An Unschooling Life

Sleep Freedom: Letting Kids Find Their Own Sleep Pattern

Joanne — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:09:57 +0000

Editors Note: As Stephanie Waldron points out in this article, it’s important for people (and yes, people includes children), to find their own natural sleep rhythym. As parents we can help our kids with that, instead of forcing a schedule on them. Instead of thinking about how to get kids to sleep, find ways to guide them towards listening to their bodies.

Ever since our kids were born they have made their own sleep times. As babies I never tried to force them on to a infant sleep schedule. They ate when they were hungry and slept when they were tired. It’s very important to follow the natural rhythms that babies are born with. I believe it causes harm to make them sleep or wake up because of the time on the clock or for a parent’s convenience.

I couldn’t bear to put my baby in a crib in another room so we slept with all of our babies. When they were ready, usually when the next baby came, they would move into their own bed. With our first son we put a toddler bed in our room so when his brother was born we were all still in the same room.

As they grew and moved into their own beds and rooms we didn’t have set bedtimes. We had a loose routine to try and wind down and get ready for sleep. We didn’t make them go to their bed and stay there. They sometimes fell asleep on the couch and we would move them to their bed. When our third child was born she was running around until midnight most nights as a toddler. Over the years the kids started staying up later and later. Their times of sleeping and waking have varied over the years.

Some people think if you don’t make them go to bed and wake up they will never be able to get up or hold down a job. I believe this is false, it is based on fear. All of my kids have demonstrated the ability to get up early for something.

I on the other hand have had a hard time sleeping my whole life and do not do mornings. All of those years that I was in school, I was just exhausted and suffered from migraines. I was forced to get up even though I had just fallen to sleep. I believe it is pure torture to put a child away at a certain time and make them stay there. Why do we have to live on an 8-5 work/school/day, bed by 9pm, up at 6am? I believe that only a small percentage of the population actually thrives on that schedule.

When kids are small we can watch for cues, we can help them calm down. The truth is the child knows better than us that they are tired. Sometimes they get overtired and can’t sleep but I do believe that when they aren’t stifled by an imposed schedule that they can and do listen to their own body.

For example, my 11 year old daughter just went through a cycle where she was backwards, so to speak. She was up all night and sleeping all day, she got turned around and it took a few weeks for her to turn back around. During that time she grew a few inches. She listened to her body; she slept when she was tired, it just happened to be the opposite of the rest of us.

As unschoolers we have the freedom to listen to our bodies and sleep when we are tired. We aren’t forced to get up and go to an artificial environment all day.

“I can’t help noting that no cultures in the world that I have ever heard of make such a fuss about children’s bedtimes, and no cultures have so many adults who find it so hard either to go to sleep or wake up. Could these social facts be connected? I strongly suspect they are.” ~ John Holt

My Daughter, The Artist

Joanne — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:50:58 +0000

I wanted to share a drawing my daughter did the other day. She gets a lot of enjoyment from drawing and she’s been doing it on and off for a few years.

Sometimes she’ll draw a lot, other times she’ll leave it alone for a while while she’s exploring other things.

But make no mistake…she’s an artist. Like I wrote in this blog post The Artist In All Of Us, she’s an artist because she creates art.

Trusting Your Child

Joanne — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 05:13:00 +0000

Natural Parenting: Trusting your child
by Ela Forest

It is natural to have fear for our children’s well-being, but there is no reason not to trust children to know their own limits. Everybody knows their limits much better than those around them.

I know exactly how high I can jump, to what shelf I can reach or how big a hammer I can handle, and I don’t put myself in danger. The same goes for children, if we let them.

Learning from the developing nations:

Children in developing nations are usually given tools to help in family chores. Throughout rural Asia I saw small children, even as young as three-years-old, carrying a machete around with them, and participating with their older siblings in chopping bamboo.

Many times when these children observe their elders in an activity, they want to do it too. The children are allowed to watch or to participate in the work as they feel like, and there is never any fear that they might cut themselves on sharp tools.

Self confidence through trust:

Whereas in the west, when a toddler sees her caregiver working around the house and she wants to join in, fearful caregivers often respond by saying, “No, you’re too little, you can’t use a knife,” or “You can’t stir the pot, you’ll burn yourself.” This can gradually undermine the child’s self-confidence and instil fear.

Children who constantly hear the mistrust of “Don’t do that, it’s dangerous!” won’t easily learn how to judge their own limits or how to trust in their own abilities.

So many times I’ve witnessed a child happily climbing up stairs and then the mother rushes over shouting, “Get down from there! You’ll fall!” Sometimes the child readily obliges by falling.

Children whose parents show complete confidence in their children’s abilities will in turn have confidence in their own abilities. They rarely fall, and when they do, they pick themselves up, and start again.

Letting children find their own limits:

I have always let my daughter, Sequoia, find her own limits, even when it means swallowing my fear as she climbs high in the playground. When she takes a knife to help me cut vegetables, I know that she understands that the knife can be sharp. In fact, though Sequoia uses knives almost every day, she has never cut herself, while I manage to cut myself all the time!

It’s okay to remind children to look out for themselves, that the pot is hot, that they need to hold on tight, to stop and look both ways, but it’s important to let them be responsible for themselves. Children who are allowed to find their own limits will know their limits, and they always ask for help when they find themselves reaching those limits.

Teaching boundaries without fear tactics:

Of course children need to have limits and clear boundaries set for them, such as “We don’t run on the road” and “We only cross when the light is green,” but there is no need to teach children these boundaries by using fear tactics.

The three-year-old of one of my clients was told by a well-meaning grandmother that he must always hold hands on the street “or else all the big cars would run him over.”

Overnight he changed from being a confident boy, who knew the “road rules” and was happy to hold his caregiver’s hand when crossing the road into a fearful wreck.

He became afraid of walking outside, even on the footpath. Every time a car passed, he would scream in terror, break away from his caregiver and run blindly, often falling over and hurting himself, and he would then explain that he got his bruises and scrapes from “the big cars that ran me over.”

Responding to falls:

Likewise, there are parents who, when the child falls or bumps herself, rush over crying, “Oh you poor baby, you hurt yourself, let me pick you up!” The child quickly learns to respond accordingly; by being hurt, by crying. Parents often forget to wait a second to see if the child is actually hurt before making a big fuss, and more often than not, children aren’t injured at all in most little falls and tumbles – they pick themselves right up and go on playing.

A caregiver who doesn’t react loudly to every little fall, bruise and bump will actually encourage a child who has fallen down not to cry. And if a child should cry, it is a natural signal of genuine pain or shock and usually all they need is a little comfort and a kiss better.

Letting the child lead:

It is very important to react only to the child’s signals and not to our own fearful responses. It’s easy to know what a child needs because they will let their caregivers know, even if the child isn’t yet talking.

If a child needs a ‘kiss better’ they will whimper and hold out the injured hand or knee, and if she really needs comfort, she will cry. The best way to help a child who is genuinely hurt, or in need of comfort is to hold the child and let her cry. Let her know that you understand that she feels pain, and that it’s okay for her to feel that.

Telling a child, “Stop crying, it doesn’t hurt, it’s just a little bump,” contradicts the child’s feelings, and makes it difficult for children to learn to deal with their feelings. Just follow the child’s natural signals with love and trust them when they show that they do or don’t need help.

© 2011 An Unschooling Life

Tags: attachment parenting, Mindful Parenting, natural parenting, radical unschooling, Trusting

Unschooling My Children

Joanne — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 03:03:00 +0000

Originally written in 2006 – updated in 2011

Ron & Andrea over at atypicalhomeschool.net are asking unschoolers to answer these questions for the next Carnival of Unschooling. (A carnival is a collection of related blog posts).

Update 2011: The Carnival of Unschooling moved to this blog after a while and was called Unschooling Voices. The carnival has retired but you can read the archives on this site.

1. Unschooling feels, sounds or appears like a good philosophy to follow, but ________ prevent me (or make me hesitant to) follow through with it.

2. Unschooling my child(ren) has enabled me to see ________

I guess the first question would be directed to those who are just starting out their unschooling journey, still thinking about it or have extreme circumstances where unschooling would not work.

Here’s my answer to question #2.

Unschooling my children is enabling me to see that learning is everywhere. The more they are out of school, the more I see the curiosity and spark in their eyes.

Unschooling my children is enabling me to see that learning is fun and enjoyable. Learning is not filling in a bubble on a test. Learning is not being told to memorize a bunch of facts that they could very easily find, in a matter of minutes, online or in a book.

Unschooling my children is enabling me to see that their interests and passions are valid and important.

Unschooling my children is enabling me to see them…for all they are and all they can become.

Unschooling my children his enabling me to see that life really is for living and exploring and singing and creating and discovering and trying and doing and being.

© 2011 An Unschooling Life

Tags: curiosity, learning, learning environment, learning without school, passions, unschooling encouragement

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not (Orlando)

Joanne — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:10:11 +0000

Originally posted June 2009

We recently spent the day checking at the weird and wacky stuff at the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium in Orlando. My husband & I had been to the one in Atlantic City, but my kids have never been there.

The building was created to look as if it were slipping into a sink hole.

There was lots of puzzles and optical illusions, which my daughters really enjoyed.

Billy standing near a piece of the Berlin wall

© 2011 An Unschooling Life

Tags: day in the life of an unschooler, learning, unschool, unschoolers, unschooling, unschooling history, unschooling math, unschooling science

Snapshot Of An Unschooling Family

Joanne — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:42:14 +0000

Written by Sylvia Toyama

I was asked by a friend who is relatively new to the idea of unschooling, “You don’t do any instruction? What do you do?” I replied that we live full lives, with our kids, and that we talk a lot. When asked about math or history, I replied that those topics come up along the way. Then I shared some recent examples of what we talk about and do.

That conversation got me thinking, what do we do? Every year in late Summer, I find myself exploring the question of what we do, and whether we’re doing enough. My usual response to this questioning is to begin keeping a journal, just a casual record of how we spend our days. The journal gives me a place to see what we’re doing with and for the boys, to see where we might add more and how. It also gives me some peace of mind that all the fun we have includes learning that can be explained to those who ask. So, I thought I’d share several examples from the past month or so.

The boys helped a friend move furniture into storage and prepare for their moving sale. Some of this was done with another teenage friend, solo, which meant a lot of logistics and lifting, how to get furniture out and into doors, up or down stairs, etc. Dan sold lemonade at the yard sale that followed, and used some of the money he earned to buy a cotton candy maker at the yard sale. Over the past month, every kid who has visited our house has learned how to make cotton candy.

Andy saved his money, from his allowance, birthday gifts, odd jobs, etc, for the past several months to buy a new laptop. As he was saving the money, he researched different laptops, shopping for the right features at the best price. By the time he’d saved enough money for the laptop model he wanted, it was sold out. So he looked some more, saved some more and last month bought his first laptop, complete with a carrying case and some other accessories.

Andy is preparing to attend Driver’s Ed and get his license within the next several months. He wants to learn to sign his name for his license, but until now hadn’t learned to write cursive yet. He asked me to write out a guide for him, and he began practicing cursive. Dan joined in and both boys spent a couple of days practicing their cursive. Andy now has a signature he’s happy with.

We’ve had conversations about the US Constitution, the three branches of government and the checks and balances it includes. One night, Andy asked who said “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” which led to a conversation about both Presidents Roosevelt, (Andy already knew there were two) how they were related, what wars happened on their watches. That sparked questions about how each World War started, along with when and why our country became involved. The next week, it was a story about the beginnings of a local amusement park that led us to learn about the YCC, and its place in the programs of Franklin Roosevelt, and the whole conversation came back around for more connections. We also talked about the role played by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, along with my own family’s history in Oklahoma in the 30’s. So many connections, each part of conversations shared over several days’ time.

Andy and I have had several conversations about religion and the part it plays in people’s choices and relationships, and how it influences politics. He loves to discuss the reasons behind the choices people make, especially when they differ from our own choices and lifestyle.

Dan’s been fishing a few times, each time catching a few bluegills. He does all his own baiting and hook removal. A couple of weeks ago, he and I looked up how to clean and cook that day’s catch. They cooked up pretty tasty, dredged in cornmeal. Once Will was home, he said we needed tartar sauce, so I showed them how to make tartar sauce, which was just what the fish needed.

Dan asked me to help him learn how to tie a slipknot, then he made a lasso and roped several small items around the house. He also went horse back riding at a friend’s farm, although he didn’t take his lasso with him.

We talked about height measurements and growth. I mentioned that I’d heard we start out a bit taller each day, then as the day goes on and we walk around, our spine compresses and we’re shorter at night. For the next couple of days, we tracked the boys’ height morning and afternoon to see if that’s true. We found each boy was about half an inch taller early in the day, and shorter by mid-afternoon.

The day I said, jokingly, “all mosquitoes should die” Andy explained to me that if the mosquitoes all died it would be bad for diversity and cause the animals that eat the mosquitoes to die off, breaking up the food cycle altogether.

Dan has become very interested in creating with Lego blocks, spending a couple to several hours every day building and improving on his creations, mostly vehicles, and a working model of a soda machine. For some of this, he consults with Andy who is a Lego expert, still creating new models almost every week. Increasingly, though, Dan works alone, looking up instructions and ideas online and just brainstorming, trying new things, until he’s perfected his models. Our living room looks like a Lego display at a toy store!

As I looked through my journal I saw that this month, we’ve talked about math, history, money, politics, religion, civics, science, penmanship, cooking and knot-tying which I’m sure isn’t a complete list. There were also driving lessons, swimming with friends, playing pool on our game table, (Dan is perfecting his bank shot), horseback riding, time with friends, and the how-to of moving and buying a computer.

Wow, we have been busy!

© 2011 An Unschooling Life

Tags: conversations, food, history, learning, math, money, nature, science, unschooling family

Meeting Your Child’s Needs

Joanne — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 05:22:42 +0000

Someone shared Jan Hunt‘s gardener metaphor on an unschooling list a while back and I wanted to share it here for anyone who may not have read it. It’s message is meeting your child’s underlying needs with patience and trust.

“Imagine for a moment that you are visiting a plant nursery. You hear a commotion outside, so you investigate. You find a young assistant struggling with a rose bush. He is trying to force open the petals of a rose, and muttering in frustration. You ask him what he is doing, and he explains, “My boss wants all these roses to bloom this week, so
last week I taped all the early ones, and now I’m opening the late ones.”

You protest that every rose has it’s own schedule of blooming; it is absurd to try to slow down or speed this up; it doesn’t matter when roses bloom; a rose will always bloom at its own best time. You look at the rose again, and see that it is wilting. But when you point this out, he replies, “Oh, too bad, it has genetic dysbloomia. I’ll
have to call an expert.”

“No, no!” you say, “you caused the wilting! All you needed to do was meet the flowers’ needs for water and
sunshine, and leave the rest to nature!” You can’t believe this is happening. Why is his boss so unrealistic and uninformed about roses?

Yet children are no different than roses in their development: they are born with the capacity and desire to learn, they learn at different rates, and they learn in different ways. If we can meet their needs, provide a safe, nurturing environment, and keep from interfering with our doubts, anxieties, and arbitrary timetables, then- like roses- they will all bloom at their own best time.”

I believe that the development of empathy, peaceful problem-solving/signaling of needs, and connecting the dots between Action and Impact on others are just as naturally learned as speaking, and that all can be learned according to the child’s timetable, as long as they are learning from that place of nurturing, emphatic connection. The path of learning is, imo, what it means to be human. Imperfect, but ever growing.

© 2011 An Unschooling Life

Tags: jan hunt, learning, natural parenting, parenting advice, peaceful parenting, philosophy of learning

A Free Child Is A Happy Child

Joanne — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 22:54:37 +0000

“There is, of course, this matter of being afraid to give freedom to young children. I believe they have that within themselves which makes it possible for them to meet the world and life and interpret it more nearly aright than can we. They carry with them that inheritance of faith and imagination undimmed; and that tremendous surging desire to know, to see, to feel and to do, which is rarely betrayed.

In our desire as adults to lay hold of a child’s life, to grip it, mold it to our own values, we do unwittingly a great harm. We confront children with our own fears, our own lack of faith; to safeguard them we attempt to thrust between them and life those many false illusions which we have picked up in our own twisting, turning way.

Children take a far more advantageous highroad.

A free child is a happy child; and there is nothing more lovely.”

— Ruth Sawyer, in her acceptance speech upon winning the Newbery Award for Roller Skates, 1936

Unschooling Questions

Joanne — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:53:33 +0000

I’ve had this saved for a while in my documents. These were questions someone asked Joyce Fetteroll on an unschooling info list.

Can a unschooler go to college?

Can a schooler go to college? Not all of them do. Not all of them can. Not all of them want to. I think it’s clearer to state that unschooling doesn’t get in the way of kids going to college. If they feel that college is a good way to explore their interests, there isn’t a reason they can’t go.

Is it difficult to learn to sit in a seat, or is one more adaptable when one needs after being allowed the freedom of unschooling?

I think it’s oh so common but oh so sad that people believe not only that we need to train for several years to sit through lectures but that the training is a good thing. I think it’s also sad that people believe that we learn discipline by sitting through things we don’t want to do. And that unless we’re trained through dullness that we won’t ever do something we don’t want to do to get to something we do want to do.

Be aware that you — and 99% of the people in the US — have no experience with people who have always had freedom from the time they were kids. You don’t know how people who’ve always had freedom behave. You only know how people who have been controlled act when given freedom. You only know how people who’ve been left to raise themselves act when given freedom.

It’s a wicked important realization. You can’t project what you know of human behavior onto kids who’ve always known freedom because you only know the behavior of controlled humans.

If you’ve spent 12 years learning that lectures and textbooks are dull and hard, then college looks like 4 more years of the same. If you’ve spent 12 years exploring all sorts of different ways to learn and college is a self-chosen way to continue exploring, then lectures and textbooks are just a part of the package.

My daughter has been taking college courses since she was 12 and hasn’t had any problems with the format. That doesn’t mean that everyone will have the same experience. Given freedom, unschoolers are free to come to the conclusion that lectures and textbooks don’t fit with their style of learning. (Schooled kids just end up thinking they’re dumb.)

I’m concerned my dd will not have the skill nor the aptitude unless she goes back into “school”. Any thoughts?

At 18 she will be different than a schooled kid. She will not have the academic knowledge crammed into her (and often blissfully forgotten!) that schooled kids have. What will help is to get over the idea that schooling is what colleges want or need. It’s what colleges are given to work with. Colleges mostly don’t have a choice. More than kids who’ve been cramming textbooks into their head for 12 years and haven’t had a chance to experience life to figure out what they want to do, colleges like older students who’ve been out in the workforce, who are clearly focused on where they want to go. Unschoolers can be like that. Unschoolers get to explore life and figure out where their skills lie. They go to college because that’s the way they want to explore their interests, not because it’s another hoop to jump through to get to the vague destination called “Success”.

Unschooling Blogs & Websites

Joanne — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:21:51 +0000

Please share your unschooling blog or website below. Please – no businesses!! I promise to add another directory soon just for that.

Unschooling Blogs And Websites
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An Unschooling Life

Sleep Freedom: Letting Kids Find Their Own Sleep Pattern

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My Daughter, The Artist

Trusting Your Child

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Unschooling My Children

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Ripley’s Believe It Or Not (Orlando)

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Snapshot Of An Unschooling Family

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Meeting Your Child’s Needs

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A Free Child Is A Happy Child

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Unschooling Questions

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Unschooling Blogs & Websites