“We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that child is someone today.”

- Stacia Tauscher

**originally posted in 2006 **

We were hanging out with our homeschooling friends one afternoon and my daughter Jacqueline was sitting on one of the picnic tables, finishing a story (Princess Barbie) she had started a few days before.

I was having a conversation with another homeschooling mom and she asked what Jacqueline was doing. When I told her she said
something to the effect of “Maybe she’ll be a writer when she grows up”. To which I replied, “She already is a writer”. She paused (and you could see the light bulb going off) as she thought about that, and said “Yes! She is a writer”.

That little shift in thinking has been very helpful to me in unschooling my kids. What she’s doing now is valid and important, not because it may help her when she becomes an adult, not because she may choose that as her career, but because it brings her joy and makes her happy now, right now. She is not an “adult in the making”. She’s exactly where she should be.

So without further ado, here is Jacqueline’s story. She is already working on her second one, which I’ll post when she’d done.

Princess Barbie
by Jacqueline Anne (a 7 year old unschooler)
2006

I love being a princess.” Said Barbie.

Barbie’s tutor came in and said “Princess the queen sent for you”. “Where is she?” said Barbie. “In the throne room” said Ken. Barbie went to the Throne room.
There the queen sat. “Come my dear” said the queen. Barbie hugged the queen. Barbie was surprise to see royal page.

Soon Barbie was heading back to her room when she heard a cry. It was the royal page yelling invader!
“Invader?” asked the princess.
“Yes” said the royal page. “We must hide” said royal page.
So they hid. The invaders lost. They were safe.
The Royal page was nice.

The End.

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We picked this origami book up at the library, dug out a pack of paper that we bought on clearance and Billy sat down with the girls to try it out. None of them had ever done it before so they chose an easy one to start with, which happened to be a frog. Billy’s in the black one, Jacqueline’s is green and Shawna’s is blue.

They’re trying to see whose frog can hop the farthest. Looks like Shawna won.

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“What exactly is unschooling? I thought it was another name for homeschooling”.

All poodles are dogs, but not all dogs are poodles.
All unschooling is homeschooling, but all homeschooling isn’t unschooling.
Unschooling is legally a type of homeschooling.
Unschoolers don’t “school-at-home” nor do we gives tests or grades.
Unschooling accepts all learning as valid. Everything is connected. You never know when one thing will lead to or connect with another! Unschoolers know they *do* and will keep searching for those connections.
Unschooling is natural learning. Humans are hard-wired to learn-we crave it and seek it out. When you believe that, you’re half-way to understanding how it works.
Unschooling is understanding the difference between teaching and learning. That’s a HUGE hurdle to overcome before you can “get” unschooling. (I can *teach* you everything *I* know about unschooling, but unless you’re willing to *learn* it, I’m wasting my time and your time.)
All children can unschool.
Many parents can’t.
Unschooling requires a “paradigm shift” to make it work. And it works best when you (the parent) are an active learner. And curious and thoughtful and enthusiastic and interested and interesting.
It’s about trust and respect and patience.
It helps if you can step OUT of the box. If you’re OK going against the flow and standing up for yourself (or at least your child).

**originally posted in 2006**

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As yellow school buses rumble through Nicole Puckett’s Spokane, Wash., neighborhood, her eight children are often asleep in bed. When they wake up, instead of heading to school, they go downstairs to begin another day of “unschooling“, an educational approach that is the subject of much debate among home-schoolers and traditional school advocates. Ms. Puckett keeps her children at home for their education, but she doesn’t have a textbook in the house. Instead, she follows the philosophy of letting the child decide each day what activities to pursue—or avoid.

On a typical day, Ms. Puckett’s children—who range in age from 4 to 17 and have never gone to a traditional school—might watch a few hours of television, read the Bible, amuse themselves with video games, play with their siblings, practice the violin, or learn Russian. On many days, they’re out of the house visiting museums, going to concerts, or attending theatrical plays.

“I believe that each child is gifted, but each has different gifts,” said Ms. Puckett, who sees it as her job to help facilitate the learning that her children choose. “When I see them veering toward something, I guide them toward it. If they’re showing no interest, then we don’t do it.” This child-led method of home schooling means that what children do during a typical school day is entirely up to them.

In an era of increased standardized testing, top-down curricula, and the mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, unschooling is attractive to some parents, who say learning should be a more organic, curiosity-inspired exercise. Advocates say it allows children to become passionate about, and invested in, their own learning.
Risks Involved But critics, including some of those who opt for more-structured home schooling and proponents of “child centered” classrooms in regular schools, say that there are risks involved, and that learning deficits can result from letting children basically learn whatever they want.

The term “unschooling” was coined by the late John Holt, one of the godfathers of the home-schooling movement, who wrote a stack of books about alternative ways of educating children. Mr. Holt first used the word in 1977 and equated it with home schooling. The term resonated with many home-schooling parents who didn’t want to use traditional methods, such as textbooks and organized subjects, to educate their children, said Patrick Farenga, the president of Holt Associates, based in Wakefield, Mass. Mr. Farenga took over leadership of the company, a home schooling publishing and advocacy organization, when Mr. Holt died in 1985. Unschooling should not mean “schooling without a plan,” Mr. Farenga said in an interview. “It’s self-directed learning. I define unschooling as allowing children as much freedom to explore the world as you can comfortably bear.”

Brian D. Ray, the president of the Salem, Ore.-based Home Schooling Institute, estimates that 10 to 15 percent of the 1.9 to 2.4 million K-12 children being home-schooled in the United States also fall into the unschooling category, also sometimes called “relaxed home schooling.” “We’re talking about people who purposely, intentionally, philosophically make learning an integral and organic part of everyday life,” he said.

State laws on home schooling also pertain to unschooling and vary considerably around the country, Mr. Ray said. Some states require home-schooled children to take several standardized tests during their K-12 years. Other states have few or no requirements of home-schoolers, he said. For instance, in Washington state, where Ms. Puckett’s family lives, the law requires that home-schooled students take an annual achievement test, though they’re not required to meet a particular educational achievement target, according to a listing of each state’s requirements compiled by Home Education Magazine, a bi-monthly magazine about home schooling that has been around since 1983. Connecticut asks that parents who engage in home schooling file an annual plan for their child’s education and meet once a year with local education officials to review the plan. Pennsylvania requires that home-schooling parents provide at least 180 days of instruction and maps out what subjects must be taught. Pennsylvania also requires annual testing and detailed documentation from parents to prove instruction is occurring.

Sandra Dodd, a longtime advocate of unschooling who lives in Albuquerque, N.M., and whose two children never attended a traditional school, said when her oldest child was of school age she believed he was already soaking up more on his own than he would in kindergarten. “If you don’t separate the world into educational and noneducational, your child wants to learn everything, so everything around them is what he’s learning from,” she said. “They’re learning in natural, real world ways, the way you learn to drive or cook or sew.”

‘Less Structured Place’ Unschoolers argue that if a child is intrigued by a book, for example, they don’t have to quit reading it to make way for a science lesson; or if they love dinosaurs, they can study them for weeks at a time, and visit museums to bolster the experience.

Jane Powell, a Bowie, Md., mother of four children who practices unschooling, said she never taught her oldest son, now 9, to read. He learned how to read by playing video games, she said. “As he was playing his games, he was asking me to read, so I was reading what he needed. Then he was asking me less and less frequently, and then it stopped. … He learned to read,” she said. “I didn’t teach him. I didn’t prod him. I didn’t give him any helpful shoves in the appropriate direction. He learned to read when he was ready.”

Likewise, Ms. Dodd said she never taught her children mathematics by using worksheets or word problems. Her children learned math by figuring out how many weeks of allowance it would take to save up for a certain toy, by calculating percentage discounts on items at stores, and by estimating tips at restaurants, she said. Ms. Dodd said her son, at his own request, took his first formal math class at age 18 at a local community college. When he took the initial placement test, she had to explain to him that multiplication could be represented by an X or by a dot or by a parenthesis. He scored well on the initial test, she said and by the end of the class he had pushed his scores even higher, she said. With unschooling, “how you learn something is because you want to learn it,” Ms. Dodd said, adding that her children have been able to follow their own interests—rather than a list of subjects determined by others. “My kids have had a glorious full life of absence of school,” she said. Of course, those from more traditional education circles worry that such free-form education could make it difficult for a child to adjust as an adult to the more structured world of college or work.

But Ms. Noddings of Stanford, despite her reservations about unschooling, believes just the opposite. “Perhaps these kids may help the world be a less miserable and less structured place,” she said. “Perhaps they’ll have something to say against the overly bureaucratic system we have now.”

Different Approaches To those who have chosen unschooling, Mr. Farenga of Holt Associates said, the method can take a variety of forms. He doesn’t espouse any particular way of unschooling, but “some parents take a very laissez-faire approach,” while others choose more structure, he said. Ms. Puckett, for example, limits her children to two hours a day of television time, a practice that makes some of the more extreme unschoolers wince. “Unschooling is not unparenting,” Ms. Puckett said. “My choice is that too much TV is not good for their brains, and it inhibits their natural curiosity.”

Ms Dodd, on the other hand, said her family has TVs and video games in many rooms, and her children’s time using them is not limited. More often than not, though, the TVs will be off because her children find more creative and interesting things to do, she said.

** Originally posted in 2007 **

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1. Give yourself some time to deschool.
Letting go preconceived notions about school and learning is a gift you can give yourself, and your children. My own deschooling is a work in progress and the more I see unschooling first hand, the more I question what I once thought about education and learning.

2. Expect a period of deschooling from your children.
It’s been said that one month per every year of school is common. As I said in a previous post about deschooling, “your child has probably their natural desire to learn squashed and will need time to recover from that. With a parent’s help, they can gain back most, if not all of what they lost and begin to see the world as a place where learning is enjoyable, and all around us”.

3. Let your children feel your energy and passion for life. Light a fire within yourself and let it burn so brightly that they see it! What are your interests? Is there something you’ve always wanted to learn? Do It! Let them see YOU learning and living life to the fullest. Be curious. Be interested in life.

4. Don’t make the mistake of duplicating at home, what you didn’t like about school. Sometimes we just automatically repeat the same patterns, without even thinking about it, just because it’s all we know, it’s what we’re used to or it’s what we’ve always done. Replace school with a full and interesting life. The public school system can not compete with that. They can’t even come close.

5. Don’t make cookies to teach math.
Make cookies because they taste good.

*originally posted in 2007*

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As other children are waking up and heading toward the school bus on a Tuesday morning, Adele Schiessle asks her children if they want to spend the day playing on a 6,000-square-foot indoor inflatable play area.

Collin, 6, and Amber, 7, agree that would be a pleasant way to start the morning. After they play on the bouncy furniture, they head back to their home in St. John, where they spend the rest of the day watching TV, navigating XBox, working on art projects and playing games.

It is just another day in the Schiessle household, where the children learn through a branch of homeschooling called unschooling.

While the definition of unschooling varies, it generally reflects a concept of child-led learning.

For Carol Pozos’ oldest child, it meant self-taught reading at age 4.
For 18-year-old Abby Stewart of Chicago, it meant the recent news that she had won early admission to Princeton.

“It’s an awareness that learning is always happening because it’s part of living,” said Jane Van Stelle Haded of Hobart, who unschools her two children. “It’s almost trying to capitalize on whatever your children are interested in.”

Unschooled children don’t go to school, but unlike other homeschoolers they don’t necessarily learn through workbooks, educational guides or study sources. Instead, the children pursue what interests them. The unschooling concept has been around for decades, but it’s been slow to catch on, as initially most parents shy away from letting their children have such control over their own education.

“I’m trying to get rid of the idea that learning happens at a certain time in a certain place,” Van Stelle Haded said.

There aren’t any statistics on unschoolers yet, but the popularity of unschooling is reflected in the number of message boards on the Internet, in the abundance of unschooling clubs, in the frequency of unschooling conferences and in the slow but steady movement of unschooling into the vocabulary of educators.

Part of the increased attention on alternative education may be the rebellion against educational initiatives such as No Child Left Behind. It was one of the reasons Janna Odenthal of Chesterton embraced unschooling for her child. “The testing doesn’t do any good,” she said.
In a 2003 survey by the U.S. Department of Education, the number of children educated at home nationally was 1.1 million, an increase of 29 percent from the previous study in 1999.

Seth Odenthal, 10, has been unschooled since he was about 5.
“I went ahead and gave it a try, and I fell in love with the things we could do together, the flexibility in our schedule,” his mother said. When Seth took an early interest in cooking and baking, Odenthal embraced his curiosity, and the two of them cook together. She even signed him up for a local cooking class. Seth never formally learned math, but Odenthal said he excels at it because it’s a natural progression from his cooking interests.

Indiana doesn’t require the unschoolers to take standardized tests, and parents are allowed to give their unschooled children high school diplomas when the parents believe the children are ready to graduate.

Since education laws in Indiana are loose, parents of unschoolers can take different approaches to learning. But most tend to have a few common practices. Students don’t sit at desks to learn, as parents believe learning happens all the time. And while they aren’t taught how to read or write or do science, the children usually ask their parents enough questions that they eventually learn on their own.

“My oldest was reading on her own without being taught before she turned 5,” said Carol Pozos, who unschools her three children in her Michigan City home. “I did not do anything except read to her, and she soaked it up and was reading full sentences. I thought to myself, ‘Obviously, this works.’ ” Pozos, who has a degree in elementary education, enrolled one of her children in preschool because the child had been begging her to go to school since she was 3. But when her daughter refused to return to school halfway through the year, Pozos decided to try teaching her children herself. Her children are 8, 7 and 4, and other than a half-year of preschool, all three have been learning at home their entire lives. They also have chores they’re required to do every morning.

And once they finish their chores? “We do whatever we want,” said 8-year-old Isabel, who spent a recent afternoon on the floor of her living room flipping through a picture book with her 4-year-old brother. On Thursday mornings the children attend an art class filled with unschoolers and their parents. “Books are out, and if they want to draw they can draw,” Pozos said of the class. “If they don’t want to participate, they can go off in the corner and play.”

To prepare for the SAT college admission tests, 18-year-old unschooler Abby Stewart bought some test prep books and took some old subject matter tests. She posted an overall SAT score of 2,350 out of a possible 2,400.

Pozos said she’d be happy if her children went to college, as long as they are happy with their decision. “I’m not one of those people who says, ‘I want my son to be a doctor and my daughter to be an attorney.’ I just want them to be happy. If Armand wants to be a stay-at-home dad and Isabel wants to be a marine biologist, that’s just fine.”

**originally posted in 2007**

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I’ve found this to be true sometimes, not so much from family but from friends and people that we meet while out and about. I’d like to share the reply I posted on the e-mail group. It was written with my daughter Jacqueline in mind. (note: This post was originally written in 2007 when Jacqueline was 9 years old.)

Dear Friend,

Please don’t talk down to Jacqueline when you speak with her. Your eyes may see only a young child, but I see a person who is interesting and knowledgeable in many areas. If you give her half a chance you may learn something that you didn’t know before you met her.

Ask her what she’s interested in and she’ll tell you all about the Mars Odyssey satellite. Ask her what she did today and she’ll tell you how she fixed her grandmothers VCR…after her daddy called her to ask for help. Talk a bit longer and she’ll tell you the Barbie story she wrote, and what her next story is going to be about.

Ask her about her life and she’ll tell you that she’s a four year Girl Scout, that she met an astronaut at the Kennedy Space Center and that she has her own plant at her grandmothers house (which is next door) that she waters every other day.

Also, if you’re going to ask her why she’s not in school, be prepared for her to tell you she dropped out in the first grade. She has her daddy’s sense of humor. Don’t look shocked. Laugh instead. She’s being funny.

Speak to her like a human being and she’ll speak to you the same way.

Sincerely,
Jacqueline’s mommy.

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One of the members of an unschooling e-mail list I belong to, wrote that she is having trouble being truly present with her kids. I’d like to share one of the answers she received.

Here’s what I figured out as it pertains to parenting and unschooling (parenthetical summaries where I could think of them):

1. Meeting my own needs means that I can be the unschooling mom I need and want to be. (recharge)

2. I found some of my homeschooling books and remembered why I believe in this approach. (reaffirm)

3. I realized my social and intellectual needs were starving, and started seeking outlets for myself. (recharge) This is extremely important modeling. how do you want your kids to take care of themselves as adults?

4. I noticed all the signals my body had been giving me over many months that I had ignored, so that I had to be “hit over the head” with panic attacks before I would change anything. (listen to self)

5. I got online and found this list. From there, by mentioning my location, I found some semi-local moms– one that I actually knew irl! (get connected)

6. I looked at all the areas of elevated stress in my life– there were quite a few– and started taking concrete steps to make changes. as long as I was taking some baby step, I could steer clear of the panic. (take action!)

7. I consciously worked on reconnecting with nature. for me, this is my constant, my place where I can find that feeling that life is meaningful. if it works for you too, it’s getting easier now that we’re moving into summer– make sure you’re not deprived of natural light, get your hands in dirt, even if you don’t garden, which I highly recommend! (get connected)

8. I started exercising, very important for clearing those toxic panic feelings and the associated biochemistry. (be healthy)

My suggestion, then, would be to figure out what you need to recharge and feel that your life is meaningful, and go get it! I once heard Bernie Siegel speak, and he said “If you lose your keys, you go find them, right? if you lose your health, go find it!” the same is true for our motivation and our zest for life. Go find your joy! and take your kids! it will snowball once you get rolling. but you’re the only one who can pull you out of the quicksand.

**originally posted in 2006**

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Mary: Hi my name is Mary, and I really want to unschool my daughter, age 4 instead of sending her to preschool next year. She currently goes 3 mornings a week. She always seemed to like it, but is now begging me not to send her. She just sits on the floor of the classroom, refusing to participate. She won’t talk, just sits there and looks incredibly sad. This is a child who is so exuberant, happy, creative, etc outside of school, and used to be in school. She creates pages and pages of artwork a day at home, with paints, chalk, markers etc. She makes collages and structures out of recycled stuff at home. At school she wont do art! How can this be? My daughter is always so sociable, now she won’t play with the other kids at school. I do not want to crush her spirit or her individuality . Please help me. Yesterday I stayed in her classroom with her, the teachers were happy to have me, but the director of the school was against it. She didn’t throw me out, but told me i needed to leave cold turkey, and it “is her job” to be here. What??? Anyway I did mention pulling her out next year, and the looks I got, made me feel so rotten. I was told how important the learning, the interaction with peers, the transitions from one thing to the next, all this is invaluable, and you can’t duplicate it at home.

My instinct says to leave now. I guess I just feel like an overprotective Mother. I guess I am afraid. Please help me, and so sorry to ramble, I am just upset. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
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Queenk: You were given instinct for a reason, so don’t dismiss it. If shes not happy theres a reason. Trust your child and yourself, and you’ll come to the right decision for your family.
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April: Trust your instincts. Listen to your daughter. You see that your daughter is miserable. She says she doesn’t want to go anymore. Take her out of preschool now. She probably doesn’t do art at school because they tell her HOW to do it the correct way, and WHAT she should do and WHEN. At home she is free to do art in any which way she chooses.

Of course the preschool people would tell you it’s a mistake to take her out, they’re losing money! This is their life! They don’t want anybody to think their jobs are unnecessary. I would definitely be wary of anyone that tells you you’re not welcome to stay in the class with your child.
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Steph: Mary, you have instincts where your daughter is concerned, for a reason.

It has always amazed me, that the first things that a person is taught in a child-development class, apart from the physical requirements of caring for children, are separation-anxiety, intrinsic learning, and trust. And yet it seems to me that childcare places all over the country, are encouraging their parents and teachers to believe in “cold turkey.”

It just doesn’t agree with any of the research which they are so quick to fall back on when it suits them. And maybe I’m cynical, but it is a business. It is hard not to take it personally when someone no longer wants your services, and I think that happens all the time.

It happened last year when we took my 5yo out of the preschool that she had loved the year before. The *feel* of the teacher and the direction of the class, was just too harsh.

Believe me, they weren’t *supportive* of our decision to have her at home. But what mattered to us, is that we’d been through not trusting ourselves with our oldest daughter, and ran into all sorts of complications that could have been avoided had we just trusted our instincts-which-are-there-for-a-reason, and what we saw in her.

Like you describe your daughter, our oldest loves projects and crafts at home, and yet at school was inundated with ditto work and disapproving looks. I’ll never forget her coming home with a ditto that they had to color just like the teachers.

It had rows of children sitting at school desks. She had colored it correctly, but when she came home, she took it out and made the children into mermaids, adding tails and prettying up their outfits.
In 3 homeschooling years, she hasn’t slowed down from her projects or plans or creativity. She doesn’t hate structure or dislike anything, really. She adapts difficult situations to herself, rather than visa-versa. I think that unschooling has validated that….validated her own instincts which might be more in tact than even mine.

There are still tugs (sometimes pulls) of doubt any time big changes are in the works. I don’t know if that ever changes.

Four is a wonderful age to learn to find and follow one’s own rhythm. What a gift that would be to her.
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April: I wanted to add, that it seems to me that society tries from the moment we are pregnant to get rid of our natural instincts. There are people telling us what to do from the beginning, and doctors that tell us we better listen to them, they’ve been to school they know best. Teachers know best. Friends and family members know best. From the very beginning we are told which professionals to trust, and throw our own instincts out the window. I learned that doctors don’t always know best when I gave birth to my first daughter. Yet I still didn’t completely trust my instincts.

I quit nursing both girls early because the doc said they weren’t eating enough. I saw the negative affects of too many trips to the doc for antibiotics when my girls were sick, but I STILL thought that surely doctors would only do the right thing.

It wasn’t until I saw my daughters in a weekly playgroup, stop doing spontaneous arts and crafts because they were waiting for instructions that I finally said to heck with what everybody tells me! This isn’t right.

From now on I will try to let my instincts as their mother tell me what is right, and stop looking to other people all of the time.
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Steph: I quit nursing my oldest too early, because a hurricane stressed me out. Had I stuck with it, it would have been calming and healing for the two of us. Instead I switched to formula and dealt with gas pains and crying fits that coincidentally were not an issue with the two children I breastfed afterward.
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Sandra Dodd:
-=- She always seemed to like it, but is now begging me not to send her.-=-

Don’t ever make her go again, no more than you would leave her with a scary babysitter, or put her on a city bus with scary-looking people alone. Each hour of stress will have to be undone. Cut your losses. Keep her home now. If you paid for this school, let the money go without another thought. If you could pay to undo what’s done, it would be worth it, but you can’t.

Get her some new art supplies (GOOD ones, not cheapo stuff) and put on some happy music and make her favorite snacks and live happily together!
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Zenmomma: Mary, congratulations for listening to your daughter! Many parents are so used to listening to the experts, that they disregard the statements of a 4 year old. She is so lucky to have you.

***I really want to unschool my daughter, age 4 instead of sending her to preschool next year. She currently goes 3 mornings a week. She always seemed to like it, but is now begging me not to send her.***

My experience has been that all of us, including kids, go through stages in our lives. Maybe your daughter enjoyed what the preschool had to offer at the beginning. Now that she’s gotten her fill, or had her curiosity satisfied, she no longer needs or wants it. When my now 7 year old dd was 4, she begged to go to “real school”. And I mean begged. Daily, and with passion, reason and full explanations. So, I found her a tiny, private kindergarten (6 kids) and had her go there. She enjoyed it while she went. At the end of the year, though, she had had enough. She asked to come back home with her brother. She got what she needed and moved on.

I’m really not saying anything different than the others who have have posted. Trust your instincts. I’m just adding that I don’t think you have to worry over having sent her in the first place. It seems like she got what she needed, and now she needs to know that she can trust you to let her stop and move onto the next stage.
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Laurie: I was going through the same agony not long ago with my two sons, who are 6 and 8. I followed my instinct and took them out of school (even though all the voices in my head were telling me that I was overreacting). I can’t tell you how WONDERFUL it’s been and how full my heart is having them home. The other day my youngest said, “I’m glad we homeschool because now I don’t get hurt every day” (he was being victimized by a bully…at SIX!). What your daughter is experiencing is just as bad as bullies…her spirit is being broken. Listen to your heart, not the disapproving people at the preschool. You are the person who knows what’s best for you and for your little girl.
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Donna: Take her out now. Do not hesitate. I hesitated and trusted the school system with my son and he has been paying the price.

It is very hard to live with yourself when you make mistakes with your children.
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Steph: Zenmomma, what a wonderful sense of peace you have. Suitable for your screen name. Thanks for sharing what you did, because it addresses my current wrestling in such a restful way.
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Mary: You guys are absolutely wonderful! I am so touched by all of your responses. You are right, I’m going to take her out tomorrow. I guess I just needed a boost of courage, and I got one. I only signed her up for preschool bc I thought it would be fun for her, not to punish her, and that is what it has turned into. I never wanted her to be there if she didn’t want to. Zenmomma, I think you are right. She probably wanted to try out preschool bc everyone around her (friends and family) talked about how “when your a big girl you get to go to school”, when she finally was old enough it was exciting to her. She has never been in daycare or anything, so all the kids, etc, probably interested her at first. Like ZenMomma said, she has gotten her fill and has moved on. It is no longer that interesting. And April, you are right, at home she goes to her art supplies, and just creates what she wants, when she wants. At school, she comes home with a painted picture of a strawberry bc it is strawberry season, and thats the unit they were on. Maybe she didn’t want to paint a strawberry! Maybe she wanted to paint a pumpkin, but they probably didn’t have any orange paint “available”.

Sandra, you are so right, I wouldn’t leave her with anyone she didn’t want to be left with, so why does the world say you’re supposed to do this when it comes to school? I guess I have had my head in the sand, just going with the status quo. I thought preschool would be fun, and now that its not, I need to listen to her and say no, you don’t have to go back. I feel much better now. And art supplies are our forte here, we cant stop creating!!

Thanks so much everyone. I am looking forward to all the fun we will have together. I am so glad this site exists. I don’t know what I would do without it.
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Laura: Well, when I first starting reading this, I was going to offer advice, but now, getting to the bottom of the posts, instead, I’ll offer Congratulations!

Your daughter sounds like my son did years ago. He enjoyed preschool for a few months, then begged to stay home. In fact, (rather pitifully to think back on) when I said that one of the reasons for preschool was so that I would have time to myself, he offered to just stay in his room for a few hours . I took him out of preschool at that point!

He loved drawing and painting at home, but after months of preschool, he did less and less on his own. He was never a coloring book kind of kid, though. All his drawings had to be his own – he wasn’t interested in just coloring someone else’s drawings. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of what they did in preschool – coloring pictures and following someone else’s directions.

He’s been drawing his own pictures and making things out of clay for almost a decade now. He’s 13, and unschooling was *definitely* the way to go for him.
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Carol: I’m too late to offer advice – it’s all been said already!

So I’ll just say – welcome back to the world of sharing and enjoying life with your child
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Steph: ***In fact, (rather pitifully to think back on) when I said that one of the reasons for preschool was so that I would have time to myself, he offered to just stay in his room for a few hours . I took him out of preschool at that point!***
This this just breaks my heart!!! What a sweetie. So glad for your decision.
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zenmomma: **What a wonderful sense of peace you have. Suitable for your screen name. **

Thank you. I’ll keep that as my soul nourishing thought for the day. I also want to share a little off topic observation I had recently.

When I first picked my screen name as “zenmomma”, I don’t think I was very peaceful or zenlike. In fact I know I wasn’t. I was in the middle of several life-changing situations and was stressed to the limit. I think I picked that name because it was what I wished I could be. Not consciously, though. In fact, at the time I thought to myself, “What a lie. If people only knew.”

Well, low and behold! Just like they tell us not to label a kid bossy (or whatever), because she’ll live up to that label, I have found myself identifying very strongly with the zenmomma label I gave myself. It’s now a year and a half later and I no longer feel like my screen name is a lie. I have a real sense of peace and joy about life now. And I feel like I can handle the curves that life throws me with a certain sense of well-being. It is, what it is. What will be, will be.

I think that’s why it gives me such a nice feeling to hear the positive way most kids are described on these boards. Just a thought. I’ll go back on topic now.

**Thanks for sharing what you did, because it addresses my current wrestling in such a restful way.

What are you wrestling with, Steph? Is someone asking to go to school? Or asking to come home?
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Steph: Oh, my incredibly free-spirited almost 9yo likes the idea of school again. The thing is, she has her eye on being around certain friends which may or may not even attend that school next year. We have been house-hunting and might move also. There is just nothing certain, and I dislike scrambling so. I concern myself with having “worked” to adjust my own goals and plans to our unschooling lifestyle, and now having to adjust again, and if so probably unadjust when she experiences that teachers are not “flexible” like mom.

She loves being home, and doesn’t want school to be closed to her either…and not for academic reasons at all. She wants friends that she can see often, and unfortunately because the support group has been scattered so far around our area, she hasn’t had that.

Her friends are school kids, who she doesn’t see enough because they have homework to do, etc. She is in activities, but the difference in schedule and others’ throughout the week, is affecting her. She just wants to hang out with people. We’ve talked a little about how kids in school don’t “hang out” much either, but this is her theory and she wants to follow it through. She makes plans and calls kids to invite them over, but usually has to wait weeks. We’ve also been very busy…too busy..for months.

Personally, I think that moving from a townhouse to a neighborhood house will fix most of this. We’d have more capacity and a front yard. So we’re working hard for that, and if we move to a certain area, I’ve read the support group info, and it feels more comfortable.

But then I think that most things in life can be changed drastically just by rearranging them. LOL A philosophy going back generations.

Just so much up in the air. Your post though…It truly gave me a sense of “::::::Breathe::::::::Stephanie, no matter what, it is going to be fine.” And we will be. Inside I know that, but it takes reminding to remember it moment by moment. And that is what zen teaches, yes?
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Anne O: ***it seems to me that society tries from the moment we are pregnant to get rid of our natural instincts.*** I wanted to share something along these lines. I had the final meeting last night with the library board about my grant proposal to start children’s programs. I worked so hard on that grant and when you read it, you can read my very heart and soul in it. The board needed to sign the final approval last night. I was a bit nervous because the board consists of people who are very academic-oriented. People for whom I don’t have a lot of respect, nor much in common. People who make decisions about a library in which they spend little time.

Anyway, they were speechless after reading my grant application. It was like they never even THOUGHT anyone could care about children in the way I had conveyed on my application.

After they signed the approval, I volunteered to work the desk while the librarian finished up the meeting. Jacob was with me, helping me and working on the computer next to my desk. I felt one board member’s eyes on us the whole time we were working.

Later, she came up to me and told me she couldn’t believe how I treated my child. She said it was clear that we were good friends and that I truly enjoyed him and enjoyed being with him. She said she never even thought of feeling that way toward her children…that she listened to all the negative things people said about children and applied those to her own mothering. She was guilty of saying that she couldn’t wait to get rid of the kids after a school vacation. She was guilty of signing them up for activities just to not have to be around them. She was guilty of belittling them and stifling their spirit. And she told me all of this because she never even CONSIDERED that you could be a nice, joyful mother…which she concluded I was from reading my grant application and watching me with Jacob (she is an acquaintance, also, and we often run into her while out and about in the community…me grocery shopping with my kids and them weighing the produce and figuring out how much it is going to cost…her alone, while her kids are in school).

Anyway…my point is…it saddens me that people have lost the basic faith in themselves to question what they are doing, how they are living, how they are raising their children, even when it just doesn’t feel right to them. They continue the path of *what society says I should do* instead of just saying “NO MORE” and letting the natural state of joy and happiness enter their lives by listening to their hearts.

This has been a beautiful, inspirational thread, and I honor you, Mary, for putting your concerns out there to see what the Universe would send back to you…you have blessed us all (and especially your own child).
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Steph: ***Anyway…my point is…it saddens me that people have lost the basic faith in themselves to question what they are doing, how they are living, how they are raising their children, even when it just doesn’t feel right to them.***

Just when I thought that the discussion had reached a peak. Anne, this news is fantastic, and the above is so completely the point!!
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Steph: ***I thought preschool would be fun, and now that its not, I need to listen to her and say no, you don’t have to go back. I feel much better now. And art supplies are our forte here, we cant stop creating!!***

How quickly you knew. Congratulations to you and your daughter, Mary.

Think of what your decision says to her, about how she has a voice in her life and how her presence is welcomed at home by her mom. It’s a big deal.
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Anne O: ***Congratulations!!*** Well, the grant isn’t actually awarded yet…the board just signed the required form…but thanks, as I envision and Trust it will be awarded…!
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zenmomma: **Just so much up in the air. Your post though…
It truly gave me a sense of “::::::Breathe::::::::Stephanie, no matter what, it is going to be fine.” **

And, no matter what, the way it is, is the way it is. My dh and I were discussing this very topic this morning. His brother called him yesterday and is (again) very unhappy with his life. Hard to understand for us, since he is healthy, with a roof over his head, with a loving woman at his side, able to eat, play, dream, live……To us, all the other stuff is just details. Take ‘em as they come and make what you can of ‘em. Or should I say learn what you can from them. That’s my newest take on adversity. “What am I supposed to learn from this?” Not a new idea, but new for me.
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zenmomma: Anne, Once again your post has left me with a smile (thinking of you and your wonderful children),and something to ponder during the day (wondering why all children can’t be so honored).
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Mary: well we had a beautiful day here. When I told Molly we didn’t have to go to school this morning, she was so excited. She said “I never want to go again!” My response was “thats great, then we won’t”. I could tell she was surprised, but she quickly accepted it and asked if we could make some blue play-do. Of course I said yes, and even showed her how oil and water don’t mix while we were making it. No, I wasn’t pushing learning, just making observations, and we had a great time. We even made brownies, and now she’s outside playing in the sandbox. I am totally into this life already. It is a very happy, peaceful way to live. I thank you guys for leading me gently to my own realization of it.

Anne, I loved reading about the bond you have with your son. It sounds wonderful, full of respect and love. I often wonder why I am the only one at the grocery letting my child weigh foods, find items on the shelf, etc. The world is in such a hurry isn’t it? Its nice to read about everyones family.
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zenmomma: Mary, I’m so happy for you both. It *is* a wonderful, happy, peaceful way to live. Welcome. And as Anne would say….Namaste. (I just love that, Anne!)
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April: Well, low and behold! Just like they tell us not to label a kid bossy (or whatever), because she’ll live up to that label, I have found myself identifying very strongly with the zenmomma label I gave myself

That is wonderful Mary (zenmomma), and I totally agree with you. We tend to live up to how we label ourselves, so it would be nice to label everybody as kind, patient, loving, and perfect just the way they are!

Mary, I’m so glad for you!! Doesn’t it feel freeing to know that this is the direction that you’re taking and it’s OKAY!!?
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Ren: Oh I wish I had found this thread earlier. I am trying so hard to transform myself from a Mom whose first instinct is to yell into a “zenmomma” (insert smile here) I just love how you labeled yourself…and IT WORKED! I am going to see myself as a calm, loving, joyful person and FAKE it if I have to until my brain gets it. I was proud of myself today because when one of the kids was doing something irritating I was able to inject some humor…it felt sooooo good. Anne, you are an inspiration! Nuff said.
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I re-read a bit more of Guerrilla Learning by Grace Llewellyn this morning. (You can pick up a copy in our amazon store). She writes about what she considers to be the five “keys” of Guerilla Learning. The first one is opportunity and this is what she has to say.

“Read. Write. Talk. Play music. See dance and theater and paintings. Read poetry, write poetry, get poetry refrigerator magnets. Spend time in nature. Build things. Go to museums-and not as a “class trip”, but for the love of things you find there. If you’re not already doing these things, it’s only because you’ve arranged your life so you don’t have time and you’ve begun to believe that learning is something that happens not in life, but in school.”

I create lots of opportunities for my youngest daughter to explore her interest in space and astronomy. She borrows videos and books from the library. I find interesting web sites for her to browse. I buy space books (I buy good quality and up to date ones and older ones at thrift stores) that she reads over and over again. She and Billy made a planet mobile for her room. We’re planning a day trip to the Kennedy Space Center. She watches astronomy shows on TV.

I think that the other side of this is creating opportunities even when a specific interest is not there. I like to buy computer software and books on a very wide variety of topics and put them on the shelves or in a basket and let the kids know it’s there. One that I bought was software on the Civil War….which they were really interested in.

Later on in that chapter, Grace Llewellyn goes on to say;

“We want our kids to learn not what to think, but how to think. One way to increase your children’s chances of developing this skill is to give them real projects, (not academic exercises) where an outcome in the real world is intended and where the result, (not the assessment of an authority) is the ultimate judge of the projects success.”

And then towards the end of the chapter;

“At the heart of Opportunity is Engagement. Stay passionate, involved and interested in life and in learning. Your enthusiasm will transfer to your kids.”

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