Faark The Shoulds (& Alchemising Education)

It’s relatively easy to build an education philosophy in theory.

Children should think for themselves. They should develop confidence, capability and self-leadership. Learning should respond to the individual rather than forcing the individual to respond to the system.

Most of us can nod along with that.

The harder question is what happens when you actually build a place around those ideas — fill it with real children, real families, competing needs, unfinished work, muddy feet and the inconvenient reality that giving young people agency means they may not do what the adults had planned.

A little over a year ago, Jonathon Zalunardo joined Alchemising Education as he and his family were preparing to launch Apogee Australia, a family leadership centre on the Sunshine Coast. The vision was already clear. What they didn’t yet have was the thing no amount of planning can manufacture: evidence of what that philosophy would become once children began living inside it.

Twelve months later, Apogee has grown from zero enrolments to close-to-full days — and the theory has been thoroughly tested.

What has emerged is less a new educational method than a deeper understanding of what self-directed learning actually asks of adults.

Because saying we want children to think for themselves is one thing. Resisting the urge to organise the thinking for them is another.

One of Jonathon’s biggest shifts came when he realised that even inside a deliberately alternative environment, he was still arriving with the day mapped out. The children were being offered freedom — within a structure the adults had already decided.

So they changed it.

The daily plan increasingly became the children’s responsibility. And with that came the part of autonomy that is much less Instagrammable: choices that don’t work, time that appears to be wasted, plans that fall apart, and the opportunity to experience the consequences without an adult rushing in to optimise the lesson.

That is where this conversation becomes less about Apogee and much more about trust.

Not blind trust. Not abandoning boundaries or responsibility. Jonathon describes an environment with clear expectations, shared responsibility and deep respect for the physical space and the people in it. But within that framework, children are given something traditional education often talks about more readily than it relinquishes: meaningful ownership.

The results challenge some familiar assumptions.

Behaviour management becomes far less central when children are regulated by the environment and invested in the community they belong to. Mixed-age learning begins to look less unconventional and more like ordinary human life. Responsibility stops being something adults teach theoretically and becomes something children encounter because the space genuinely depends on their participation.

And the parent’s role shifts too.

It is one thing to ask a child what they think. It is another to build a relationship in which their answer can actually alter what happens next.

That distinction runs through Jodi and Jonathon’s conversation: between giving children a voice and giving that voice consequence; between protecting them from every poor decision and allowing experience to become part of the education; between raising compliant children and developing people who can increasingly lead themselves.

For families looking at alternative education, homeschooling or self-directed learning and wondering what it looks like beyond the philosophy, this is the useful part.

Apogee is no longer an idea waiting to be tested.

It is a working model that has spent a year being shaped by the very people it was designed for — and the biggest lessons have come not from tightening the framework, but from becoming clearer about where adults need to loosen their grip.

Because if the aim is to raise children capable of directing their own lives, eventually we have to give them something real to direct.

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Explore free resources, courses and support at quantimama.com

Preparing for birth — wherever you are
High Vibe Birth is our self-paced online birth preparation course, available worldwide. Want more personalised support? Birth Immersions are available online or in person, with practical birth preparation, partner support, nervous-system tools and space to explore your choices.
→ quantimama.com/highvibebirth

Planning for postpartum
Optimal Birth Recovery provides professional placenta encapsulation across Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and selected regional areas. Not local? Explore QuantiMama’s free postpartum resources for pregnancy, birth recovery and early postpartum preparation.
→ quantimama.com/optimal-birth-recovery

Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
→ quantimama.com/take-the-leap

Follow @quantimama on Instagram, YouTube & Facebook — and come say “howdy”.

One of the quiet panics that can arrive with homeschooling is the idea that if you take your child out of school, you now have to become the school.

You need the curriculum. The answers. The resources. The expertise. And increasingly, perhaps, an AI prompt ready to generate whatever lesson comes next.

But what if the parent’s job was never to know everything?

In Episode 70 of Alchemising Education, QuantiMama Jodi and QuantiMama Kerri explore a very different model of homeschooling and child-led learning - one where parents stop trying to provide the entire education themselves and start paying closer attention to the people, places and possibilities already around them.

Because a child’s next teacher might not look much like a teacher at all.

It might be the people running the local hobby shop who are generous enough to answer a teenager’s hundredth question about remote-control cars. A musician who understands that learning to sing requires emotional safety before it requires technical perfection. A blacksmith willing to share a craft with a curious young person once a week. Or somebody you haven’t met yet, who happens to know the thing your child has suddenly decided they need to know.

The skill, then, isn’t collecting experts. It’s discernment.

Jodi and Kerri talk about recognising genuine interest, finding the right mentor rather than simply the most qualified one, and creating community-based learning opportunities that fit the actual child in front of you. They also make room for something adults are notoriously bad at: allowing a good opportunity to be refused.

One of their sons was offered what looked like the easiest of pathways - a ready-made project, existing equipment, previous success and every reason to continue what his older brothers had started.

He said no.

And that mattered just as much as all the opportunities that had received a yes.

Because unschooling and alternative education lose something important if “follow your interests” quietly becomes another version of adults deciding what those interests ought to be.

The same is true when a child shows real talent. The temptation is to accelerate it, professionalise it, find the best teacher, maximise the potential. But sometimes the person who helps a child love something is more important than the person who could make them exceptional at it.

That is where this conversation gets much bigger than homeschooling.

It becomes a conversation about autonomy, consent, trust and the kind of adults we place around our children. About learning to notice when they are engaged, when they are uncomfortable in a useful way, when the fit is wrong, and when something they once loved has simply run its course.

For parents wondering how on earth they could ever provide everything their child needs to learn, this episode offers a much more spacious possibility.

You don’t have to know everything.

You do need to know your child - and stay curious enough about the world around them to notice who might help with the rest.

Free prompt sheet from this episode: Finding Your Child’s People - six small prompts for finding the people who can help your child learn, waiting in the free QuantiMama Village: https://www.skool.com/quantimama-4458/about

Take The Leap, the course for parents behind these conversations: https://quantimama.com/take-the-leap/

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Loved this? Come deeper.

QuantiMama supports families with empowered birth education, postpartum preparation and homeschooling support — practical tools, lived experience and honest guidance to help you make choices that fit your family.

Explore free resources, courses and support at quantimama.com

Preparing for birth — wherever you are
High Vibe Birth is our self-paced online birth preparation course, available worldwide. Want more personalised support? Birth Immersions are available online or in person, with practical birth preparation, partner support, nervous-system tools and space to explore your choices.
→ quantimama.com/highvibebirth

Planning for postpartum
Optimal Birth Recovery provides professional placenta encapsulation across Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and selected regional areas. Not local? Explore QuantiMama’s free postpartum resources for pregnancy, birth recovery and early postpartum preparation.
→ quantimama.com/optimal-birth-recovery

Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
→ quantimama.com/take-the-leap

Follow @quantimama on Instagram, YouTube & Facebook — and come say “howdy”.

Living in alignment sounds lovely until life gets involved.

It’s easy enough to talk about following your joy, trusting the flow and choosing what feels right when the choices are spacious. It gets more interesting when there’s a mortgage, four kids, a job somebody has to show up for, competing needs inside a family, grief that arrives without asking, and mornings where nobody is particularly enlightened.

In Episode 69 of Faark the Shoulds, QuantiMama Jodi and QuantiPapa McGill pull apart the polished version of alignment — the one that can start to sound suspiciously like peace, ease and feeling good all the time — and ask whether the real thing might be much broader than that.

Because sometimes alignment looks like doing work you wouldn’t necessarily choose, while still knowing you’re free to leave. Sometimes it’s recognising that what serves the family as a whole won’t always be the thing that serves you most in that exact moment. Sometimes it’s letting a child have the full force of their emotions without rushing in to make them smaller, neater or easier for everyone else.

And sometimes it looks nothing like happiness at all.

A hard week brings that idea into sharper focus for Jodi, as she watches someone she loves move through wave after wave of grief without fighting the fact that it hurts. It changes the question. Maybe alignment isn’t about arranging life so discomfort disappears. Maybe it’s about how honestly we’re able to meet what’s actually here.

That opens up a bigger conversation about choice, resentment, relationships that quietly become scorecards, the freedom of having an exit clause, and the difference between supporting somebody and trying to rescue them from their own experience.

Jodi wonders whether coherence might be a better word. McGill leans towards flow. Either way, neither of them is interested in a version of alignment with what Jodi calls “slight Valium energy.”

They’re interested in the whole kaleidoscope.

The joy and the grief. The freedom and the responsibility. The surf that resets your nervous system and the job you still have to turn up for afterwards. The moments where you nail it, and the ones where you get knocked sideways and have another go.

For anyone who has ever wondered why “follow your joy” somehow made them feel like they were failing at being spiritual, this one widens the frame.

Alignment might not mean feeling good.

It might mean being fully in the life you’re actually living.

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Support the show

Loved this? Come deeper.

QuantiMama supports families with empowered birth education, postpartum preparation and homeschooling support — practical tools, lived experience and honest guidance to help you make choices that fit your family.

Explore free resources, courses and support at quantimama.com

Preparing for birth — wherever you are
High Vibe Birth is our self-paced online birth preparation course, available worldwide. Want more personalised support? Birth Immersions are available online or in person, with practical birth preparation, partner support, nervous-system tools and space to explore your choices.
→ quantimama.com/highvibebirth

Planning for postpartum
Optimal Birth Recovery provides professional placenta encapsulation across Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and selected regional areas. Not local? Explore QuantiMama’s free postpartum resources for pregnancy, birth recovery and early postpartum preparation.
→ quantimama.com/optimal-birth-recovery

Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
→ quantimama.com/take-the-leap

Follow @quantimama on Instagram, YouTube & Facebook — and come say “howdy”.

Adults talk about kids constantly. What’s best for them. What’s damaging them. What they need to learn, who they need to become, and which path will give them the best shot at a good life.

But how often do we actually ask them?

In Episode 68 of Alchemising Education, Faark the Shoulds’ sister podcast, QuantiMama Jodi and QuantiMama Kerri hand the mic to three freshly minted adults — Charlie, Annabelle and Tom — and ask them to look back at their own education while it’s still close enough to remember clearly.

Between them, they’ve experienced school, homeschool, and a fair bit of both. And their answers don’t fall neatly into either camp.

Charlie loved school, but struggled with being forced to learn at everybody else’s pace. Annabelle is grateful for the opportunities school gave her, while questioning why university was presented as the obvious next step. And Tom’s strongest reflection on homeschooling has little to do with curriculum at all: it’s that having more time at home strengthened his relationship with his parents.

What emerges isn’t a verdict on school or homeschooling. It’s a much more interesting question: what changes when young people are treated as individuals and given a genuine say in how they learn?

They talk about pace, pressure, sleep, homework, social connection, extracurriculars, family time, finding what lights you up — and why an education that works beautifully for one child may be completely wrong for another.

For parents wondering whether their child is genuinely thriving, merely coping, or quietly asking for something different, this is a conversation worth hearing.

Three young adults. Three very different educational experiences. And one message that keeps surfacing without anyone needing to force it:

Maybe we should spend a little less time discussing kids — and a little more time consulting them.

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Support the show

Loved this? Come deeper.

QuantiMama supports families with empowered birth education, postpartum preparation and homeschooling support — practical tools, lived experience and honest guidance to help you make choices that fit your family.

Explore free resources, courses and support at quantimama.com

Preparing for birth — wherever you are
High Vibe Birth is our self-paced online birth preparation course, available worldwide. Want more personalised support? Birth Immersions are available online or in person, with practical birth preparation, partner support, nervous-system tools and space to explore your choices.
→ quantimama.com/highvibebirth

Planning for postpartum
Optimal Birth Recovery provides professional placenta encapsulation across Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and selected regional areas. Not local? Explore QuantiMama’s free postpartum resources for pregnancy, birth recovery and early postpartum preparation.
→ quantimama.com/optimal-birth-recovery

Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
→ quantimama.com/take-the-leap

Follow @quantimama on Instagram, YouTube & Facebook — and come say “howdy”.

Unapologetic Mothers with Riona Seehusen, Bellagreen Organic Farm.
Somewhere along the way, mothers were taught to be softer, quieter, nicer, more accommodating, and less animal.

Which is odd, really, because have you seen a mama bear, particularly when her cub is threatened?

In Episode 67 of Faark The Shoulds, QuantiMama Jodi continues the conversation with Riona Seehusen from Bellagreen Organic Farm for Part 2 of “Unapologetic Mothers”. This one moves deeper into maternal instinct, family culture, raising capable children, community, birth, postnatal depression, and the wild little truth that mothers are allowed to protect what matters without asking permission first.

Riona is a mother of five and an organic and biodynamic farmer on the Bellarine Peninsula. Through Bellagreen Organic Farm, she brings mothers and children together in a way that is practical, earthy, and quietly radical: kids free range, mothers get their hands dirty, and everyone remembers community does not have to be complicated to be meaningful.

This episode is full of those excellent, inconvenient reminders that family life is not meant to run like a productivity spreadsheet. Connection is not linear. Children are more capable than we often let them be. Boundaries can make childhood feel safer, not smaller. And mothers do not need to rescue their children from every scrape, sadness, discomfort, or tiny public inconvenience.

Inside this episode:

•  why family culture becomes the water children swim in 
•  how boundaries create safety, not deprivation 
•  why children need chances to become capable 
•  how mothers can stop rescuing everyone from discomfort 
•  why postnatal depression is not a personal failing 
•  how birth stories shape what women expect from themselves 
•  why maternal instinct has been pushed down, but not erased 

Jodi and Riona also wander into Women Who Run With the Wolves, animal mothers, joyful birth resources, and the kind of mother fire that says, very politely or not, “No. This matters.”

This is for the mother who has been told her instinct is too much.

Maybe it is not too much.

Maybe it is exactly the thing your family needs.

Resources, as promised:

•  Bellagreen Organic Farm — local to the Bellarine? Experience the best local, seasonal produce from Riona and the team at Bellagreen Organic Farm: bellagreenorganicfarm.com.au 
•  Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés — discussed as a rich resource for women, instinct, initiation, mythology, and the wild self. 
•  Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin — mentioned as a go-to birth resource full of varied, empowered birth stories. 
•  The Big Stretch — an Australian birth film/resource by Jenny Blyth, mentioned by Riona as a joyful birth resource she watched during pregnancy. 
•  Video compilations of mothers in the wild — suggested as a reminder of maternal instinct, fierceness, and protective power.

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Support the show

Loved this? Come deeper.

QuantiMama supports families with empowered birth education, postpartum preparation and homeschooling support — practical tools, lived experience and honest guidance to help you make choices that fit your family.

Explore free resources, courses and support at quantimama.com

Preparing for birth — wherever you are
High Vibe Birth is our self-paced online birth preparation course, available worldwide. Want more personalised support? Birth Immersions are available online or in person, with practical birth preparation, partner support, nervous-system tools and space to explore your choices.
→ quantimama.com/highvibebirth

Planning for postpartum
Optimal Birth Recovery provides professional placenta encapsulation across Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and selected regional areas. Not local? Explore QuantiMama’s free postpartum resources for pregnancy, birth recovery and early postpartum preparation.
→ quantimama.com/optimal-birth-recovery

Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
→ quantimama.com/take-the-leap

Follow @quantimama on Instagram, YouTube & Facebook — and come say “howdy”.

Unapologetic Mothers with Riona Seehusen, Bellagreen Organic Farm
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from mothering while constantly checking whether everyone else is comfortable with it.

Is the baby too loud?
 Are the kids too wild?
 Are you being too much?
 Too soft? Too firm? Too visible? Too honest? Too bloody inconvenient?

In Episode 66 of Faark The Shoulds, QuantiMama Jodi is joined by Riona Seehusen from Bellagreen Organic Farm for a gloriously honest conversation about unapologetic motherhood, postnatal isolation, community, judgement, birth stories, and the tiny-but-massive question every mother eventually needs to ask:

“Do I actually have to?”

Riona is a mother of five, organic and biodynamic farmer on the Bellarine Peninsula, and a magnificent should-farker. Together, she and Jodi talk about the way modern motherhood can become deeply extractive: people coming to take from the mother, judge the mother, advise the mother, and somehow still expect the mother to make the cup of tea. Wild. Truly.

This episode is for the mum who has found herself apologising for her child existing loudly in public. The one who feels watched in the supermarket. The one who is tired of earning imaginary medals for coping quietly. The one who suspects there might be another way to mother without shrinking herself to make everyone else comfortable.

Inside this episode:

•  why mothers apologise for children who are simply being children 
•  how postnatal culture can become extractive instead of supportive 
•  why women often bond over birth trauma, but hide beautiful birth stories 
•  how judgement pulls mothers away from their own instincts 
•  why “says who?” is a wildly useful parenting question 
•  how community can become an access point back to yourself 

This is not a neat little parenting tips episode.

It is a conversation about instinct, responsibility, power, pause, and the kind of mothering that stops outsourcing its authority to the imaginary judge in the room.

Press play if you are ready to stop apologising for taking up space as a mother.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Loved this? Come deeper.

QuantiMama supports families with empowered birth education, postpartum preparation and homeschooling support — practical tools, lived experience and honest guidance to help you make choices that fit your family.

Explore free resources, courses and support at quantimama.com

Preparing for birth — wherever you are
High Vibe Birth is our self-paced online birth preparation course, available worldwide. Want more personalised support? Birth Immersions are available online or in person, with practical birth preparation, partner support, nervous-system tools and space to explore your choices.
→ quantimama.com/highvibebirth

Planning for postpartum
Optimal Birth Recovery provides professional placenta encapsulation across Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and selected regional areas. Not local? Explore QuantiMama’s free postpartum resources for pregnancy, birth recovery and early postpartum preparation.
→ quantimama.com/optimal-birth-recovery

Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
→ quantimama.com/take-the-leap

Follow @quantimama on Instagram, YouTube & Facebook — and come say “howdy”.

Prepare for your baby's arrival with this guided planned caesarean birth meditation and C-section rehearsal from QuantiMama's Jodi, creator of High Vibe Birth.

Designed for expectant mums preparing for a planned caesarean, this gentle visualisation helps you mentally rehearse the experience of your baby's birth before the day arrives - from leaving home and arriving at hospital, to meeting your care team, seeing your baby for the first time and settling into connection, recovery and rest.

Rather than experiencing caesarean birth only as a clinical or surgical event, this meditation invites you to experience it as something deeply personal, intentional and connected.

You are guided to visualise yourself arriving at hospital feeling prepared, recognising the people around you as your team, connecting with your baby, trusting your body and allowing yourself to feel calm, supported and present as your baby's birth unfolds.

Throughout the rehearsal, you'll be invited to practise:

• connecting with your baby before birth
• breathing into calm, trust and anticipation
• visualising your arrival at hospital
• feeling welcomed and supported by your birth and medical team
• recognising the extraordinary work your body has already done growing your baby
• remaining present as your baby is born
• imagining the first moment you see and meet your baby
• noticing the reassuring sounds and activity around you
• allowing your body to move into recovery and restoration
• visualising closeness, touch, skin-to-skin and bonding with your baby
• settling into rest, stillness and connection after birth

The meditation gently reframes a planned caesarean as the birth of your baby - an experience in which you can still feel involved, connected, supported and deeply present.

Use this rehearsal regularly in the lead-up to your baby's birth. You may listen quietly as a guided pregnancy meditation or use it as an intentional visualisation practice to make the environment, emotions and transitions of your planned caesarean feel more familiar.

The aim is not to control exactly how your birth unfolds. It is to give your mind and nervous system a familiar pathway to return to - one grounded in breath, trust, connection and confidence.

This free meditation forms part of the QuantiMama approach to empowered birth preparation and complements the deeper practices taught through High Vibe Birth and QuantiMama Birth Immersions.

About Jodi and QuantiMama

Jodi is the founder of QuantiMama, a birth educator, former Advanced Life Support paramedic and clinical instructor, mother of four and creator of High Vibe Birth.

QuantiMama supports families to prepare for birth with practical tools, nervous-system awareness, informed choice and a deep respect for each family's individual birth pathway.

Whether you are preparing for vaginal birth, caesarean birth, hospital birth or another supported pathway, the goal is not to prescribe one "right" birth. It is to help you feel more informed, connected and capable of meeting your baby's birth in a way that feels right for you.

Explore more QuantiMama birth resources and support through the links in the show notes.

Important: This meditation is a supportive pregnancy and birth-preparation resource. It is not medical advice and does not promise or guarantee a particular birth experience or recovery outcome.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Loved this? Come deeper.

QuantiMama supports families with empowered birth education, postpartum preparation and homeschooling support — practical tools, lived experience and honest guidance to help you make choices that fit your family.

Explore free resources, courses and support at quantimama.com

Preparing for birth — wherever you are
High Vibe Birth is our self-paced online birth preparation course, available worldwide. Want more personalised support? Birth Immersions are available online or in person, with practical birth preparation, partner support, nervous-system tools and space to explore your choices.
→ quantimama.com/highvibebirth

Planning for postpartum
Optimal Birth Recovery provides professional placenta encapsulation across Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and selected regional areas. Not local? Explore QuantiMama’s free postpartum resources for pregnancy, birth recovery and early postpartum preparation.
→ quantimama.com/optimal-birth-recovery

Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
→ quantimama.com/take-the-leap

Follow @quantimama on Instagram, YouTube & Facebook — and come say “howdy”.

Prepare your mind and body for birth with this guided positive birth meditation and natural labour rehearsal from QuantiMama's Jodi, creator of High Vibe Birth.

This is more than a relaxation meditation. It is an embodied birth visualisation designed to help you mentally and physically rehearse labour before the day arrives - building familiarity with the sensations, breath, movement, partner support and inner steadiness you may draw on during birth.

Through guided breathing, body awareness and visualisation, you'll rehearse moving through waves of labour, relaxing and surrendering between surges, connecting with your baby, changing positions instinctively and receiving loving support from your partner or beloved.

The rehearsal takes you from the early sensations of labour through increasing intensity, downward pressure, birth and finally the moment of meeting and holding your baby.

You'll be guided to practise:

• slowing and lengthening your breath through labour surges
• relaxing, releasing and conserving energy between waves
• moving instinctively and finding comfortable labour positions
• connecting with your baby throughout labour
• receiving affirmations, light-touch massage and physical support from your birth partner
• visualising your body opening and your baby moving down
• trusting your own inner knowing as birth unfolds
• imagining the powerful transition into meeting your baby

At the heart of the meditation is the intention:

Your baby is born in a way that is for your highest good and your baby's highest good.

Use this birth rehearsal regularly during pregnancy, either on your own or together with your partner. You may listen quietly as a guided meditation, or make it a physical rehearsal by moving, breathing and practising the positions and partner-support techniques as they are described.

Repeated birth rehearsal can help make the experience feel less unfamiliar - not by controlling how birth unfolds, but by giving your nervous system a practised reference point for meeting labour with greater calm, confidence and connection.

This free meditation is part of the QuantiMama approach to empowered birth preparation and complements the deeper practices taught through High Vibe Birth and QuantiMama Birth Immersions.

About Jodi and QuantiMama

Jodi is the founder of QuantiMama, a birth educator, former Advanced Life Support paramedic and clinical instructor, mother of four and creator of High Vibe Birth. QuantiMama supports families to prepare for birth with practical tools, embodied confidence, informed choice and a deep trust in their own capacity to make decisions that fit their family.

Explore more QuantiMama birth resources and support via the links in the show notes.

Important: This meditation is a supportive birth-preparation and wellbeing resource. It is not medical advice and does not promise or guarantee a particular birth outcome.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Loved this? Come deeper.

QuantiMama supports families with empowered birth education, postpartum preparation and homeschooling support — practical tools, lived experience and honest guidance to help you make choices that fit your family.

Explore free resources, courses and support at quantimama.com

Preparing for birth — wherever you are
High Vibe Birth is our self-paced online birth preparation course, available worldwide. Want more personalised support? Birth Immersions are available online or in person, with practical birth preparation, partner support, nervous-system tools and space to explore your choices.
→ quantimama.com/highvibebirth

Planning for postpartum
Optimal Birth Recovery provides professional placenta encapsulation across Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and selected regional areas. Not local? Explore QuantiMama’s free postpartum resources for pregnancy, birth recovery and early postpartum preparation.
→ quantimama.com/optimal-birth-recovery

Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
→ quantimama.com/take-the-leap

Follow @quantimama on Instagram, YouTube & Facebook — and come say “howdy”.

Picture, if you will: your kid is mid-meltdown over something that feels wildly out of proportion, and instead of saying a word, you're staring into their left eye like a weirdo, silently repeating "They're holding the 'talking stick' right now."

Ridiculous? Yep, kinda. Effective? Also Yes, according to this episode.

In Episode 65 of Alchemising Education, Faark the Shoulds' sister podcast, QuantiMama Jodi and QuantiMama Kerri open up the question every parent circles back to eventually: when do you push a kid forward, and when do you get out of the way and let them work it out themselves?

This isn't a lecture on letting kids run feral while you observe serenely from a safe distance. It's the more useful version - knowing when to flex the parent muscle and when to sit on your hands, and noticing how often that first instinct is actually just an old, low-vibe habit wearing a helpful disguise.

Surrender isn't the same as absence. It's giving up the need to have all the answers, so kids get to build the muscle of working things out themselves while they're still young enough for the stakes to be small.

Jodi and Kerri talk through what that actually looks like in practice:

●      handing an invisible talking stick to whoever's actually meant to be talking

●      looking into their left eye; that's the receiving, non-confrontational one

●      throwing the clock out the window the second the urge to fix kicks in

●      letting a contrast experience do the teaching instead of another lecture

●      checking whether an activity is still a Yes, not just a standing commitment

●      offering yourself up as the fall guy so they can exit gracefully, no cred lost

For the parent who's bitten their tongue through this exact conversation more times than they'd like to admit, and for anyone whose household calendar hasn't asked a single kid whether they're actually enjoying any of it.

Next time the urge to jump in shows up, try the invisible 'talking stick' first. See how long the talking stick stays with them before you need it back.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Loved this? Come deeper.

QuantiMama supports families with empowered birth education, postpartum preparation and homeschooling support — practical tools, lived experience and honest guidance to help you make choices that fit your family.

Explore free resources, courses and support at quantimama.com

Preparing for birth — wherever you are
High Vibe Birth is our self-paced online birth preparation course, available worldwide. Want more personalised support? Birth Immersions are available online or in person, with practical birth preparation, partner support, nervous-system tools and space to explore your choices.
→ quantimama.com/highvibebirth

Planning for postpartum
Optimal Birth Recovery provides professional placenta encapsulation across Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and selected regional areas. Not local? Explore QuantiMama’s free postpartum resources for pregnancy, birth recovery and early postpartum preparation.
→ quantimama.com/optimal-birth-recovery

Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
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Some jokes don't stay jokes. Four years ago, calling a podcast Faark the Shoulds was mostly just funny - a release valve for how much of adulthood runs on quiet obligation. It's still funny. It also became the actual way this family makes decisions, including the ones that matter.

That's what Episode 64 sits with. QuantiMama Jodi and QuantiPapa McGill mark four years of farking the shoulds by asking the harder question underneath the joke: what does taking "is this a should?" seriously, every time, actually do to a person and a family?

The truth of it is that it doesn't make you more certain. It makes you more honest.

There's something almost too simple at the centre of it: you can feel a "yes" in your body before your mind builds a case for it, and a "no" the same way, usually earlier than you'd like to admit. Most indecision is just talking yourself out of a feeling you already had, because someone else's expectations had already decided the acceptable answer.

Once you start trusting that in yourself, it gets harder to keep overriding it in your children. A hug forced on a child because a relative expects one. A swear word swallowed because nice families don't say that. Neither is really about hugs or language. Both are small moments where a child's honest signal gets quietly corrected for someone else's comfort - and small moments are exactly where trust in your own body gets built, or worn away.

It's why, when their eldest was working out whether a trip overseas was something he wanted or something he felt obliged to do, Jodi and McGill didn't make the call for him. They asked the same question they ask themselves, then got out of the way. He came back with more questions than answers - which turns out to be exactly what taking a should seriously looks like.

For the parent trying to raise kids who trust their own no - and, if they're honest with themselves, for anyone who's spent years being polite instead of honest, and is curious what the other option actually feels like.

Four years on, it's still faintly ridiculous to call a swear word a philosophy. Listen to why it's the one that's actually endured.

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Questioning school or considering homeschooling?
Take The Leap supports families anywhere in the world to explore homeschooling with clarity, confidence and practical next steps — without needing to have it all figured out first.
→ quantimama.com/take-the-leap

Follow @quantimama on Instagram, YouTube & Facebook — and come say “howdy”.