Unschooling is NOT Unparenting

 

A fair few of our friends, even homeschooling friends are a little confused it seems as to what unschooling is and is not. So I thought I'd write a post to clear this up.

Like a lot of "alternative" parenting or education styles Unschooling is actually very fluid. I would say that unschooling is a spectrum rather than a pigeon hole.

People tend to hate spectrums because they can't put them in a box and leave it at that. But that doesn't change the facts.

Unschooling is in general as classified by DECD of Australia as parents using their own curriculum. That is the most "mild" form of unschooling. this revelation came about when the DECD officer came to my mothers house to do their yearly exemption and my brothers were not following a bought curriculum. He told her that DECD class this as unschooling.
 
So this will be the "base line" level or "mild" on the unschooling spectrum.

Then right down the other end of the spectrum are those RADICAL UNSCHOOLERS many of which also practice UNPARENTING. I've put that in Caps to get your attention. I would now like to also mention that even with radical unschooling, unparenting is not a hand in hand mutually exclusive practice.

Radical Unschooling comes from a belief that children will pick up their academic necessities through living their everyday lives.

Meanwhile Unparenting comes from a belief that children are like mini adults and deserve full autonomy at all times while their parents are there serving as a purely supportive role. This is not a bad thing so long as their child has adequate variety in their experiences and treats others with the same respect and freedoms their parents have so painstakingly tried to give them.

In fact some children who go to school are still in families that practice unparenting and or radical unschooling because these children choose how they want to learn and as a result some of these children decide to send themselves to school- is your mind blown yet?

Most Unschoolers, our family included fall somewhere in the middle. Unschooling in general also known as delight based learning, tends to be tailored to the childs interests to help them learn and aims to provide learning experiences through everyday living that the child will use for the rest of their lives. Our lessons include gardening and landscaping to cooking and sewing as well as the usual subjects that our boys take interest in such as art, maths and reading, English and literacy. A lot of my role as their educator is to get them stoked to learn what I may be thinking I need to expose them to. Reading and writing has happened pretty naturally as well as numbers.

we made Shaun the sheep

We accomplished this by allowing our sons to have a go at working all these things out for themselves and then saying, writing or giving them the correct answer. Edison learned to read by MC and I reading to him. He then learned a few story books verbatim. This in turn lead to him recognizing short words, his own name and gradually longer words and punctuations.

Edison was reading his own books at three and a half years of age. He needs us to read a new book to him a couple times and then he will remember it and also pick out the words he knows and read the book to himself without missing any of the words. So clearly literacy isn't an issue for him.

Kicky is at present obsessed with numbers, when we go through the supermarket isles he points at the isle numbers and either will tell me what number it is or he will ask me "what number is this?" and I will tell him and he will then repeat this number over and over and point it out wherever he sees it.

We have not drilled the boys or coerced them to do these things. All we did was point things out as we saw them, gave them a name and went from there.

In order to know they are keeping up academically with their formal education peers we have some activity books for their appropriate age groups. The boys elect to do these activities and by providing the books I can tell if I need to step up on our methods for a particular subject by whether or not they can do the work. If they were appearing to be behind then I would drill them a little but in a way they don't know they are being drilled such as playing a game with them that includes the subject.

But so far Edison is ahead of his peers at 4 years and 8 months for reading, writing and counting. He's doing work books designed for children aged 5-8 years without much help at all.

And Kicky is 2 years 11 months old and able to count up to 17 (after that he gets a little mix up) and he is able to recognize his name, sing his alphabet and knows most of his colors. So we aren't worried.

Things in no particular order that our boys do NOT have control over are:

meal times and menu- I am too busy to be a short order cook and eating all day isn't exactly healthy so mealtimes are one of the corner stones of our days. I serve up nutritious foods on a schedule and our boys will decide whether or not they will eat it but if they choose not to eat then they will be waiting til the next snack or meal to eat. I serve food every 90 minutes or so. And I do try to make sure that I serve up foods that they like but we all try a "new food" each day. Can't love it til you try it and I know so many kids living on a staple of PB&J sandwiches that I can't bring myself to only serve pasta shapes and sauce at every meal (the boys favorite meal)

Bed time- this is a subject I have posted quite a bit about. We are relaxed about sleep but we do still have a routine and a bedtime. While I removed the bedtime completely for our family in order to experiment with sleeping in sequence and we are still sleeping in sequence we do still have a time of night where we settle those kiddos into their sleep space and they do stay there and quietly play, read or sleep. But they stay in the sleep space. In this way we aren't trying to force them to sleep but we are enforcing a quiet time for the whole family and this provides a largely touched out by the end of the day mama with some non contact time. This also helps to avoid the children becoming too anxious or cranky.

Handling animals, in particular horses correctly- thankfully both children have a keen interest in riding and handling animals. But even if they didn't, we live with many large animals capeable of stomping on them or biting them and even just hurting themselves because they got a scare. So this isn't optional. From the day they were born they have been acclimatized to the animals and from their second birthday they have been taught how to catch, lead and tie up a horse. By three they are beginning more serious riding lessons where I teach them how to stay on. Edison having been riding for coming up two years has just begun free riding which was his choice and I would not push him on this at all. but the rest; how to handle and behave around such large animals appropriately is a non negotiable.

Swimming- this is another non-negotiable. Children have to be able to at least be able to "dog paddle" their way out of danger and know how to effectively haul their own body weight out of the water. But that's it. Provided they have the dog paddle down we don't care.

Personal Hygiene- we don't tolerate smelly kids. They have been taught how to wash and must shower at least every second day and if they choose not to shower daily then they top and tail. They also are taught to put on a fresh pair of underwear and a clean shirt each day. Jeans, shorts or trousers can be re-worn a few days in a row as long as they aren't visibly soiled. Wiping after toileting has also been enforced.

The rest is up to the kids. We live our lives, we all are learning all the time and we are loving it. And if one or both of our children decides they want to go to school then we will unschool them within the school system.

And that is the beauty of Unschool theory. It is spectral and within the childs collaborative control alongside the parents. But even those who choose to do everything "traditionally" really and truly we're cool with that. Most unschoolers aren't "schoolists" we just walk to the beat of our own drum.
Come over for coffee and a play date, we aren't that scary. We may even swap ideas. Because their isn't actually a set way to do it.