative, getting unconventional, what works for someone maybe it doesn’t even work so well for someone else. What we see working for someone else may not be the solution for our family. It just depends on the different individuals in our family. 

And I think when we really value every family member’s contributions to these conversations, it’s just so amazing. It’s such a great experience for kids. It’s a great experience for parents to be able to all be working together as a team. It’s something that we might not have experienced ourselves as kids and so I think that’s why it has a learning curve and takes some time to understand, how do we even do this? I’m so used to the parents just saying what’s going to happen and then that’s what happens and that’s the answer. But we all know that sort of parenting has some downsides to it. 

If we’re trying to do something different, getting everyone involved in the conversation, making sure that everyone knows, I hear your needs, too, and those are also important. It’s as important to me as getting my needs met and we can figure out a way that all of these things can happen. That’s a really valuable problem-solving skill and important conversational skills to have that they can take with them in their adult lives.

PAM: Yes. Two things that bubbled up for me. One both of you were speaking about is I remember when the kids were younger and I was trying to navigate my own needs in this very hands-on care season. What I found was when I was trying to make those plans for the shower or whatever, I would try to plan it. It would be like, okay at 3:00 they have their nap and I’m gonna take my shower. But then they don’t fall asleep at 3:00 and my shower plans are shot for another day. That shift from trying to plan ahead and making life fit those plans versus, I’m just gonna pay attention to when I can have ten minutes to jump in the shower.

It may not look like we’re expecting. Maybe somebody drops in and they can hold the baby for ten minutes while I go jump in the shower. I don’t have to entertain them. They would love to have some quiet time with the baby. Then it’s the creativity you were talking about.  These are the things that I would like to do and I’m going to watch out for moments, so adding those into the flow weaving them into what’s actually happening, versus trying to create what happens to match some future plan I have in my head. So, that was the first thing that bubbled up.

The other piece is something I bring up when these conversations come up, when we’re chatting with our kids. It doesn’t have to be everybody involved talking together to come up with the plan. Maybe it’s me going and talking with one child and trying to speak with them about what their needs are and why this doesn’t feel good because having an audience maybe just doesn’t feel good to them or getting comments from others trying to work it out. Giving people the space to think about their needs to talk about their needs to feel validated to be validated about their needs and then with a deeper understanding that you can go talk to the next child and bring up why that doesn’t feel good because of this or that. “Maybe we could try this.”

There’s a depth of understanding as they’re learning a little bit about each other as well through me alongside trying to figure it out. So there were times when I was doing that circle for a while until we figured out, oh yeah that’ll work, that’ll work, that’ll work. Okay off we go! So, that was one piece. 

And then the other piece was for ones who aren’t as much into the conversation, they’re still communicating even as young kids. “I don’t want to talk about it,” that’s still communication, right? That’s letting you know something, maybe just getting some sort of short word, maybe a shrug, maybe a nah and just circling back. And also knowing okay that is not the child in this season that I go and give long five-minute paragraphs explaining all the context and everything that’s going on.  Maybe it’s like three seconds. Does thinking about doing this sound good and we’re done. I get feedback and then I can go off and think if it did or did not sound good. It’s just understanding the people who we are talking with and engaging with and communicating with that it might not always be all about the words.

ANNA: That’s so important. Not everybody is that deep conversationalist who is able to even articulate their needs, but I love what you did with that separate space because I think that helps them have the space to think about it. Because especially if they’re siblings, I don’t want to do that while they’re trying to think about what their need is. It’s hard, but giving them that quiet space where they can say, okay, this part I don’t mind, this part I do. I love that piece. 

And then there was something that you said, Erika, that I wanted to highlight again. I think you stated it is like sometimes looking for the unconventional solution and what that brought to mind for me was sometimes in these situations we’re taking that outside lens of how other people see this or how are other people doing it and I think that can really derail us.

Even if we take it within an unschooling environment and take something like sleep. Some families have this around-the-clock thing going and it’s working very well because it’s working for their child and that makes sense and that could be a solution. 

Or maybe in your particular family you are thinking, that wouldn’t work because of your partner’s schedule or because of this thing or because of my own whatever. You don’t have to do it that way. I think what I wanted to pull out from when you said that was just really circle the wagons and look at the people that are involved in your family, because whatever solution you come up with that you all feel good about, it doesn’t matter what it looks like to the outside world. It really doesn’t. No one cares. They don’t. They’re wrapped up in their own thing so just really finding the creative solutions that feel good to you. 

You might get a side eye from an in-law or something else if you decide to do around-the-clock or something different, but if you know it’s working for you and your kids, that’s all that matters. So, sometimes watch that outside noise, because I think that’s one thing that gets in the way of us finding the creative solutions.

ERIKA: Yeah I had made a little note that says “make sure you’re not just responding to what they will think about our solutions.” 

I know we talk about this a lot, but it’s not like you find the one answer and then that’s going to work forever either. As needs come up, as we see what’s rubbing, as problems come up, conflicts, whatever it feels like in your family, then we do it again. So we get practice figuring it out. I’ll catch my husband saying something like, “But you like doing the XYZ.” It’s frustrating when they change their minds about how things used to work and now they want something different. But I think that happens to all of us.  We all are growing and changing and so what works to meet our needs during one season, it’s not gonna work for another season.

That was another thing I wanted to bring up, seasons. Just to keep grounding back into even when this feels like too many needs at once eventually it’s going to change.

ANNA: Yeah yeah and just really quickly, I think what you just said could actually be helpful for the outside voices too. To just say, “for now”. This is what’s working for us for now so maybe that calms them if they’re thinking wow that’s looking really unconventional or strange but instead, it’s like oh they found something that’s feeling good for now. Sorry, go ahead!

PAM: That’s fine, that’s great and because what I was taking away from that, I love the seasons thought and I think it can help in both ways. When things are going well, it’s not getting attached, like your husband saying, “But this is the way it’s been.” “You like this thing,” or, “You don’t like this thing.” And not taking it in as a failure if we’ve solved this. This is the way that works for us now and if something breaks in that like stops working, starts rubbing, if we take that on us as a failure, then our energy can feel judgmental to the person who has changed. “Why did you change?  Why don’t you like this anymore?” I like all those pieces. 

So, thinking of it as seasons can help with that and then also when things aren’t going well. When you’re in a season when things are rubbing, when you’re still trying to figure out how this might work where everyone’s needs are getting met. Whether it’s trying to figure out sleeping arrangements or whatever, whatever, it can feel like you’ll be stuck there forever and like you’ll never find a solution, etc. 

So, again reminding ourselves that this is a season and like you were saying earlier, I know we’ll figure this out at some point. Not putting agendas and timetables and targets on it can just be so helpful to keep that open and curious energy as you’re navigating.

ANNA: Well, thank you everyone for joining us. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I know we’re not solving how to navigate all the needs but hopefully some ideas about slowing down, being creative can help. Because for me, that shift of energy can make such a big difference. I appreciate all the things that came up during this call and hopefully it will spark some ideas for meeting the needs of your families. 

We would love, love, love for you to join us at the Living Joyfully Network. It is such a beautiful supportive community and we love diving into these topics. It feels great to move through some of these situations with other people because we’re all so different. 

We’re coming from different countries, different phases of life, different ages of children but the ideas and that intention is there and it really makes such a difference for the conversations. I find them just so rich and really, really enjoy it. 

If you would like to learn more and join us you can follow the link in the show notes or go to livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on the Community tab in the menu thanks for listening and joining us today.

In this episode, we were so grateful to be joined by Melissa Crockett-Joyoue of the Unschooling Summit and Weave ND. Melissa shared her dramatic journey to unschooling, her experience as a neurodivergent parent of neurodivergent kids, and how amazing unschooling has been for all of them. We also talked about increasing our capacity through intentional self care practices and being an entrepreneur while unschooling.

It was a very rich conversation that we hope you enjoy!

Can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everyone’s interested in right now? And then we would also love to hear a bit about your story of coming to unschooling.

Before the call, you mentioned how valuable unschooling as a lifestyle can be for ND kids. How have you seen that in action?

I know you talk about the importance of building capacity for ourselves. Can you share some of your ideas around that?

You’ve mentioned your online community, Weave, and there’s The Unschooling Summit event you co-host with Esther Jones. We’d love to hear more about those and a bit of your experience weaving unschooling together with being an entrepreneur.

Weave Community: weave-community.mn.co

Weave IG: www.instagram.com/weave_nd

Melissa Unschooling – IG: www.instagram.com/mama.weaves

The Unschooling Summit: www.theunschoolingsummit.org

The Unschooling Summit on IG: www.instagram.com/theunschoolingsummit

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

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. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

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?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

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

ERIKA: Hello everyone, I am Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia, as well as our special guest today, Melissa Crockett-Joyoue. Hello to you all. 

MELISSA: Kia ora.

ERIKA: But before we begin our conversation with Melissa, I wanted to invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, which has really been life changing for me in so many ways. On the Network, we have amazing discussions about so many topics since our community has such a wide variety of experiences. Everyone in the Network is really learning and growing and being intentional with their families.

It’s unlike any other online community I’ve found. Being part of the Network offers powerful support, especially during moments when questions and fears come up, or if you’re new to unschooling and just need a place where people understand the journey. If you’d like to learn more about the Living Joyfully Network and check it out for yourself, you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on the community tab. We’ll also leave a link in the show notes. We would love to meet you there.

We are so excited to have Melissa joining us today on the podcast. She is the co-founder of the Unschooling Summit, and the founder of WeaveND, an online membership community supporting neurodivergent unschooling families with a focus on building capacity and connection for the parents. She lives in New Zealand and is mama to two unschooling kids. I met Melissa recently when I participated in her Sunday Session with Esther Jones, which is part of the Unschooling Summit. I’m excited to learn more about her in our conversation today.

And so to get us started, Melissa, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everyone’s interested in right now? And we’d also love to hear a bit about your story of coming to unschooling.

MELISSA: Okay. Well, I’ll check back in an hour with you. So, kia ora koutou. So I’m Melissa and you know that we’ve done that part. I live in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I live in a small coastal rural fishing village, which is approximately an hour north of Auckland. I grew up in the very far north.

I’m part M?ori on my mother’s side, and a big mix on my dad’s side, and grew up really intensely connected to that part of me growing up in a small, predominantly M?ori area in the far north. And my wife and I, she is from St Lucia in the Caribbean. And we have two children.

So we have T?mana, who is 10. And we have Hinem?rie and she is seven and a half. Hinem?rie did three part days at preschool with me in attendance and was a big fat no. And that was her journey in mainstream schooling. And T?mana did a year at our really lovely little country school with a role of 60 kids max. It was probably about 55 when he was there, a school that I had been on the board of governance of for three years before I even got pregnant, because we moved to a small town and I wanted to make connections and help out. And I thought, I’m going to make the school really awesome so when my kids get there it will be great. That didn’t turn out quite how I anticipated.

So, that’s where we live. And we live on a big, big property that my parents own. So it’s native forest. They live there as well in a different dwelling within shouting distance. And my uncle lives there as well. And my brother and his wife and two kids live just a five minute drive away.

So, it’s a beautiful intergenerational kind of living with all the ups and downs of that when you are striking out on a different path. My parents are supportive, really supportive of the unschooling stuff, more challenged by understanding the neurodivergent stuff, because they’re neurodivergent too, they don’t know it yet. They’re working it out. So, we have a different parenting style that they are trying to be supportive of. And we’re all kind of learning how that works. 

Our journey to unschooling was a mixture of, longer than I wish it had been in hindsight now, and kind of quite quick to jump straight into unschooling in other ways. So as I said, I was quite invested in the whole local school and so on. I was also doing fundraisers for them. I was working on M?ori strategy with them and so on.

So, when T?mana was smaller, he had really intense food allergies. And so we didn’t do a lot of socializing with him. We lived quite an unschooling kind of lifestyle anyway. He didn’t go to any kind of childcare. He was only ever looked after by my mum occasionally.

It was a very kind of attachment-style parenting. And I ran a M?ori language play group with my sister-in-law. And so he socialized there. But apart from that, play dates were really hard because of his food allergies. And he liked other kids, but there was always something. He really liked adults. For his fourth birthday party, his list was all grown-ups and elderly people he wanted to come to his party. And so it was always a little bit challenging. And he really liked babies. Those were his key interest areas with other kids.

We put him into preschool when he was three and he wouldn’t go inside. And we just thought, oh he’s just such an outdoor boy and he just wanted to move rocks and climb trees and ride bikes. But every time he went inside, he’d get really upset, particularly if it was raining.

Now I’m looking back and seeing all these flags for sensory overload and stuff that we just didn’t know or understand at the time. And we thought that it was his food allergies making him really cautious around other kids. So, he did a little bit of preschool, like two mornings a week. But I had a new baby and I might get him there at 10 and he might have to finish at 12. So he did about two hours twice a week max.

When my daughter was eight months old, I actually had three SCAD heart attacks, Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissections, which were near fatal and pretty extreme. And I spent five weeks in hospital. And it is a key part of our story because it was very traumatic for the children.

So T?mana was there for two of the times, including one which was cardiac arrest. And it meant that he had really severe separation anxiety. And the nature of him anyway, he was very, very attached. But this was really intense. And so I spent five weeks in hospital and had to have open heart surgery. And he kept going to preschool during that time. But it was really difficult for him. 

So, it was probably a year later that it was time for him to start school in New Zealand, we start at five. And pretty much everyone just goes at five. You legally don’t have to be there until you’re six. But I knew that he was going to need a long transition into school. I felt that. And the preschool and school were right next door. So, we had this plan in progress. And then COVID happened.

So we locked down at home. And that suited him really well. And also, after I recovered in that period of time, my wife got really sick, but that came after. So, we put him into school. And it went abysmally, basically, from the get go. And after a few months, he started halfway through the year. He started in June. And so the other kids had kind of settled in at the beginning of the year. He only had 10 kids in his class, but it was just too much. And I’m trying to think how I can make this shorter. 

So basically, school was really difficult. He, from the very first day, it was screaming violent meltdowns from him. And I couldn’t lift him because of my chest surgery and stuff. And so my mum helped literally drag him into school. And we pushed him in the door. And the teacher closed the door on him. And it was horrific. And I was really fully in PTSD still at that point. So I was having panic attacks and stuff. And so it was, it was intense. It was really hard.

And then they did the classic thing of, you know, 10 minutes later, sending a photo of him playing and being like, he’s fine. But this didn’t stop. And pretty much every day was traumatic for all of us.

And we had meetings with the school and they said that it was because of me. And so we had his grandparents drop him off at school, occasionally my wife if she wasn’t working and so on. And it just didn’t get better. And he would be up trees and my dad, who is a bit rough around the edges. “I’m gonna have to get the chainsaw and cut the tree down.” And it was just really dramatic every morning.

And he went through a small phase of kind of being okay to go. And they were bribing him with Lego he could do in class and stuff. But it just wasn’t supportive of his neurodivergence.

They didn’t understand that. They just blamed it all on his trauma around my heart stuff. And yeah, it just continued to go on.

And everyone was telling us he’ll get used to it. Kids are like this, it’ll be fine. He’s just traumatized, you know, like it’s just that.

And yeah, the plans that they put in place were basically me not being involved. And you know, don’t make it nice for him to be at home, encourage him to be at school, all of those kinds of things. This is with a five-year-old who’s really traumatized.

One of the final days they were restraining him on the ground while I drove off with him, you know, yelling for me. Sorry, I didn’t think I’d get this upset again. I’ve talked about this. It’s all your empathetic faces. 

And we had anxiety bands for him that were giving him bilateral stimulation, all this kind of thing. And nothing was helping.

And at that point as well with his learning, I could see some disparities. And I ended up finding out about giftedness and I had him assessed and it turned out he was a highly gifted visual-spatial learner. So then I kind of went down the path of, okay, things will be better if we get them on board with his visual-spatial giftedness.

And we talked about it with him because he knew he was different from the other kids. And so we went in with all these ideas and this 26-page report and the school just wasn’t able to support him in that. And they gave him a teacher’s aid, but it just wasn’t working.

He kept running away from school grounds out onto the main road and stuff. And it was just difficult. And I really wanted to homeschool him. And I knew homeschooling was going to be our future at that point. I’d always kind of seen it because of his food allergies, placements didn’t work out. Then I was like, yeah, I could be a homeschooling mom, but I did really like that local school.

I knew homeschooling was in our picture, but my wife and I thought that I was just having to deal with the trauma that I’d been through. And I was having panic attacks and so on. And we just thought that I didn’t have the mental capacity to homeschool him at that point.

I didn’t know about unschooling. I mean, I’d heard about it. And I thought that was like those really happy, slack parents. I followed one woman on a blog, and she lived in a house bus and the kids were constantly being picked up for not being looked after properly and stuff.

And I was like, yeah, no, that’s wow. And I have nothing against house buses, I think that’s a cool lifestyle. But a particular blog I was reading maybe wasn’t very representative.

So, I thought we were going to have to homeschool him, but I thought that I was going to need to get a whole lot better first. And it just got to the point where he had like four vomiting migraines in two weeks. I thought maybe he had some kind of brain problem going, like some kind of illness or something, some terrible thing.

And it was just stress. And it turned out that he was being really bullied at school. And he was telling us, but we didn’t believe that it was as bad as what he was saying and so on.

And it just came to a crunch when we had a second big COVID lockdown for about, well, it was big for us, it was about four months of complete lockdown. And he absolutely blossomed at home. He completely thrived. He was learning. He was much more interested in learning. He was so much less anxious. And we sat down and had a conversation. At that point, the new protocols had come in that we would have to drop him at the school gate and leave.

Parents just had to drop and go, you weren’t allowed into the school at all. And we just said, that’s not okay. It’s my mental health or his, we decided. And we were like, I can be more robust. I can sacrifice mine for his, we just couldn’t do that to him any longer. And that’s when we decided to homeschool. And I’d been trying to convince my wife for probably six months that we needed to do this.

And we finally had this conversation. I remember I got up off the couch and I walked over to the kitchen bench and I started doing dishes. And then I just had this complete wash over of me, like, how the hell am I going to homeschool him?

Like, oh, I don’t have the capacity and how am I going to teach him maths? You know, and all of those things that just washed over me, just like this whole whoosh. And I went and spoke to her, sent a message to a friend who is an unschooler, who’s a psychologist who lectures at a university. And she unschools her two similarly neurodivergent, at the time we thought, similarly gifted kids. They’re gifted as well. And she said to me, yeah, read this Carol Black essay and you need to unschool.

And so that was it. And I just autistically deep dived into that. And that was it. We were unschoolers from pretty much that day. We didn’t start homeschooling. We just went straight into unschooling.

Wow. Okay. I told you, see me in an hour. Yeah, so it’s a big, big story. But that’s how we got to unschooling.

ANNA: It’s amazing. I think so many parents can identify, just all those feelings and trying to make it work and trying to do what everybody’s saying you need to do. And oh my gosh, it’s just so intense. And then with your health pieces too. So yeah, just feeling all the feels of that experience for sure. 

PAM: I was just going to say, so many feels. And I resonated with a few spots that were very similar. Like trying to work with the school, going in with the reports and trying to create this environment in which they’ll thrive and it just not being something that they’re able to do within the constraints that they are living with. 

But that moment, I was actually writing about that recently. The moment when you realize all of a sudden, that there really are other options than this, this one thing. You were working so hard with the school and trying to make it at that welcoming and wonderful place. And then the bright side of a lockdown, I guess. But I think it’s kind of the baby steps too.

And I think for me, it was really helpful when we decided to ask the kids if they wanted to stay home, that it wasn’t like, okay, this is our decision that we’re doing forever. We’re going to try it out and see because when you give it that opportunity, oh my gosh. Like your description of how he was shining when he had the opportunity to just be at home and do those things. That is amazing. And that was your insight and moment to be like, okay, I need to make this work somehow.

So it was just fascinating. Thank you for sharing. It’s okay that it was long!

ERIKA: It’s just such a beautiful story. And you can really feel all of the, there’s so many elements to it. And I think for everyone who goes on this journey, there are so many contributing factors. So you’re feeling all the context of what’s going on for you, and then for your partner as well. And then for your child, everyone, all these different people with different needs. And then those relentless outside messages saying, it’s you. Don’t get involved in this, that’s such a pressure on parents.

MELISSA: Yeah, I hear that so much as well, in my community. People that are considering it and they’re like, but everyone says that if I remove my child from the system, where’s all the support going to be? They need an SLT, they need an OT, they need a behavioral person. And it’s like, actually, once you remove them from this environment, so many of those needs drop away.

PAM: Actually that is a wonderful lead into our next question. You mentioned this before the call, but your whole description just brings it to life, how valuable unschooling as a lifestyle can be for neurodivergent kids. So, I was hoping you would dive into that a little bit more.

MELISSA: Okay. Be careful with a little bit more. This is my soapbox. 

ANNA: We’re here for it.

MELISSA: Yeah, I’m just so passionate about parents of neurodivergent kids understanding that unschooling is not just a valid, legitimate option, but it may very well be like a life-changing one for their family and for the trajectory of their children’s lives. Because I think that what they are able to gain at home, in a supportive environment, assuming that you can provide them with a supportive environment, is, I can’t put into words, and this is rare for me, how much that can turn around can be. I think about the potential life story of our kids, because my son was at school for one year and there were lockdowns during that time, and there were school holidays, and all of these things, vacations, whatever you guys call it, and he left there, telling us that he was stupid, and that he was worthless.

And he’d got all these messages from there. He hadn’t been told that by anyone, he had internalized all of that stuff. And he had really deeply internalized it. And it’s just because it wasn’t the right environment for him. Even though he had this paperwork telling him he was a gifted learner, he has an extremely asynchronous, really spiky profile.

So, he’s 97th percentile for some things, or 98th, and then 4th percentile for something else. And so all that was amplified at school was those 20 percentiles and the 4 percentiles, and none of the 97th or 98th genius were the things that were focused on. And all we do is celebrate the stuff that they’re good at. Our life’s work is to help them to learn how to regulate and to celebrate all the good things that they bring. And autistic people, which now he’s diagnosed, I’m diagnosed, and our daughter is yet to be diagnosed, have like a really increased risk of very, very poor mental health and a really high suicide rate and so on. 

And for me, that is my bottom line is that I want my kids to be mentally well. And if they don’t have mental wellness, to have supports for that, and to be able to learn how to regulate themselves and keep themselves safe. And that is the most essential thing, I think.

And with neurodivergent kids who are in school, even the ones that are doing okay, there’s so much around just the sensory overload and the amount of capacity that they are using in a day just to get to the baseline that other kids start the day at, or spend the day at. The amount of executive function that they, you know, it was said we have no executive function, but actually, we’ve just used it all up, because our brain needs to utilize it just to do all the things that come naturally to other people. So, it’s not that we don’t have any, it’s just that we use it really, really quickly.

And when a person’s central nervous system is in fight or flight all the time, it’s hard for them to thrive in any way, let alone do the bare basics of learning. I think that at school, just simply the sensory overload, even for being in a room of 10 kids. Now I’m not going to put my kid in a room of 10 kids without knowing what we’re going to need to do in advance. We’re going to accommodate in this way. And afterwards, we’re going to have a buffer of one to two days, depending on whether he knew the kids or not, and whether it was extra loud or what they were doing.

I can calculate all of this into my dysregulation maths and be like, okay, this is what we need to place around this so that the rest of our week goes bearably. There’s no control over any of that in school, and just the amount of overstimulation and sensory overload, now that I know that I’m autistic, and I can look at how as an adult I function in certain ways, I can unpick and unpack all of that and just be like, wow, all of these aspects are so, so challenging for our kids. And then they’re there trying to learn? It just seems completely unrealistic, you know. They can’t learn when they’re in complete fight or flight.

I actually had an example with T?mana. They have parent-child interviews, I assume they do that all around the world where you go and you talk about the kids’ learning goals and what they’re doing well at and what they need to work on and so on. And we had one of those when T?mana, it wasn’t long before we finished, and we went in and you’re sitting on the little five-year-old tables with the little seats, and we’re all sitting around with our adult knees up. And there’s the teacher and my wife and I and T?mana, and T?mana was doing well.

But he’s ADHD as well as autistic. And so he was on his knees on the chair, on his elbows, and then his feet, doing all the things that a five-and-a-half-year-old does when they’re sitting in a boring meeting. And I was trying to focus and I was probably trying to people please and over-stressed about trying to convince her that yes, we’re supportive of that, but what about all these other things we want you to be doing? I was trying and feeling like such a pain in the butt parent because I was constantly riding them. And I was starting to get a bit stressed because he just wouldn’t sit still. 

And I said, you know, T?mana, we’re just, you know, a few more minutes and then we’ll be ready to go. Like, just try and put your butt on the chair kind of thing. And the teacher looked at him and she said, oh, she said, we never have this. He never does this at school. And my wife and I just looked at each other in disbelief. And we’re like, really? And she’s like, no, no. I mean, you know, sometimes they lie on the floor because they’re allowed to do work lying down and stuff. But he doesn’t do this. 

And we left that meeting and for all of the things that got said and discussed and stuff, the thing that my wife and I were just absolutely flabbergasted by was he doesn’t do that at school. Like, I don’t think that kid’s ever sat on a chair unless it’s like an ice cream or something in front of him. He didn’t eat ice cream for sensory issues until he was like six anyway. But, you know, unless it was something that he was hyper focused on. 

And we just went, how can he have any creative flow if he is controlling his body so tightly in order to do what he thinks he needs to be doing? How can he excel? And we went, how can he do the bare minimum when you’re putting that much bodily muscle, let alone thought, et cetera, into controlling your whole self? We were just like, there’s just no way.

And that really stuck with me. So, I think that neurodivergent kids who are at home can have environments where they can learn. And that’s probably the key thing. You know, they can regulate. They can learn. They can socialize in ways that suit them. And they can just, they can just blossom because it can be so individualized. Yeah. 

ANNA: It’s so interesting. That chair piece really sticks with me, too, because look at how hard he was trying to fit into that environment. And they’re saying he’s not doing this. He’s not doing that. All they’re seeing are the deficits and trying to fix these deficits, but missing the fact that, my gosh, he’s trying with everything that he has, you know, to fit into this environment he’s been put in. And I think all that’s missed. I think that is very, very powerful. =

MELISSA: And there was another day as well where he was more unmasked, shall we say, where we’d had to go to the city for a medical appointment for me, like a checkup, and the teachers didn’t know. And they rang us, the principal rang us and said that he had a substitute teacher, so that was yet another change in his routine. And he was on the table doing a strip show and had got down to his underwear.

And the principal was like, they were used to him running away, but she’s like, I’ve never seen him like this. And we were like, he’s probably quite dysregulated because, well, we didn’t even use the word dysregulated, but we said he’s probably really worried or anxious because we’re doing this. But yeah, these are the things that he was trying to keep down, and that day he couldn’t.

ERIKA: Yeah. My family is neurodivergent as well. And when I think back on just how overstimulating the school environment was for me as a child. The memories that I have of being a young child in school are all the people. I remember what they were all doing, and I was worried because if you do too much, you get in trouble.

There’s so much coming at you being in this room full of children all doing different things. And so to expect someone who’s paying attention to it at all to be able to then somehow tune in to what they’re supposed to be listening to and supposed to be doing. And then if you don’t do that, then you’re getting in trouble. It’s such an intense environment.

And I don’t think that a lot of adults recognize that or remember how it was. But when my son was very young, I was trying to picture him in that type of environment and how aware he was of what all the children were doing. And I was like, it’s just going to be too much for him.

MELISSA: Yeah, yeah. I remember when T?mana was at preschool and then one day he was inside and he was building with blocks. And his teacher said to me, oh, we were having a conversation, like an adult conversation, nothing bad, but they were talking about different countries they’d visited or something.

And they were sitting adjacent to him. But it was a day where there were other multiple children moving and talking and playing and stuff. And she said he was just sitting there doing his blocks and maybe with another kid as well. His cousin was there or something. And then he just started feeding into our conversation. And he’d fully been following it and he knew a whole lot of facts about one of the countries or something.

And she was just like, oh, kids aren’t normally that tuned into an adult conversation. We couldn’t talk about and we can’t talk about anything in our house. And we couldn’t from the time he was a baby, because he would come in and he just knew. He just was super hyper vigilant and aware and all of those things.

The other thing I think that makes it really hard for lots of our neurodivergent kids is T?mana does his learning by asking a lot of questions and info dumping. Those are his communication styles. And there’s no capacity for a teacher to deal with that.

I said to him the other day, he was asking about being at school and whether he might try to go back at some point. And I was like, yeah, one thing I noticed though about you, T?mana, is you like to ask a lot of questions. Do you know that when you’re in school, if there’s like maybe 15, 20, 25 kids in a class, what happens if every kid wants to ask one question at the start of a session? And he’s like, well, that wouldn’t work. And I was like, so how many questions do you reckon you’d get to ask a day? And he’s like, oh, never mind. Our kids learn in different ways and it just doesn’t work at school.

PAM: I do remember a very similar story. I was told by the teacher or the principal. Anyway, I guess my eldest was in class and the principal had come by to look in and could see that he was fiddling with stuff in his desk and playing, et cetera, et cetera.

So the principal called him out and started quizzing him and how he was supposed to be paying attention. And he answered every question about what the teacher was talking about. And yeah, it was probably the principal who told me this story because I talked to the principal a lot.

And he was just flabbergasted that he could know and understand what was going on all around him, even though he looked like he was doing something completely different. So yeah, the environment is just not a place where they can shine. And the other piece that bubbled up while you were talking, Melissa, is so often I think we can worry or wonder, could we even bring our child home to homeschool, unschool, et cetera? The child that we see in that environment and the challenges they’re having, oh, if they come home, I’m just going to have to deal with all those challenges. But no, it is such a different environment. 

MELISSA: Yeah, I see that again and again. 

PAM: Yeah, completely different child, right? 

MELISSA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, we still get meltdowns and we still get dysregulation and stuff. But I think the thing as well that we’ve been talking about in the group a lot lately is there’s this spaciousness. There’s this time. And I did a member feature with one of our people yesterday, and she’s only been unschooling since the Unschooling Summit. So she did that and then she started unschooling. 

And she was just talking about how, in her family in particular, so her kids are six and two, and just how long everything’s taking to come to reading or come to dressing themselves or what the different things are. And I said, I think that is the thing with our neurodivergent kids is that everything does can take longer.

I spend a lot of time in my family with my wife saying, it’s okay, it’s just not yet. We can have that experience with our kids later. It’s not the time yet that it would actually be beneficial for them or that they would enjoy it or that it would go the way you think it might or you wish it would.

And we do need to face that with some of our neurodivergent kids that, for some of them, they are disabled in some ways and that things are going to take longer for them to get to certain ways of doing things or being able to regulate themselves or helping you within that space and that time. And we can just kind of lean into the season being longer and that they may not sleep any better than they did when they were babies until they’re 10 and that we have this kind of spaciousness that we can give them time.

We talked the other day, I think maybe it was with one of the Sunday Sessions, I’m not sure, or a Zoom I did recently. We talked about surrender and that surrendering is just such an important part of being a parent and particularly with some of this process. Yeah, that all of those kinds of aspects are really important because things might take longer and we don’t need to rush things.

And I think it was something that I think it was a quote I wrote down from you, Pam, once you guys were doing a talk and you were saying that unschooling learning is internalized and not memorized or something along those lines. And it’s like, yeah, we don’t want our kids to learn stuff by rote because they have to, whether it’s about the need to wash themselves or mathematics or whatever it is. We need them to come to that slowly in this expanding and contraction of their capacity and of their growth and a thing so that it’s really rooted in all aspects of themselves and their learning about themselves and so on. And we have the time for that. It can be hard as parents. 

ANNA: We also have neurodiversity here as well. And I think what time allowed what was to see the gifts. I think when you’re in that tightened timeline thinking we have to hit this milestone, we have to do this thing. There’s just only the deficit focus. That’s why it happens that way at school.

But I think unschooling really gives us that chance to see all the gifts. And so those timelines really have no value or meaning, because it’s just we get there when we get there. But oh, my gosh, there’s so much beauty along the way that it doesn’t feel like we’re missing anything. So I really love that. 

I’m going to change gears just a tiny bit for this next question, kind of bringing it back to us as parents. I recently had a little aha moment myself about capacity and understanding if I’m operating within my capacity, I’m able to hold things more lightly, and I’m able to be present and not have not take things so personally, not kind of crash and burn when things go awry.

And I mean, it seems really obvious when I say it out loud. But there was just an aha moment for me, because I think I do push beyond my capacity a lot. And I’m like, oh, okay, I need to be aware of this because it’s impacting the way I’m showing up and the way that I want to show up.

And so I know that you talk a lot about the importance of building capacity for ourselves. And so, I would just love to hear more about your experience with that, ideas you have around that, and just what your journey has been around that piece. 

MELISSA: Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think especially for me, because it came into it in quite a deficit place, I didn’t have a lot of personal capacity. And now I know that as well as being a kind of PTSD, I was probably in autistic burnout from, I mean, my goodness, just being in a heart ward five weeks is kind of rather stimulating, because people are dying around you and you’re having CPR and stuff. So, I came into this whole season, pretty depleted.

And I really needed to be the one that was building my own capacity. And also, once we were about three or four months in, and things were starting to go quite fine and quite lovely. And we’d kind of done nothing schooling wise.

And then we started to try and do some arts and crafts with our daughter. And so that our son was starting to sniff around that and we were starting to just kind of gently ease into doing things and doing a few more trips out and so on as his capacity grew. And then my wife had a massive medical situation as well, and had to have massive surgery and nearly died as well.

So massive PTSD for the kids, bringing all that up again, and for me, and it was really rough. And so, capacity in our family has been super, super limited. And my wife now lives with an ongoing medical condition. I have to have a lot of capacity. And now I’m also running a business. And so, I’m trying to unschool and I do most of the outings for our family and try to run Weave and the Summit as well.

So, there’s a lot to be said for the pressures that are around you and kind of rising to the occasion, but that can only go on for so long. And so for me, what I did was I tried lots of different modalities to support myself and things like EMDR. And I think that dealing with your past trauma and your past history and so on is a really important thing to do. So I did a whole lot of work for me on this more recent trauma with EMDR and EFT tapping and different things to help my nervous system. And we see a chiropractor and so on. And all of those things are to support our central nervous system. But then I started doing breath work.

And for me, as an autistic ADHD person, meditation was very difficult for me to grasp. But breath work, which really, and it’s not like the Wim Hof style, it’s a polyvagal central nervous system relaxing breath work and it really is just breathing and you might hold like a yoga pose of some kind. But yeah, that has been very, very supportive for me in terms of my capacity. And so, I do lots of online programs where I’m doing breath work with other mostly mums. And that I’ve found has been extremely helpful for my capacity. 

And then when I started doing Weave, which is the community that I have, I noticed that so many of us were coming in crisis and that we were discovering that we had neurodivergent kids. Most of us didn’t know that we had neurodivergent kids until they burnt out in school. So the kids were in school refusal. They were coming home because there was no other option. And we were then realizing that we needed to unschool, not just homeschool. And unschooling, you guys all know this, but I think it’s a lot harder than homeschooling. There’s no curriculum.

You can’t just lock them in a curriculum and be like, do that, tick the boxes, red pen out. I don’t know if people use red pens, but you know. And that’s your schoolwork done for the day.

Unschooling is very, very intensive on parents because we actually all really want it to work. And we have all of this weight on ourselves to begin with, especially of like, we are holding this and we are taking this new path and it is on us. And lots of the people that I know don’t have fully supportive, committed partners to the process.

It’s like, okay, if that’s what you want to do, you’re responsible for the reading and the carrying out and the kind of reporting back to me if it’s working or soothing the other partner’s fears. 

And you’re going to be holding a whole lot. Often the families that I work with, just like us, are arriving into unschooling in a state of crisis. We’re not starting out in a nice, we’ve made a philosophical decision to unschool and we’ve known that since our children were small and we kind of ease our way into it. We just drop in, trial by fire. It’s all happening at once. And you’ve also got kids that are burnt out and in school refusal and you are at the scraping the barrel levels of your own capacity. 

And you’ve got a kid at home who is there 24 hours a day. Lots of our kids don’t sleep. We really, really need to build our capacity. It’s just essential. And also a lot of us are starting to realize in the process of having our kids diagnosed that we are neurodivergent too. And I think if we don’t build our capacity as neurodivergent parents of neurodivergent kids, if that’s your picture, then it’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very, very difficult to survive, let alone thrive, you know? 

And so I think that we need to get to a point where we can survive and then we need to be working towards thriving. And what I’ve done is I’ve tried out lots of different modalities because everything’s going to be different for what works for different people and what works for different seasons.

And I think for those of us that are unschooling, you have to have things that you can do in these little pockets of time that you have. And you need to find ways to kind of fill your bucket or your whatever you want to call it, your basket, in these tiny moments. And so for me, it’s things like purposely going and finding glimmers and noticing the moment that I take a sip of hot tea because it might be the only one that’s hot. We kind of talk about having a hot cup of tea is like, ahh! but the reality is maybe only you get the first few sips. Make sure you enjoy them, notice it, feel into that. Bank all of these small moments, so that when you do need to dig deep, because there will be multiple times probably through every day where you need to be holding something external from yourself, that you have some capacity. 

So, we use havening. I have a havening practitioner that comes into Weave and we do this, we do, that sounds really silly, we do this. Havening is like a whole movement that’s kind of continuing on from EFT, and it’s very good at bringing the nervous system back into alignment. And as an autistic ADHD person, havening practices are very accessible.

Finding a moment to breathe is often very, very inaccessible. So I find that things for me that are very physical, like feeling my toes as opposed to trying to do something like a 10 minute meditation. If my son is trying to get on the roof and I’m the person responsible for him not getting on the roof during a meltdown, I can do some havening or feel my toes. And I don’t have the time for anything else. 

So I think that really focusing on spending some time every day, doing one minute of havening to get that muscle memory in your body so that when you need it, you can grab it. And I find that the more that I put in these small practices, these small accessible practices, the more that I am able to have the capacity to feel like there is a well of all that I’m connected to and the earth and all, everything that I’m trying to hold, because otherwise I’m constantly in my head or beyond it. And I don’t feel in my body a lot. So I have to be very determined that I need to have these practices in my life because it’s very easy to let them go.

And ADHD, I love something and then I forget about it. I need to kind of keep coming back to things. 

ERIKA: That’s very relatable. I love the idea of practicing them over and over so that they almost come as second nature when you’re in the more difficult moments.

Yeah. I really love that.

MELISSA: It’s like anchoring.

ERIKA: And I was just thinking in some moments when we’re at low capacity, I’ve noticed a pattern of like, we tend to want to add even more things or notice even more things that are missing.

And so, for me, that’s one of the things I noticed. When I’m having a hard time things in my mind get worse and more intense rather than me trying to drop things. And so, I think that the physical practices would help a lot with just kind of coming back to center, but then also just remembering to let things go that I don’t need to deal with in this moment. Because there’s always plenty to deal with in that present moment.

MELISSA: Yeah. And I think for me and for lots of people, the overwhelm cripples you. And this is a small thing I can do to start to move. 

PAM: That was one of the big things that bubbled up for me too, how valuable it can be to make it almost second nature by practicing, giving ourselves a space in those less overwhelming moments so that we have it in our back pocket. Because it’s so easy to freeze and just forget all the tools that we have when we are in a challenging moment, so keeping them top of mind rather than saying, oh things are going well, I don’t need these tools right now. Then we don’t have access to them when we need them.

MELISSA: Yeah, yeah, we do havening once a month and during that time of practice it’s, oh I come out of there feeling like light as a feather. But what I was finding was that when I was feeling my dysregulation rising in a moment with my child when I needed to stay calm because their dysregulation was rising or going off, I wouldn’t remember to do it. And so yeah, so we did a thing in the group where we did one minute of havening every morning for 14 days and we all knew we could access one minute and now it’s second nature. So yeah, anchoring in and finding things that are accessible that actually work for us and for other people it might be like a different move or it might be tapping or something, but yeah, finding some, just some little thing that works for you. And for some people it is breathing and things, but for me it’s not always the easiest thing. It feels very forced to control my breath.

ERIKA: Right, yeah, I love that people are different so you have to find what works for you. So I just wanted to see if you wanted to share anything additional. Your group sounds amazing, Weave ND, and just your experience of creating that group and weaving unschooling together with running your businesses.

MELISSA: Yeah, yeah. Weave came about, when we were in that very stuck season when my wife Doria was very unwell as well and we were unschooling and I jumped into a really fantastic online community for unschoolers and we had these Zooms and they were fantastic, but what I was finding was that it made me feel a little more isolated some of them, because if we were talking about socializing of our kids or events or things, the advice that everyone else was sharing on the experiences was so different from ours because my son was not able to engage in those things. And so I ended up asking if I could run a Zoom for neurodivergent parents just to connect and talk within this other group.

And we had wonderful conversations and we started doing that monthly and for about two hours we’d have these meandering conversations that people could come in and get warmed up and then spill and not record it and so on. And then that group decided that they weren’t going to run as a community anymore and went off and did different things. And so I decided and they encouraged me to take it into Facebook and so I did that and then I ran that for two years from the time that I was doing it within the group to deciding that I needed to have employment and my wife couldn’t work.

And so the group, I was saying I was either going to have to close it down or start charging and so we moved into a paid membership community. And yeah, it’s fantastic and it’s a way that I can be at home with my kids and I run it mostly from home. I’m in a hired motel today for the internet.

I use the local motel to have fast speed internet because I’ve ended up doing things like the unschooling summit and I needed to be able to interview people and stuff that the internet wasn’t going to lag and the children weren’t going to come in with chickens and interrupt if I was interviewing some famous person like Pam Laricchia or whoever it was. 

But yeah, it’s been an amazing journey and with that journey I worked out that instead of just coming together and talking about our woes, which was a lot of what we were doing but that was becoming quite heavy, was that the key thing that I needed to focus on was this capacity building, because it was the piece that we were all really struggling with and I think also the kind of compassion part. A lot of us are not very good at being compassionate to ourselves in a very difficult circumstance that we’re living in at points of our journey. It can be really difficult and very isolated and so finding ways for us to like connect and be compassionate and then kind of build this capacity was so important. 

And so, part of that was that I spoke to Esther Jones about coming in and doing a mindfulness session for us and that just blossomed into a really amazing relationship which has been really cool and we decided to start working together more last September and then one of us just in one of the first emails we had backwards and forwards because she’d been in my community and been doing like you know mindfulness and so on but one of us said and I can’t remember which one of us it was, was like maybe we should do a summit. That would be cool. 

And so I was really passionate about more people hearing about unschooling with the neurodivergent flavor and she’s of course, an amazing unschooling person, figure and so we thought we might do like a one or two day summit and maybe invite sort of five or six speakers, weren’t sure, eight maybe and maybe a thousand people might come if we were lucky and we kind of both went nuts, hard out. 

She’s in the UK, I’m in New Zealand so one of us would be waking up full of enthusiasm and vim and vigor and the other person would be suggestible and tired and would agree to anything and so it just was this magic equation of alchemy of,I’ve had this idea overnight and I think we should this and the other one would be like okay look if you’re going to take care of that part it sounds fine with me go for it, invite them or do this or whatever. 

So I think it honestly was the fact that one of us would be fresh fueled up and one of us would be working on fumes and so we just kind of kept going but yeah it ended up amazing and it was such a joy for us to work together and to create the Summit. So that’s been pretty special and it has had a really strong neurodivergent flavor. It’s been really supportive for our ND families because so many of them are unschooling but yeah really, really broad, interesting thing to work on. So, that’s been pretty special.

ANNA: And so it will be happening again in the coming year? What are the plans?

MELISSA: Yeah, we’re working on it now so we’re doing early morning or late night Zooms again. It’ll be happening in the last weeks of March. I can’t think of a date right now so yeah of next year, same thing three days all for free online and lots of amazing speakers. I’m sure you guys will get invited to be on panels and speak and so on so yeah we’ve got some different ideas this year, ways of doing things. 

So, yeah, we’re really keen to have like the diversity of unschoolers reflected which was one of our key things last year and I really loved that people were brave enough to say yes to these two people that well they certainly didn’t know me, they do now but yeah, it’s been pretty amazing and really lovely for my community as well because I’ve had some wonderful people come in and speak within the community now that I know more people and I don’t need to be so shy to ask people to come in and talk and so on.

PAM: I really enjoy participating in it as well but also your piece of finding stuff that you can do for the most part within your home life. You can do it from home mostly, you can like and the people like in your community, they understand obviously the circumstances of your family life as well, so you can have chickens come in and kids.

MELISSA: Yeah, exactly and like yeah, I think that is something I did want to talk about, it’s encouraging people to be entrepreneurial. I think unschoolers often are very entrepreneurial, it’s a very common kind of thing and partly it’s probably out of desperation because we need to make money and get creative about how we’re going to do it. But there is that real spark of not needing to live by the rules and not needing to do things the same way and not wanting to work for a boss and so on. And I do most of my stuff from the kitchen bench or a chair in my bedroom and the kids come in and out and I do have a caravan in the garden but it’s not any less kid infested. 

So, I come here to do the recordings because of the internet quality but you can do these things from the kitchen bench with your kid across from you and needing to get up and make snacks and it all just happens and when you find the thing that you’re passionate about, just like our kids, you can just focus on that and they can see. 

My son is so invested, drives him nuts, he doesn’t want me on the laptop and he gets very dysregulated part of the time as well but he’s so proud. And anywhere we go out, he’s like, oh yeah, my mama has an online business and she does this summit and she does that and so he tells everyone, oh we’re unschoolers and my mum is an advocate. 

And our kids seeing us do something and seeing us mess it up or fail or have a bad day or send the wrong email or whatever. It’s all such vital learning and that was something I think I got from your podcast as well, Pam, I binged yours, and Esther’s, Stark Raving Dad, I was in that really stuck season where my wife was very unwell and my child was in crisis and was having constant meltdowns and stuff because of like the PTSD and we were getting the autism diagnosis and stuff, I just went, I need to work on me. I need to feel like I’m not stuck so I’m just going to educate myself in every way, shape and form about unschooling and then about neurodivergence and the crossover. 

And hearing all of your different interviews with different people and all of the different ways that unschooling has gone but part of it for me because I’ve been an entrepreneur in the past was you talking about, you know, you get to actually indulge in your interests as an unschooler because you kind of have to because you need to model that for your kids and you need to not go crazy and I heard stories over and over of people saying, I just do my thing and my kids are around. And that was really motivational for me. It was like, yeah, I could just do my thing and the kids could be around. 

It’s hard, and I’m often working till 11 or later at night. With the Summit, we’re up till 1 many, many times and you just fit it in around and you’re really tired and you have bloodshot eyes and you have bags under your eyes but it is possible. I hear other people say, oh no, you need to dedicate at least one day out a week where you go and you do this and whatever and it’s like sometimes it’s just not the reality and if you’re going to wait for that, you’ll never start these things. You’ve just got to dive in, just like we tell our kids, I suppose, if we sit around waiting until everything’s perfect, we’re never gonna get anywhere.

ANNA: That conventional wisdom, right? If you’re going to do a business, you do x, y, z, do the checkbox, but really there are so many ways. And if we can make it fit for our life, that keeps our enthusiasm going, that makes it work for our families and we’re much more likely to then be successful at it. So, yeah, I think that’s always a great reminder.

MELISSA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s definitely a juggling act and I have to be careful not to burn out because of my autistic hyperfocus but, I love that.

PAM: Yeah.I think that piece that you mentioned is just beautiful. Because then you’re thinking about being an entrepreneur and you go and you start looking and you want to learn and it is so much about, do x, y, z, and make sure you tell everybody that when your door is closed, you don’t interrupt me. All these “tips” for working from home, etc.

But what we learn through unschooling, is that we can question conventions, right? So, we can do things differently and not just for the sake of it, but because it works better. It actually works better for us. It keeps our relationships. It keeps our connections.

Yes, we’re up and down and doing this thing and that thing. And maybe it feels like juggling a few things. But you know what? Even the challenge of juggling a few things, in my experience, for my brain, just works better than trying to spend all my energy to get those two hours alone to focus. Even now, when my kids are adults, it’s just how my brain works. And valuing that over trying to make myself conform.

And then your children seeing you do it, even my adult children seeing me play around and doing this thing and trying this thing, etc. It’s just our lives all weaving together, which just feels so much better than trying to put boundaries and separations between it all.

MELISSA: And my kid’s really invested. He comes in and he checks my phone, because when payments come through, it’s updated to my bank on my app. And so he’s like, monitoring there. And he’s like, now I’ve heard this thing on a podcast, where there’s this thing that you can get, this piece of tech. He comes in and he tries to advise and he’s really invested.

And I love that. He’s thinking about it. He’s won a Lego competition recently, because Lego is his special interest. And he’s phenomenal at it. And it was with a real estate agent. So, now he’s engaged his own real estate agent. And so, he keeps telling people, do you know many 10-year-olds with a real estate agent? He hasn’t earned a dime yet, but he’s like, when I make my millions on these particular business plans, because he’s going to be an entrepreneur, then he’s going to have her looking for a piece of land in advance. And it’s just, I don’t know, I love that he has really big dreams. And because he can see me starting something from scratch and growing a thing, he’s learning all of that stuff. And he’s really invested.

And my daughter as well, but she’s more independent whereas he’s more up in my business. She’s out in the garden and doing her own thing. Yeah.

ERIKA: So I just love all the space. Everyone can be doing the things that work so well for them. And we’re all figuring it out. I feel like that’s something so valuable about the unschooling journey is just like, we are all getting to figure out what works well for us and getting to follow our interests. And it’s just a lot of fun.

So, this has been so much fun, Melissa, thank you so much for joining us. We hope that you all enjoyed our conversation and maybe had an aha moment or picked up some ideas to consider on your own unschooling journey. And if you enjoy these kinds of conversations, I think you would love the Living Joyfully Network.

It’s an amazing group of people having thoughtful conversations about all the things we encounter in our unschooling lives. And you can also check out our new substack at whenschoolisn’tworking.substack.com. And the Network is at livingjoyfullyshop.com on the community tab at the top of the page. So thank you so much for listening. And we will see you next time.

PAM: Thanks so much, Melissa! We’ll have all your links there in the show notes as well. Bye!

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Every Moment is a Choice.

It’s common in our culture to look at our lives in terms of “have-tos,” but staying in that space takes away our agency and our joy. By getting curious about our have-tos, we can figure out what is really important to us and play with ways to make the things we do more enjoyable. And in difficult moments, when it really feels like terrible things are happening to us, we still have the choice of how to respond, what story we tell about our situation, and what energy we bring to it. Realizing how much choice we have can be so empowering!

We hope today’s episode sparks some fun insights for you!

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

Want the full collection of Living Joyfully Foundations podcast episodes as an audiobook (and the transcripts edited into an ebook)? Find them here in the Shop!

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. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

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?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

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

ANNA: Hi, and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast! We’re happy you’re here and interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about choice. I love talking about and grounding ourselves in choice, because life is filled with choices from the mundane to the epic. And for the most part, it’s an invisible process. We’re making decisions on the fly throughout the day. Other decisions are made with a lot of deliberation and forethought and take a lot of time, but the ability to choose is something that empowers us. The knowledge that, no matter what, we have a choice.

PAM: Right, and that is so surprisingly easy to forget in the moment. I can find myself moving through parts of my day almost by rote, and sometimes that means I’m in the flow of things, feeling good and accomplishing things I want and choose to do. And other times things start to rub.

When I start hearing myself say, “Oh, I have to do this,” that feeling that I don’t have a choice is a good clue that I’m probably feeling a bit overstretched or under-resourced, and it’s a great clue to step back, take a breath, and just take a moment to look around a bit.

It’s so easy to fall into the “I have to” trap, because it is used so much in our culture. The phrase “I have to,” or, “You have to,” has become so commonplace that we’ve mostly stopped questioning it altogether. It just seeps into our everyday language. We say we have to go to the store, we have to brush our teeth, we have to go to bed, and so many more things. And soon, we start to believe that we have to do all the things, that we don’t have a choice, that we are, in fact, prisoners to a long list of have to’s.

And not only that, when we come to feel that we don’t have choices and buy into this whole “have to” ethos, it’s usually not long before we start to feel pulled to impose them on others. “This has to be done and you have to help,” which then can lead to judging others around the things we think they have to do. Like, “Why aren’t they doing this thing I don’t want to do, but have to do?” It is so disempowering and disconnecting.

So, taking a moment to look at a situation, any situation, even small everyday ones, and noticing that choices actually exist helps us let go of that overwhelming feeling of being trapped in our days. It reminds us that we have agency. We can use phrases like, “I have to,” or, “You have to,” as red flags, signs that it’s a good time to step back and see where we’re feeling pinched, where we’re feeling controlled, because definitely those things can sneak up on us bit by bit.

And then, we can dig deeper to identify our underlying needs, find the choices in the soil of the have to’s and shift things up to meet our needs in ways that don’t include controlling others or even using control tactics on ourselves. Realizing that I always have choices has been such a freeing and empowering mindset shift for me. It’s just been amazing.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. For me, too. It’s been such a critical part. The shift from feeling like life is happening to me, to understanding my agency and navigating this thing called life. It’s funny, I have a good friend whose husband does not buy into this idea at all. So, he believes, “There aren’t always choices, Anna,” but I find it so interesting.

And one of the examples he used was, “Well, we have to do the animal chores in the morning.” So, they have a small farm, donkeys, goats, chickens. And here’s the thing. They don’t have to do that. They could choose to re-home the animals. They could skip the morning chores or do them later. I know the lap of luxury these animals live in and they would be just fine. They could also hire someone to do the chores for them.

There’s always a choice and with each choice, we hone in on our priorities. They don’t want to re-home the animals. They love them. They love bringing the special treats in the morning and moving the donkeys to the track to watch them play and run. They don’t have to do those things. They want to. And maybe they decide it’s not worth the money to pay someone else, or in that choice, they realize that they actually enjoy it and might miss it and don’t want someone else doing it for them.

And so, then it’s like, okay, so if we’re feeling pinched about time, in that exploration, they might find they’d rather free up time in another way, adjusting something they don’t enjoy as much. What a different feeling than to feel we’re held hostage by an obligation. And maybe it’s just semantics and energy, but I really think it’s worth examining our language about any of these have to’s and deciding if that language is serving us.

Is it helping us find joy? Is it helping us enjoy the things around us? Could examining it as a choice help us understand what we actually want to do and how we want to spend our time and resources?

PAM: Yes. I think what can happen over time is that we make a choice and then it’s new and exciting.

We relish it. It’s fun. And then, over time, we shortcut our language down to, “I have to.”

For me, it feels like as the activity becomes more commonplace in my days, “Every morning I’ve got to go take care of the animals,” my internal language becomes more efficient. “I have to take out the animals, I have to take the dogs out,” all the all the things. “I have to go grocery shopping, I have to clean the bathrooms.”

And I think the word obligation is a great way to describe that feeling and the growing weight of it. And I think we can naturally start to resist that obligation and maybe even start to resent it. So, if our internal “have to” language doesn’t catch our attention, eventually that growing weight of obligation or resentment definitely might. So, time to dig in and see what’s in there. What’s the rub?

And what’s so interesting is so often digging in helped me remember my why. So, you had that wonderful example about the animals. I’m going to take a quick moment to look at cleaning bathrooms, because it is a very basic example. But to give you an idea of ways to dig into those festering feelings.

So, I can remind myself that I enjoy the feeling of walking into a clean bathroom. If I realize that’s even feeling a bit stale for me, I can start there. So, maybe I choose to spruce up the bathroom a bit, bringing in a plant or two, or some art for the walls. Maybe I print out an inspirational quote or two that makes me smile, or a couple of pictures that make me laugh and I tape them to the mirror. How can I more enjoy walking into this mostly utilitarian room?

I find that is such a fun way to look at things. It’s like, cleaning the bathroom, what do you mean decorating it or whatever? But that is a wonderful aspect to look at, too.

I can also contemplate the cleaning schedule that I’m holding myself to. There are no bathroom police that are going to come and arrest me if I don’t stick to it. So, what if I change that up, extending the period between deep cleans? How does that feel? I can try it out and see. That’s something you can always play with and is likely to change over time, depending as the number of people rise and fall.

So, just because we’ve done it weekly for years doesn’t mean it has to be weekly forever more. That frequency may well change over the seasons of our lives.

And we can look at the how. How can I make it easier for me to slip into cleaning? Can I keep the cleaning supplies in the bathroom ready to grab quickly? That may mean having more supplies up front, but they each last longer, because they’re only being used in one bathroom. So, it works itself out. Can I make the process itself more enjoyable? I often put on my headphones and listen to podcasts or sometimes upbeat music to help my body get moving. Or we could also choose to pay for cleaning service if that’s an option. There are just so many possibilities.

So, after taking some time to dig in and discover what’s really rubbing for me, so often, I still do the thing. I clean the bathrooms. But my internal language is much different now, because I remembered how much choice and agency I have. It may not be the most fun I’ll have all day, but I remember why I want to do it and I’ve made the process more pleasurable, particularly the bits of the process that were rubbing me the wrong way. My internal language is lighter. Maybe even, “I want to clean the bathrooms today,” rather than that obligatory weight of, “I have to.”

It’s so fascinating to see that we can find choice even in the most mundane bits and pieces of life.

ANNA: And just how different it feels when we do. I mean, those choices all along the way. And I think the money piece that I talked about is a really interesting way to check in. So, do I want to pay somebody to do this? Does it have that value or is it not that big of a deal? Is my time more valuable there?

It’s playing with it, asking questions that we talk so much about. It just opens up instead of getting stuck in the weight of the have to’s. So, yeah, I love that, because again, I just really think it helps us hone in on our priorities and get back to that why, like you said, and then we know, okay, I got these animals for a reason and I like having a clean bathroom and that’s why I’m doing it for me. Whatever those things are, getting back to that why.

PAM: Yeah. And I love that priority piece. That was episode number one, because that is so foundational, playing around with our priorities and the time that we’ve got, the things that we want to do. We can always bring it back there to realize that we have choices with all the things that we think are on our plate.

ANNA: Yes. And it just really changes things. But I do want to talk about times when it feels like there really is no choice, that life has happened to us. There’s a tragedy, a death, a loss of something that’s out of our control, because that’s going to happen to all of us. It’s certainly happened to me and realizing I still had the choice of how I react made all the difference in moving through those difficult events. No, I couldn’t change the fact that the job was lost or the injury happened, but I could decide how I was going to let that impact my mood, how I was feeling, and how I wanted to move through the world.

So, for me, that helped me to put things into perspective and to feel again, that life wasn’t just happening to me. I’ve had some pretty difficult things happen to me over the years. We all have, but the times I’m able to ground back into who I want to be, how I want to learn from what’s happening around me, and how I want to find joy, even in the darkest moments, those were the times that I moved through the events with the most ease. It’s not easy necessarily, but with more ease than when I was fighting and bucking against the reality of what was happening.

And, for me, gratitude was a big part of that. Finding those little spots of gratitude is a choice, and I found that I could find them even in the darkest of days. And with that choice, that first move towards looking for the tiny points of light, the shifts would start and new ways forward would present themselves.

PAM: Yes, definitely. Things happen in our lives that are out of our control. Times where we find ourselves just reacting to things. It can feel like our life has come to a standstill with this big thing. And for a time, that can definitely be helpful, because it needs immediate attention, right? Yet moving through these challenging events often takes time and staying stuck in that emergency mode can have its consequences.

So, for me, once the initial shock and overwhelm began to ease a bit, I found it helpful to gently remind myself to come back to the present whenever I noticed myself getting stuck in my head with my swirling thoughts. Because in the present, I slowly began to notice those bits and pieces of life that are happening around me. Those spots of gratitude, as you mentioned, Anna, even small ones, like how the light comes through the window, a moment of connection with my child that makes me smile. Continuing to bring myself to the present, soon I was open enough to start to see more possibilities, new ways forward that I couldn’t see when I was like stuck in tunnel vision. I began to see choices.

ANNA: Yes. And that’s what it’s all about, finding our way to just seeing the choice in the moments. And so, this leads to another area where our choices influence our perspective. And it’s an area where we often give away our powers. And it’s, we tell our own stories. We’re the creators, we’re the writers, we’re the orators of these stories of our lives.

And digging into stories is so important to us that we’re going to do an entire episode on it in a couple weeks, but I think it’s worth talking about it right now in this context of choice and seeing how it’s playing out in our days, because our stories have a way of defining us for ourselves and for others. For ourselves, they become this sort of self-talk. If that talk is negative and full of worry and distress, then we can become that. If that talk is positive and full of joy and gratitude, then we become that. We start to embody it.

For others, it colors the way they see us. They trust that our story is our truth. And if that truth is steeped in frustration and anger, then we can attract the frustrated and angry, because it’s that whole misery loved company thing. And if that truth is infused with joy and gratitude, we tend to attract the people that are looking for joy and gratitude. And I’ve found that, for me, where I put my energy is the areas that I’m growing. And so, I just want to be really aware of that. And so, again, it just boils down to this choice. How do we want to spend our energy and what do we want to attract with it?

PAM: Yeah. The stories we tell ourselves and those around us have such a big impact on us. So, I am really looking forward to diving into that idea more deeply in a couple of weeks. But it is also a great lens to consider when we’re thinking about choice, because if the story we’re telling ourselves and the people around us is that we don’t have a choice, that we have to do X, Y, Z, that’s most likely going to be the one we all run with. So often, we treat our stories as facts. “This is the situation. Now where do we go from here?” And that’s where people join us.

So, if our story is grounded in frustration and full of have to’s, that’s where they join us, often sharing their frustrations and just generally tossing around in the muck with us. Back to that misery loves company. But if our story is steeped in choice and possibilities, that’s where they’ll jump in with us. Oh, that is a big change. Best of luck with that. Have you considered this? They’re just generally more supportive and helpful. And both stories can absolutely be true to the facts. But we get to choose which one we tell ourselves and others, which one feels better to us in the moment. And that is not a trick question. Sometimes what feels better is to vent, right?

But it is absolutely helpful to remember that it’s a choice and we don’t need to stick to that version of our story forever.

ANNA: Oh my gosh, yes. We can change a story when it stops serving us. That’s another big revelation. Like, “Oh, this story I’ve been hanging onto, I can change it up.” So, lots to consider there.

So, we’re going to leave you with a few questions to ponder.

First, do you find yourself saying, “I have to,” a lot? Really listen, because actually we don’t even always notice it.

PAM: That’s so true.

ANNA: Tune in. Can you find any patterns around when you see it happening more frequently? And kind of like you talked about, Pam, it tends to be those under-resourced moments, where we kind of start clicking off the have to’s and the giant list and all the things.

How does it feel to think about having choices in each moment?

PAM: So, I think that’ll be a big one. You don’t even have to like move forward with it, but just take a moment to think, “Oh, what if I had a choice?” If you can’t see a choice yet. But it could even just be how does it feel to think about, “Oh, what if there were choices?” And that I think can be the first little baby step.

ANNA: I’m so curious how my friend’s husband’s going to think about some of this stuff, because he listens to the podcast. And so, what does it feel like to just think, but what if you did have a choice? What if you let go of that story that you don’t?

So, another thing is, what helps you find your center when you’re moving through a challenge? I think that can just be really helpful, because we’re going to keep getting challenge. So, helping people understand what helps us move through that, what helps it feel a bit more with ease, what helps us find that gratitude, whatever it is that feels good.

And lastly, what choices do you see around the stories you are currently telling about your life? Yeah, that’s going to be good. Because we’re always telling stories. If you’re sitting there listening, going, “I don’t know if I have stories,” no, you do. You have stories. And let’s look at them like, because these can be things we are carrying with us for a long time. And again, check back in a couple weeks when we really dig into stories as well.

So, just thinking about this idea of choice, I think is just interesting. Play with it. How does it feel? What feels better? How does it work? So, yeah, I think it’s going to be fun.

PAM: Yes, I think so, too. And that stories one, too. As you said, if you don’t think you’re telling stories, I think just take a pull back and instead of choices around the stories you’re telling yourself, think about, what stories am I telling myself? Just start to look through the lens of story and see how that feels. See what you see. I think it’ll be so interesting to dive into.

ANNA: Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next time. Bye-bye.

PAM: Bye.

We are back with another episode in our Unschooling Stumbling Blocks series and this time, we’re talking about unschooling with strong beliefs.

Sometimes our strong beliefs can be a stumbling block along our journey when we put the belief ahead of our relationships. When those moments come up in our families, it can help to remember that our own strong beliefs work for us, for now, but that people are different. And leaving space for people to choose what works for them can strengthen our connection and build trust. Whether the strong belief is about food, spending time in nature, early bedtimes, a particular type of social interaction, or anything else, taking time to peel back the layers and examine how these beliefs affect our relationships can be so enlightening!

We really enjoyed diving into this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

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?

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. This month, we’re talking about supporting our children’s autonomy. Come and be part of the conversation!

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: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia. Hello to you both.

So, today we’re going to be talking about another unschooling stumbling block, which is when parents have strong beliefs. It’s a topic that comes up a lot and I’m really excited for this conversation.

But before we begin, I wanted to invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, which has been really life changing for me in so many ways. On the Network, we have amazing discussions about so many topics, since our community has such a wide variety of experiences. Everyone there is really learning and growing and being intentional with their families. It’s really unlike any other online community that I’ve found.

The Living Joyfully Network offers such powerful support, especially during those moments when questions and fears come up or if you’re new to unschooling and just need a place where people understand what you’re going through. If you’d like to learn more about the Network and check it out for yourself, you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on the Community tab. We’ll also leave a link in the show notes and we would love to meet you there!

So, Pam, would you like to get us started about unschooling with strong beliefs?

PAM: Strong beliefs, yes. I would very much like to do that, because exploring the idea of strong beliefs has definitely inspired an important paradigm shift for me on this journey. Because, of course we can hold beliefs so strongly that it feels like a truth for us, but the big shift for me around this was recognizing that it was my truth and that didn’t mean that it was a universal truth. Because, as we may have mentioned, people are different! My kids, my partner, my friends, they aren’t me.

And yes, a strong belief I hold is something that is working well for me, right, that helps me care for myself, helps me be the person that I want to be but that strength of that belief comes from so much experience. I’ve probably tried on numerous different perspectives along the way that didn’t quite click or that maybe sent me in a direction that I eventually found I didn’t like. So, trying to wholesale drop my strong belief and all the experience that comes with it onto someone else’s lap just isn’t going to land with that depth of understanding.

And as I was thinking about it, to me, it’s really like that web of learning that I talk about. So many bits of life are connected in interesting ways and that’s what’s bringing the richness of understanding, not that one point of information or a belief that is disconnected from a person’s experience.

So, I remember thinking back when I was first playing with this paradigm shift, I just kind of stopped jumping in to share my strong belief in the moment. And it felt a bit like I was betraying myself by not sharing my hard earned knowledge with the people that I loved, earnestly trying to convince them of its validity and that it’s the one right way in the circumstances, like it makes sense.

But when I managed to put the “it makes sense to me, let’s see how things unfold here,” oh my gosh, they unfolded in such interesting ways, in ways that I could see and I look back on that moment more closely aligned with the person that they were at that time, and in ways that they learned something that stayed with them. It was a meaningful experience for them instead of me popping in with what the cumulative belief of all my meaningful experiences along the way.

So, it doesn’t mean that I’m tossing my belief, because I know it works well for me. And nor does it mean never sharing what works for me. Those are like the opposite ends of that spectrum, and at first I needed to not share so I could see well, what would happen? Would the world end? Would they choose like something that I wouldn’t choose and it was a big catastrophe? Those pieces did not happen.

So, for me, it came to me just being more careful to share my stronger beliefs without the energy of an expectation that others take it on as their truth. I want to be in that space or that mindset first before I share, where I can see it has more information that I’m sharing with them. They learn a little bit about me, because this is something that is meaningful to me and makes sense for me and so they see how I kind of see the world, how I navigate things, and they’re welcome to try it out and see if it fits for them, see if they might want to tweak it without any fear of feeling judged by me if it didn’t work for them, at least for now. It’s not that this is your one opportunity to decide or not to adopt this belief wholesale. There are going to be so many experiences now and into the future.

There are experiences now where I get to revisit my strong beliefs and see if they are still working for me and see if they’re still making sense. So each moment is just like another point in that web of learning, another piece of experience that we can bring with us and it just makes the next time something similar comes up a richer moment because we have more experience and more thoughts and stuff to draw from as we come up with the plan for this time.

ANNA: Yeah, I think the thing that stood out for me that you were just talking about is how unique our journey is to the strong belief and how it is so involved. We really don’t just kind of pop with a strong belief out of nowhere. It comes from this experience. It comes from going down a road that was maybe the opposite and realizing that doesn’t feel good. We’re taking in information. So, again, so personality-dependent. Have I done a lot of research about this? And I feel really strongly and I’ve done all these pieces. But that’s what holds it up is all of that experience that I’m bringing to that moment. So, like you said, we just really can’t hand it over to someone and think that it’s going to have the same meaning to them.

And I think the challenge becomes, too, if we’re coming at people with the strong belief and not really giving them a chance to even have a chance to figure out if it works for them and try it on. We’re coming with this judgment piece. That was the other thing you said that I thought was important. I think it can lead people to believe we’re judging them if they don’t hold the same strong belief, whether that’s our children or partner or friends. And so, that’s not where we foster understanding. That’s not where we foster connection.

Because I do have strong beliefs, 100%. I have strong beliefs. But like you said, it’s from my learning what I know about me. And I can get excited about sharing those beliefs. But just like you, I had to go through a process of like slowing some of that down, making sure there was room for conversation, understanding what’s happening with the people around me so that we could have a more rich conversation and it didn’t feel like that judgment piece was coming in.

ERIKA: I mean, it is such an interesting and rich topic. And that’s why I think it comes up a lot. Because what it can feel like is, when we’re the one with the strong belief, it can feel like, “But this is a fact. And my child is going against this fact of life that I know in my heart is so true and right and good.”

And so, that’s where you get those relationship rubs. But if we come in really believing there is only this one right way, then we can put a lot of judgment on the other person, not give them room to come up with their own answers to things. And we forget about that whole history that we have of, how did we even get to have this belief? And I know we’ve seen lots of examples, just around of people who have had a strong belief that they grew up with and then change it in adulthood. Strong beliefs, even when they’re that strong, can change.

And so, I think just remembering that and noticing that there’s not one right way. And no matter what belief you’re thinking about, whether it’s something about diet or something about a religious belief or something about the right way to do a certain thing, any belief that you can kind of think of, you can find people who are doing it another way and it’s working out okay for them. And so, I think just noticing that, remembering that, and any time I start thinking, “They should do this,” you know, “They should be like this, I figured it out and this is the way,” that’s a good clue for me to kind of pause and get a little more curious about like, okay, this is probably my strong belief and not something that I need to give to everyone else.

But I think also there could be excitement about our strong beliefs that make it hard to not try to put that on everyone else, especially if we’ve been through a long period of learning and figuring out and trying to see, like, okay, what is the best diet? And then we start eating this way and we feel great and we want to convince everyone in the world. And so that comes from a good place. But once you start to see the kind of rubs in the relationship, either with your kids or other people in your lives, I think that’s interesting. It’s just another place to do that navigating of our relationships.

PAM: I think what helped me, because thinking back, that deschooling season of our journey when we’re questioning so many things, so it sparked, Erika, when you said it feels like a truth, right? And so, what was helping me was also exploring what we’ve come to describe as people are different.

Because it’s so easy to just assume other people are experiencing the world the same way we are, right? Because that is the only lens we have. So, the idea that people are different, that people could be experiencing things differently. We talk about sometimes not putting ourselves in their shoes, but looking through their eyes. All those ideas alongside, they helped me understand how a strong belief could be my truth. Instead of the truth.

And that it didn’t diminish it just because it was my truth. It’s a powerful thing, because now that self-awareness that people are different, I can now really own and embrace what’s working for me. So it was just really helpful to be able to see that separation that helped me more embrace my strong belief without feeling I had to give it up, because it wasn’t the truth. Well, then, what is the truth? It’s like, it’s okay that it works for me. And there are some really good reasons why it may not work for someone else. It may not work for my child.

Whether it’s from personality things, or just experiences, or it’s a different world 20 years later than when I was whatever age. There’s so many different aspects to it. And once you start to see the context, right? We talk about context so much. Then being able to bring that to this strong beliefs conversation going on in my head was really helpful.

ANNA: Yeah, I think the people are different thing is so critical here. And I feel like my kids definitely led the way with this paradigm shift for me. And even in little ways, like we experience temperature different. So, my mom was always like, have a coat on the kids, you know, that’s a thing. That’s a good parent. You’re bringing coats and putting coats on your kids. Not in Miami, but this is like up here where I live. And so I’m thinking, okay, that’s what you do.

But then I had a child that just ran hot. Did not want to wear shoes, did not want to wear coats. And I’m like, okay, why do I have a belief that somehow this is tied to like good parenting? And so, just that little bit of, she’s experiencing this exact same situation differently, even though that’s not a super strong belief, it started to crack that open for me to be like, okay, we actually do really have different experiences of the world.

We really do. Even something that, I mean, well, the temperature saying this shouldn’t that mean that you’re cold? But no, it doesn’t, because we’re all so different. And then it starts to go, oh, I’m really grounded outside and feel great when I move my body outside. This child doesn’t. It’s itchy and it’s scratchy and it’s warm and it doesn’t feel good and they don’t like it. Oh, okay. But aren’t we supposed to do this?

So then, it was just like slowly, this crack just got wider and wider as I realized we really do experience the world so differently. And then I feel like Pam, because you’ve been talking about open and curious for so long, that’s what I switched to. Like, okay, so if it’s not what I think it’s supposed to be, if it’s not, there’s this one right way, I want to be curious about how we’re finding our right ways and what that looks like.

And so it was, it was a really fascinating process for me. I really do remember these steps along the way, because I had a lot of strong opinions. I still do, but I was much more militant about them in my twenties, in early life for sure.

ERIKA. Yeah. I was thinking it feels like this is something that grows in with age, it becomes easier to see that everyone has their own beliefs as I get older, where in those college years and a little beyond that, it was like, no, there’s one right way and I know what it is. And so, that’s funny.

And I was thinking about this conversation also, once you start thinking about, what are my own strong beliefs? It’s possible that some of them are so externally influenced, that maybe they’re not even our own strong beliefs. Maybe they’re just part of a culture that we’re trying to be a part of. I’m thinking things like kids need to be outdoors or kids should go to bed early or things that you may see around you in parenting circles or with parent friends.

But if you sit down and really start to think about it, maybe those aren’t my actual strong beliefs. Maybe it’s just something that I’m hearing a lot and so that it starts to feel like it’s important. And so, yeah, just anytime if my kid’s pushing against being outside because it doesn’t feel good and it’s so hot and humid and sticky and terrible, it’s like, okay, so which is more important? The going outside and pushing that or is listening to them and knowing that people are different? I mean, there are still people enjoying being outside during this season in Miami and we aren’t and that’s okay.

But if I was going to take on that belief of, this is so important and everyone needs to spend time outside, it could get in the way of my relationship with my kids.

PAM: Yeah, I think that’s such a great point that some of our strong beliefs maybe were just adopted as the conventional wisdom that we hear all the time. So, that’s why it is so valuable to just take that moment to ask ourselves, where is that coming from? And is it something like that makes sense to me?

That was one of the things I did a lot of questioning about as we came to unschooling, which was like, so what does my experience look like? At first it was my experience with school growing up, that came with me wholesale, but what exactly did that look like? Which parts worked better for me? Which ones were more challenging? So taking the conventional wisdom around school and then asking, is that really true? And then looking back at my own literal experience to see what I could discover and then start to understand what it actually looked like to me and what I believed about it versus just the conventional story that I had just kind of adopted wholesale.

But it’s not like we can do this with everything all the time, right? It’s pretty challenging work and also, I mean, that’s what conventional wisdom is for, helping you move quickly through something. Oh, well, most people do it this way. I don’t think that’s going to make a big mess and we do it and totally good. Those are our shortcuts.

But it’s when they start to do things, right? Like rub in a relationship or end us up in a place where we’re not feeling comfortable anymore after we do the thing, like this isn’t working for me as I was hoping. And so, that is one other aspect I wanted to bring up too is when our strong beliefs get woven in with our personal values. Like, I value being open, as in sharing a level of details. Or I want us like to be an outdoor family. I want us to be out doing things or I want us to have dinners together or like whatever it is that we feel is a personal value but to recognize when we like a value like that actually isn’t just our own, right? It’s not a personal value. It includes other people when you have a family that you think should all be having dinner together and it can be so tricky.

I definitely had that and tried to do that, right? But navigating a value that requires other people to participate in it, oh my gosh, that’s when the rubs can start, right? And you can start to realize and question, is this really something that’s important to me? Why is it important to me? What does it look like? Because you start putting expectations on others and then you start looking through their eyes and you can see, oh I can see why this isn’t working for them, etc. It’s just like another, as you were saying, Erika, another good clue that we might want to revisit something and is it and just trying to think through like is this a value? Is this a belief? How am I bringing that into the world? Who am I expecting to not just take my belief but participate in my belief?

ANNA: Right. And I’m so glad you brought this one up. I definitely wanted you to, because I think it’s so critical. And I hope I’m going to articulate this in a way that makes sense, but there was an example on the Network around this that was interesting, because the strong belief that was kind of praised as a personal value was that everyone needs to contribute to the family as a whole. But it was rubbing. And so, it was causing friction and causing problems.

And you brought this up that that has to be tricky to have this personal belief that you need other people to participate in in order for it to feel good. And what I think is important for me to recognize is when I put it into a personal value which is really this strong belief that’s come and I now I’ve reframed it as a personal value it kind of shuts down the learning for me and for those around me, because I can kind of stand on my high horse of personal value. Like, this is this thing and it is a value that we should all hold to be good people. You can just hear it. It’s like rhetoric, almost. And it’s stopping me from seeing anything else.

And so, that was the clue for me of, oh okay if my personal value is to contribute in this way I can do that, right? That is something that I can do and show up. But if I’m wanting someone else to, I’m not taking them into consideration because we’re not even having a conversation about it. I’ve just already decided that I need you to.

And so, what was cool about the situation in the Network is they really started having different kinds of conversations and they started figuring out how to meet all the needs and they started breaking it down into, okay who feels which way about what things what feels harder? Let’s learn about each other. And so, there was all this rich learning and it became so much richer than standing here on this place of, I’m right because this is this personal value.

And so, I love that additional learning about each other. And to me these are things that are just so important about learning to live with other human beings in general and it’s not about whatever the particular value is, because we all have different ones. And like you said, Erika, it could be the early bird gets the worm so everybody needs to go to bed early and get up early, so they’re filtering from all of these cultural narratives. But then we create it as a value that you’re a better person if you’re doing that, if you’re out there getting this. And so, I think it would just be really fun for people to think about, where do I have this strong belief and is it about diet or sleep or parenting or whatever? And again, it’s not about letting go of the strong belief, because you know I’m a huge advocate for children I have a lot of strong beliefs about how I would love all children to be treated, but if I stand there I’m not learning, I’m not reaching, I’m not connecting with anybody. And so, that’s kind of what sticks out for me, and so I love that you brought that point up.

ERIKA: Yeah, I really liked that conversation on the Network, too, and I feel like what was interesting about it is that if I feel like I have a value of everyone in the family contributes and that feels like very important and sacred and wonderful to me, then I think everyone else should also feel that way and that the work that they do to contribute is coming because we have that same shared value/belief. And so, it’s coming from this deeper place.

And so, then that’s why it rubs, because if they’re not doing chores, it doesn’t just mean they were busy, it means they don’t value the family in the same way that I do. Because it’s equating two things that aren’t necessarily equal. And so, if the thing is we need to get all the chores done around the house, that’s one conversation. If it’s, I like to feel connected as a family, that’s an entirely different conversation where we could figure out other ways to feel connected to each other that don’t have to be we’re all working together to clean the house.

Because obviously people are going to have different opinions about what feels good. And so, yeah it was just super interesting and fun to unpack some of these beliefs for ourselves.

PAM: Yeah exactly. And I think what you mentioned there, Erika, too, is it just bubbled up for me how often as well that whole productivity conversation comes up. Because, oh if I can make this thing mean this and this and this that’s effective and efficient and like we bundle it all together and hand it to somebody else. But they don’t know all these nuanced meanings and all the little tick boxes that we’re checking off in our head that this means and they’re just like maybe doing the thing.

ERIKA: Like for a family dinner, I could totally picture that, where someone in the family is like, well I’m not hungry, so I don’t want to eat right now. But then it’s like, no but to me, it’s everything. This is our only moment of connection and it’s so important and deep. And so, yeah a lot more conversations and peeling apart the parts that you’re wanting.

ANNA: Right! Because, in that situation, are we even communicating that? So, we have it in our head that the family dinner means we’re all valuing each other and finding out about each other’s day, but have we said that? Or are we just saying, come to dinner? Because again, that child who’s not hungry may be like, oh but if you want to hear about my day or I could hear about your day, that might be fine. But it’s interesting to think about how much we do in our head with these ideas and how much we’re putting on it, which maybe we aren’t even communicating. And that’s why those conversations can be so helpful to figure out what are the priorities for each person. And how do we make sure we meet those in a way that feels good to everybody?

ERIKA: Well, this one has been a lot of fun! We hope you enjoyed our conversation and maybe had an aha moment or picked up some ideas to consider on your own unschooling journey. If you enjoy these kinds of conversations I think you would love the Living Joyfully Network. It’s such an amazing group of people connecting, having thoughtful conversations about all the things we encounter in our unschooling lives and you can learn more at livingjoyfullyshop.com. Just click on community at the top of the page and we hope to meet you there.And you can also check out our new Substack at whenschoolisntworking.substack.com. Thank you for listening and we’ll see you next time.

ANNA AND PAM: Bye!

In this episode, we’re sharing a conversation that Pam had with Iris Chen in 2018. At the time, Iris was new to unschooling her two sons in China and was writing blog posts about her experience at her website, Untigering. Pam and Iris talked about why she and her husband decided to move to China, her family’s move to unschooling, what unschooling in China looks like, deschooling expectations around achievement, feeling like an outsider in both Chinese and American societies, and lots more!

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family?

I love how you describe your blog, untigering.com, on your about page: “Untigering is a blog about my adventures of trying to be parent in the tension of my Chineseness and Americanness. It’s about me moving away from being a typical tiger mom, but still wanting to hold on to my cultural heritage. It’s about figuring out what I believe about identity, family, and success as an outsider to both societies.” Let’s start with your shifting definition of success. You and your husband were well on your way to fulfilling the “American Dream” when you guys did a complete 180. How did that come about?

And then you had children. How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

I’m really curious about unschooling in China. Can you share a bit about your experience and the pros and cons you see?

You have a great blog post about the value of letting go of expectations, especially ones around achievement. When a child dives into an interest it’s so easy for us to start envisioning that as their lifelong passion and career, like we need to rationalize to ourselves that it’s okay to let them have at it. Maybe we try to convince ourselves we’re just being supportive, but it can quickly backfire, can’t it?

I’d love to talk some more about your experience with the tension of feeling like an outsider in both Chinese and American societies. Can you share your thoughts around the process of weaving together your cultural heritage with what you’re discovering makes sense to you about children, learning, parenting, and family? What does that look like for you?

You recently published a blog post titled, ‘Unschooling as an Asian American is an Act of Resistance.’ I thought it was a great piece and was hoping you’d share your thoughts about it here.

What is your favourite thing about unschooling right now?

Iris’s blog, untigering.com

Scott Noelle’s podcast episode

The Alliance for Self-Directed Education

Peter Gray’s article, Kids Learn Math Easily When They Control Their Own Learning

Iris’s blog post, Pros and Cons of Unschooling in China

Iris’s blog post, 3 Unschooling Expectations and Why We Shouldn’t Have Them

Idzie Desmarais’s blog post, In Praise of The Unexceptional: Because Unschooling Doesn’t Have to Be Impressive

Iris recently went to see the play Soft Power

Iris’s blog post, Unschooling as an Asian American is an Act of Resistance

Iris’s Facebook page, Untigering: Adventures of a deconstructing Tiger Mother

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

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. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

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?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

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

PAM: Welcome! I’m Pam Laricchia from livingjoyfully.ca, and today I’m here with Iris Chen. Hi Iris!

IRIS: Hello Pam.

PAM: Hello! Iris is an unschooling mom and I came across her work a few months ago. I really enjoyed reading around her website, untigering.com, and I was super excited when she agreed to come on the podcast!

So, to get us started Iris …

IRIS: Sure! So, I am a Chinese American, and I was born in the States and grew up in the States and Canada actually. After I got married, we moved out to China to teach English, and then we had two boys out there in China.

And I’ve only been unschooling for about a year but have really just fallen in love with it.

PAM: Oh, that’s awesome, yeah, and it’s doesn’t take too long once you start diving in, does it? If it’s for you, if it’s a good match, it just sucks you right in, right?

IRIS: Yes, yes.

PAM: So, I love how you describe your blog, untigering.com, in your about page and I just wanted to read a little quote from it.

“Untigering is about my adventures of me trying to be an parent in the tension of my Chineseness and Americanness. It’s about me wanting to move away from being a tiger mom, but still wanting to hold on to my cultural heritage. It’s about figuring out what I believe about identity, family and success, as an outsider to both societies.”

And look! I got goosebumps again just as I was reading it.

IRIS: Yeah!

So, we lived in the Silicon Valley. It’s a very driven, very ambitious culture here, and, at that time, my husband had been working for five years as an electrical engineer, and was doing well, and we were living a very comfortable, good life.

But I think we just wanted something different; we wanted something meaningful. We wanted to be of service somewhere. And we wanted a sense of adventure too, something different. And so, we went to China just planning on teaching English for just a year—we didn’t expect on staying out for very long.

We were going to give it a year and have a good time with it. But once we got out there, we just fell in love with it—fell in love with the people and the culture. I mean we are both Chinese, but yeah, just really falling in love with the people and the culture there. And ended up staying for the next 15 years and have been there ever since!

PAM: Was the biggest piece when you were talking about wanting to feel like you were doing service kinds of work, helping people—that was something you felt was missing? Was that a big chunk of it?

IRIS: Yeah.

I think sometimes when you stay in your own culture, you are stuck in these scripts or these tracks that ‘everybody around you is doing this,’ ‘everybody else is buying their house and having children,’ or whatever. And I think we just wanted to be intentional about the choices we made—we didn’t want to just do what everybody else was doing. But we also wanted to make intentional choices about what we wanted to do with our lives.

PAM: That’s cool! So, it was noticing that you on this track, I guess, the definition of success for people, right? And you guys were rocking that.

IRIS: Yeah, yeah, we were doing well…

PAM: And it became time to question it. Is that how?

IRIS: Yeah, Definitely. And not to say that that is wrong, but are we being intentional and mindful about that choice. For us, we just felt like that wasn’t our path, that wasn’t our calling. We wanted something different for our lives.

PAM: I love that point too, because, just because it’s conventional doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, right? Like, you said, just knowing which path is feeling good for you and is working for you, right?

IRIS: Right, exactly! I feel that follows really closely with unschooling too. It’s not that you can’t have a conventional education, or you can’t go to college. It’s not about that. It’s about doing it intentionally and because it’s meaningful and purposeful for you. Don’t because it’s just with you do.

PAM: I love that word, purposeful, because that shows the intention behind it, right? Because unschooling lives can run the gamut for young adults. And some, when you’re looking from the outside, can look very conventional, and some can look very unconventional, but they are all, either way, lived with intention and purpose. I love that.

IRIS: Yes yes yes.

PAM: I love that.

IRIS: Yeah. I had this blog called untigering, because I think I was a typical tiger mom. Like, I had very high standards for what I wanted my kids to do and to study. It was my full intention to send them—well, at first we were considering conventional homeschooling, and then we were thinking about sending them to local, Chinese school, because we were living in China. We thought that if we send them to local school, they will be fluent; they will be bilingual in both Chinese and English, and that was sort of like a high priority for me, so we were really trying to get them into a local school.

But that didn’t really work out because they didn’t have enough space for foreigners, so we went another option where we went to like a local, private Chinese school. And I think we had a good experience there, but after a few years there, I felt that there was a lot about the schooling mindset that I didn’t agree with—that didn’t resonate with me. Because I had sort of part-time homeschooled them when they were younger, I felt that there was just a lot of wasted time, a lot of busy work. A lot of it was meaningless, that you just felt like you had to do as part of school.

And I was also teaching there at that school, and I was sucked into those types of patterns too, even though I didn’t believe in them, like giving homework just to give homework, or seeing what the results of grades like a mark did. They just cared about looking at the grade, they didn’t care about whether or not they understood the material. Or, even seeing my kids. They did really well in that environment, but then noticing that they were doing things more for the affirmation of the teacher; like, they were trying to get recognition and saying, “Look! Look at this!” And comparisons and stuff like that.

So, I was noticing, even though they were doing well, attitudes that were inadvertently passed on to them because of this environment. I had not really been exposed to unschooling, but I listened to a parenting conference and one of the speakers was Scott Noelle who is part of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, I think, and he wasn’t really talking about unschooling, but at the end of his talk, he referenced it.

Then I went to the website and read what self-directed education was about. I just really resonated with it and felt like, “Oh, this is something that I really believe in; or I want to believe in.” It was a very radical way—at least for me—of looking at education and sort of letting go of the reins. But there was something very appealing for me, especially since, at the time, I had to think of other options, because the school that I was sending my kids to was shutting down.

Pretty much my only option was to homeschool, and yet I was really stressed by that idea because I knew that if I took a schooling mindset and applied it to homeschooling, that would just create so much stress in my family life and for my kids because I’d just be this really controlling mom trying to get them to do their work. And I didn’t want to do that!

And so, once I discovered unschooling, yeah, I think I just really resonated with it, and was excited about what that meant for my relationship with my kids and a way that we could homeschool that would just work for us.

PAM: That’s cool! Yeah!

You were mentioning that you were teaching at the school and you were doing all the things that were expected. You mentioned, giving homework, paying attention to grades, and using that as a measure etc. And it’s so interesting to see that, and you were doing it because you had to in that situation, and then imagining having to do that at home, because it wasn’t something that you really believed in. Is that kind of how it felt, like you would have to bring that home?

IRIS: Yeah, definitely. And actually, in the school environment, I felt frustrated, because I was behaving in ways that I didn’t believe in either. Like, maybe I was just putting on that teacher hat and feeling like I had to be very authoritarian in some ways, like, “sit in your seat, pay attention, follow along,” you know…

PAM: Yeah, you were playing that role rather than being yourself.

IRIS: Yeah. Right. Like, interacting with them in the way that I would if they were just my kids or we were just home together. So, just the role of being a teacher and being in that role meant something to me, where I needed to be the one imparting information and they needed to absorb it or whatever, so…

PAM: And I guess it might be a little bit easier trying to do that within the institution because all the teachers are doing it, whereas at home, ‘Oh now it will just be me trying to play that role.’ That could be a lot harder!

IRIS: I don’t think my kids would like it, would respond well to it either, me always wearing the teacher hat.

PAM: Yeah, that’s such a good point too. So, did the school close? Did you guys finish out they year there, and then the school closed, and then you kind of transitioned into it at home?

IRIS: Yes. So, the school closed and we transitioned to what we were doing at home. A lot of the kids—it was a private, local school, and so all of the kids are pretty much local Chinese kids—they went back to their different situations, like, to a local school, or a private school, or to other options. But yeah, for us, we ended up homeschooling.

PAM: Did you pretty much end up unschooling at home from the beginning?

IRIS: At that point, yeah. It was sort of like we had our summer off and then we started.

At the beginning, I was like, “There’s a few things that we are going to do,” so, I wasn’t in total “jump in the deep end.” We were still in the process of deschooling. So, I was like, “We still gotta do math.” You know, “We’re Asians, we do math!” At that point, I was not yet ready to let go of that and felt like that needed to be taught. And then we did other things like Chinese class and piano class, but other than that, I was really able to sort of let the rest of it go.

I would read to them—sometimes I would pick a book or they would pick a book and I would read aloud to them. But the rest of the day was pretty open and they could do what they wanted to do. But I think after a few weeks into it, because of my changing views and my philosophy of unschooling, making them do math didn’t make sense to me anymore. Because, if I truly believe that kids can learn through life and learn naturally in ways that are meaningful for them, then why was I making them sit and fill out these worksheets that didn’t have meaning for them?

And I also read, I think it was a Peter Gray article about learning math, and how kids in the future if they want to go into a field that requires math, that they can actually learn it really quickly, because they already have the skills to know how to learn. So, they don’t have to spend their entire childhood spending hours and hours doing workbooks and learning math, they can just go on and learn it really quickly if they want to. And so, I think hearing those things and wrestling with it a little more allowed me to let go of the math. So yeah, I no longer require them do math. That was part of my deschooling process.

PAM: Oh absolutely. I think whatever “the thing” is for us—whether it’s math, or maybe it’s reading, or spelling. That was something that I held onto for a little while, just for the first couple of weeks. Because, whatever that one thing is, then we see them all the rest of the time, and see how much they are learning, and we see them in action. And we’re continuing to learn and read ourselves. So, I think that’s a pretty normal transition time, because there’s always that one last thing that it’s hard for us to let go of. But as we keep going just a few weeks, it starts to gel together and we can kind of release that last big thing, right?

IRIS: Yeah. Absolutely.

The other two things that I was holding onto was Chinese—Chinese language lessons—and piano. And we live in China, so it sort of made sense. And with piano, that is something that they had wanted to do when they were younger, but it’s been four years and we were still having them do it, and sometimes there was a lot of tension around piano practice and stuff like that. So, it wasn’t until more recently, maybe a couple of months ago, where we actually again had to question why we were continuing those activities and whether or not those activities were things that our kids wanted to do.

So, we put them before them and asked, “Do you want to continue? These are the reasons that we think, from our perspective, but what do you guys think?” And it was interesting, because they didn’t really want to continue with the Chinese lessons, but they did want to continue with the piano. That was actually really affirming to us in a way, because we had thought that maybe if we didn’t force them to do it that they wouldn’t do either. But to know that once they had the option to consider for themselves and really tap into their own desires, that they realized that, “I do really want to continue with the piano.” So, now as we move forward, at least with the piano, they can continue with enjoyment, and not feeling like it’s not mom and dad making me do it, but that they are in control.

PAM: That’s a really great point. It is so interesting to see them, executing their agency, I guess, in making choices. And it’s nice to know that you get to that point in the relationship—it might have been a few months till you guys felt like you could ask that question and get a real answer from them; because at first, it could be very reactionary. Like you said, we figured at first it could be like “No I don’t want to do anything because you were making me do that.” But to actually take the time to think about it and to make a choice for what really works for them, right?

IRIS: Right, that’s a really good point.

I think sometimes they might react because we have been so controlling and we’ve robbed them of that agency for so long, so, once they have agency they’re like, “Ok, well, I’m just going to rebel, or I’m just going to do my own thing and not do what I know you want me to do.”

But yeah, I think that can be a process too, allowing them to do that until they get to the point where there is that trust and they are like, “Oh, mom and dad honor my choices, and maybe some of what I want to do is what mom and dad want me to do, and that’s okay.”

PAM: Yeah, that’s such a huge process—I call it deschooling for us—but also for the kids too because it’s building that relationship and that trust back in, right? Because if they say no to everything that’s ok too. And when you ask, it’s about being ok with the no. And none of these noes are forever. They can always, like you said, later on, say, “Hey, you know what, I think maybe I do want to pick that back up.”

But now they’ve gotten to a point in the relationship that they know they are making that choice for themselves, not to please you, and you know that too.

IRIS: So, that was something that both my husband and I had to be ok with, it like, “Ok, if they say no to both of these things, we have to be ok with this, rather than trying to manipulate them to choose something.” Being ok with the no.

I think with unschooling we are always hoping that they will say yes to something, that they will grab onto something that they really love, but I think that for kids who haven’t been given a lot of freedom, I think the first choice is to say no, and they have to have the freedom to do that.

PAM: That finally helps them to feel powerful when they haven’t felt like they’ve had a lot of power.

IRIS: Yeah, I actually wrote a blog post about this, and I would be interested to know if there are any other unschoolers in China. I have no idea.

But I think one of the really challenging things is the easy access to information because we have a firewall. It’s really hard to get information online, and I feel like probably for a lot of unschoolers, a lot of the information they get is online. So, that is sometimes really challenging for us. We can’t get on YouTube or Twitter or Instagram or Facebook without a VPN—a virtual private network. Sometimes the Internet makes it hard to get all those things. I think that is a challenge.

I think another thing is just the cultural values is just very high on academics. It’s definitely the whole society is very focused on children doing well in school—getting the good grades, doing well on the tests. We are in an environment that really pushes those types of values. So, we’re pretty weird to them. So that’s also, I guess, another challenge.

And I think there’s also the lack of affordable resources. Whereas here I feel like there’s the library, the community center, there’s the free days at the museum, there’s nature, there’s a lot to work with, and there’s also a community—a pretty strong unschooling or homeschooling community.

I think in China there aren’t a lot of free resources, because most families only have one child and they are willing to pay a lot of money for their child to do cool stuff. And so, a lot of things cost a lot of money, so in that way there aren’t a lot of affordable resources, in my opinion. We do have a homeschooling community, which I’m very, very thankful for, but not necessarily unschooling, so not very many people with the same perspective on schooling.

So those are some of the cons, but those can also be pros too, in my mind. Just the fact that because they culture emphasizes so strongly on academics, people actually see the detrimental parts of that. They see how the system is really broken and they don’t want that for their kids, but their choices are limited and it’s pretty risky for them to try other things. So, in some ways they see a more extreme example of the negative things we see in schooling in the west. They know something needs to change, or something isn’t right here. They can understand the value of more choice, more freedom, more agency. Like, when I tell my friends about it, it’s something that sounds really amazing, but it’s too outside of the box for them at this point.

And I think also the bicultural aspect of living oversees is something that’s built-in for us. This sense of learning from another culture, learning a different language, eating different types of foods. Sort of like the worldschooling thing, right? We are learning from life and our perspective isn’t just based on our own experience or our own culture—you’re exposed to different people and different cultures. So that’s a big one too.

PAM: That’s really interesting. Especially the part that academics are such a big focus, and there’s so much pressure on the kids, they really see the negative effects. And yes, I can see that yeah, it’s totally too out of the box to step away from it, but I can imagine them wanting to figure out ways to support their kids, while still putting the pressure on? You know what I mean? It seems it’s quite a dichotomy, but I can see how, “This is what we have to do, this kind of pressure, but I’m going to help you to live with it, because this is just the way it has to be,” right?

IRIS: Yeah, there’s definitely that attitude, it’s like, “Well, this is the way it is. How can I help and support you? And I know it’s really stressful and unfair, but this is the way it is.”

So, I feel that I recognize that I have a lot of privilege in this in terms of the choices that I have as a foreigner living in America, and, even if I was in America, I’m very thankful for the privilege to not have to send my kids to school. So, I really try to not try to push unschooling upon my Chinese friends, because I know that that’s an unfair standard for them, I guess. All I know is that I believe in it, and I’m going for it, and I will support you in whatever choices that you make because I know that you are doing what’s best for your child too.

PAM: Exactly, because everybody’s choices to make right? And they see you living it. You don’t have to convince them or change their minds or anything. Just by seeing you living it they know it’s an option. I can’t imagine trying to put pressure on that or trying to convince them. That won’t help at all, will it?

IRISI: I have talked to some local moms who have chosen alternative ways of doing education and I’m so proud of them. I mean, it’s a really big risk and a really big jump for them. So, I do want to support them as much as I can and to help them to think about education in a different way so that it’s not so scary for them, because it is really scary for them to make choices like that.

PAM: And I mean, that’s the thing about living out in the world as you do—people know you’re there when they have questions or are even just curious. Not even that they are planning a move in the near future, but just curious to learn a little bit more and ask questions. That’s awesome that you’re speaking with them and sharing your experience. That’s awesome. And so, how often do you guys visit in the States then?

IRIS: We come back every summer. I’m not sure how my kids feel. I mean, we grew up in the States, so we are very comfortable in both cultures. I wonder how my kids feel about it? But they love visiting the States and seeing family and everything. We come back every summer for about two months.

PAM: That’s awesome. I will definitely share a link to that blog post.

IRIS: Yes. I think sometimes that our version of support is actually in the guise of support, but we are actually coming in with our own exceptions, like “Oh, they are going to be amazing at this!” Or, “They are going to go to the Olympics!” Or, “They are going to win an amazing prize!” But we’re actually coming in with our own expectations, and in a lot of ways it’s still about achievement and outside affirmation rather than about the joy and the process of learning something new.

So, maybe part of the appeal of unschooling for me in the beginning was like, ‘Oh, these kids are doing amazing things and they are following their passions, but I think I just read this headline by Idzie Desmarais who writes “I’m Unschooled…” What does she write?

PAM: I’m Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write.

IRIS: Yes, I can write. Yes! And it’s like, sometimes our kids are unexceptional, and why do we have this pressure that we put on our kids to be exceptional and to be a genius at a young age? I mean, some are, and that’s great, but how just to accept our kids where they’re at and just to be fellow sojourners with them in the process of their learning.

I think something that I’m not actually good at right now is actually empowering them and giving them the resources. Sometimes I’m just like, “Oh, just use the free app and see how much you get out of it.” But I don’t know if that’s bad either, because if they really are into it, then they will let me know, and then I will hopefully get them the resources. Maybe in the meantime they can just dabble and that’s ok too.

PAM: Yeah, I think that’s a great point, and I kinda think of it as a dance. I often call it the dance of parenting, because it’s like, you don’t want to overpower them with stuff, and step on their toes and kind of take over like you’re directing, like you’re leading—like in dance terms. But you also want to react to their lead, right? As long as you are reasonably comfortable that in the relationship, if they want more, they’ll say something.

And for us, that’s part of making sure we’re connected, staying connected. Asking them, “How’s that free app going? Did you finish all the stuff that was available there? Did you want a little bit more?” Not always expecting them to come to you. So, again, it’s the dance, right?

You don’t expect them to come, but you don’t want to push too hard, so that they feel like you’re controlling or like you’ve got some kind of expectation hiding in there. So yeah, it’s just the push and pull, back and forth. It’s living together.

IRIS: So, I think that’s something that I really had to learn to step back and hold my tongue and really not try to strew too hard. Like, we go to the library and there’s all these books that I think they might be interested in, and I like ask them, “Do you want to read this?” And they slip through and they are like, “Nope.” And I have to be ok with that! Maybe in the past I would have been like, “Well, I’m going to borrow it anyways and read it to you.” And I’m just backing off and saying. “It’s ok, you’re reading a lot of other stuff.”

My boys are really into coding and gaming and stuff, and so, we are back in the States and I know some people at gaming companies, people who are coders and stuff like that. And so, I asked them, do you want me to ask if you can visit this gaming company or whatever. And I thought this would be really fun for them and they are like, “Ehhhh.” So, there are ways that I’m trying to open doors for them and help them improve or whatever, but they are just not there yet, and so I have to be ok with that.

PAM: I love that example because I had that so many times over the years. Because, they are at a place, and you can kind of see next steps, a few steps down, but I came to realize that that’s a few steps down the path that I envision, right?

So, we are all surprised when I say, ‘I have this way to contact this person, that’s a few steps down. Would you like to go hang out with them, meet them,’ whatever, and they are like, ‘no thanks.’ Because we have no idea what path is their’s, and even if they’re ready to take a next step—maybe they are completely comfortable where they are.

It’s a lot of our work, isn’t it? Thinking that through, figuring that out, realizing that not all of these plans, all these possibilities that we are envisioning for them around the spot that they are in, may be completely different from what they are, right?

IRIS: And my kids are like eight and ten. So, I have to realize that they are still young and there’s no need to box them in yet. See, the tiger mom in me. See, I still need to do that, to untiger.

PAM: Well yeah, because they have this time, if they have the interest, they could be rocking it a few years from now, right? But but but…

IRIS: Exactly. I realize a lot of it is about my own aspirations, my own projections for them, so I need to let that go…

PAM: Because it’s our envisioning their achievement at a young age. So again, it’s our thinking, our conventional definition of success. And it can sneak up on us in so many different ways, can’t it?

IRIS: Yep yep.

PAM: Um, let’s see. Yes!

IRIS: Sure. Yeah, It’s a really big question, and I’m still in process. I just went to watch this play last night called Soft Power, and it’s like a, they call it a Chinese musical about America, so it’s written by an Asian American, but it’s sort of like a Chinese view of what America is like.

And there are some scenes in it where, it’s like, as an Asian American in America, I’m never American enough, I’m not western enough, I’m not white enough. And in China, I’m not Chinese enough—like, my Chinese isn’t good enough, my ways of communicating aren’t Chinese enough. And so, in both culture, we are outsiders, or there’s feelings of not being enough, not belonging or whatever.

But I think there is also value in that, in that we can sort of step back and be observers of both cultures, so that we can sort of critique both cultures but also celebrate both cultures so that I don’t have to feel defensive about America. If there’s like something about America that’s gone terribly wrong, I don’t have to say, “Oh, I’m an American. I need to defend it.” or I don’t need to be patriotic or defend it. And same with Chinese culture. If something says something bad about Chinese culture, I can also accept it or deconstruct it or whatever because I’m a little bit of an outsider.

And so, I’m finding that being in this position as an Asian American, I can be a lot more intentional about the things from different cultures that I am incorporating into my family life and into my parenting, so, it doesn’t have to be fully western, or and it doesn’t have to be fully Chinese. Like, nowadays we are more of a global society, and I think if we had the humility to learn from each other, that there are ways that we can learn from different cultures.

I’m just reading all these articles about the Mayan culture in Mexico, and how their children are very different from American children, and how can we learn from that culture, and just how the blessing of being bicultural is that we can be a lot more intentional about the things that we take from each culture.

For example, Chinese culture, the values that we have, the focus on family is very strong, and respect and responsibility and just working hard, and these are things that I associate with Chinese culture. And those are good values, I believe in those values, but I think the how—the way we get to that—is also important, and so maybe the how is a more western approach, because the Chinese way of getting to these values is often through patriarchy, through authoritarianism, through shame.

Those are maybe the ways that sort of get embedded into the culture in a lot of ways, and now that I can see that that’s not how I want to get to those values, I can find other ways to get to those values that are more respectful and provide more agency and freedom. Those are still values that I want to honor and instill in my family, but it’s just a matter of how we get there.

PAM: Yeah, I loved that. I loved the realization that you can still get to the same place, but a different way, with a different path. It’s not, ‘If you don’t use these authoritarian shame control tools, you’ll never get there.’ Like, that’s the message that they use to continue parenting and just structuring society these ways. But to realize that you can still get there but in different way, that’s eye opening, right?

IRIS: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I think—and I’m just speaking for myself as an Asian American—we don’t have a lot of models or examples that we have seen of a family dynamic that operates like that. I think that, at least for me, I’m feeling my way through.

Like, we have the typical white, western family, but in my experience, Asian families, the way we interact, the dynamics are a little bit different. Just feeling our way through so that we can uphold our Asian values and the things that we love about our Asian culture, while doing it in a respectful and honoring way. That seems very un-Asian in some ways.

PAM: I’m really curious. You were talking about being bicultural and the advantage in that you could choose what resonated with you from both cultures. So, it became more about, you’re already open to choices, it sounds like, right? Did that kind of help when you discovered unschooling, which is focused on choices? Did that help a bit that you were already picking and choosing things that were working for you, that this was just kind of another thing that you were going to pick?

IRIS: I think so! I think that living overseas made our lifestyle, very intentional. Because we didn’t totally fit into that culture, and we weren’t going to just bring American culture over there either, right? So, it was definitely we made very intentional choices about how we were going to live, and the aspects of American culture that we wanted to bring over that were important to us, but ways that we wanted to incorporate the culture around us too. And so I think that did give us the freedom to be more intentional and purposeful—those words keep coming up!—about the choices we made with schooling.

So, maybe if we had lived here in the States we wouldn’t have had to question it was much, because that’s just the way everyone does it, but because we had to be really intentional about that as we lived overseas. In some ways it opens the doors for us for a lot more options in some ways, because we aren’t stuck in a certain track.

PAM: I can’t remember, I’m going to butcher the quote completely, but you know “once your mind opens to a new idea, right? Or grows from a new idea, it can never go back.” Like, once you see one choice and you make a little bit different choice, all of a sudden you see more of them everywhere.

IRIS: Yeah.

PAM: Well, that’s beautiful.

IRIS: That blog post was about how, as a Chinese American specifically, it adds a different layer to my decision to unschool, and I think that’s true for a lot of people of color. It’s not solely about educational choice, that there is a component of resisting racism in it. So, part of it for me was about resisting.

There are three thing I was resisting, and the first one was resisting cultural pressures, and I talked about this already a little bit, about Chinese culture in particular emphasizes a lot on academics, like, the test-based system pretty much originated in China. So, really rejecting that view of what education looks like, so from the Asian side, resisting those cultural pressures of having high academics or going to an Ivy League school or having a certain type of career. So, I’m resisting those pressures on that side, which as a culture and maybe my extended family, they are like “What are you doing? That’s very strange what you’re doing!”

And I think also as a second generation immigrant, where a lot of our families have moved to the west to provide more opportunities, to provide these educational opportunities, and then if you don’t take them, they feel like, “Why? What did we sacrifice all that for?” So, there’s a lot of pressure on that side of it.

I think there is also the resistance of Asian stereotypes. Where maybe there’s views of like the stereotypical Asian nerd, or you see Jeremy Lin, who’s a Chinese American basketball player. He has faced a lot of racism because people just don’t see him as athletic. People just don’t see Asians as athletic, or attractive, or as outspoken, or as a leader. So, there are these ways that society stereotypes Asians as not having these opportunities, especially in a schooling environment.

So, there’s ways that we can achieve. Like, if we were on the academic route and we’re smart and that follows the stereotype so people can accept that, but if you don’t want to follow that stereotype, like if you aren’t super academic but you really enjoy dance, or you want to be a football player or whatever it is, there are stereotypes that prevent you from achieving those things in that environment.

I feel that unschooling is a way outside of that. That we can provide different opportunities that hopefully can resist some of those stereotypes and not have kids boxed into being a certain type of Asian. So, there’s that.

And then I think the last one was the curriculum, and the very white-centric, very patriotic, American, information that is given in most western schooling environments is very western-centric. And I think that we are realizing more and more that the story we are telling each other isn’t the whole truth, and that there are many different perspectives out there on the history. So, not only stories about our country or about the world that are very euro-centric, but pretty much all of curriculum is. Or even sports—most schools don’t necessarily have Asian sports like badminton, but they will have basketball or golf, things that are more associated with western things. Or the music that is played in band, or just a lot of different things that are just typical, white-centric instead of a more global, multicultural, view of the world. And so, unschooling can allow us to expose them to whatever resonates with them, and it doesn’t have to be just that one canon that we are used to.

PAM: Yeah, that’s so narrow, isn’t it? The curriculum, just in general. And yeah, you don’t really realize it because, if you’re on that path, you just absorb it because that is what we are supposed to do. Somebody has said, “This is what we cover,” and somebody has said “This is the angle of the story that we are going to cover.”

I loved the idea of it’s also being a resistance to all that—conventional isn’t even the right word, stereotypical probably is, for lack of a better word—white culture that’s there, and all of the other stories are ignored. And I love that idea of it also being a big act of resistance of that main cultural story.

That the world is so much bigger, so much wider. And that we can bring that world to the kids. But also, just standing up and choosing that it’s important to us. It’s our choice too for our families. That this is an important way that we want to be in the world and that we want to share with our children. Does that makes sense?

IRIS: Yeah, definitely. And where they can be sort of the protagonist of their own stories, whereas like, if we grow up in the typical American schooling system, we are never the protagonist of our own story system, we are never the protagonist in our own stories. The stories that we read, there are very few, there are more and more, but very few books that are required reading at that age, that tell stories about Asian Americans or Asians.

PAM: I love that point too, and I’ll share a link to that too.

IRIS: There are so many things, but I really think it’s not so much just about schooling, but it’s really a whole lifestyle sometimes, so I just really love how it gives me so many opportunities to connect with my children, and just the relationship that we have with one another and the growing respect we have for one another. And just enjoying each other.

Whereas, it’s not about herding my kids through the day, getting them to one class or that class, it’s really about just enjoying life together. It’s a really slow pace that allows us the opportunity to just connect and enjoy one another. So, I’m really thankful for that.

PAM: Oh, I love that. And you don’t realize how fast that pace is until you step away, do you think? I found that I appreciated that slowness and that ability to be in relationship and be in the moment with them way more than I even expected.

IRIS: Yeah, yeah, and I think that’s sort of my personality too, I’m more of a homebody I like things to be slower. I get overwhelmed with too many things. But, yeah, just really enjoying that opportunity to build relationship with them.

PAM: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me Iris. I’m so glad you said yes. I had so much fun!

IRIS: I had a lot of fun too. Thank you for asking me Pam.

PAM: Before we go, where is the best place for people to connect with you online?

IRIS: My blog is untigering.com and I also have a facebook page that’s Untigering. I also started a facebook group for parents who are or have been tiger parents, and that’s called Untigering Parents, and then on twitter I am @untigeringmom.

PAM: Excellent. I will put all those links in the show notes for people too. And thanks so much. Have a great day. Say hi to everyone. You guys are in the States now, right?

IRIS: Yes, we are.

PAM: Yay. Thank you! Bye!

IRIS: Ok, bye!

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Boundaries, Comfort Zones, and Capacity.

The idea of boundaries comes up pretty often in conventional circles, often through the lens of self-care, encouraging people to set boundaries with their kids, their partners, their parents, and so forth, and to stay strong in defending them. But in this episode, we’re digging into the language of boundaries and exploring some alternative ways of communicating our needs and learning about the important people in our lives.

We hope today’s episode sparks some fun insights for you!

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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. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

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

PAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully podcast. We are happy you’re interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.

And in today’s episode, we are going to talk about boundaries, comfort zones, and capacity. And it may end up being a bit longer than usual, but we are really excited to have this conversation. There are some big paradigm shifts around these ideas that can really have a positive impact on your relationships.

Now, our focus with this podcast is on cultivating connected, trusting, and respectful relationships with our partner, with our children, with anyone we choose to have that level of a relationship with. And we soon discover that that means deeply understanding ourselves so that we can more gracefully navigate the edges where we engage with others. So, that’s really the foundation of this conversation.

And to start with, let’s dive into the idea of boundaries, because it comes up pretty often in conventional circles, often through the lens of self-care, encouraging individuals to set strong boundaries with their partners, for their parents, to set boundaries with their kids, and just to stay strong in defending them.

And the motivation behind that idea makes a lot of sense. It’s to encourage us to not be manipulated into doing things that we don’t want to do. That makes a lot of sense. But the solution proposed of setting and defending boundaries can often create challenges and disconnection in our relationship. Can’t it?

ANNA: Yes! I just don’t find the boundary language particularly helpful. So, the energy of it feels very final and it has this feeling of drawing a line in the sand and, “I’m going to defend that line to the death,” and also that somehow, I’m letting myself down if I don’t uphold it, which is just this double whammy coming at us.

PAM: Exactly.

ANNA: So, the alternative I found is to look at the moment in front of me, to be honest about where I am, what I can do in that moment, because it changes. There are things we can’t anticipate about the situations we’re faced with.

And I think, especially with my loved ones, I want to have an energy of curiosity and connection. Standing on the other side of an intensely drawn boundary just doesn’t have the same feel to me. And this could be a language thing. I’m definitely a word person and I tend to respond energetically to words. So, I look to my language to help me cultivate the energy I want to bring and the person I want to be in a situation. That’s why these words are important to me and why I really love teasing apart these nuances.

PAM: Yes, yes. I find it very helpful to consider my language, as well, including the language I use when thinking or talking to myself. When I use the word “boundaries,” does it mean a hard stop to me? When I envision someone approaching it and approaching me, am I looking at the line or am I looking at the person?

Because what a pre-drawn line doesn’t do is consider the context of the moment. Am I feeling resourced and centered? Are they? How’s our day been going? What does their request look like through their eyes? What does it look like through my eyes? What constraints may be at play? Can we get curious together about ways to navigate it this time?

Because I think one of the things we worry about is, if I do it this time, I’ll have to do it every time. “There’s that boundary. I moved that boundary and now it’s forever there.” But that is not true. We are not giving tacit permission forever more. We’re chatting with them about this particular moment and that is how we learn more about each other.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. Exactly. And keeping in mind that context keeps it from feeling arbitrary to the other person involved as well. We’re reacting together to the context of the situation, and that’s where the learning’s happening.

And I do think boundaries can have a place when we’re faced with toxic relationships. This can be friends or even family from our family of origin. When a relationship is harming us, when we find ourselves tied in knots thinking about it, when we see it impacting our mental health or happiness, boundaries can be a helpful step to distance ourselves enough to see the situation more clearly. Even that doesn’t have to be a forever step, but it can be a self-preservation step to gain perspective and to decide if this relationship is one that will work for us going forward.

But if we’re choosing to spend our life with someone, I truly believe that boundary language just tends to shut down communication. It doesn’t leave room for finding solutions that feel good to both parties. And I think it’s important to realize that this is not about not expressing or meeting our needs, but when we do it in relationship, it looks so different.

If we want to have a consensual relationship where the parties involved are heard and seen and we find agreeable solutions, standing behind a hard boundary can get in the way of that. And I’ve found that I can honor who I am and still be open and curious to finding solutions that feel good to everyone involved.

PAM: Yes! I think that is such an important distinction. We’re talking about relationships with the people in our lives with whom we want to cultivate strong, connected, and trusting relationships.

So, when it comes to extended family or people at work, a boundary can be a useful tool to quickly communicate our needs to someone. But with those we want a closer and more intimate relationship with, a boundary can get in the way of that. We tend to pull that out instead of having a conversation.

But it’s in those conversations where we come to better understand each other, where we cultivate connections, where we build trust. That space is where relationships flourish.

ANNA: Yes. And so, another thing that I’ve noticed, I call the pendulum. For much of our early life, we’re basically subject to others in a variety of different ways. We’re told what to do, how to do it, often subjugating our needs and preferences. And somewhere along the line, often in our thirties and forties, we have this awakening and we realize, “Wait a minute! My needs are important here, too!”

And so, you can go into this intense period of advocating for your needs. And I think this is when the strong boundary language that we hear around really resonates with people. “Yes! This feels awesome!” But I’ve also seen that as we get a bit older that things soften and we realize that we don’t have to defend our needs to the death, that we can honor ourselves and honor another, and that solutions are really there to be found.

And I want to say very clearly that there’s no right and wrong about this. There’s no timeline about any of it. It’s just an interesting pattern and I think it can help to be aware of it and maybe watch for it. Are we swinging way over here? Do we want to come back maybe more towards the center? See how it’s feeling as we play with unpacking any baggage we have in this area.

And I think pretty much all of us have some baggage in this area.

PAM: Yeah, no, I do love the metaphor or the image of the pendulum, and absolutely it can be a valuable part of our journey, a helpful part, to swing right up to the very edge, because then we’re gaining experience with what that feels like, and we notice the pieces that aren’t working.

And when we understand those kinds of patterns, it can be helpful for us, too, to help us recognize where we might be on the journey and use that information to help us just decide where we want to go next.

But I do love that idea of the patterns and just paying attention, because, for me, I enjoy looking for that and seeing those bigger picture patterns of how things flow.

And you mentioned the baggage that we can bring. Because, for me, as I thought about how the idea of boundaries feels for me, and thinking back to when I was first playing around with this, I realized that I grew up steep in the conventional culture of competition. So, as I started thinking about this myself, that’s one of the places I went.

So, when I thought about how I anticipated engaging with others in terms of boundaries, it really spiked my defensive energy. As soon as I was feeling defensive, I saw the other person, whether it was my child, partner, whoever I was engaged with, I saw them as the opposition. Like, “You’re the enemy, because I need to defend this boundary. This is a win-lose situation.”

And time and again after having brought that energy to many a conversation, just like you were saying, I learned through experience that when I did that, especially with someone that I love, that perspective and energy just hindered our interaction. It got in the way of us moving forward.

I noticed that my defensiveness raised their defensiveness, which meant that we were both less empathetic. We were just defending harder and harder. And we were each just focused on our own bits and we were only seeing it through our own lens. We listened to the other person not to hear those new bits of information that curiosity can bring and that we notice. We were listening to them so that we could find the things that we could twist in support of the position that we were defending.

So, as I sat with the discomfort of these two seemingly contradictory ideas, “I need boundaries so that people don’t walk all over me,” and, “I want to be connected to this person,” I came to see that, for me, the image of holding a boundary sparks that defensive energy, which negatively impacts my connection with my loved ones.

So, even a rule or a boundary that made sense to me, what it did was shut down so much rich conversation and learning and my opportunity to learn more things about these people in my life, things that I would have never discovered if I didn’t have that conversation in the first place. But those conversations didn’t bubble up if it was just like, “No, you can’t do that. You can’t do that.” 

ANNA: Right. And that’s the thing. We’re talking about a very different style of communication and problem solving, and so I hope it’s clear that as we’re looking at it, because we have this one side, you the zero-sum game, defend your position at all costs. That’s pretty common in our culture. We see it in governments to toddlers.

And then here, we’re talking about listening, stating our needs, listening to someone else’s needs, having those conversations, learning more about each other, moving forward together on the same team. It’s so different, but it’s so much more pleasant and so rich with the discoveries about each other and where we can go from there.

PAM: Absolutely. And what helped encourage me to have those conversations was moving away from the idea of boundaries. And instead, I started using the idea of comfort zones. And what that shift from boundaries to comfort zones reminded me to do was to bring my sense of self. So, it’s not about, “I have no boundaries now, do whatever,” again. It’s never about taking our needs out of the equation. It’s more fully bringing our needs into the moment and into that conversation without having to draw that line in the sand.

So, boundaries feel external to me while comfort zones feel internal. Comfort zones remind me to open up and lean in rather than to stand there right behind the line.

ANNA: Right. And, for me, it’s that line in the sand that I wanted to avoid. And with comfort zones, I just like the feel of it, because we do talk about stretching and growing our comfort zones, and I think all of my relationships have helped me do that.

I think we can come into all of our relationships with some pretty rigid ideas of how things should be. And that can stem from our childhood experiences, the prevailing relationship ideas around us, what’s being modeled for us. But those rigid beliefs don’t take into account the actual humans that we’re living with, how they see the world, what feels good to them, how they process information, what they want to accomplish and learn. And that’s where the curiosity and the communication that we’re talking about comes into play.

I don’t have to stretch my comfort zone, but I want to be open to examining it, especially if it’s somehow putting a limit on someone else. And so, that’s why, in general, I just prefer to look at needs. If we have a situation where we’re at an impasse, if we switch the focus to the underlying needs, then we have more room to find the creative solutions that feel good to both of us. So, I like the feel of that again. It’s just a totally different paradigm.

PAM: It really is. And I love the way you framed that as needs. For me, that shift was that these conversations really ended up being less about the thing, the thing that we were in conflict about, and just more about the people involved, which fully included me, and that’s where the needs come in.

Being curious about what the person is needing or wanting to do and understanding the motivation behind that.

Why is that the next step that makes the most sense to them? And why is that next step right at the edge of my comfort zone? Why is that needling at me? And when we better understand those pieces, we can better explain our perspective and needs to them, which gives them the opportunity to understand us better.

And then, from there, maybe they give us more information that we didn’t think of, information that addresses our need. Maybe we give them a piece of information that they missed, and together we find a different way to meet their need. There’s just so much more space for people to move when you take out the competitive nature of that hard line and just start playing, just start thinking, just start sharing what your needs are, what you’re wanting to accomplish, and seeing where that goes. We can be so much more creative when you take that competitive nature out, I think.

ANNA: Right! Because, as humans, if we’re backed into a corner, we’ll defend something to the death even if we don’t agree with it. It’s just this reaction when someone’s coming at us to start defending. But you see that very different exchange that you were just talking about. It’s like, “Well, here’s what I’m feeling worried about.” “Oh, okay. Well, what about this then? What about that?” We’re working together to try to make both of us feel comfortable, both of us feel good moving forward, and it’s just so different.

PAM: Yeah, and I like how it feels, understanding that I’m choosing to stretch my comfort zone rather than naming it in my self-talk as, “I failed to defend my boundary.” It’s night and day how that feels. “I failed,” or “I chose.” And we can also choose to just not stretch, but we can choose to operate completely outside our comfort zone for a while. Sometimes a situation needs me to do something that in any other circumstances I would not choose to do, but this is where I am right now, and that’s not a failure either.

ANNA: Right. And I think relationships give us so many opportunities to do that, to stretch, but also to just step outside for a minute to take care of business. But I always want to ground myself in the choice. And you mentioned it before.

So, I’m not great at parties. Again, this is a well-known fact. If David wants to go to a party with his friends, it will no doubt stretch my comfort zone. But instead of feeling pressured or as if I need to set a boundary around it, I can first ground myself in the fact that I always have a choice. And then I can also feel that choice and I can bring into play my whys.

In this case, I want to support him. He thinks it’ll be a fun night. And so, with some further conversation, we can figure out a way for it to feel good to us both. Maybe for me, that’s knowing where it will be, who will be there, how long will we need to stay. Should I drive separately? If that doesn’t feel good, can we agree not to stay too late?

That conversation helps us learn more about each other. He’s learning what my concerns are, also what my tender areas are, and I’m learning why it’s important to him and what parts he’s looking forward to and why he wants to go in the first place. And if I just shut that down summarily, “I don’t go to parties, I don’t like them,” we’d miss this chance to dig into that and to find something that feels good to both of us.

PAM: Yes. And that is the beauty of comfort zones for me versus boundaries. It encourages me to actually pay attention to the moment, to the context of the moment, versus, this is my line. This is always my line.

Conversations are so much richer and our relationship connections are strengthened, not strained. I love that piece. When we have that boundary, “I don’t go to parties,” that’s just what we pull out. But remembering my why, and everybody’s why, I can support the why and the joy and all those pieces.

And there are times when I’m feeling resourced, when I’m just in a great place and I can stretch my comfort zone a bit and we can enjoy this thing together. Maybe we’re not enjoying the same pieces, but we can jigger things around so that there are also pieces that work for me. That’s so much richer and there’s just so many more experiences in our lives, like not literally having to do things, but our worlds are bigger when we know more about each other, when we can navigate those pieces.

Okay, so there’s one more aspect that we wanted to explore, and that’s the idea of capacity. I feel it fits so beautifully with this conversation of boundaries and comfort zones, because sometimes we do have a pretty hard limit on what we can physically or emotionally take on in a particular moment, and it can feel a bit more definitive than a comfort zone.

So, for example, having a migraine or being very tired can definitely impact our ability to engage. So, even if we’re not able to stretch right now, I think the idea of capacity just feels more informative and less confrontational. It feels more supportive of the conversations that we’re talking about than a boundary or a limit, or, “I can’t do this.”

It quickly communicates to ourselves and to the others involved in the conversation what we are feeling that we are and aren’t able to take on in this moment. It’s more information about us, again. And capacity can be a great lens to use for us to check in with ourselves and just really feel what’s up.

If our first reaction is, “Oh my god, no! I don’t want to go to a party!” Oh, where did that really strong reaction come from? Oh, maybe my capacity’s really low and I need to do something to address that. 

ANNA: Oh my gosh. Yes. Capacity just feels so much more descriptive to me and it’s much more about the moment that we’re in, because my capacity at the end of a long day is very different from my capacity in the morning. And there can be so many things at play that come into this piece of capacity. Sleep, money, time, illness, all of these different factors.

But what I want to do with all exchanges with the people I love is to keep us on the same side. They aren’t trying to thwart me or harm me. We’re all just trying to get our needs met. And as we keep those lines of communication open, we build trust in each other to work together to help meet all of our needs.

And another idea that a friend introduced to me related to capacity is that we can operate within our capacity and survive, but we might not be able to thrive. So, we’re kind of on the edge of our capacity and we can physically get it done, but it might be taking an emotional toll or even a physical toll, so that when we keep choice in that equation, we can choose to operate within our capacity to thrive. We can communicate that to the people in our lives and help them do the same.

So, I can honor who I am and still support my partner or child, and they can honor who they are and still consider those around them. It’s really important to me to honor someone else’s comfort zone or their personal definition of capacity, even if I don’t understand it or I think they could do more.

This, again, comes into play with our partners and our children. Our honoring of this helps them develop a strong sense of what works for them and their why. I want to trust their process and that they will stretch when it feels right to them. And so, maybe it’s helpful next time we bump up against someone when we think they could do a bit more than maybe they are, is to consider that maybe they’re operating within their capacity to thrive, not their capacity to survive. And wouldn’t it be beautiful if we could all stay in that thriving zone as much as possible?

Because there are going to absolutely be times where we are pushed way outside of it to deal with an emergency or because something has happened around us that we can’t control. But what if, when we see our loved one not doing something that we think they could, we give them that generous assumption that it’s really just them knowing themselves, knowing that whatever it is may push them over an edge that is into survival mode versus thriving. I just love that framing of it as we look at another person and maybe, hopefully it stops the judgment.

PAM: Oh yes. I love looking at things through their eyes, which we had talked about earlier. And even when we don’t understand why they’re making the choices they’re making, remembering that we don’t need to, that it is making sense to them, even if we think that they should be able to do X, Y, or Z.

It doesn’t matter. What matters and what’s interesting, that’s where my curiosity goes, is, “Ooh. That’s feeling really good to them.” And remembering that their choices really aren’t about me. They are not trying to piss me off with this choice. There is some reason for them.

So, I love that distinction between thriving and surviving. Because when we honor those choices, it just gives us another piece of the picture of who they are and understanding that there can be so many reasons why for them. Capacity can be a reason why they aren’t up for it or don’t want to stretch or do the thing that you know that they are capable of doing sometimes.

And it’s especially helpful to question the boundaries that are handed to us by society. One that we see held up often in conventional culture is, “I’m not going to do something for someone else that they can do for themselves.” Oh my gosh. “They need to learn how to take care of themselves.” You see it more often with children, but absolutely you see it with adults, too, that if we do it for them, we are being taken advantage of.

ANNA: But really, we’re just missing these opportunities to deepen that relationship. And then what I’ve seen, and I know you’ve seen it, too, is that when I’m feeling out of sorts and I’m just not wanting to get my own water or whatever it is, both my partner and my kids were happy to bring it over to me because that’s the relationship that we cultivated.

I don’t want to die on a hill of, “I’m not going to do something for you, because you can do it for yourself.” I do things for people all the time that they can absolutely do for themselves. I do it from a place of love and because it’s within my capacity. And when it’s not, I know they’ve got my back. And these skills are critical in all relationships, understanding it’s about learning to communicate more about my needs versus expecting them to understand it or stand behind this strongly-drawn boundary with no explanation. It’s just more information and transparency. The more we have, the easier it is to be in relationship. And, for me, the human experience is relationships.

PAM: It’s relationships. I know. And when you think about it, the more information that you have, it is so often so much easier to find that path through those pieces of information. If I only have two pieces, “They want to do this,” and, “I don’t want them to do this,” how do you find a path between the chasm of those two things?

But as we share a little bit more information back and forth, we’re narrowing in on the path that we can travel between those. Sometimes it takes three sentences and off we go, we’ve got it figured out. And sometimes it takes longer conversations, maybe over days and weeks, but we can find our way. 

ANNA: I mean, it’s just a quick way for me to go, “Hmm. Okay. I want to turn this around a little bit. I want to look at what’s happening to get us back on the same side,” because even when it feels really hard, and it may take a couple weeks to figure out something that’s really big that we’re trying to figure out as a family or a couple, if we’re both over here together working on the problem, it feels so much better than being on these separate sides with this giant decision in front of us, and we’re not really communicating about what our capacity or comfort zones are or any of those pieces. And it feels isolating and tough. But when we’re together, even if it takes us time, it just feels better. It’s about being open about it and examining that and seeing what makes sense to you and it’s so individual.

PAM: Yeah, it’s so individual. It’s so rich. And as we talked about in an earlier episode, where do we want to spend our time? Do I want to spend my time on the same team working together? Finding a way? Because when you’re working together and finding your way together, you’re both invested in this path at the end of it, rather than one powering over another, convincing you to do it this way, or us convincing them to do it this way. But then there’s tears at the relationship. And then we need to invest the work in, in repairs.

So, for this week, we have some fun questions for you to ponder around the ideas of boundaries, comfort zones, and capacities.

The first is, think of a boundary you hold right now with your partner or a close friend. What might be gained from having some conversations around it? Might it give them some more helpful information about you, help you feel more seen and heard in the relationship?

I think that’s another big piece. A boundary only shares that little line of information. It doesn’t share all the little pieces of me that came up with that in the first place.

ANNA: And can we really be understood if they don’t understand those other pieces? They can still honor that boundary. And maybe that feels okay, but with a partner who I’m in love with and this is who I want to be with, that deeper understanding of why that is a rub for me would be so much more important to me than them just honoring what might feel like an arbitrary boundary to them.

PAM: Exactly. Without that information, it can feel like an arbitrary boundary. And absolutely, they can still respect it, but there is a richness that’s missing then that’s the only piece of communication.

Okay, so next, how does the idea of using comfort zones to better understand and communicate your needs land with you? Does that make sense? Maybe try that framework and that language next time and see how it unfolds. Remember, as we talked about, let’s play with this. Let’s see. Nothing is a forever commitment. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to try this comfort zone thing, and now I can never use any other language.” No. Play with it.

ANNA: We’re just having fun. We’re just learning things. We’re just trying to learn more about ourselves.

PAM: Yes, yes. Okay. Next one. How often do you operate outside of your capacity to thrive? Another great question, just to dive into that self-awareness piece. It may not be something that we communicate very often, but understanding it about ourselves, noticing how often we are stepping outside of our capacity to thrive more in survival mode. And then that also can help us understand why we’re feeling tired, why we don’t feel like we have a lot of energy, what kind of self-care pieces that we can bring in there. Anyway, it’s a great question to start with. How often do you operate outside of your capacity to thrive?

ANNA: Because I think it also impacts our relationships. So, our culture values this operating at just survival mode. And so, it’s something we all fall into, schools and work and all the things that we’re doing. And so, it is a really interesting question to say, “Am I able to thrive and have the relationships that I want and do the things that bring joy to me? And what can I change?” So, it’s like, “Am I operating outside of that and then what would that look like?” So, I think, yeah, that’s going to be really interesting.

PAM: Yes. And our last one, can you think of times that you didn’t trust someone else’s definition of their capacity? Ooh, that’s a good one. How did it play out? Did it impact your relationship? It’s very curious to see what other people’s lens of their capacity is. As you were saying, are they just living through the cultural expectation that we survive, we go till we drop, put it all in, we are productive to the max. Are they bringing that in? 

ANNA: And I want to add to this one a little bit, that sometimes when we are in that survival mode, when we are pushing, pushing, pushing, we can have resentment towards someone that’s choosing differently. And that resentment may not even make a lot of sense to us, but I think when you look at it through this lens, it’s like, oh, wait a minute. Do I really want to be resentful or passing judgment on someone that’s actually taking care of their mental health and doing this for self-care, just because I’m running my nose to the grindstone?

So, I think it’s really interesting. For me, again, it’s this awareness. It’s like, when we name these things, we’re able to distance ourselves. It doesn’t feel like it’s all who we are. We can go, “Okay, this is something I can examine. I can play with it. I can see how it feels.” You don’t have to make changes, but playing with it just gives you so much more information. And especially if you see it causing a problem in a relationship, it’s very much worth your time to look at those pieces.

PAM: Yeah. Oh, that’s one of the reasons why we are so excited to be sharing these questions, because we are not trying to get rid of some rules or paradigms and then being prescriptive about how, now you must do it this way. No, let’s play with these ideas. These are things that we’ve found helpful in our relationships, paradigm shifts that have helped us. There is no expectation that it will work out any particular way for anyone else, but it is so worth the time to play with it. 

ANNA: And especially if you’re feeling pinches, because I think that’s the thing, if our relationships are humming along, then we’ve got a good understanding. Whatever we’re doing is working.

But when we start to feel the pinch, when we start to feel a distance, when we have a rupture for whatever reason, using these things that we’re talking about can help us really kind of zero in versus standing in a place of hurt or not really knowing how to make the repair or not knowing how to change it even if we can make the repair, because we don’t know how we got there.

And so, these pieces allow us to play with that and to look at it and be like, “Okay, I’m going to be more intentional about this piece for these relationships that are important to me.” 

PAM: Yeah. And for the moving forward piece, like standing there, “I don’t know how we got there,” and two weeks later, “I don’t know how we got there.”

ANNA: We’re here again!

PAM: Okay. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you next time. Bye.

ANNA: Bye bye.

On this episode of Exploring Unschooling, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about when school isn’t working. In the northern hemisphere, many children are going “back to school” and so, we wanted to share some thoughts about what can happen when school just isn’t working for your child.

In our conversation, we talked about changes you might notice in your child, about the choices that we have when it comes to living and learning, and about the value of community during that big transition away from mainstream schooling.

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

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

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. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

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?

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

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

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.

PAM: Hello everyone! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts today, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about what you might do when school isn’t working for your child. But before we dive in, I’d just like to take a moment to invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network.

There is just so much value in walking alongside others on this journey, particularly any kind of unconventional journey like when school isn’t working for our child, because while everyone’s journey is unique, many of us face similar obstacles and challenges. And that is where the power of community shines in feeling seen and heard by others.

In the Network, you can learn from the experiences of other parents on similar journeys, draw inspiration from their a-ha moments, and gain insights from the unique and creative ways they navigate both their own and their family’s needs. To learn more, just follow the link in the show notes or go to livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on Community in the menu. And Anna, would you like to get us started?

ANNA: I would. Oh goodness. This topic has been coming up a lot over the last few months, really this year, and we just thought it was important to create a space to talk about it. I’m excited about today, because the truth is school doesn’t work for everyone.

Instead of the message that people tend to hear, which is, “There’s something wrong with your child. Let’s do X, Y, or Z to fix your child,” we wanted to say, it’s okay. It’s okay if a particular environment doesn’t work for your child. Parents will tie themselves up in knots trying to make it work and make themselves sick thinking that there’s something wrong with their child or that they’ve done something wrong as a parent, when again, it really just is an environment that doesn’t work for everyone.

And when we think about how people are different, which if you’ve been here any amount of time, you know we talk about a lot, it can help so much in this situation. Because we just are so different. Our brains process information differently. We prioritize things differently. We have different sensitivities and capacities and all of it is just fine.

The journey is in learning more about ourselves and what we need to thrive. And often that just can’t happen in a one size fits all environment. And honestly, how could one size fit all? We’re so different. It’s amazing that it works as much as it does, and we know there are a lot of issues along the way, even for those where it “works”.

I feel like when we think about people and how we work, some people need to move to think, pacing around helps them really solidify an idea. Others like music to help calm a busy mind and that focuses them on the task at hand. Some people like to deep dive into a subject and are not coming up for air for weeks to understand all of the nuances. Others like to flit around and find patterns. They’re pulling from different arenas, to get this bigger web of learning and picture for themselves. None of those types are served in a school environment where it’s, “Sit still. Be quiet. Do this now.” Bell rings, “Do something completely different now.” That’s the way they play the game there. And it doesn’t work for a lot of brains. 

And as soon as we turn a discerning eye to it, we can see why they need to do it that way. It often boils down to crowd management. And this is not about teachers. Teachers are incredible.They’re devoting their lives to creating a wonderful environment, but it just can’t meet the needs of all children. I mean, it just can’t.

So, we see then that it’s not about something being wrong with our child, but it’s more about what our particular child needs to thrive and learn. And it just might not be able to happen in a traditional school environment.

The good news is there are options. Whether it’s an alternative school that maybe can address particular needs of a child or homeschooling or unschooling, there are so many different ways to find what works. Because we’re learning creatures. In a safe, affirming environment, we have almost an unlimited capacity to learn.

Here, we talk a lot about unschooling, because it is what worked for our families. And I do believe it provides a great environment for us to learn more about ourselves and what we need to thrive. Then with that knowledge, we can take that into all sorts of environments and find our own unique path.

I feel passionate about this particular thing because we’ve met so many parents along the way on the Network and in other realms and they are feeling so terrible. And I just want them to know that there’s nothing wrong with a child that doesn’t fit in traditional school.

Seeing children shine for being exactly who they are is a beautiful gift that changes that child. And honestly, it changes us, too. And I’m going to even say it changes the world. So, I’m pretty passionate about this. 

ERIKA: I think it does change the world. I don’t even think that’s an exaggeration. This is such a beautiful topic. I would love to pass along the message that there is nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with your family. There’s nothing wrong with your child if you’re finding that school is not a fit. It just makes sense. People are so different.

It makes sense that the one-size-fits-all model is not going to work. At the beginning of my unschooling journey, and I think for a lot of people, there are these huge paradigm shifts. When you’re first starting to just even consider, “Should I, or can I, opt out of this system?”

I remember reading John Holt and reading John Taylor Gatto and really, Gatto in particular is very vehement in his arguments against school. And as someone who went to a lot of school and did very well, I feel like reading those kinds of alternative voices did help me a lot in those beginning days.

They helped me to wrap my head around this huge paradigm shift, realizing I didn’t really think about all of those negative pieces when I was just doing what I was told to do and achieving in that system. My children are what sparked me to do that investigation and dive into those topics.

But it did help me to listen to this podcast, to read Pam’s books, and all of these other voices giving me alternatives to what I had always heard my entire life growing up. And so, I don’t know if scary is quite the right word, but it was a really big moment in my brain. 

I felt like school worked for me. I thought it was going to work for my kids. Now that I’m looking at it, maybe it didn’t work as well for me as I thought it did. I can now see new possibilities for my children and especially when I’m looking at kids who are neurodiverse, who have very particular interests and strong interests. I was just picturing that kind of bustling, busy, loud school environment and just not seeing how that could work well for my sensitive first child.

And the journey began there. But it is fun to know how many options there are. And to me, the way that I view unschooling is it’s like we have every option now. If they do want to go back to school, that’s okay too. Because it’s all about learning, learning more about ourselves, learning more about our kids, and then making choices that feel good and feel empowering to us and being able to shift when things aren’t working. So, yeah, I love it.

PAM: Yes. Love it. Love it. And I think that is a place that we get to too in that, at first, I didn’t even know it was a choice. So, for me, that was one of the reasons when, way back when, when I started writing and sharing a little bit more online.  It was just so people knew it was a choice. That was an a-ha moment. Mind blown. Like, oh, they don’t have to go to school. This was, I was just doing the calculations, 23 years ago. 23 years ago. It is so interesting when you can recognize, oh, it is a choice. It doesn’t have to be that way.

And then you can get to that place of learning, like you said, Erika, that these other choices are valid too, that it’s not a failure. I didn’t fail because this environment doesn’t fit for my kids. And a lot of the messaging still is around fixing the kids and getting the kids ready so that they are ready to fit into this environment, et cetera.

But yes, there are more and more voices now and it’s much more well known that these are options and these don’t work for everyone, each one doesn’t work for everybody. And then, if the kids do come home or you just choose not to go, and like you said, Erika, it is totally cool too if they at some point decide they want to try it. At that point, it’s not about school or not school, it’s about what works for this child? What would this child like to do? What things do they want to try? I like to think of learning as a big buffet table and school is a plate on the table, that is a choice you can make.

But before I learned about this, before my mind was blown, it was the only plate on the table. That’s all I knew, right? But now there are so many plates. There is truly a buffet there, and you’re less tied to a particular choice and it’s more about helping each person, us included, because we don’t stop learning just because we’re adults, right? Seeing what choice we want to make in this moment and trying it out and knowing we still have a choice. We can try something and we’re not getting out of it what we thought we were going to get out of it, or we did for a while and now it’s no longer working. That’s totally okay. We can change our mind or we can say that’s enough of that dish. It comes back to our choices. 

And I came to that understanding and realization for my kids through learning that school was a choice, and coming to the point to see that when school’s not working, it’s not about blaming the child and needing to fix the child.

This environment, like you said, Anna, is set up this way because it’s efficient. Teachers are doing their best with the environment as it is and stretching it. When my kids went to school, we had teachers that worked with us, but still there’s only so much they can do. 

There’s the constrained environment of, these are the hours, these are how many kids are in a class. All those pieces. So, it really was, for me, just getting through that initial tendency to blame or to feel like it was a failure to move away from it and to recognize that buffet table that’s really there and that those choices all have value, more or less, just depending on the person who’s at the table trying to decide what they want to partake of in this moment.

ANNA: I love that, because I feel like it’s an empowering place, to realize that it’s a choice and we get to choose. Because I think environments that are big systems like that, I think of medical systems, but also the school system, they drive off of a sense of urgency. And so it’s very much like, “You have to do it this way.” There’s one way and you’ve got to do it and you’ve got to do it now, or there are going to be dire consequences. So, there’s a lot of language that is directed at parents that feels very intense and scary. “If you don’t do this, it’ll never happen.” 

And that’s what’s so valuable about the Network, but also these podcasts, but other environments as well. But in the Network, you see all of these children who have learned to read and who are pursuing their passions and who are doing all these different things that did not follow that one very narrow course that school lays out. And so, it can help you build confidence. And that’s looking more externally. 

Because I would also say, just look at your child, because look at what kids learn without any help at all. Maybe not any help but facilitation, but learning to walk, learning to talk, all the things that happen before school even comes into the picture. Just ground into, okay, I have this unique child in front of me. Look at how much they love this thing. 

And especially, and I love that you mentioned neurodiversity because, if you have a child that’s deep diving into this passion about dinosaurs or trains or something that they love, you see the learning that’s happening. It just doesn’t happen to be fitting into what they need at school. It’s not across these multiple things. But what we talk about in the network and what you know, being around other people that are living this lifestyle can help you see the web of learning that’s coming out from those individual interests.

The web of learning that child is creating as they understand where the trains go and how the trains are built, and who’s running the trains and all the things. That is actually what learning is. So yes, in a school environment, they need to make it. What’s the word?

Conform? They need to make a system that they can plug people into, but we have the ability in our individual families to create the environment where we each can thrive. And I think even if you just take a minute to think about just the people in your immediate family. Look at the differences there.

I think that, again, will help you see it. Because I can think about my husband who is a very tactile, experiential learner, and he’s brilliant, but it’s different from me. I like to read, I like to take in information that way. I’m not really an auditory learner. And then I look at this daughter and she learns this way and this daughter, and I realize there are so many ways that we can learn and move through the world. I think as soon as you recognize that choice, like you said, Pam, it just opens up everything.

ERIKA: I love that you mentioned that, individualized versus standardized. And I think even in school, they want it to be individualized. If it could be, that would be the dream, but it’s just not feasible. There are too many kids, not enough teachers. You just can’t make everything individualized for every kid. And so, by doing it on our own and just following our children’s interests, we’re able to make their lives a perfectly individualized instruction plan, if you wanted to call it that. 

That looks nothing like school, but is allowing them to dive so deep into the things that are interesting to them. And I know on the podcast in the past we’ve talked about learning and school learning and natural learning. In school they’re really pulling the skills out away from, from the context. That’s something that is hard for many children. If growing up it felt like math is so hard and doesn’t make sense, it’s probably because in school it’s completely divorced from any reason to do it, any kind of context at all.

And so what’s great about taking the learning out of school is that then context is everything. If, if there’s a reason to learn something, then they learn it. There’s a reason to read, which there is in every field. There’s a reason to want to read. And so, then they want to read and they learn how to read.

I’ve seen that happen over and over again with other children that I know as well. And just the feeling that I have from watching my children get to these big learning moments in their own way. In a way that they have ownership of that. It’s just so amazing and beautiful that my kids feel like they have done it on their own.  I don’t think they would say they taught themselves to read because the word taught doesn’t really even make sense. But it’s they did that themselves. They know how to read because they figured out how to read. And of course I have played a big role in it, but that’s not what they remember.

They remember that they figured it out. It made sense to them. And so, when you’re coming out of the school environment or starting to question school, it might be those things like, but what about math? And what about the reading? And I don’t know, my child isn’t meeting these benchmarks and how are they going to do it?

It really is just a complete paradigm shift to realize there’s plenty of time and people don’t need to learn things on the same timetable. Following our interests is a path towards learning these underlying skills that will be necessary, for anything that you want to do in life. And learning them with that context makes it so much easier to learn.

PAM: Yeah, I love that piece because I think when we can recognize that school isn’t working for our child and even look for alternative ways, choose homeschooling, choose unschooling, etc., but so much of that journey away is our work to do our paradigm shifts because. School can often be so ingrained for us.

So even if we take our kid out, we can be looking for learning that looks like school learning. We can be looking for progress that looks like school progress because learning in school feels so linear. So step by step by step and learning in action really doesn’t look that way. It can look like

soaking up like a whole bunch and then looking stagnant for a while as it percolates, processes in the background and builds our web of understanding, our connections, that context.

Or something’s hard right now, it’s just not clicking right now. And then maybe just moving on to something else. And then we are finding the next step is this, and the next step is this and you’ll see them get there, but it will look so different. It can come from somewhere different and then just zoom up. It can be months and months and months, and then all of a sudden, a whole bunch happens, big leaps. So, it really doesn’t look like school learning.

Marks go up and down and people have good, easy seasons and harder seasons at school. It’s not so much that it fits with everybody, but it is the way it needs to be presented because we have so many days and we have so many topics that we have to cover. So, it gets chunked out that way, very linearly.

And we have a big group of kids, so math does look like a worksheet. It doesn’t look like how we use numbers out in the world because we don’t have a lot of time to create those situations. But we can create worksheets where you can practice those skills. 

So it is that shift for us. Not only choosing not to send our kids to school. But also then it comes to understanding that the way we thought learning looked, the way it looks in school, the way it’s marked, graded in school, etc. It looks really different when we take out the school environment or take the child out of the school environment. We need to also take all the school think and school lenses that we’re using and, and find new ones. 

Because when we look to our child and we engage with our child and we watch them in action, we see this learning in action. And it’s not that it’s not happening, it just looks very different. I remember like people fresh from bringing their kids home and they’re like, they’re not learning anything. Yes, I know it doesn’t look like they’re learning anything, but that’s because you’ve got your school glasses on and you’re only looking for learning that looks like learning does in school. But actually, if you try to take those off and look at what they are doing. You can see it. 

It just doesn’t happen to look that way, the way school tells us it will look. It’s so fun.

ANNA: I think looking at ourselves, I loved that you said that Erika, you even took the lens looking back at your own journey because you were super successful in school. Most people from the outside would say it worked for you, but you were able to look at it and go, oh, maybe not.

But it’s interesting, because it reminds me of a story with my dad who was an engineer and he did well in school and did graduate work and all the things, but he was also just so engaged and loved learning. And so when my kids were young and I had all the unschooling books everywhere, all over the house, he would read them and we’d have conversations when they were little and he said, ‘School was fine for me. But I can see that it wouldn’t work for everyone and how different it would be if there were choices.’ Because he had friends that he thought of how different it would’ve been for them to not be carrying the weight of thinking there was something wrong with them because they didn’t fit in the environment.

But he said, we just didn’t really have another way to look at it. And so I loved that he could recognize that because again, some people do fine but others don’t and there’s nothing wrong with them. Those are brilliant minds that just look at things in a different way and that linear path, I mean it’s more narrow regardless. I think people that even do well on the linear path, it’s fine, but if they were to stay there, their life would be a little bit boring. But I think they take it and then they move beyond it, especially after school. But there are some kids that just want to move beyond from the beginning. They look at things differently and take information in differently.

And so allowing that context and for things to make sense and having conversations really understanding how our brain works is just so valuable. I would love for people that are thinking about this to get excited. To think, this thing that I’m looking at, maybe it has been judged as a failure or that something’s wrong. But I can get excited about learning about myself and about my child.

We can find the ways that work for us. So because it really is so fun and amazing, and I think community can be helpful, that is why we talk about the network, especially in these situations where you’re making a big transition because really seeing the thoughtful, amazing, brilliant other people and what they’re learning and what’s happening for their families and what’s happening with their children can just really just bolster and give us this beautiful space to share our own journey with people who understand.

ERIKA: Right, especially if the environment we’re currently in does not have much space for alternative thinking. Finding the people that you can have those deeper conversations with when you’re first doing all of that questioning, I think is really amazing. And of course the network is an awesome place for it.

I was also thinking that it’s a fun little exercise to think back about what you remember from school. Because for me that was a big one where it was like, okay, wait, I could say that it’s so important that they learn all these things, but then do I remember those things and does it matter now?

Just little thinking experiments like that to think about, what are my big takeaways from being in school? And what did I get out of it? I think we’ve talked a lot of times about the unschooling journey and how it just opens our brains up to questioning everything.

And this moment of being curious and wondering, is school really the best option for my kid? It can be that moment of, let me question this and then let me question this. And then everything opens up. And what I’ve found is that in the meantime, the kids just keep on living their best life.

And because they already know what they wanna do, you know? And so if we can support them in the things that they really love to do. And then we see that, okay, when they’re really having fun, they’re learning a whole lot. Um, like that really was a, that was a big turning point for me. 

And I remember having the realization that I could follow their happiness and joy.

We are having a really great life. They are learning so much. If I’m constantly there as the support in helping them live their best, most joyful life, I don’t know, that became my focus, especially when they were young, when I was turning away from the idea of putting them into school.

That was a new thing for me to focus on. And when I saw them, just getting so excited and pumped up about a certain topic or whatever, and then they wanted to learn more and then I could bring something else. Those moments were so fun and really gave me confidence in our decision to not go to school.

ANNA: And just to build on something you said real quickly before we wrap up, kids are learning before they go to school. You can see it. Again, acquiring language, walking, colors, animals, all the things. And we as adults are learning long after school as well. And so when you can just go, oh yeah, I don’t have to go to school to learn something and put yourself into that process of, what do I need when I’m interested in something, what do I do? I gather information, I find a mentor. Whatever the things are, then you start to realize they don’t have a lock on learning. That’s  what our culture wants us to think, that you can only learn in this one type of environment.

But there are so many examples across the spectrum of how we all learn at different ages without that one environment. So, you can let go of that weight and really find what works for you and your family.

PAM: Yeah, and I think what Erika was saying, leaning into our kids, that’s the great next step because that’s what helps us see, like you’re saying, there’s not one way to learn in this age range, right?

Recognizing that we do it before and we do it after, and then leaning into seeing our kids doing it to help us realize and recognize how much learning happens even without school. So, like I was talking about earlier, looking for learning to look like school. We don’t need it.

And when we lean in and watch our kids, we see they have their interests. They’re thrilled to have the time now to dive deeper into things if they’re leaving school. It’s just beautiful to watch and just helps us shift and really open up. We realize what learning looks like and it’s just so beautiful and fun.

ERIKA: Can I share one more thought? I just was thinking maybe we could also put a few links in the show notes to Deschooling, a few deschooling episodes. Because that word deschooling is what we use to describe that process of getting rid of some of those school thoughts. That might be a good next step as well.

PAM: Yes, we will put those in the show notes. That’s awesome. Thank you. And thank you so much to both of you. What a very fun conversation. And as we mentioned, we invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network to dive into these kinds of conversations anytime with other kind and thoughtful parents, and we are very excited to welcome you. To learn more and join us, just follow the link in those show notes or go to livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on community in the menu. Wishing everyone a very lovely day!