Exploring Unschooling

We’re back with another On the Journey episode! Pam, Anna, and Erika talked to Living Joyfully Network member Nora McDonald, who was also on the podcast a few years ago.

Nora shared an update about her family and spoke about how her unschooling journey has progressed. She also dove deep into a topic that she’s spoken a lot about on the Network, which is cultural differences. Nora is British and she currently lives in Costa Rica. Many of the expectations we take for granted in our home countries do not exist in other cultures. It’s a fascinating angle to consider as we question paradigms and realize that people are different. It was a really interesting conversation and we hope it resonates with you!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

EU340: On the Journey with Nora McDonald

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello everyone, I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-host Erika Ellis and Pam Laricchia, as well as our guest today, Nora McDonald. Hello to you all.

I’m so excited to welcome Nora to the podcast again. She first joined us in episode 340 in January of 2023. Nora is a longtime member of the Living Joyfully network and she brings the most interesting discussions. She loves nuance and to toss around ideas and process all the pieces. And that is definitely my happy place. So I’m thrilled that we can bring a bit of that to the podcast audience. So, Nora, to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everybody’s into right now?

NORA: Yeah, sure. My name is Nora. I’m British, but I have now been in Costa Rica for four and a half years. And I’ve sort of been back and forth for nearly 20 years because my husband is Costa Rican. So we have two kids. Ruben is 12. Liam is about to turn 9 next month.

I’m super into food, cooking, and baking. I have joined a cookbook club here where every month people sort of choose a theme and bring all different food to share on that theme. I also sort of accidentally started something similar, kind of on a smaller scale. So I’m doing a lot of cooking at the moment, which I’m really enjoying. I also like making British food as well, a little link with back home.

I also really love history. I’ve been sort of rediscovering history, having really liked it as a child. I spend a lot of my time listening to history podcasts and reading history books. Everything history at the moment, which has been super fun. I also really like board games, which has slightly fallen by the wayside because of all the cooking. But I have discovered that playing online with friends is a really good way to stay in touch with friends and family at home and play some fun board games. So that’s me, I think at the moment, those are my main things.

Luis, my husband, is, I feel like I’m the humanities one and he’s the kind of science and tech one.

I currently refer to him quite a lot as the IT department. He’s very handy. He’s very into computers and engineering and electronics and taking things apart and putting things back together again. He’s also super into water polo. So he goes and plays water polo with people that he has played with since he was at university several times a week. He’s super into that. That keeps him busy.

And then Ruben and Liam are very into the same kind of things. They’re both big gamers.

They love Roblox. Not really any specific trend. They go exploring everything that Roblox has to offer and lots of YouTubers talking about Roblox and different things. And then apart from that, they don’t have the kind of hobbies with a capital H. I was thinking about all the things they like and it’s these sort of little things. So they’re really into the reboot of She-Ra recently, which I do super recommend. But also they really like going to the beach. They like going to the pool.

Ruben’s got certain books that he’s really into. He’s really into the Dogman ones. There’s a series called Hundred Things to Know About Money and Food. He loves those so much. Ruben really likes it when it rains and he can snuggle up on a rainy afternoon, which is good because it’s the rainy season. So, there’s just a lot of different things going on, I guess, with them.

And then Liam is really into any kind of transport and so buses and trains and planes and helicopters, which I really like because he used to be really into them. He used to be really obsessed with level crossings. And then he sort of lost that a bit and was like, oh, no, no, I’m much too old for toys. And now he’s come back into it. And he’s constantly wanting to look up what toy he can buy. Like an airport or train tracks. And he does Roblox games as well. So he’s doing a lot of flying planes on Roblox recently. So that’s really a multi-platform interest, which is fun to see. So, I think that’s us.

ANNA: I love that. It’s just always fun to get that glimpse of everyone and just what’s happening because it’s so unique and fun. I love it.

ERIKA: I love it. It’s reminding me of something we were talking about earlier, which was how parents are also pursuing their own interests and how that can just be so cool to think of the whole family as we all are doing the things we’re interested in and kind of inspiring each other in that way.

PAM: And for me, I love the reminder that capital H hobbies doesn’t need to be a thing. So often people are like what’s their passion? What are they super interested in? What’s their big hobby?

And to be just reminded that it doesn’t need to be one thing. You said they don’t really have hobbies. And then you list it off a whole bunch of stuff for each of them. So I thought that was great.

Now, I wanted to ask since it has been almost four years since you’ve been on the podcast and the kids are getting older now, I can’t believe when you said he is about to turn nine. I’m wondering what has surprised you the most or how things have changed since we last spoke.

NORA: Yeah, it was really interesting. I was reading the transcript. One of the things is I’d forgotten how hard it was to go anywhere in the car because that has totally changed. They’re still not super big fans of long trips. But it was amazing to read back and be like, oh, my God. That was a huge part of my life.

And so it is really nice when you see, OK, that has really got easier. So there are little things like that. The other thing I was thinking about is I’ve done a lot of research into neurodiversity. And so I think I have a different understanding of my family, myself.

I think there’s a lot of neurodiversity happening, which has been really helpful just in terms of seeing different advice, the way that brains can work differently, all of that kind of stuff. So that’s been helpful. We haven’t felt the need to get any diagnoses as yet, but it’s still been really, really helpful.


And then the other really big one that I’ve posted about a lot in the network is as I was working through my process was sort of changing where I feel I stand as a parent in terms of unschooling and realizing that I was sort of expecting a certain type of child to materialize as I unschooled. And I know there is not one way to unschool. And I know that everybody’s different.

But I had just sort of encountered enough stories of these sort of certain types of unschooling kids where they’re very, they take the initiative. They want to do a deep dive in something. They want all the materials about one topic or they want to do one big capital H hobby and do all of the stuff.

And they will ask you these sort of deep questions as they’re going to sleep or as you’re in the car and they approach a lot of interesting learning that way. And my kids just never became those kids. And I really appreciate being in the network because I was sort of seeing everybody else’s stories and stuff. I was OK. This is not my parenting. This is who these people are. I’m not making a mistake and making that happen.

But I do think I needed to work out what I actually want my approach to be. Because I think for a while I really really really stepped back and just sort of thought OK. I was sort of seeing it as me being in charge. And then I started unschooling was like OK well I’ll just put them in charge. Because I tend to pendulum from one side to the other.

But I do think that was actually a really important part of the process for me because it meant that I could release my agenda, release everything I thought we should be doing. I could be focusing on observing them, getting to know them on a whole other level, understanding what worked what didn’t work. But at a certain point I felt a bit like I’m trying to be a butler. I’m bringing you the snacks and doing the things and doing all of this but sort of be nobody in the corner. And then I was like, I don’t think this is the parent I want to be. I didn’t think it was really working for us as a family.

Because yes and my kids are not really take the initiative type kids. They will just stay at home and play Roblox and go on YouTube and be there and seem very happy. But then they will get grumpy, and I noticed that actually it wasn’t really working for them either to be doing this.

I think it was even this week that one of their favorite things to do was to go to the mall and go to the food court and get food and get lunch and there are other things too but that was the constant one. And I realized that we haven’t done it for months and they haven’t said a word. They don’t even think of doing it. So I sort of was like OK I need to be a bit more proactive.

I need to be kind of making things happen. I need to be slightly more pushing them but it’s pushing them towards things that I genuinely think they will like that is super informed by how well I know them. So another example is that they really like going to this beach.

It’s called the beach house. It’s just like a flat that we’ve been to a few times. The first time they did not want to go. Absolutely not. We’re not interested. But I chose somewhere that was the closest beach, somewhere with really good Internet, somewhere with air conditioning.

It’s like this close to the beach, just a couple of meters to the beach and a couple of meters to the pool. There are showers. So, I organized around them even though they didn’t want to go. And now we can’t hear the end of it, they are just constantly asking when we are going to the beach. When do we get to the beach? He just totally loved it but he would not have chosen to go there. And so it’s been like this really interesting, it feels a bit like a tightrope.

I really don’t want to be that kind of controlling parent who’s making the decisions. But actually I do need to kind of be a bit more of the initiator. And I think they do have struggles with transitions. And I do need to be sort of a little bit of a cruise director sometimes being like come on we’ve got to get out the door but you choose. I do need to do that.

And I find that quite exhausting because I’m trying to do it as well in a way that is not sort of laying down the law and I’m trying to do it in a way that is friendly and maintains a good relationship and feels OK but it’s a lot of effort for me.

But yeah, I’ve found I need to do that. So, that’s been a big thing, and just bringing my own stuff into it and being OK with that as well. Because I think a lot of the time what I try to do is think about OK, what am I like in my relationship with my husband or my kids. I am there saying, especially with my husband, I read this thing or I listened to this podcast. Did you know this? I’m sharing it. And so it’s the same with my kids.

I really like reading. So I worked really hard to find books that Ruben likes and I will read to him. I made that effort because that is important to me. Liam is not interested.

I would love to share this but with Liam I can be like OK fine it’s not his thing and let it go. So it’s this tightrope between bringing who I am. Trying things out being like what about this? What about that? What about this? And it’s also just complicated because they like things that are familiar.

Even She-Ra that they are both obsessed with. They objected to it for three episodes about how it was cringe. I think maybe they thought because it was a cartoon it was for little kids. So, sometimes I just have to be like let’s keep watching it let’s see what it’s like. And then they end up loving it. And it’s been kind of complicated for me. But I do feel like I’m in a good place with it. But it feels like it’s still trial and error. Like does this work? Does this look OK? How much I know I’m going to meet some resistance but like how much resistance. And also just trying to understand I’ll get information in ways that are not as clear as, this is what I thought of this. So both of them are not great at telling me. I don’t know this sort of negotiation beforehand or the sort of thinking about how it was afterwards. I don’t really get that.

But I will be able to see how long they lasted, how much fun they are having. Often I will say OK we’re going and then they can decide to come back whenever they want and they will stay. So how long they want to stay, how happy they are.

Ruben is really helping me because he’s developed a system where he wants to wear his favorite pajamas after particularly good days. So, I’m getting some really useful information from that in terms of what he feels like is a good day. Sometimes it’s a really good day because something really amazing has happened on Roblox. The other day he finished Doors which was big. And so that was a good pajama day. Yeah. If you know you know.

But some days, I’ve taken him to do something that he didn’t seem that keen on. But he ended up having a really good time. So I’m having to gather information from different sources.

And because a lot of the negative stuff will come straight out of their mouths immediately. And it took me a long time to realize that is just what is happening for them in that moment. It’s 100 percent true. But it’s not forever. So I think I sort of put a little bit too much emphasis on believing that bit. And I missed a lot of other stuff as the whole story.

ANNA: Right. That’s not the whole story of their experience. I think what’s so cool about, well a lot of different things that you said, but how important the pendulum was because I think especially for coming from a more controlling place. I don’t know that you can get to that nuanced place without really letting go. Because I remember that time when you were doing that where you were just learning so much about them and it kind of surprised you, the things that you were learning when you weren’t directing in front of them.

And so I think it’s cool to see that was needed to get to this place. But I’m a huge advocate for everybody being in the equation because how else can we live and sustain life and enjoy things? We all need to be in the equation. But it’s that awareness that’s so critical to keep the relationships and for everybody to be enjoying themselves.

And yeah we’re all going to have outings that we don’t enjoy. I do plenty of that. But there’s pieces of it. I’ll stop talking. But I love that.

PAM: Oh for me what I love is the image of the tightrope. But the way you described the tightrope, I often use the metaphor of the dance. And so I think those are very similar.

It’s that dance of being present, of being there, of sharing ourselves and noticing right how it’s received and taking that as information not as judgment.

I think that’s why the pendulum. Anyway I was going to say we can be so taken aback when they feel safe and free enough to express what they’re feeling. But yeah it can definitely cloud our vision as to this is the result of the thing that we did so let’s not do that again I guess.

But instead recognizing the piece of that dance or that tightrope that you’re balancing on like oh yeah that was a moment. Oh yeah I can totally see why that moment isn’t working. And oh yeah noticing later on. But it’s so hard to notice the other pieces when we’re feeling overwhelmed by that initial negative dump on us right. It’s like OK let’s get out of here as fast as possible and not do this again for six years until they’re much older or whatever. Right?

So I think that was such a beautiful piece. And the other piece that really stuck out for me was the pajamas. I love that because it’s our kids, people, human beings can communicate in so many different ways. Some people just aren’t talkers. So you are observing for reactions, noticing what PJs they choose. There are so many ways that our kids are communicating with us. But it’s opening up to see them and notice them and to respect them as valuable as a conversation or as words that they share with us.

ERIKA: It was so cool. And I just really appreciate you describing what it looks like now, because it’s like getting to that place is not where we would expect to be. I’ve had the similar experience with my kids, where there is a certain amount of pushing involved but it’s not what I would have thought it would have been from the beginning of parenting. And so, I love the description of that pendulum and releasing. And what happens in that space is they start to trust that you are taking their needs seriously. You’re hearing them. You’re learning about them. And that builds this kind of environment that then they trust you to say, I have this idea for you. And here it is. And they won’t just reject it outright. Or if they do it’s still just different.

I mean it’s different than it used to be with my kids as well where they are. They know that it’s based on all of this kind of shared history and what I know that they like and everything. And I just think a lot of us find ourselves in that place with our kids. And so I think that’s going to be super relatable and helpful for people to hear.

PAM: Love that piece Erika. Oh sorry, just to riff off what you were saying there. It’s like that energy shift. They can feel that the things that we’re recommending or suggesting for them are because we’re thinking about them. It’s not that we’re recommending or suggesting something that we wish that they’d like to do or something that is about us, what we like without regard. You know what I mean. We’re really suggesting it because we’ve thought of them. We’re thinking about the pieces.

ANNA: I liked how you said it’s air conditioning, the Internet, because maybe the heat doesn’t feel good to one of them and the Internet feels important in those wind downs after you’ve done things. And so I think and again I think this is for adults too. It’s like when we’re thinking about the other people in our life, oh, she likes this kind of food. We’ll make sure there’s a restaurant like that or oh I’m thinking about, she doesn’t like the cold or this and that. This is how relationships work right to be thinking about each other and it kind of sets that stage. So I think that is such a beautiful piece to bring into something as simple as I want to go to the beach. I think we’d all have fun at the beach. Let’s make sure it works for everybody.

ERIKA: Yeah. I love that. So for my question, something you’ve brought up many times on the network which has been so interesting is this lens of cultural differences and how that helps us understand that there are so many different ways that people do the same thing or the meaning that something has for different people is completely different. And so I would love for you to share a little bit more about how things we think are ‘have tos’ or think are just totally normal are really culturally specific.

NORA: Yeah absolutely. I think I might be a frustrated anthropologist because I love this stuff so much. And it’s so fascinating and it’s really interesting because this isn’t my first time living abroad. This isn’t my first time living in Costa Rica but this is really the longest time. I just feel like I’m reaching a new level of studying this culture and also through understanding my own culture. And yeah, the whole people are different thing has been so massive for me and it is so useful to just be somewhere where people are doing things differently, everybody around you is doing things differently. And you sort of have to work out what you think about it and sometimes you’re like this is bananas and then you live here for like four years you’re like oh okay.

So for example, it’s very normal here to get up at what I think of as very early, so five or six in the morning. And I never really got it until I realized that the daylight is very consistently six to 630 in the morning, and till six to 630 at night. So if you get up at nine, you’re missing a lot of that daylight. And also in the rainy season, it rains in the afternoon. So you sort of organize your life around it.

When there are all the things you want to get done in the morning when it’s not raining, it just makes way more sense to go to bed early and get up early. I mean, I haven’t started doing it, but I get it.

So there’s been loads of things like that where a lot of it so much of its climate as well, in terms of things like that. But yeah, in terms of understanding that we put meaning on a lot of behaviors, especially with kids and seeing the way that these the same behavior can be seen very differently in two different places.

We had one come up because we returned to the UK for the first time in July. And it was very striking how much people care that you say please and thank you. Whereas in Costa Rica, they don’t care that much if you say please and thank you, but they really care if you say hello and goodbye. When you arrive somewhere, you have to go up to each person and give them a kiss and say hello. Especially close family, you have to go around to everybody and say goodbye. That is not the case in the UK. And so this idea of “politeness” is completely different.

And then yeah, there was a really interesting conversation in the network about food and having a kid that like, scoops up all of the brownies or whatever. And just goes and eats all the food. And whether or not that would be seen as impolite or sort of people putting even a value judgment on that is a greedy kid.

That the kid that is not leaving enough for everybody else. That is a kid that is not considerate, or that is not thinking about whether other people are getting enough or whatever, which is absolutely how it will be seen in the UK. You have to sort of perform consideration a little bit, you have to sort of make sure that you’re not the one taking everything because it’s all about being polite, right?

Nobody’s gonna say, hey, leave some for me. So you have to sort of preempt that by leaving things for other people. And I mean, I was always the person that was like, I’ll have the last piece of cake if nobody else is going to so I feel like maybe I’ve moved to Costa Rica for a good reason.

But here, especially with kids, if you eat all of the food, the grownups are delighted. And like you, they are being hospitable. And they are giving you food because they want you to have a good time. And they’re, sort of to me a little bit over concerned, whether kids are eating or not, that seems to be much more of a worry that the kids will just not eat enough. And in fact, even in my own home. I think this is just occurring to me now that we have a bit of a cultural difference there, where Luis is much more concerned about whether they actually eat. That is a really big worry. So if a kid goes in and just eats everything It’s fine, the other kids will just be doing the same thing.

But it’s not seen as rude. It’s just seen as this is a kid that’s appreciating what we have to offer. And so it’s so interesting, these sort of value judgments.

And there’s a whole thing here about, I think of the UK being a rigid country, with rules that you need to follow. And I hadn’t realized until I came here, how much I walk into every situation, looking for the rules, like, what am I supposed to do here? What is going on? What can I do? What can’t I do? And then I moved to what I would call a flexible country, and realized nobody cares, nobody’s doing that.

So there’s a completely different attitude to rules. I feel like in the UK, if you break the rules, just the act of breaking them is a problem. So, if you break a rule, you’ve committed two crimes, you’ve done the thing you weren’t supposed to do. But also, you’ve broken the rule. Whereas in Costa Rica, it’s much more like, oh, you caught me. And the other person is like, oh, you tried.

But you know, fair enough. Well, wouldn’t we all but you know, now you have to stop because I’ve caught you. Even kids I find here are very like that.

And I struggle with it sometimes, because I feel like they will do what they want until they’re told not to. But it’s just a completely different sort of way. If I come into that with my British brain, I will be like, that kid is naughty. And that kid is trained enough to kind of supervise themselves. They’re not supervising themselves. They’re just going crazy doing whatever they want, because they’re expecting somebody to come and supervise them.

So, I would see that as a problem. And I do struggle with it genuinely still. But then there’s a freedom to that. There’s flexibility. And that’s how the society is. So yeah, it’s really been helpful for me in terms of, not of just realizing how much judgment we put on kids behavior but that it’s cultural. It’s like you could see that exact same behavior in another country and it would be seen in a completely different way. So you can just sort of get rid of that layer of judgment over it, I think. It’s definitely helped me do that to just be like, okay, I don’t know, this doesn’t mean what I think. I don’t have to think that this means this thing. So yeah, that’s been very helpful, actually. But interesting as well.

ANNA: Yeah, I think it’s so cool, because I think it’s exactly that. It helps us bring curiosity to it. And I think whenever we get in this rigid story of there’s one way to move through the world it’s disconnecting. I think that is something that’s great about the network, because we even see it with people responding differently, because we have people from all over the world. And it’s like, oh, you know, this isn’t a big deal.

We come in thinking this thing is this really big deal. And other people are like, wow, that never even occurred to me, we do it completely differently. And so it’s so fun to see that range of cultures there.

Now I really think we even have microcosms of it in any country, right? In families, there’s a family culture, there’s these different pieces. And so recognizing what’s okay, just not bringing that judgment layer, I guess, is the piece that I think is so helpful.

Because then I think it allows me to get curious. And then I’m able to think about, does this serve me? Is this cultural idea serving me?

PAM: I think it’s really, really, I mean, I’m going to say fun, because when I could release that, the judgment pieces that I came to see, as you’re going through something that we have our own kind of judgments, and etc. But to discover the ones that are more cultural it opens things up. Instead of, that’s the way things work. Those are the rules of things.

To be able to start playing with that, and just really get curious about what they’re doing. Because then we’re starting to see through their eyes, like you said, Nora, even now, it’s still sometimes challenging when other kids are just doing these things.

So to be able to wonder what the heck is driving that? What’s behind that? To just get curious about that. I think it is so very helpful. And then it just brings, I was gonna say, it brings a new set of eyes when I’m watching my own kids. But really, it’s kind of like taking off the filters and the glasses, because they’re not any different.

They’re not acting. I am seeing differently what it is that they are choosing to do. So in that way, I just learned so much about them.

But yeah, I can see so much. And when you’re talking about some of the Costa Rican culture, it sounded very familiar to some of the Italian culture in my husband’s family. And it’s just fascinating, like the going up, the hellos and goodbyes being super important that way.

And, interesting, because you kind of mentioned the briefing and debriefing piece, but that was something we would talk about as we were rolling up in the driveway. It’s like, oh, hey, we’re going to say hi to Nona when we get in there. We’ll all go in, we’ll all say hi. And then you can go and play and do whatever and whatever we brought, or whatever they were looking forward to doing.

So, it was very helpful that way, for understanding the culture, helping them kind of understand it, just say, yeah, she really just wants to know you’re here and say hello to you, etc. And it would be very interesting to kind of navigate that tightrope or that dance, like if somebody’s kind of not in the mood or whatever, and working for, how can I agree? How can I help Nona be happy that these people have come to visit? So it’s super interesting to use that cultural lens as well. Just to see people in a new light, I think.

ERIKA: I love that, helping our kids learn about the differences, how people are different and pointing those things out. This may not matter that much to me, but I can see to her, this is really important, or whatever it is. I love that. And I like bringing this lens just to look at anything that comes up that I feel like, well, that’s just wrong. They should know that’s wrong. And they shouldn’t do that. That’s, everyone knows that’s wrong.

And so how true is that really? Does everyone think it’s wrong? Is it wrong in every situation? Kind of digging under when we have that strong feeling of judgment towards what someone is doing. It can just be interesting to kind of dig under that and see how true that really is. And is our feeling about it really ours? Or is it just something that we learned, an external message from when we were younger?

PAM: So often these are kind of cultural, they’re cultural norms, but they’re shortcuts for our brain. Because as you were saying, Nora, it’s been a lot of work, right? To figure out how to engage with your kids, how to support them without using tools that you weren’t comfortable using as a parent.

And so often when we go into these situations, a lot of these are shortcuts. And it’s like, yeah, this is the way we do it, blah, blah, blah. And so you’re going to learn to do it this way too.

So it is more work, I feel, but it’s also what we’re choosing, the kinds of relationships that we want to have, the way we want to engage in moments, even for ourselves. I mean, I spend a lot of time working for myself, as you were saying, and noticing the difference in the cultures and, and it’s like, well, you know, why are you doing it? My brain, my personal unique brain just kind of really loves to know why we are doing that.

And then I can be all in. But if I don’t understand it, it makes it much more challenging, because then it feels performative. I don’t feel like I’m showing up in the moment, I feel like I’m performing whatever I’m supposed to be doing. It’s so understandable. Why the different cultures, they’ve just absorbed this over their lifetime. And this is the way we do the things.

But it’s so valuable to get to that beginner’s mind questioning space, so that we can even just have these conversations with our kids, but also to open up our eyes to, is this something that we want to be doing participating in? I still love the air conditioning, the internet, like all those pieces. Like, yes, okay, we want everybody to go to the beach, but to take that extra time, you know, to understand the people that are going to be there with you and the things that will help them feel comfortable and enjoy the time as well as much as we’re anticipating enjoying it for the beach itself. That is just so valuable in developing that trust that we’ve been talking about this whole time, that trust in the relationship, so that the back and forth that we have with our kids is literally trusted by them, that we’re not trying to manipulate them, we’re not trying to take away their agency.

We’re just really interested in doing this thing. And I think that you could really enjoy it too. And I’ve thought about this, this and this and like, let’s go try it.

And as you said, they know they can leave if they’re really not enjoying it in that moment. So they’re, they’re not losing that agency, they’re not losing that control. But like you said, helping them with the transition to the actual activity.

ANNA: And I think it’s that piece of holding everything a little bit more lightly. Like, I’m curious, and maybe Nora, you can answer this, like maybe in Costa Rica, the beach experience is no AC and no internet, because you’re thinking the beach is right there, right? But you’re making it work for your family and the people that you’re bringing to it.

NORA: I mean, I really need the AC. And the showers, the shower next to the beach is a big for me, I really hate having sand on me. So actually, a lot of times our needs overlap.

But yeah, there was a famous time when I accidentally, when my sister was visiting, and I accidentally booked an Airbnb, not the beach, actually, but somewhere hot, and it didn’t have air conditioning. So everyone’s dripping. It was so hot.

So I think also, just being able to be comfortable. I also want to be comfortable. And it’s interesting to think about because the flat that we rent, I don’t think I would have rented that one sort of pre kids, because it was sort of in this big development. I would have wanted to be somewhere with lots of fancy restaurants, or, you know, somewhere a bit more, I don’t know, more traveling rather than tourism. And this is definitely more tourism, and you’re just in this big development, and we don’t really leave it. And there’s this big pool.

But it’s so nice, just to be like, I’m going to just make sure we’re all comfortable. And I think even the podcast that we did many years ago, I was sort of talking about not pushing through and being like, I don’t have to put up with this rubbish situation, I can find a way to make it better. And I think that is still carrying me through because I’m just like, I want to go and see this beautiful country that we live in. I mean, I’m not even that fussed about the beach, but there are beautiful beaches here.

But I was like, I want to go somewhere. And actually, yeah, I think the beach is best for them. They don’t want to go and do hikes through rainforests or whatever. Because they really don’t like bugs. So even the choice of the beach is part of the decision. But it’s also like, this is if they’re comfortable, and I’m comfortable.

ANNA: Everything is just making it easier, right? The shower outside makes it infinitely easier than chasing down sand on everybody or everybody being uncomfortable. So right, I think it’s looking for those pieces.

But I think this whole cultural lens, again, it just allows us to, I don’t know, relax a little bit or let go of some of these, like you were saying, Erika, these rigid ideas of what we think is the only way to do it. And I think many countries have this, certainly parts of the US have this, it’s like, there’s one right way. And there just isn’t one right way.

And it’s so liberating to realize, because then you’re really able to sink into what is the way for us, what is the way that works for me? What is the way that works for my family? And that is very liberating.

So but it’s growth. And I feel like all of these things are bringing that awareness and allow us to grow.

NORA: I think just as you said that I was like, Oh, yeah, Costa Rica is just better at the idea of there’s not one way to be. It’s just a flexible country. I really thought about this for it is just a bit more like people are just not quite expecting everybody to live the same, in the way that people in the UK are. I don’t know, it’s really complex. It’s not quite that simple.

But there’s definitely an element of in the UK, there’s this standard. And there is, I don’t know, I think it’s this sort of optimization. You have to sort of do everything better, you have to improve better, whereas Costa Rica is much more relaxed. And so I think that really helps as well.

So yeah, I think Costa Rica is just generally a better place to be like, you do your thing.

ANNA: Yeah, right, really taking in that flexibility piece, because if you’re in a culture, that’s really so much more rigid in that way, it would be harder. But all countries have different pockets, I’m sure. And I have some familiarity with Italian culture as well. And there are so many things that they’re very light about. And it’s very different. And when I’m there, I always think, Oh, this feels so different.

And yet I see why they love it and how it leads to these different types of relationships with these different types of experiences. I think it’s such a cool lens to take to anything we’re feeling, I don’t know, rigid about or ouchy about, when it comes to our kids.

Well, thank you, Nora, this was so fun. I really appreciate it. I know we have much more to talk about. We’ll come back with another episode, because there are just so many nuances of all the things. I just really appreciate you being here. And thanks to everyone for listening. We hope you enjoyed this conversation.

And before we go, I want to invite everyone to join all of us at the Living Joyfully Network where we can have some more fun conversations. It’s a warm, welcoming online community of like-hearted parents in a non-judgmental space where we can steep in these unconventional ideas and explore what they might look like day to day in you’re uniquely wonderful family.

We do have a free month that you can try to see if it’s a good fit. And we would just love to see you there because it’s so fun. Again, the more people we have to talk with and from different places, I think we all just learn and grow so much from being steeping in that environment where there really isn’t judgment.

We’re really not judging anyone else. It’s just learning and being curious. So I love it.

And I really appreciate you being there, Nora, and also here. So thank you. Thank you so much.

PAM, ERIKA: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much, Nora.

Pam and Anna interviewed three former teachers who are all unschooling parents and members of the Living Joyfully Network. Erika Ellis, Jen Hollis, and Michelle Kren shared their experiences becoming teachers as well as their thought processes as they chose unschooling for their own families. They talked about their changing views of education and how their roles as teachers helped shape their ideas of parenting.

It was a fascinating window into a very common phenomenon – teachers becoming unschoolers! We hope the conversation sparks some insights for you.

Watch the video on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us.

Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more!

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

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello everyone, I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and today I’m joined by my co-hosts Erika Ellis and Anna Brown, as well as our guests Michelle Kren and Jen Hollis. Hello to you all.

So, today’s episode is a panel style featuring teachers who became unschoolers. And Erika is joining Michelle and Jen as we explore aspects of their journey and reflect on this very interesting perspective. So, I’m very much looking forward to our conversation. Anna, would you like to get us started?

ANNA: I would. So, first, thanks for joining us. I’m kind of excited about this one.

I think it’ll be an interesting conversation because it is actually really wild how many teachers turned unschoolers I’ve met over the course of these last 25 years. And it makes sense, right? Because teachers deeply know what’s happening in education. They’re passionate about it. It’s something that’s important to them. So, it really makes sense.

But I can’t wait to hear about each of your unique journeys. So, this first question will just be, tell us briefly about your journey to becoming a teacher. What drew you to the field? How did it unfold for you? What did that part look like? And I’m going to start, Erika, with you and then we’ll kind of move around to the rest.

ERIKA: I’m excited about this too. It’s something that honestly at this point I don’t think about that often, but I also have met a lot of teachers. And so, yeah, it’s just very curious.

I was only a teacher in public school for two years before I had children. When I left school, I was planning to be in film production, which I did for several years. But that field out in LA is mostly project by project.

And when we were thinking about having children, it seemed a little bit risky for both me and my husband to be finding job by job what we were going to do next. And so, I was looking for things that I could do that would be more steady and just know what I was going to get paid for the year, basically. And so, that was kind of where I started.

But many years before that, as a kid, I wanted to be a teacher because I loved school. I loved being a student. I loved curriculum. I loved tests. I just loved everything about it. And so, it wasn’t far from my mind as a possibility of something that I could do.

But then, of course, as we grow, we learn and change our minds about things. And so, I hadn’t thought about it until I was really just looking for some more stability. And the way my mind works is like I’m a scanner.

I am interested in many, many things. And so, there were always things I could pull from, like I was in film production, but my undergrad was in biopsychology. So, I was like, I can teach science.

I could do different options. And so, when I was thinking about a stable job, something I would be able to do in the area where I was, I thought about getting a teaching credential and teaching high school science. And that whole process was actually really easy for me.

It seemed like a good fit as far as the pay is pretty good. The union in LA for teachers is really great. And so, I got good benefits. And it just drew me in that this would be good for our family financially. And I just, I love learning. I love science. I love kids. There were lots of things that I was like, this is gonna be great. But I never knew how long I would stick with it because I also envisioned myself being a stay-at-home mom.

I really wanted to devote myself to really focusing on connection with my kids. And so, since we knew we were planning on starting our family, I didn’t know what the whole journey would look like. And so, I told my husband, Josh, that from the start, you’ve got to be ready for this to last two years or 50 years. I just don’t know. And I have figured out the math. It’s going to work either way. But is that fine with you? If I put all this effort into it and then I walk away from it, is that gonna freak you out? And he’s like, no, we always figure it out.

I definitely went into it not sure how the whole process was going to go. But there were things I loved about it. I loved the topics, I taught integrated science. So that’s a little bit of biology and a little bit of physics and a little bit of chemistry and a little bit of earth science. And so, that was very fun.

And the kids, of course, were amazing. And I don’t have to get into all of the details of what happened later. But I just, I definitely learned a lot about, what even, what is this? I started questioning things a lot more than I did when I was a student in school, because I could really see the whole picture of what we’re asking of these kids. And I definitely started to change my mind about how much I loved school at that point.

ANNA: Yeah, oh my goodness, I can totally imagine that. So Michelle, let’s go to you next. And then we’ll go to you, Jenna.

MICHELLE: Okay, it’s funny that Erika got about two years of teaching in because that’s the same amount of time of teaching that I got in. Like her, I did want to be a teacher for forever since probably about second grade. I loved my teacher. I loved to play school and everything. And I was pretty good at performing in school. I loved to babysit. I loved kids. So it just kind of made sense. So, I worked well in school so that I could get a scholarship so I could go to college so I could be a teacher.

Go on the path, do the things. And I really felt like I wanted to help kids at a foundational level, that I wanted to be in on the ground floor because I felt like as students got older and if they weren’t supported in the early years, that the problems just kept compounding. And that whene they got to high school, you have this kid that’s hated school for all these years, it felt like they’re doomed now.

So I really wanted to be in on the ground floor. I did my student teaching in second grade and enjoyed that experience. I actually, in one of my phases, got to be in a classroom that was first and second grade. It was kind of nice to have the youngers and the olders just to have that little bit of a different dynamic where it’s not so based on age. There’s a little bit more flexibility in that.

I got married right out of college and moved to where my husband was and I couldn’t quite get a job right away. So I did substitute teaching, which I enjoyed. I enjoyed the flexibility. I enjoyed the variety of it. Like, I don’t know what grade I’m going to be in today and what the kids are going to be like and all of that. I liked coming with a teacher bag of some books I liked if we had a few extra minutes to read to them before recess or whatever. I liked that part.

But then I did end up, once we moved again, working in a small Hebrew academy. That’s where I taught for two years. The only availability was to teach fifth grade my first year. And then it was fifth and sixth grade my second year. And so that’s what I did, which was really interesting because the fourth grade teacher, as I was coming in, I was thinking, oh, she’ll be able to mentor me and help me. She’s got so much experience and she can help me, give wisdom to me.

She told me, oh, this class was the best class. You’re going to love it. These kids, they’re all great students and everything. And they were, they were great. But then we had a couple other students get added to the mix very shortly after. And that just kind of threw everything upside down. And I’m trying to adapt for all the different needs of all the different children and everything like that.

It was quite challenging, I just felt a lot of burden or pressure, just trying to rack my brain on how can I meet the needs of this kid? And this kid and this kid. This kid can read college level and this kid can read like second grade. And how am I supposed to meet the needs of all these kids? So, yeah, that’s kind of my journey to becoming a teacher.

ANNA: Okay, thank you. Jenna.

JEN: When I think about this question, it’s sort of like, where do I begin? Do I take it all back to my early childhood years? Which, you know, always looking forward, things don’t tend to make sense. So I find it really interesting that we as parents and teachers get so fixated on the child’s future. When you look back at anyone’s life, could anyone really say that? Yes, I knew that I wanted to be this and my path was this clean sequence of events.

And so when I think about my path into becoming a teacher, I actually didn’t want to become a teacher. I never really thought about it. I actually wanted to be a chef at one point. And as I was going about my experience, I realized, well, that was probably going to require me to work late at night. And I’m just not a night owl. I’m early to bed, early to wake.

And then so, the kinds of conversations as you’re getting towards that back end of your high school years, all the adults in your world are starting to ask those questions. What’s the plan for after school? And so, of course, I had to have a plan.

I was like, OK, being a chef wasn’t going to quite work for me. And I think I must have just plucked it out of thin air. What if I explore being a teacher? Once I made that decision, I really committed to my studies and ended up doing really well. I got into uni, started my degree as a primary school teacher. And when I did my first prac, I ended up coming home from that thinking, I don’t know about this.

All of the teachers just seemed really unhappy. And for me, it was like, if I’m going to do anything, it’s got to be something that’s meaningful. And then I’m going to enjoy it because we spend so much of our time at work. That was a non-negotiable for me. Anyway, I was having a conversation with my mom saying, I’m not sure about this. It just doesn’t seem like anyone’s happy in this industry.

And at the time I was working in a sales company. I was just doing some telemarketing and I saw these salespeople going out and selling. I think it was an alarm system door to door. And I thought that was a really great other option. I really was looking at it, I really don’t want to do this. That seems like a really good idea could start to generate some decent money. And my mom was like, absolutely not. You have worked way too hard to get here. Choose another degree. And I’m like, okay.

And so then I moved into early childhood and I absolutely loved that degree. And the difference was I found primary school teaching was all about subjects, whereas an early childhood degree was focused on the whole child. And so I really, really loved that study.

And so as I’m going about it and I started to do my work placements, I didn’t absolutely love working in the industry, but I loved the study of the whole child. And so then I did my final year of uni and ended up going to the Cook Islands for a whole month to do my final prac, which is pretty cool. I came back, got a job in an early childhood center, which, you know, again, it was okay. I really loved connecting with the parents, really loved connecting with the children.

But that didn’t last very long because I discovered that I wasn’t being paid properly. So then I approached the owners of the center and they validated. Yes, you haven’t been paid correctly. And please don’t tell the other staff. And that was my red flag to go, okay, here’s my resignation. And of course, I let my friends know who I was working with that you might just want to tune into whether you’re being paid correctly.

And so down that path was letting the parents know, they were all really upset that I was leaving and I was upset to be leaving them. But what came about was that one of those parents was a teacher. She was actually an assistant principal at her school and she was going on maternity leave towards the end of that year.

And I was saying to her that, I’m just going to go and do some casual teaching back in the primary school system. And she’s like, oh, you know what, actually, would you like a job? And so one thing led to another and I ended up starting that position towards the end of the year.

And I absolutely loved it. I loved the structure. I loved the conditions, compared to the early childhood conditions of work. It just was like a breath of fresh air. I had two hours a week of planning time as opposed to working 10 hours a day needing to work out when I was going to do any of the planning. On top of that, better pay and all the rest of it.

And so I really loved the structure of it. And so for the next sort of four years, I really dived into that world. And because I was based in a really small school, I got all these amazing opportunities. I became the reading recovery teacher. So we really got to understand the mechanics of reading or what I thought were the mechanics of reading as it was being delivered to me. And I was also in class at the same time.

So I had a class that I was responsible for and I was doing reading recovery, which was a massive load. I literally felt like I jumped in the deep end and learnt so much in such a short period of time. But as my husband and I, we got married, and we started to think about a family, we ended up having our first child.

And I had every intention of going back to teaching because like I said, I loved my job. But as time went on and it got closer to that point, I was just like, I can’t leave my baby. I can’t leave my baby to be raised by someone else while I go back into a profession that demands so much of my time and energy.

And I just couldn’t see the possibility. It was like, how could I be the teacher that I was before I had children as well as be the mum that I wanted to be? And so at that time, my husband had his own business and it just made financial sense as well for me to be at home, for me to help out with the admin and really prioritize raising our family.

That’s basically where my teaching journey started to taper off. I always had this idea that I was going to go back. But as time went on and I started to experience life as a parent, teaching just didn’t make sense to me anymore.

It didn’t make sense. I have complete admiration for those teachers out there that are doing both because it’s such a demanding job. Personally, and I am a person who likes to do well at everything that I do. And I just knew that for me, that was not going to happen. I do believe I probably would have ended up sacrificing my family big time to be that teacher who I really wanted to be.

But when I think about the time that I did spend in teaching, I was really focused on engagement. How can I really engage these students? And I think a lot of that came from my own childhood experience of being in school and feeling completely disengaged, feeling like I was more interested in watching human behavior than what the teacher was delivering.

It’s just interesting when you do reflect back at your own journey, so much of it makes sense when you’re looking back. But this whole idea of being able to look into the future and have it all figured out, it kind of makes me think like, gosh, we put so much pressure on ourselves as teachers and parents to have these children’s lives figured out when they have so much to teach us. But yeah, I’ll stop there. Otherwise I can talk forever.

ANNA: No, no, I appreciate it. And I think you’re right, we have this idea that we can control and have this linear path. And yeah, it just doesn’t work that way. But gosh, do we see the connections when we look back and how it’s gotten us here? So I just appreciate all those stories. So amazing.

PAM: And I’m just super excited now to take the next step because you’ve been looking back and putting the story together for yourselves. So it will be very interesting to hear how you then came to decide to unschool your own kids. And do you feel that it was easier to make that choice because of your teaching background or did that make it more difficult?

And also curious to know about whether you had a lot of pressure from external voices, like friends and family who were also in education. I feel like they kind of come in bunches too sometimes. So I think this will be very interesting to hear.

And Michelle, would you like to start this one?

MICHELLE: Sure. So for me, I feel like the decision to unschool my kids was a very organic unfolding type of thing. My husband and I have five children.

Right now, their ages are from 19 to 10. And so basically, I was having a child every two years. And so as my first two were approaching school age, the bond that I had with my children. I essentially didn’t want to give them up.

And so while I can’t really remember the conversations about, are we going to homeschool our kids or not? But I remember it just unfolding. People around us are homeschooling. So that feels like, okay, we’re not alone. There are other families doing this. And also the fact that my first two sons both taught themselves to read at very young ages. So the oldest was four, and his brother was two.

And it was kind of like a party joke, not a party joke, like party trick. Oh, look at my two year old reading. People would do that, and ask, do you know this word? Do you know this word? And because it was so baffling, like, are you kidding me?

So, with your first two children teaching themselves to read, which that’s why we go to school, right? To learn to read and write. So if that part’s already taken care of, then what’s my kid going to do in a school anyways?

I wanted to learn alongside my children. I saw them learning already. And to me, you’re learning all the time. You’re learning from all sorts of things, and ways. You are learning how to be in relationship with people as a family. That was always something when I was having another baby, I couldn’t imagine all the other siblings having to go off to school right now and not be able to be with the new baby.

I did start with a curriculum for my oldest just because I thought, well, let’s try that. It was like a unit studies thing. And I liked that it was every six days because you are always rotating. It wasn’t like Monday through Friday, right?

So because it was six days, it was always rotating and that helped it feel like you were never behind. So, I liked that aspect about it. And because I’m a learner, I love to learn. I’m a very curious person. I was looking into different people’s homeschool things and philosophies and things like that.

So I came across some different people like Julie Bogart. She’s been in homeschooling for a really long time. And she is very open to unschooling and has talked about it, doing a little bit of it herself with her five kids and such. Sally Clarkson is another person that I had looked to and then I found Pam back in those early days. So I’ve been listening to the podcast for a really long time and actually reached out to a guest that was on the podcast, Amy Martinez.

She and I are friends now and have been for numerous years. I looked, it was 2019 that I reached out to her for the first time because she had five kids and she was further down the road. And that’s one of the things that I think is so beautiful about this community and homeschooling in general is just the helping. It’s the education, but it’s also the parenting.

It’s the whole picture, right? Unschooling is learning without school and pretending like school doesn’t exist and things like that. As far as it being easier or harder though, I was kind of torn on which I thought. It’s a good question. I just, I’m not quite sure if I think it’s easier or harder.

I think that my instinctual ideas about learning fit really nicely with unschooling, and things not being arbitrary. I really did not like that about school, you have to learn this because you’re this grade and you’re this age and all of that.

That was something that did not sit well with me. And so, I wanted a lot of time to not feel hurried and rushed. I had these school experiences. I had my own growing up in school. I had teaching in school. I had all these different experiences. I kind of got a little smattering of each of the different types.

And so then it was like, well, I get to pick which one I think is best out of all of these because I tried them all. I did also approach it as like, this is an experiment too. We are taking this one step at a time and if something’s not working at some point, we can pivot, we can try something else.

So, just organically making our way to let’s keep learning the things that are in front of us, the things that we’re interested in. I think about my five different kids and just what they’ve been interested in over the years. I couldn’t just, oh, yeah, we’re learning this science curriculum. And I just didn’t want to go that way.

PAM: Oh, that’s beautiful, Michelle. I love that piece, too, you know, that, like you said, that it’s not like a forever decision that you can keep trying things and keep learning. You said you’ve always been interested in learning yourself and figuring these things out.

And the point about, especially with a large number of kids, the number of interests that I’m sure would weave through, continue to weave through your home is super numerous. So yeah, to try and fit that all into some sort of curriculum-y schedule, I can imagine would be very difficult. Erika, would you like to go next?

ERIKA: I feel like in one way, my teaching journey is completely separate from my own unschooling journey. But certainly, it must have informed it, but I view my unschooling journey as really just me listening to my kid, my oldest, and it kind of naturally flowing from our relationship that was growing as he was growing. When he was a little kid, he was kind of scared of other little kids.

And I also saw that he was, he was slow to speak. I just could see these things that I’m like, this could be a problem for someone in a school setting. But to me, it didn’t seem to be a problem. I could see him learning and communicating and all these things. But I could see if his behavior at school was similar to his behavior on the playground. It could be a problem in school.

He’s running away from other kids. He doesn’t want to do what anyone else is doing. He’s very specific about what he wants to do and very clear about it. But, and also just so sensitive. And so I was just putting together this image in my mind of what that would look like for this little guy to be in a school setting. And it just didn’t feel good to me. And so that really was my reason for looking into other options.

And I did find project-based homeschooling first. Which could work. But any kind of adult-imposed ideas just have never been okay with either of my children, really. And so in order to really facilitate them learning about things, it had to be their decision of what the thing was going to be.

And so it made me think about something I’ve heard about teaching, which is that teachers are kind of like taking away the most fun part of learning when they pick the curriculum and plan all the activities. So, if an individual child is choosing what to learn and how to learn it, there’s so much more that they can get out of it than if somebody comes in with that already pre-planned. And plus, as teachers, we know that part’s also really fun. It’s our most fun part. And the kids aren’t getting to do that. We’re just coming and putting it on them.

And so I really thought a lot about that. I had heard that somewhere and it made sense to me. And so I do think it probably was slightly easier to choose unschooling given my teaching background, just because I had become aware. I had the rosy view of what I could imagine school was like kind of eliminated over my experience as a ninth grade teacher.

I was in a title one school in LA. It was great. We had such a nice atmosphere as far as a real safe place for kids. And the teachers seemed to all be there for the right reasons. And it had a nice, I don’t know, it was a nice community. And at the same time, I was like, these kids don’t need to learn earth science right now.

This is literally the last thing they need and they’re not interested in it. And so I just felt horrible giving them anything in addition to what they were already carrying, the loads that they were carrying, taking care of their younger siblings, working jobs. They were like 15 years old, but they had to work because their family needs that additional support. So they were already, in my opinion, it seemed like they were already young adults having to shoulder so much responsibility.

And it just felt ridiculous for me to say, and now do this homework because this is the most important thing. I just couldn’t do it. And so I saw teachers who really did in their core believe that this was the most important thing. And for them, that worked, they could do it. And I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t make myself believe it, just based on what I had heard about, what my kids would tell me about, what was going on at home and what was going on in the neighborhoods.

And it just didn’t feel right to me. And so I ended up never giving homework. It was always just review what we did in class, you know?

So then for those few students whose parents were like, I know you have homework, they could do something. But for the kids who were overwhelmed already, I was not going to be a person who would add to that for them. And so I do think having that experience made me question it a little bit more.

And then definitely as I started diving into unschooling and learning more about that, then I started really looking back to my own experience as a kid in school and questioning all that had happened as well. Because I did love it. And you know, in some ways, and in some ways, it was terrifying.

All the things because you’re in this kind of super controlled environment, lots of rules, lots of expectations, and I wanted to not get in trouble and all of that. So all of those kind of things, I started reflecting on later. I don’t really remember pressure from external voices at all.

But I’m kind of immune to that, for the most part, just personality wise, like I’m going to do the things I want to do. But yeah, I think people probably looked at my decision as like, well, she knows what she’s doing. So they assume that’s the best choice. It’s been interesting for sure.

PAM: I can feel like you having that teacher’s experience is kind of one thing that can show people when you make the choice to teach your own kids, that you tick a little box for their acceptance versus the how on earth are you going to learn how to do that? You’re not a teacher.

So Jen, how about you? What’s your experience?

JEN: Homeschooling was never on my radar. I don’t even think I really even thought about it, probably because no one around me was doing it. And for the most part, with my eldest son school was a pretty good fit.

And then, like I said, I didn’t really think about homeschooling as such. But as my second son came into the world, and I watched how he learnt from the world around him, I started to question how school was going to work for him. He’s pretty much like what Erika was saying, he really is quite immune to other people’s ideas for him.

He just pretty much runs his own show. He was a very hands-on learner as well. And so I could just see, I think I intuitively knew that it wouldn’t work. I just wasn’t sure how school was going to work out for him. Anyway, we just kind of went about raising our kids the way that we knew how. They started off in an early childhood setting. So, they actually joined the prep program that was part of the private school that we had decided to send them to. And that was quite beautiful. The teachers that had both my eldest son and my second son were amazing.

They were very whole child focused, very play based as well. But then as my second son was starting prep, I started to notice even things in prep started to change. There was less focus on the play side of things, and things started to become a lot more structured.

But thankfully, I had an amazing teacher that was in that space. And she was very much relationship based, she really put a lot of focus in connecting with the children. And so that was a really beautiful experience for Hayes. I often would talk to her about how I’m really concerned about how Hayes is going to go moving forward into this more structured approach to learning. But like I said, we just sort of continue down that pathway that we knew. And as he went into kindergarten, he actually had the same teacher that my eldest son had.

And she was an amazing teacher in that she was very academic, like you could just see that she knew her content. But the piece that was missing was that connection piece. I felt like there was this big focus on academics, but it didn’t land because she did not have that connection with the children, she didn’t have children herself.

I can appreciate that when you have gone through the system, and you go on to uni, and you do really well at uni, and it becomes all about the academics. And so that was a real missing piece. And so I started to see Hayes not gelling with that classroom environment.

But again, just continuing on with what we knew, it wasn’t a big problem. But it was sort of then that I was starting to question things. And then as he went into year one, Blair, my third son, had started prep.

And again, I started to see this change in the system where they were taking primary school trained teachers and putting them into prep. It was like they were shifting towards even more structure. And so, and then what I started to see too, was this whole diagnosis approach, like, we need to get these kids diagnosed early, get them connecting with the right services, so that we can basically get rid of those problems that get in the way of our approach to teaching, so we can get better results.

And so at that time, I’d actually had my fourth son. I had just had my fourth son. And I remember having the interview with Blair’s prep teacher. And she was suggesting that I needed to take Blair to go and see an OT, an occupational therapist.

And I’m like, freaking out thinking, Oh my God, what have I missed? I’m just seeing this beautiful child. And she is seeing this child who can’t sit still on the carpet for a session. And me just having had my fourth child, just feeling really overwhelmed, self doubt through the roof. And thankful, thankfully, as I was going through that experience, I lent into really focusing on my child instead of what I was being told.

And I just started to, to really ground in that. But at the same time, we just continued to do what we were doing, because it still didn’t enter my mind. It wasn’t until Hayes, my second son, was moving into year two. And he had the most amazing teacher, as well as he was in a class of all of his friends. But I just started to see this light dim in him. And at the same time, Blair was in kindergarten, and he would pretty much cry every day.

The anxiety was through the roof. And I had this new baby. I had this baby, I had Blair in kindergarten, who was really struggling. And then Hayes in year two, who had all the conditions right, amazing teacher, friends, but was just completely unhappy.

That’s when I started to really look at other options, more so for Hayes, because I felt like back then, Blair was just kind of, I had this idea that he just needs to get used to the whole school thing. Anyway, so then come towards the end of year two for Hayes, I thought, okay, let’s try the Steiner school.

So we did that for a little bit, which was a massive ask, because it was like half an hour there, half an hour back. So it’s two hours of driving every day. And at that stage, my youngest was only two. And then I started to see that that was still sort of the same thing.

It was a different idea, but it was still an idea that was placed upon a child. And so then I started to explore the homeschooling route. And as I was exploring that, I came across the Living Joyfully podcast. And it just spoke so deeply to my heart that I just couldn’t look away. I listened to so many episodes. When something just really resonates with you, that it’s like, it just, you feel this whole weight lifted from your shoulders because it just feels so right. And so that’s what gave me the courage to really jump into homeschooling because I knew which direction I wanted to head.

And as far as being a teacher, does it help, did it help me or did it make things harder? It was kind of a little bit of both. It helped in terms of other people outside of my family going, oh yeah, that makes sense. You’re a teacher because they’re naturally thinking I’m doing school at home. And I often say to people, if I had those kinds of children who really resonated with that approach, that would make my job so much easier. Like, okay guys, let’s sit down and we’re going to do x, you know, I could do that really well, but that’s not why I moved to homeschooling.

I could see that environment did not work. It did not work for most of my children. And I could see that it did not work for a lot of children. And so, it took a lot of courage to go down this route because I didn’t know anyone who was doing it. I started to discover more families who were homeschooling, but very rarely did I come across a family that was unschooling. And so I kind of felt like I was doing something naughty.

Like I should have still been trying to do school at home. But for me, I’m like, if I was going to do that, my kids would be at school where all the other kids are because they loved the social aspect of school. But so far as whether it was easier or harder, it was kind of a little bit of both.

It was easy because I had the insights from my teaching experience. I also had the insights as a parent. I could see how the system was changing. I could see how it was moving from this really play-based approach, which I feel like even when I think about my own schooling experience, a lot of that was still play-based. And now I could see this shift towards more structure and more control. And we’ve got to box children in and identify all of these problems that really are not a problem if you have the right environment.

As far as the pressures were concerned, I didn’t really have that outside of my family and friends. And I think that kind of blindsided me a little bit because I thought my immediate family would really appreciate it, like, oh, okay, she’s got all the skills in the world. She’s a teacher.

I had been diving deep into the world of personal development and I feel like I’m an awesome parent. And so it makes sense that I’m going to have my kids at home with me and we live life together. But that was not the case.

My family found it really hard to understand and appreciate my decision purely because they couldn’t see outside of their own world of how that could be possible. And so as I became more and more grounded in myself and I started to unpack a lot of my own, I guess, my own conflicts with this way of doing things, it just became kind of irrelevant. I just was able to then build that stronger shell where I had compassion for other people’s ideas without feeling like I had to take them on. So yeah, I hope that answers that question.

PAM: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s brilliant. It really does.

And I mean, it’s underneath all of your answers. It is so much of our work to do, right? Our own processing, there’s the word, processing our own experiences. Even you had talked specifically about that too, Erika, like looking back at our schooling now with this new lens. And because I feel like I did that too, kind of paint it over to make it a positive experience for myself while I was going through it. It’s like, oh yeah, rah, rah, I can do this, blah, blah, blah. And looking back, it’s like, oh, I put up with a lot of shit without even really realizing it at the time. So yeah, that’s very interesting.

ANNA: I was kind of struck too by your story, Jenna. So you’re talking before kindergarten, this kind of pre-program, they’re already making it this more structured academic. And we really see that here in the US too. It’s just earlier and earlier and earlier. Whereas I feel like back in the day, there wasn’t any of that until so much later. It was kind of fourth grade things kicked in.

And so you had this time of really just learning about yourself and how to be around other people and all of those things. And we really have lost that. So I thought that was interesting.

But yeah, I just love how each of you brought those insights from that time, but also just listening to your kids and seeing who is in front of you and listening to your heart. Because I really feel like all of you had, there’s just this call to be with your kids, this is so important. So I think that was really beautiful.

JEN: I was just going to say, on that note, Anna, we’ve also needed to appreciate that with this more structured approach that the education system is still moving towards, we need to understand the pressure that that puts on teachers.

ANNA: Yeah, absolutely.

JEN: There is no space for relationships. There is no space for connection. And so I appreciate where the system is trying to move towards, but it just puts so much pressure on so many layers within that, that it ends up just extracting all of the good pieces from the teaching profession. That again, like when anyone is in a stressful environment, no one is going to benefit from that.

And we see that time and time again, that teachers are under incredible stress, incredible pressure.

ANNA: Well, that whole system, right? I feel like that whole system is having this pressure of, we need these outcomes, so we’re going to put pressure on this system. But when you drill down to the individuals there, I mean, every teacher I know, again, has the biggest heart, right?

They’re there because they love kids. They love learning themselves. They want to be a part of something, like you said, Michelle, these foundational pieces of like, if we can reach these kids.

And so there’s just, there is so much heart there, but you see this incredible pressure coming from wherever, governments, larger community, whatever that puts such pressure that makes it this boiling point. And I think it’s the kids who suffer and really the teachers too in those systems. It’s so hard.

Okay. So my question is, it’s similar to what we’ve been talking about, but can you share any mindset shifts that have happened on your unschooling journey? Maybe shifts away from schoolish ideas or the way you thought it might be.

And I think we’re all, we talk about this a lot on the network, we’re all learning all the time, but just some of those shifts for you that have been like, oh, I thought it was going to be this way, but really, my kids have shown me another way. So I will go to Erika first.

ERIKA: Yes. I mean, there’s been so many, but I feel like one of the biggest things I had taken away from all of my schooling was that there is a right way for everything, one right way, at least a better path compared to a worse path or, different ideas like that.

And so I think that left me as an adult kind of trying to figure out what’s the best way to do this and what’s the right way to do this. What’s the best way, there’s got to be a correct way for me to parent and there’s got to be a right, best way for my kids to do X, Y, Z. And so that has been gigantic for my mindset to realize that there’s not a right way and that we can’t know. I think we’re promised a lot in school that if you do these things, you’ll get a good outcome.

And now I know that’s not true. And so I feel like that has taken a lot of pressure off of all of our individual decisions. It’s opened my eyes to the great lives that people are having that I would have judged as not a good life back when I was in school because they didn’t do it right, or I don’t know, it wasn’t prestigious enough or something like that. And so I would say that’s probably the biggest mindset shift. I also feel like I had kind of an immature view of the expectations of school being like making sense or being easy when I was younger, that now I don’t feel like that at all.

I understand deeply now that people are different. Back when I was in school, I had a lot of empathy and really cared about how other people were feeling and doing, but it didn’t make sense to me why they wouldn’t just do it though. Like, why don’t you just do the work and then it will be okay and you’ll stop getting yelled at and you’ll stop being in trouble and you’ll get good grades. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that this is harder for some people than it is for others or that we have different strengths. And so that is something that I am so grateful that I know now, just how different people are and how different everyone’s experience of every single thing is from everyone else.

It’s been interesting if I ever do have a chance to talk with someone from my school days, how different our memories are of the same things. Something that stuck with me forever that shook me to my core at that time. I’ve had people be like, oh, I don’t remember that that happened. So really even back then everyone was having a completely different experience.

But I didn’t recognize that at that time, of course, because I was young. And so that’s something that as a parent, I think, and as an unschooler on this journey in particular, I think I’ve had a lot of space to dive into really questioning those things. And I’m so grateful.

ANNA: Yes, those are big ones! Okay, Jenna, I’ll go to you next.

JEN: Yeah, with mindset shifts, it’s almost hard to pinpoint what exactly they were once you’ve made the mindset shift, right? Sort of like, oh, what was my mindset like back then? And I think one of the biggest ones was moving from this mechanistic kind of approach to raising children.

And when I say mechanistic, I’m referring to if you’ve, well, I know you beautiful ladies have read it, because that’s how I discovered it. Alison Gopnik’s book, “The Gardener and the Carpenter.” This whole carpenter approach where you are trying to mold or build something specific. And so you’re making decisions based on, if I do this thing, then I’m going to get this outcome.

What that shifted to was really this gardener approach, which is really interesting, because we’re now as a family, we’re now going down the road of regenerative agriculture, so everything that I’m learning about regenerative agriculture, I’m looking at it through the lens of unschooling. And it’s really this whole idea of understanding the nature of things, understanding, what it really takes, it needs to start with observation, right?

You need to really take that step back and see the child in front of you, which is really impossible to do when you have that mechanistic kind of approach, that carpenter approach where you’re trying to mold them into something specific. I don’t believe that children are this blank slate for us to just do with what we like. I believe that every individual is their own person.

And like Erika demonstrated, two people can have the same kind of experience, but they experience it very differently. And so really moving towards this gardener approach, it’s all about creating the conditions that allows the nature of that thing to really bloom.

We see it in schools, the kinds of conditions that we create in the education system, how it really stifles a lot of children. I know you’ve spoken about it, Anna, that you work with a lot of adults who are in their forties, fifties, and are really just learning about themselves now because they’ve kind of lived this surface level life where they’ve done all the right things. They’ve followed the directions that well-intentioned people have been kind of steering them on, but feel out of alignment with the life that they’re living.

And so I think for me, one of the biggest blessings, and even though I would have my mom back in a heartbeat, losing my mom at such a young age helped me to see the depth of life. I started to question everything when that took place, that I started to really understand. I started to dive deep into what the meaning of life was. And so through going on this unschooling journey, like I said, I felt so called to it that I couldn’t not do it.

And that was really the birthplace of me making decisions from my heart and appreciating that children know how to do that best. They really know how to follow that inner voice within them. And from my perspective, coming from that really mechanistic approach to living life to this gardener approach has allowed me to see the magic that unfolds as we are living life.

Why would we want to set outcomes for other people? It just makes zero sense to me now that, like Erika said, I just feel so grateful that I have come across this way of living life, because there is just so much more connection. There’s so much more depth to the way we’re living our lives that no amount of planning could ever create that.

And it’s just like, why would I want to? There’s just so much magic that comes from being in the present moment and following what we’re drawn to in any given moment that, to me, curriculum just makes zero sense. And particularly in this day and age where the world is changing so rapidly, I always say to parents, like, what are we actually planning for?

What are we planning for when, I think I heard a statistic like by 2030, 85% of the jobs that will be around in 2030 don’t even exist. And it’s like, what are we planning for people? Whereas by really following what a child is interested in and being so in tune and present with where they’re at in that particular time, not worrying about what their reading ability is, or their writing ability is, or do they know how to do this, or how to solve this mathematical equation.

I’m seeing this now, with my youngest. I’ve really been on this pathway pretty much from the get go with him. And just seeing all of these skills just naturally organically evolve has been really beautiful. And he’s not, if he was to go into a school environment, which he has entertained and played with that idea, because this pathway is not about whether you go to school or not. It is so much more about what is that, what are those conditions that are really going to allow this child to be more of who they already are. And so he has gone back into the school system. And it just doesn’t make any sense, because it’s just this surface level stuff, filling this worksheet.

And I actually showed Leeton a couple of months ago, he was doing something, he was playing a computer game, and he needed to work out which V-Buck bundle he was going to purchase. And watching him navigate that, it was just like, oh my goodness. And then I, as a teacher, documented what that looks like, pen and paper form.

And then I said, mate, what you just did then, that’s what that looks like at school. It doesn’t make sense whatsoever that just filling in a worksheet is going to bring about that depth that you get when you learn things in context.

And so I think, from a parenting perspective, does it make sense to just know how to do something on a worksheet? Or does it make sense being able to solve problems as you’re encountering the problems in everyday life? And I think really every parent would agree that’s way more meaningful than filling in, showing that you know how to solve this mathematical problem through this teacher method that the teacher has delivered.

And even my eldest son, who has been at school for the most time, and did pretty well at school, then started his electrical trade, had to do an early entry exam where they had to do a numeracy and a mathematical one. And he even said, he’s like, mom, I’ll be lucky if I got, he was kind of being smart about it. He’s like, I’d be lucky if I got zero.

I’ve learned all of these things, but do you think I could remember how to do it? And it’s like, yeah, mate, because when we don’t learn things in context, we don’t grow the depth. And going back to what I was saying with the gardener and the carpenter, now understanding more about regenerative agriculture, it’s about what’s happening beneath the surface that drives what happens above the surface.

And so that’s where my mindset has shifted probably the most is understanding that when we learn things in context, we’re actively learning them. We’re growing those roots that allow us to then take those concepts and apply them in all different contexts. And so, I often talk about this whole idea of, well, most people in my world drive a car, but I guarantee hardly any of them know how the engine works.

Like we know how to drive a car, but we don’t need to know all of the intricacies of how the engine works to actually be able to drive that car. What I feel education is trying to do, it’s trying to really teach all of the intricate pieces, whether they’re related or relevant to what the learner is interested in or not. And so I just feel like we lose, we lose the context, right?

ANNA: We lose that context.

JEN: Yeah. We really do lose the context and we get bogged down in all of this detail. But when you think about how we learned to walk and talk, no one sat there and said, right, okay, now you’re going to put this leg forward.

We didn’t explicitly teach that. And somehow we get this idea that once we hit the age of five and even earlier now, everything needs to be explicitly taught. And it’s like, no, everything is implicitly taught.

And this is the thing about even going back to the creatures. Even going back to that gardener and carpenter approach. When we’re taking a carpenter approach and we think about how we want our children to be, but the beautiful thing is we don’t need to do anything to our children. We just need to be it ourselves. And we see it, we see it in our children.

They’ll do something. And I’m like, oh man, I used to do that like early in my parenting days. And I’m like, oh man, that’s coming back to bite me in the bum now. They learn so much more unconsciously than what they do consciously. But yeah, I feel like I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent there.

ANNA: That’s okay. I really appreciate it. Because all of those things are wrapped together, right? All those ideas and all those are the shifts that this journey teaches us. That is part of our implicit learning, right? Of just being able to be there and be a part of it. So yeah, I love that. But I’ll go to you, Michelle, and see what your thoughts are about that.

MICHELLE: So as I was listening to her, I was thinking about how a lot of my thoughts and chewing on these questions were similar. Like the gardener situation, I’ve been thinking about children, my children in particular, whether it’s about flowers or animals, the environment mattering very much. And so for example, different flowers, obviously they need different environments to thrive.

With animals, I view it in a sense of how much is the school environment asking a tiger to swim or, I don’t know how well tigers swim actually, but okay, have the fish climb the tree, right? Yeah. That I think that’s what school is actually doing in a lot of senses is trying to take a child who, if left to the beauty of exploring the world in the safety of their home with their parents and family, that they would be able to thrive and blossom.

It makes me upset that so many children get labeled in certain negative ways that they think something’s wrong with them, instead of recognizing that it’s the adults that are trying to fit them into a particular box that is never going to work for them. Even as an adult, they might struggle and as an adult, still trying to fit into that box and everything. So I don’t know if this mindset shift per se, but something that does bother me is the use of the word behind.

I feel like it’s not a helpful term to say that a child is behind. Behind who? Behind what?

That’s not helpful for the child. It might be helpful in your system and such. But if the whole idea is to nurture and teach children and help them to learn and enjoy learning, critical thinking, all the things that schools want to put out as, oh, we’re helping them to be critical thinkers and things like that.

But then the way that you’re going about instructing them doesn’t work. It doesn’t fit together because you want them to conform. And I just think that, well, I wrote down, it’s sad to have kids jumping through hoops.

I know from my own experience of being a child and wanting to get good grades. That was so important to me was getting those good grades. And I felt like as I got older, I didn’t learn anything. I just was really good at regurgitation.

And then I got the golden stars and everything for that. But as far as my actual understanding of things, the way I view things now is mastery and enjoyment are available to us. So to learn something because you want to be able to do a thing, that’s the reason why you learn.

So when people, teachers, parents, whatever, want kids to learn by a certain age, learn how to read by a certain age, it’s for their purposes. It’s not for the child to be able to enjoy what comes from being able to read. All five of my children taught themselves to read at different ages in different ways, but they were just in an environment with their parents, their extended family. There’s so much around us that how can you not in a sense take it in. You’re just going to be able to eventually understand. It clicks at different times. One day you couldn’t as an 11 year old you just haven’t gotten it yet. And then all of a sudden, you’re reading big long sentences. And we have so many homeschooling, unschooling stories of this.

It just really makes me sad for kids that are stuck in the system that have those labels. But also the fact of just kids being focused on grades, what comes from that, whether the teachers or the adults realize it or not, is the question, will it be on the test? And so then, if it’s not on the test, I don’t care about it. Why would I spend my mental energy? I could be doing other things with my life.

It makes the learning not enjoyable. You’re just regurgitating and missing all of the beauty and wonder of being able to learn about anything you want. I mean, the world that we live in now, as far as the access that we have to the information and school is like a fake world.

It’s an imitation. I remember when I was in third grade, my teacher set up a whole big portion of the room that was a store. And we had a cash register and we could buy things. But at the end of the day, that’s fake money. That’s, it’s not real money. It’s not real world learning about, budgeting or whatever.

I feel like because of who I am that all these mindset shifts may have happened just naturally anyways, but definitely being on the unschooling journey. I don’t even know how to end that sentence, but yeah it’s part of it.

ANNA: But just tuning in with your kids. You just really brought those things that were deep inside of you to the surface. Because I think that’s the beauty of our kids just really showing us these things that I think we have inherently known. But a lot of us that went through that system, it’s kind of been pushed down. And something you said reminded me, do you, Pam, do you remember Animal School? I’m going to try to find it.

It’s an old video. I feel like it’s probably been 15 or 20 years. Maybe it’s still out there, but it’s this exact thing about what you’re talking about. And it just brings you to tears. The fish is at school and he has to stay out because he doesn’t know how to climb the tree, but the monkey gets to go climb the tree and then he has to stop that to learn how to swim. And, oh my gosh, recognizing that these environments don’t mean anything.

And I think that’s what I love about when people start questioning is because we just don’t question it, right? We don’t question, does this make the most sense? Is this the easiest way or the best way or the most efficient way even to learn about something?

And so I think it’s cool when you open that up, because again, I think so many people in that environment, they want that. And they have a lot of constraints around what that can look like. And so when we have the privilege and the ability to be able to try different things. For kids to really guide their own learning, find their ways. It can be really beautiful.

PAM: Yeah. And I think for me, through this whole conversation, really what shines for me as one of the big differences is, and you alluded to it, Michelle, is the, how in the system we come to put value on learning that happens there over all the other learning. Why can’t I learn while I do this other thing that I love, at which I’m learning a ton. So for me, I feel like you’ve been able to see within your lives and within the system, just the huge difference in how one just defines learning and the fact that, okay, not even define how we value, that idea that there is learning that is more valuable.

There’s learning more valuable to the system for the system’s reasons, but not to the individual, right? Things that are important to them in the moment are just beautiful learning experiences.

Well, thank you all so much for joining us. It’s been such an interesting conversation. I have loved how much you guys have thought about this and processed it, and I really appreciate you sharing with us.

And we invite everyone listening to join us in the Living Joyfully Network to continue the conversation with all of us. It is a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a nonjudgmental space where you can explore these more unconventional ideas about learning and parenting and these wonderful gardener and carpenter metaphors, and what they just can look like day to day in your family, because as Erika said, people are different.

Your family’s different from our family’s. Your child’s different from a sibling or from another family’s child, but that doesn’t mean we have to twist these ideas, right? They fit for individuals, for people, just as the human beings they are.

Anyway, your first month is free so that you can get a sense of whether the community is a good fit for you, and we are very excited to welcome you. To learn more and join us, just follow the link in the show notes or go to livingjoyfully.ca and choose Network in the menu up top. Wishing everyone a lovely day.

Thanks so much, everyone. Thank you. We appreciate you joining us.

We’re back with another On the Journey episode! Pam, Anna, and Erika had fun connecting with Living Joyfully Network member Julia Triman. Julia was on the podcast with Pam back in 2021, when she talked about her unschooling stories. It was really cool to hear how things have changed and how they’ve stayed the same in her family of four.

Julia shared about her family’s latest passions and what has surprised her the most about her unschooling journey. She also talked about her interest in quilting, how she followed the threads of her new interest, how it grew into a business, and how it all ties into the paradigm shifts she’s made through unschooling. It was a really inspiring conversation and we hope it resonates with you!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

EU264: Unschooling Stories with Julia Triman

We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us.

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

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

I’m very excited that we get to talk with Julia today. I met her right when I joined the Living Joyfully Network in 2020. And I’ve had so much fun connecting with her over the years. Julia was also on the podcast back in February 2021, when her kids were just three and five. I encourage everyone to check out episode 264 if you would like to hear more about her unschooling journey.

And we can’t wait to hear an update five and a half years later. So to get us started, Julia, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everyone’s interested in right now?

JULIA: Definitely. And I’m so excited to be back. This is really fun.

So, we are similar to what we were five years ago. We still live in Frederick, Maryland in the US. We’re not terribly far from Washington, DC. And we’re still a family of four humans and two cats. Our cats are getting a little older. They’re aging a bit, but they’re still very much part of the family every day. So as far as what we’re interested in, I’m going in the same order I went the last time.

Starting with Dan. Dan and I have been together for many years. And he loves being outside, trail running, open water swimming and biking. He is a triathlete and he also does each of those activities by themselves. He absolutely loves to read in his spare time. One of the things I love is he’ll just go, so I’m a library person. When I go I want this very specific book and I get the hold for that specific book. Dan is a browser. So he’ll go to the library and he will come home with a backpack completely full of books.

But for me, it’s a thrill because then I get to see each book and see all the things that he found, all these little treasures that he’s interested in. And the last important thing to note is Dan absolutely loves good food. He likes cooking and also eating and finding delicious tasty foods to eat. Going to our farmer’s market is another personal hobby of his.

Cody, which is kind of amazing to even say this out loud. But Cody is 11 now. And he right now I would say is very into animation, both watching different animated shows and also making his own animation. He’s also still very into music. And the biggest game he’s playing right now is called Terraria. And he and a friend have been working through that quite a bit in the last couple weeks and really enjoying that game.

And Nora is eight. So she’s eight at the time that we’re recording this, but she is very soon gonna be nine. So by the time it comes out, she will be nine. Her absolute biggest thing she’s into now is connecting and playing with her friends 100%. She also loves and she has for her whole life, like creating and making things. And right now that’s investing a lot of time in beading and also very recently bedazzling. That’s the newest most exciting thing that’s happening on our porch these days.

But she also combines those things. She likes making things to gift to her friends. That is probably her top occupation the last week or two or three is just using these things that she loves to create and gifting them to friends. It’s just a big thing for her right now.

And then the last thing I wanted to say about Nora, she also has recently really been enjoying when we travel or go on a day trip, anytime we’re exploring or seeing something new. She’s very into that these days. And when we do travel and stay at a vacation home or a hotel, she just loves every single one from the moment we walk in the door, she just loves exploring a new place to live in a way.

And so that’s just been a really fun thing that I would say more recent than maybe the last time we chatted. So the three of us are also deep into the Percy Jackson book series right now and all three of us are loving it. One of them will say we need to read a lot tonight. We need extra time because we’ve got a lot to get through.

And I’m excited, we’ve decided we’re going to do book one, season one, book two, season two. There’s a series I think on maybe Disney plus that we haven’t watched yet, but we’re going to do that soon too.

So, I looked back and I was thinking about it. As for me, I don’t think I was a quilter. The last time we recorded a podcast which, just like the kids’ ages, is mind blowing to think about because quilting has just become such a big part of my life now. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But I absolutely love quilting. And what it’s become for me now is a creative outlet, a way of expressing myself artistically and creatively. But I’ve also very recently become a quilting teacher.

And so one of my hobbies these days is coming up with new creative quilting workshops, just like how can I come at it from a different angle, and a different topic. I just get a little zing of a thrill just making up new quilting workshops. And I do have at least a few other things I enjoy besides quilting. Hiking and yoga are still really big.

And I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about the philosophy of creativity, which kind of stems from my quilting and art interest, but it’s also a separate passion or interest.

The last thing about us is we’re also joining our first ever homeschool co-op this fall, which is something I’ve always kind of been curious about. And I’m excited that the timing and the co-op we’re going to try just hit everyone at just the right moment. I’m excited to just see what that might be like for all of us to have like a regular group that we’re meeting up with every week.

ERIKA: Yeah, that was awesome. I’m so excited hearing all the things and all the things that have changed. And just picturing all that you’ve gotten to do since we talked to you last time. I just feel like that’s really cool. And that you could have such a big part of your life as quilting, in such a short period. We never really know where our journeys will take us. But yeah, that’s super inspiring.

ANNA: Yeah, that’s what struck me about the quilting too. I’m thinking, oh my gosh, we may not even know what’s going to be our main passion five years from now. And that’s the same for kids too, right? There may not be a well worn mapped path of how we get there. Things just show up. That really struck me too. It’s amazing.

PAM: It is. I had fun. I tried my hand at Terraria as well.

It was just fun to hear and have an idea of how much they’re figuring out as they’re working their way through it. I think that is super cool. That’s why I love hearing snapshots. And then snapshots from the same family over time. Because yes, unschooling kids have a wide range of interests.

And also an unschooling child can often have a wide range of interests. And I don’t want to leave out the ones who have a lifelong passion about something, but the window changes over time, and the different ways they approach it, the different ways that they’re diving in because a passion can just be a window to so many different things.

JULIA: It’s always so fascinating to hear that. And that’s funny that you mentioned those two things right next to each other, because we were having a conversation recently about Cody’s interest in Terraria and how he and his friend had tried the game. I don’t know if it was a couple of months ago, maybe even a year ago, and it didn’t really click at that time.

And so some period of time later, it is that window. It is just the right time for several reasons. And it’s fascinating for both of them right at the same time. So that’s been really cool to talk with him about, sometimes you might try a game and maybe it is really interesting, but it’s just not the fit for that time.

PAM: Mm hmm. And sometimes you’ll see games or any interest, but just using games as an example, how something will click and you’ll play for a while and that was really cool. And then you move on. And then you’ll find it’s circling back a few months, a few years later, and there’s a completely different aspect. And that’s what they’re diving into and exploring. So many games are rich in that way that they don’t have just one thing, especially a game like Terraria. It’s very much a sandbox.

JULIA: It’s got so many different aspects you can play with. It has such a unique style too. We were talking recently, or I was sharing rather about how there’s almost a retro, like it looks if you just look superficially at the gameplay and the style of the game, it definitely looks like an older game, maybe from when I was a kid even, but then there are some elements they throw in that are very much of the sort of 2026, or it wasn’t made in 2026. But you know what I mean.

The era that it was made, which was not in the early 90s. So anyway, it’s just interesting how each game we play and how there’s so much to each one. We can have all these rich conversations about all these different aspects of every single game that they might play. I love it.

PAM: I know, I love it. And that’s one of the things with unschooling we talk so much about, is that when we engage with them, in whatever it is that they’re interested in and playing, we’re not just saying, oh, they’re playing a game, right? We just know so much more.

And we can then have those rich conversations. And that’s where we see and just learn so much more about them and see what is catching their interest right now, which bit of it and then we can make their world richer. Anyway, that is beautiful.

I love that piece. And it kind of leads nicely into our next question, which is, we’re just very curious to hear with this window now that we’ve had more than five years since you’ve been on here speaking about things. What has surprised you as to how things have shifted and changed what your unschooling looks like nowadays? I would just love to hear your perspective on that.

JULIA: So I just love this question so much, because I maybe had a different thought when I first saw the question. And then as I sort of pondered it more, so much started coming out in my mind and from my experience. So my first response, and this was my gut instinct was, well, everything is different. And everything is the same. It looks nothing like it did. And it also is exactly like it was.

Which is a non answer, but my initial thought. So, as Erika mentioned, the last time we recorded, the kids were three and five, so quite a bit younger. And when I was thinking back, I mean, I was in the thick of big sensory play. I would say I was very physically responsive, physically present with the kids, almost every minute of the day.

Very hands on, lots of exploration, lots of creation and destruction and huge messes and just like playing together all day every day. Now, we’re still together, we’re still connected. But it is really different the ways that we connect.

So how I would describe it is my involvement and interactions with the kids these days are a lot more cerebral. And I think that probably is tracking their individual development and their development as humans, in terms of how they want to relate and the types of topics we might get into. But I was thinking about it.

And I think I maybe oversimplified what I do at first. I was like, all right, Julia, I’m doing more than that. So the big thing I would say I’m doing is listening. And I want to talk a little more about that.

But I was like, you’re doing more than that. So now I would say I remember talking with you, Pam, about how they really helped me focus on the present moment. And they absolutely still do.

But we’re also a lot more future focus these days in certain aspects. I will do a lot of work to schedule meetups with friends, schedule activities, coordinate and plan these logistics. Whereas before, we spent a lot of time at home. And we might go out once a week to do some big adventure.

Now it’s like, at least one of the kids would prefer that we be out of the house every single day doing something. So it’s a lot. That’s a big part of what I’m doing now is listening and then responding to those requests. A lot of sourcing and finding materials and technical things.

But what I remember when they were younger is it would be Julia figuring it all out myself. And now it will be like, I want this thing, or I’m curious to explore this. And it’s very collaborative.

We’ll be together, either internet researching, going to the library, whatever the need might require. So that’s still a big part of what I’m doing. But it’s so much more in sync with each person, each kid, and exactly what they want, or what they’re looking for.

And we do a lot of just brainstorming. I want to do this thing, but I’m not sure how. And so just a lot of back and forth around, what will we want? How can we make this thing happen?

Or this even just like an outing, there’s an outing today that doesn’t really fit in the schedule. So it’s like, okay, well, let’s just sit together and think of how we can make it happen. Like, could we do it later at night? Could we do it tomorrow? Could this person come with us? So anyway, a lot of brainstorming, I would say definitely every day.

Also, we’re moving things around, and setting up new spaces and taking down old ones to kind of support as their interests grow and change. Maybe we need a chair here. Maybe we need a whole room switched.

Whereas before it felt like maybe an open play space where just everything happened all the time. But now their needs are getting more specific, and their interests are getting more specific. So they’re maybe wanting a desk for some purpose, maybe needing a dedicated place for a certain type of art creation.

And sometimes, they still invite me to play games with them or create things. Sometimes Nora will want to show me, she’ll want to kind of help me understand how to make a particular beaded project. So she will give me a little cup with what do you call it? A kit, she calls it a kit.

So I’ll have my kit with the beads that I need to make the thing. And then she walks me through it step by step, which is also so interesting, being a sort of arts and craft teacher. And then just experiencing that through a different lens with her is extremely fun.

So yeah, I was gonna say about the last piece I wanted to share was just about when I say listening, what do I mean by that? Because obviously, or not obviously, but in my experience with them, listening is what I always wanted to do from the very beginning. And maybe it wasn’t always listening to lots of words, but listening to who they are and what they want to do.

And I don’t know if it surprised me. But it really has changed, how and what I’m listening for. So they might work on something like an animation or an art project, and then they want to show or share that with me.

Or they might do something on their own or with a friend. And then they want to, at length, tell me about things about it, just verbally explain, this is what happened. These were all the pieces, maybe even show me something on YouTube, it looked like this.

And these conversations, again, we’ve had conversations their whole lives, but they are just becoming so much deeper, and rich and varied. And I just am learning so much from them every day, they ask so many challenging questions and have really deep insights. And as we were reviewing for this, I have notes that I’m occasionally glancing at to make sure I’m staying on task, which I’ve already kind of gotten off task once or twice.

But as we were reviewing this, one of the things the kids told me was there were just a few words that didn’t resonate with them. And actually, the word resonate was something that I needed to explain. But in explaining to one of them, what I meant by the word insights, it was so fascinating.

And it was, I think, just a perfect example of what I’m trying to explain. They’ll come with a question, what do you mean by insight? What does that mean in this context? And then I was explaining, well, you’ll ask a question, or we’ll be talking about a topic.

And then something new is revealed that maybe neither of us knew before, or one of us, one of the four of us in our family will know something the others didn’t. And so that gives us new information. So it’s just like the coolest thing to be learning more about humanity and language and all of these things, with just the most, sometimes they’re very simple questions, but then it gets really deep.

But the other piece I will say about listening, is I’m also challenged in a lot of new ways that I wasn’t before. And I mean, I think as a parent, there are challenges always along the way. And I don’t necessarily mean challenge in a negative way.

But they question what I do a lot more. And they’re interrogating my opinions. And they happily let me know when something I say or do doesn’t resonate.

Which I think, again, you know, being nine and 11, I think it’s pretty common from what I understand from other parents that I know. So yeah, I feel like I’ve probably covered most of what I want to say about that. But listening for those, I’ll call them critiques, and understanding why the things I do or say, may not resonate.

I feel like that’s kind of one of the biggest learning and growth moments for me right now.

PAM: I love that one, Julia. Yes, I love that you focused on listening and how that is changing over the years. And absolutely, that shift in the depth of the conversations. But also it’s so fascinating and there’s definitely work to not take feedback like personally, maybe words we use or things we’re sharing or things we’re choosing to do, like there, you use the word critique, information about their perspective.

And it’s so fascinating, if you can bigger picture that rather than taking it as a knock on who you are as a human being. It’s really telling you so much about them, isn’t it? It’s like, oh, they’re noticing this.

Now, this is something that they really didn’t see happening. It was just like part of the background of the day, part of the background of another person. But it is so fascinating to see the pieces that they start to notice when they start to notice. And, just what they as a human being are thinking, how they’re seeing it, what that it really is, It’s so helpful in seeing through their eyes and the lens of the particular action or words or whatever, and how they’re seeing it.

I remember a long time ago, Lissy had a couple of words like that. She liked to say show, not concert. We had conversations about it, and what that meant to her. And then she didn’t like if people talked about kids going through a “phase”, they’re going through this phase, because if you call it a phase that presupposes that there’s an end to it. And for her, she felt like don’t call it a phase when I’m deep in the middle of it, because maybe I’ll be this way forever.

And so it’s just so fascinating to have those conversations rather than feel defensive about it. Or thinking, I have to change, there’s something wrong with me.

No, to actually have those conversations. Of course, you try to use the language that resonates for them as well in the moment. But now when you understand the perspective, it’s so much about them. And it’s all about them, and how they’re seeing things. But as a family, and as a relationship that we want to develop, and keep connected and trusting, to learn that and work with that, I think it’s just beautiful. So I love that you brought that up.

ERIKA: I totally love that, too. And I thought challenging or challenge is such a good word for it because sometimes it can feel hard for me when it’s like, but this is how we’ve always interacted, or I’ve always said that, or you’ve always liked that, or, those kind of feelings of, I thought I knew you. And now you’re telling me that you’re different.

But it happens so much now that I’m used to, that’s just the new normal is they’re different. And they’re going to tell me about the things that are working and not working for them right now. And it’s not how it used to be, and so to not take that personally, and really see it as kind of a positive challenge, like a way that we can all grow together in our conversations, I think has been really cool.

And right, I can totally imagine how much has shifted in the way you communicate with them over these really important developmental years.

ANNA: Yes, so much. And I love the don’t take it personally piece because that’s huge. But what that allows is what I love. I get lots of insights into Julia’s process and things because we’re close, but I love what you’re describing because I think it helps people see how these conversations really just flow in our natural day to day. That’s not resonating for me. Okay, let’s figure out something else. Or, hey, I’d like to do this.

There’s such an openness about it. And I think we can get kind of stuck in defensive postures or in thinking there has to be one way. We’re speeding through, there’s the sense of urgency, whatever things kind of stop us from giving things that space. I think you’re really just very beautiful in allowing the space. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t bumps, right, that sometimes that’s hard, or we are pushed up against timeframes and deadlines.

But when we cultivate that sense of openness, and hey, we’re going to talk about this, and we’re going to have space for this. And we’re going to be aware and watch for those other nonverbal cues. It really changes the energy of those experiences. And I think that you’ve just really beautifully explained that.

ERIKA: I think it’s giving them a chance to be someone different, to grow.

JULIA: And I would say, it’s doing the exact same thing for me. Because while I totally agree, it’s helping me see through their eyes. It also in a really powerful way, at times is revealing to me, or I wrote down that they’re catching me in my stories.

And in my tapes that are in my head, even just this is something so simple. But the other day, one of the kids asked, Why do you say my dear, why do you say, well, I love you? Blah, blah, blah, blah, my dear.

And I was like, Oh, I think it’s probably because that’s what grandma always said to me. It’s not something that I think a lot about. And it’s nothing personal.

That’s another thing is there was a time within this stretch of time since we’d last chatted, that one of the kids was clear that they did not want me to use any of the nicknames that I was using for them anymore. And we’ll just say for those who don’t know me that I am affectionate and effusive to a fault. And this child had probably more nicknames than any child has ever had.

So that was really a process for me. And I remember telling them at the time, I’m committed to this, I’m going to mess up, I’m going to make mistakes. But it didn’t take terribly long until I wasn’t using the nicknames anymore. But related to the my dear piece, that was just one little nugget that I was like, Oh, I have these tapes in my head, these stories, these ways that I think that are so ingrained, or the ways that I speak even, that are so ingrained in the way that I am as a person.

And we’ve talked a little bit in the network about, maybe questioning that. How strongly do I want to hold on to the story of what Julia is, how she speaks, how she’s effusively affectionate, like all those things like. So these encounters with them, and these things that have come up, have really helped me see the ways in which I might reevaluate that for myself. And that applies to so many other interactions with people too, not just with my kids, but it starts to take me in new directions.

To just look at it with a different lens, or look a little closer at my interactions. This is relevant to a conversation Anna and I have been having recently about listening, like the different ways that we might listen when someone’s talking. I have that choice, I can make a choice to use a different style when I’m listening to Dan, for example. So anyway, it’s just really interesting.

ANNA: It’s like catching us on the autopilot stuff, right? Because I think we and it’s partly just our brain trying to be efficient, right? We just get in these autopilot modes of speaking and doing and moving through the day.

But I love that about kids because they absolutely call us out on those things and make us question it. And that doesn’t even mean we have to throw it out. It’s more like, oh, am I intentionally choosing this? That’s what I loved about it. I felt that was a big thing for me. It brought so much more intention to everything I did, having kids around me and that we were having these conversations.

PAM: Yeah, exactly the intention, because what it does, just like you’re describing, Julia, which is brilliant, is that we just, it’s a moment for us to question ourselves, right? And like you said, it doesn’t, it’s not dependent on stopping doing something. It’s just shining a little light and like, oh, I get to think about that. Is it an automatic thing I do? Where did it come from? And in that processing, we might decide, ooh, I really love that part of me.

But then we can explain it to others. The explanation is not, oh, I’ve always done that. And then we can say, oh, where it came from, why we do it, how we feel when we do it, when we say it, and then that’s where you get those deep conversations, right?

And they say, oh, but I see it this way. And it feels like this for me. And then maybe we come up with a third thing that’s completely different, it’s not start or stop.

It’s just something different. Right? But that’s how you get to those deep conversations, right?

ERIKA: I feel like having the older kids is such a great way to learn about how people are different, because they’re going to tell us the things that I’m like, but this is so fun to me. And they could be like, it’s not to me. I don’t even understand that at all.

And so that just shows us even if we thought they were going to be just like us, they’re not. And then we can learn about the ways that people are different.

ANNA: I love that. Okay, so I’m going to go on to our next question. I’m excited about this one.

I have really enjoyed following your journey as you first started talking about, I want to do some work outside the home, what does that look like? And I love how you brought this unschooling mindset into it. And then just how it’s come from this deep, oh, I don’t know, just passion inside of you, how it’s grown.

And so I thought it’d be cool for you to just share a little bit about that journey and the process of doing it and where you are now. I’m just excited because it’s a cool story.

JULIA: I’m excited too, because I talk a lot about quilting and teaching quilting, but not usually to an unschooling audience. And so I was like, it’s so exciting to think about this conversation, because you all are just going to immediately know what I’m talking about for certain aspects of it. And I feel like my interest in quilting, so I am a deep diver, and I have been for my whole adult life, as long as I can remember.

But I really feel like, let’s say it was five years before I started quilting with the kids. Having young kids absolutely influenced kind of like the permission that maybe I gave myself to fully dive into this interest in quilting. And it wasn’t really super logical. I wasn’t like, well, now I’m giving you permission, Julia.

It was like, well, I started one project and just felt so good. It was just like, some people in the world probably do just make one quilt, but most quilters you talk to, you make one and you just don’t stop, because it’s just so satisfying and fun. There’s a mindfulness aspect to it.

It’s meditative. It’s satisfying to just create something. And at the time they were so small, it was something that I could piece together that wasn’t going to be immediately torn apart.

So it was like, I have the ability to create and to make things. So I started out quilting mostly other people’s patterns. But over the course of a couple years, I really started moving towards more creative expression. But I wasn’t thinking at all. It was never like, I’m going to start quilting so that I can become a quilting teacher. That was never in my mind.

And I think the last time we recorded, Pam, I think I might have said something like, I couldn’t ever imagine teaching. I had been through this. I had completed my PhD and finished that and discovered unschooling at the same time.

And there was just this huge dissonance. I could not imagine continuing to stand in front of a classroom with a curriculum that perhaps not all of the students were enthusiastically consenting to for various reasons. So in my mind back in 2021, I couldn’t teach. I couldn’t see how I could do that. And now I’m a teacher. So it’s been the most amazing turnaround for me.

I feel like when I started teaching, it was 2025. And it started super small. And very similarly to my quilting journey, I asked a friend, hey, what would you think about me teaching a quilting class at your sewing studio? And the answer was yes. And I taught one workshop and it was over. It was like, this is amazing. I love this. What am I going to teach next?

Like I mentioned, coming up with new ideas for creative quilting workshops is a separate hobby, which is something that I absolutely love.

But from the very beginning, having all this experience living and learning collaboratively and consensually with the kids, I wasn’t imagining myself, a lot of quilting teachers, amazing quilting teachers will teach sort of a project or a particular skill. And the goal of the class might be to make that thing just as the instructor made it, which I have absolutely taken classes like that, loved them, they’re beautiful. But that wasn’t going to be the approach that I wanted to take as a teacher, because it just wouldn’t fit my sort of philosophy, I guess.

So from the beginning, I wanted my teaching to be open ended and allow for people to make their own choices and create their own things. I didn’t want to teach a project with answers that they had to figure out. I wanted each person to have the freedom to make what they wanted to.

So in my first couple workshops, I played with the structure and in inviting people in, often, you do need a hook, you need something like not just like, I’m going to teach you nothing. So sort of playing with that, finding a class or a workshop idea with some sort of broad idea. Like, for example, this summer, I taught a mini map quilt series.

So we’re all going to make a map quilt. But what each person’s map quilt will end up looking like is and was completely different. So, it’s been an interesting journey playing with how to create a class that people want to actually take that has things that are interesting, but also has so much freedom and flexibility.

So now that I’ve taught, I’m almost at about the year mark of having taught probably 12 to 15 different workshops. Now I’ve got this small group of students who just want more. And so at the end of a class or series, they’ll literally say, well, what are we going to do next?

And I’ll say, well, what do you want to learn? And so it’s this incredible dynamic now of I am creating new classes and series that they are specifically asking for. So it’s a really cool interchange in that sense.

But the ultimate example of this is something I’m calling Creative Quilting Studio. And this grew out of two of my students in the spring. Both wanted to work on their own original creative quilt ideas.

And so we were like, well, why don’t we just come together, just a few of us, and we’ll make this little class, Creative Quilting Studio, and I’ll just help you with your projects. It was fascinating how many other people then also joined to do things that I could never have imagined that they might need or want help with. So to me, Creative Quilting Studio is like the ultimate combination of my passions of unschooling and quilting because it’s an open studio style situation where each person comes in with a project in mind or a goal that they want to work on.

And I will sort of have one-on-one time with each of them, and then we all work sort of in a group. Everyone’s learning from each other’s projects. But it is so enriching, and I am loving the ability to have this class workshop situation that is truly collaborative and consensual with every single student.

And it’s low commitment, so they can either come for a single session or for multiple. And it’s fascinating. I think my favorite part about it is the challenge of, and this is true with the kids too, the challenge of every day, every session, I don’t know.

I don’t know what’s going to come up or what they’re going to bring. I do survey them the week before a session and say, hey, what do you think we’re going to work on? But sometimes they might come, and I’ve had this happen with a student, and say, I don’t feel like working on that today.

And I’m like, great, what should we do instead? Truly, whatever they want to work on is what we do. I’ve even had a situation where a student just wanted to talk about possible design ideas.

We just looked through a bunch of ideas they had, talked about technical issues and what they might consider. So it’s just so satisfying and interesting, and it’s, I think, the direction I’m hoping to head and just grow even more. I’m even curious about how I might do something like that online or digitally.

I’m not quite sure. It’s still very nascent. But it’s definitely hitting that sweet spot of just being the perfect combination of all these things that I’m loving.

ANNA: I love it so much, because I think, again, we have in our head this idea of what teacher and student means. We’re this and that. It’s this top-down, this authority. And I get why you were bucking against it as you were first discovering unschooling and seeing how it was to interact with your kids.

But then this is the thing, right? We can bring this lens, this mindset to everything we do. And I know how excited and energized your students get, because I think they can feel that energy too.

This difference of getting to tap into what they love, to not having to make it conform to someone else’s idea. And I know there’s times where you’re like, okay, I’ve not done that, but let’s figure out this. We can help you figure this out.

And that, again, it’s this empowerment that you give them and just this person that can be with you as you’re figuring something out. So I love that. And I love the idea of maybe figuring out a way to do it to a broader audience.

We’ll share how to get in touch with you on your website and your newsletter, because it shares these cool ideas about things. And so even if they aren’t local to Frederick, there’s going to be things that can grow from that. Because your passion for it is so infectious, and it just makes me excited.

Oh, and people that are watching this on YouTube can look behind me, and I have a beautiful quilt that was made by Julia for me. I have a triple spiral tattoo, and she hand-stitched the triple spiral in my favorite colors of green. So I’m glad that’s there, and I’m glad I noticed it.

ERIKA: Yeah, I imagine something really amazing about a group like that is that it’s so much easier to learn the exact thing that you need to know right now, rather than kind of trying to generalize on some other project, right? I mean, obviously, I could go to a craft workshop and learn what they teach. But if I already know 95% of that, you’re not getting the exact thing you need, where if you’re choosing the project you want to work on, and you know exactly that edge where you’re like, but I don’t know how to do this yet, and you can come in and do that. I think that’s so amazing. I just love that idea.

PAM: Yeah, that’s literally what we’re talking about with unschooling, right? That’s the idea beyond the curriculum. What am I super into right this moment, right?

And what am I trying to figure out right now? You are meeting them right where their brain is just thirsty to learn this one piece, and then the light bulb goes off. And even if that takes them back and forth and back and forth, and that’s where your expertise comes in, right?

And your openness to there’s no one right way to solve this problem. The openness, the way I explained that didn’t make sense to them. I’m going to try explaining it in a different way.

I’m going to try explaining it a third way. Oh, I’m going to show it and see if just physically seeing it unfold in front of them is helpful for them. So you can connect with them in the way that they can hear you. Back to the listening piece, right?

I think that is just so fascinating. And that’s how you manage to bring this whole new kind of unschooling lens on learning into this environment about something that you love.

That, for me, that’s just a huge difference. Because the people who are coming, yes, they’re coming with different things. But there’s like a shared interest. Whether it’s just the creativity aspect that you’re diving into right now, right? Is it the creativity that people are loving? Is it more about the quilts?

But back to when we were talking about video games, how many different aspects are, like, you were saying one wanted to talk about design ideas, and didn’t even want to pick up the tools and actually get started yet. There are so many aspects to the whole process of quilting as well. So being able to meet someone again, where they are in that moment is just brilliant.

JULIA: Now I’m thinking about it. It’s really helpful to reflect on it, how it emerged, because I have these amazing students who keep coming back. And they basically asked for something that looked like this.

If last August, when I first started, I said I want to make an unschooling quilting class. And this is what it’s going to look like. It wouldn’t have been responding to these particular students and their particular needs and interests.

It would have been Julia’s vision of what that might have looked like. And no one knew me, right? It wouldn’t have worked out, I don’t think.

I also don’t think I could have done this back. I mean, obviously, I wasn’t a quilter in 2021. But I don’t know, I think everything had to line up just at the right time.

Because when I imagine jumping right into something like this, or what it would have looked like if I had been like, I’m going to become a quilter and start teaching quilting classes right after I had been in academia for decades. It would have been different. I needed time, my brain needed that time. I needed all of these years of building trust with the kids and seeing how they learn, watching how they dive in. My mind is so totally shifted now into like, embracing a very different view on education and educational philosophy that, I just can’t credit the kids and my time with them enough for how I’m now sort of envisioning my professional life unfolding, which is really, really special.

ANNA: That’s so special.

ERIKA: Well, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much, Julia. And we hope everyone enjoyed our conversation and maybe had an aha moment or picked up some ideas to consider on your own unschooling journey.

And if you enjoy these kinds of conversations, I think you would love the Living Joyfully Network. It is such an amazing group of people connecting and having thoughtful conversations about all the things we encounter in our unschooling lives. And all four of us are there.

We invite you to check it out and see if it fits with our free month offer. You can find the link to the network in the show notes or you can visit livingjoyfully.ca and the link is right at the top of the homepage. So thank you for listening and thank you all for being here.

JULIA: This was awesome. Thanks for having me.

Thank you, Julia.

We’re back with the fourth episode in our series in which we’re working our way through Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide.

Today, we’re continuing our exploration of the deschooling phase of the journey with stage eight: Accepting the Value of All Experiences. We’ve questioned our beliefs about learning and about parenting. Now we’re moving beyond judgement. As our understanding of this new world of unschooling grows, we are drawn to digging deeper. Using the lens of unschooling, we’re exploring what it means to be a human being living fully in the world, with all of the ups and downs.

We had a great time diving in. We hope you find this episode helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

Learn more about Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide.

We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us.

Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more!

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

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

ANNA, ERIKA: Hello.

PAM: And we are back with another episode in our A Field Guide series. We are working our way through my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide, which is framed around the hero’s journey and is a weave of myths, contemporary stories and tales from my own journey.

We are now deep in the deschooling phase. In the last episode of this series, episode 413, we dug into some of the popular conventional paradigms about parenting, and we found more truths buried there. And as we continue our journey on the road of trials, we’re exploring the idea of accepting the value of all experiences.

If you’re newer to unschooling, and this is your first time exploring these truths, you’re likely dancing with these ideas intellectually to understand what they mean and some of their further reaching implications. If you’ve been unschooling for a while and feel like you already intellectually embrace these ideas and have been bringing them into your family’s lives, now’s the time to peel back some more layers to build more connections and context around them, strengthening your web of understanding with your personal experiences, building your wisdom as you move towards believing them in your bones as your own truth.

Now we are well into the deschooling phase. In the last two stages, we challenged those conventional pieces of wisdom around learning, like embracing curiosity rather than following curriculum, and parenting, replacing control with connection as our relationship dynamic with our kids. These stages often have lots of twists and turns as we bring these ideas into life, life into our family, and see how things unfold, right?

Again, not about right or wrong. We’re gaining experience, we’re seeing how things happen. So this episode, which is stage eight of the journey, we’re exploring the idea of accepting the value of all experiences. In other words, we’re moving beyond judgment. Now here we go. As our understanding of this new world of unschooling grows, we are drawn to digging deeper.

Using the lens of unschooling, we’re exploring what it means to be a human being living fully in the world. So Joseph Campbell calls this stage the meeting with the goddess. So in myths and stories, the hero must be spiritually prepared to meet this revered goddess, the universal mother, who represents the whole cycle of life.

To meet her in her true form is to rise to her challenge and be able to contemplate the entire birth death cycle that she presents with equanimity with calmness and composure, the ups and the downs, the good and the bad, cosmic creation and destruction, to be able to hold both of these seemingly opposing ideas, opposites in your mind with comparable appreciation. So in the book, I shared that Kali from Hindu mythology is a great example of the kind of goddess you might meet in this stage. As a goddess of time, creation and destruction, she represents both the benevolence of a caring, comforting mother, and the fury of an aggressive punishing one, as well as the expanse of time that contains them both. So, when we look at Kali’s right side, we see good and on the left, we see bad. That’s what she represents. And when we are ready to grasp the truth that lies at the heart of this stage, we see her full nature, both. We see her in full. And we’ve been preparing to meet our Kali with all that we’ve learned so far on our unschooling journey. Like how on earth are we going to link those together?

Here we go. We started to see the connections play out between our new perspective on things like we talked about in the last Field Guide episode, like why quitting things isn’t bad, right? Why saying yes more to our kids isn’t bad. Why are kids seemingly doing nothing is not bad. We’ve noticed times when we didn’t stop our child from making a choice that we feared might go badly. And they went on to happily engage with the activity.

So by giving our days the time to unfold more naturally, we’ve seen new and interesting things take root in the wake of destruction and upset many times. From a fallen block tower springs a taller, sturdier one. From highly anticipated plans falling through emerges, say, a spontaneous trip to the park, or a cuddly movie day, which turns out to be just what was needed.

Without knowing it, we have been thoroughly preparing ourselves for this meeting. And for me, I think the key shift has been your mantra, Anna, there’s plenty of time. The trick was giving moments more time and space to unfold. That allowed me to see how seemingly good and bad moments actually weave together that they’re not like just separate single incidents. They’re not like these distinct events where I can tell you that like, oh, we had five good moments today and seven bad moments. So that was a losing day, or if they were the opposite, that was a winning day, right?

To see the fuller, bigger picture, see how this is our life and, and the good and bad were weaving together. But that block tower one is just something I remember, you know, one kid running up and knocking it over. And like just those pieces, think of your own stories in your own life. Think back to when you’ve seen those things go from, from bad something upsetting to working out well, and vice versa. It’s all so very interesting, I think.

ANNA: Yeah, it is. And I think Kali is such an interesting representation for this phase, because many people are very afraid to get Kali in a reading because they associate her with destruction. But yes, both pieces are there, creation and destruction.

And it fits here so well, because how I see that destruction part is really just a sweeping away of old paradigms, creating a clean slate, allowing us to build a stronger foundation when that tower of our ideas are knocked down, and a new framework to support where we are now with all of this new information that we’re taking in. And it really can’t be built on top of the old. We can take what we’ve learned with us. So it’s not that we’re leaving everything behind.

But letting go of the fear around letting go of the old and embracing a new paradigm allows us to fully open to all it can bring us. And a lot of discomfort comes, I think, in straddling the old and new, because we aren’t actually fully in either at that point. And releasing judgment was such a key part of my journey.

You know, in my 20s, I loved a good debate and was quite adept at it. And as I started to value connection over winning, I realized how disconnecting the judgment was. I will never know what’s best for another person, even my child. So any judgment of them or their actions actually just keeps me from learning about them, who they are, how they want to move through the world, what their priorities are.

And honestly, it keeps my own learning stagnant. If I’m so sure I know what’s best, how do I see a new way, a way that might serve me better in this moment where I am right now. And I love the tally piece that you mentioned because I think it’s a really slippery slope.

If we are focused on categorizing the day or the event as good or bad, we’re missing the nuance that exists in every day, every event, because there’s always going to be both, they exist together. And while our brain can like this idea of categorizing as a shortcut, it really takes us out of being present in each moment. And it can end up dictating our emotions around it.

So have we had a good week? Okay, then I can feel happy and feel good. I’m a great parent, we’ve done it this week. But then if this week has been bad, then there must be something wrong with me, and I should have done something differently.

That type of judgment and kind of surface level ranking just doesn’t serve us personally or relationally. And it can really keep us stuck in this yucky cycle, instead of learning and growing together. And so that is something to watch for that like, oh, this was good and so now this means X, you know, whereas again, I think the idea of plenty of time really does help just let things unfold, and not getting attached to those pieces, we just learn so much more.

ERIKA: Yes, I like this phase, because it really feels to me like having gained some perspective, and maybe some maturity, after making a whole lot of huge mental shifts and paradigm shifts we’ve been working through in the last few episodes. And so I just think life is so much more nuanced than there’s one right answer, or there’s one right way to do something. And I think we may absorb that message in school that there is a right answer or one right path.

But it’s so much more real and true to living life in this world to be in this gray area, there are infinite possibilities, there are infinite paths, we’re not sure how it’s going to play out. And so I feel a lot more grounded and safe when I have that perspective, and I’m not clinging so strongly to this is good, this is bad.

I also feel a lot more generous and nonjudgmental towards other people as well. Because I can recognize, we’re just all doing our best in each moment to meet our own needs and just figure out what’s going to work best for us. And we’re all different. And I don’t need to judge others. And I just feel like it’s a grounding place to be, when we get to this stage.

PAM: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Okay, so the next aspect we want to explore around the idea of accepting the value of all experiences is moving beyond this is good and bad. So in the book, I share a quote that’s usually attributed to Alexander Graham Bell. When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

I think that succinctly describes life before this encounter with the goddess, right? We don’t realize the connection between destruction and creation between good and bad on that continuum of time. So this is the wisdom that the stories of Kali and other cosmic mother goddesses are meant to convey, rather than being tossed around by the ups and downs of life, like that whole roller coaster image, we now see the value of and the connection between those moments.

So as we’ve been paying attention on our journey, giving things time and space to unfold, which you hear us talking about all the time on the podcast, we’ve soon experienced the cycle and had time to learn that trying to rush through the down times doesn’t work. We can’t pry open a door that doesn’t want to give. We’ve learned that doesn’t mean passively sitting back and waiting.

It means being attentive, just like from that quote, right? Maybe knocking on a door, wandering the hallway, noticing the door that’s slightly ajar, hearing the faint click of a doorknob being unlocked. Eventually, something happens and things move forward, maybe in unexpected ways.

But in my experience, often in more interesting ways than we had first imagined. That was us looking at that door, that’s where we thought we were going. That’s where we thought things were going to be. But when we there’s just so many more ways that life can unfold.

I actually really learned this more through observing my kids’ lives in action. So often, when I was able to stretch my comfort zones and follow them where they were eager to go, the door they wanted to go through, I saw them learning so much, both when things went well and when they didn’t. There’s that good/bad.

I was humbled by how often my initial predictions were just flat out wrong. Thank goodness I kept them to myself because I wasn’t ready quite yet to admit how often I was wrong. But without me clouding their experience with my judgment, they could more clearly and directly learn what was most valuable to them in the moment, because that’s where their mind was.

That’s where their whole body was. I want to be in this moment, and just see how it plays out. So as my wish to understand my children’s perspective, and choices grew, my need to judge them truly faded.

And with that, so did so many of our conflicts, and our trust in each other grew. And again, remember that not judging isn’t about giving in or giving up or saying do whatever you want, right? It’s about engaging more deeply but with openness. The image that helps me is beginner’s mind. What can I learn here? That’s what this stage is encouraging us to discover.

It’s about seeing the value of all aspects of life, moving through the bad moments with as much awareness as the good ones, not covering your eyes and trying to ignore them until they pass. Because, as you see, through all the ups and downs, all these moments are integral to our lives. They all mean something. They all help us learn something.

ERIKA: Yeah, that’s a huge shift when we can stop labeling things as good and bad. It’s just more complicated than that. And I think our judging tends to influence what happens next. And so I don’t, I certainly don’t want to label my day as a bad day, especially at the beginning, which I do hear people do that sometimes. Because a day has all kinds of moments in it. And we don’t know what’s going to happen next.

And by labeling it bad, I think we’re just setting ourselves up for well, now it is going to be bad because we said that. But we learned from it all. In some of the meditation courses I’ve participated in, I really came to understand and value that idea of equanimity.

It’s a power that we can cultivate, to be able to just witness the turbulent nature of life and still see the bigger picture. It feels like not getting swept up by every little thing that’s happening. And it helps keep me going and moving towards the things that I want.

Whereas if I am getting swept up, it makes it so I’m so overwhelmed that I can’t even face what’s happening or make decisions or move forward. And so I feel like if we can move away from judging ourselves, judging others, judging all the moments as good or bad, I think there’s just so much more potential and so many more possibilities in front of us. To me, it has a very spacious feeling.

ANNA: Yeah, I really like that visual, witnessing the turbulent nature of life, but not getting swept away. I think that therein lies that practice of equanimity and just presence. I feel like the categorizing that I mentioned earlier keeps us from really appreciating the nuances of all the experiences.

Each experience brings with it a wealth of knowledge and understanding about ourselves, about each other, about the world. And the idea of releasing good or bad always brings to mind for me the Taoist farmer story. I’ll post a better version in the show notes.

But the idea is that there’s a farmer who has a series of events happen to his family at each event, the village wants to weigh in with, Oh, what bad luck you’re having? Or Oh, what good luck you’re having? And each time the farmer answers maybe. His horse runs away, bad luck. Maybe. His horse returns with six more wild horses. Good luck. Maybe. His son breaks his leg on a new horse. Bad luck. Maybe. His son doesn’t have to go to war when all the other young men do. Good luck. Maybe. As the story unfolds, you see how something first appears is never the whole of the story.

And if we can step away from preconceived notions and judging everything as good or bad, it opens us to more nuances, to new paths, to new ideas. Even just bringing “maybe” into our mind when something happens can slow us down and help us widen our view. Because we get caught up with the quick snap judgment, and it creates this ripple that really narrows our focus, and keeps us from seeing the bigger picture.

And that’s the thing with good or bad, it is just this narrowing of the focus. And so if instead, I acknowledge that what is happening just is, I’m more open to seeing the opportunities for growth and learning, I’m more open to actually experiencing it. And I guess that’s a big piece for me, because judging really takes us out of the moment and puts us back into our head. We’re categorizing, this is a problem, this is not good, this is bad, end of story. But there’s no end to the story. Each bit of life leads to another and weaves into this larger tapestry.

And with openness and willingness, we can create this massive tapestry that keeps us learning and growing throughout our life. And once we understand that for ourselves, we can see that our kids are doing exactly the same. They are on their own unique journey, building their own unique, massive tapestry.

PAM: I love that piece. And the word maybe could be so helpful if you’re navigating this stage right now. And just put a little card that says maybe somewhere where you see it. It’s just a little reminder that judging something in that moment, maybe you’re right but maybe not. Let’s let things unfold.

Okay, so the next aspect we want to explore around the idea of accepting the value of all experiences is the epiphany moment. We’ve talked before about how we often understand things intellectually before we feel them as truth in our bones. And in the book, I liken the intellectual understanding as puzzle pieces we have floating around in our minds, right? They each make sense to us on an intuitive level, but they haven’t really quite solidly clicked into place.

So as you begin this stage of moving beyond judgment, you may not yet have enough puzzle pieces to grasp what this not judging thing might look like in the bigger picture. And then at some point, the piece appears that kind of changes everything. The moment that sparks this epiphany, as with so many other insights on our unschooling journey, truly might be quite ordinary. It doesn’t need to be a special puzzle piece.

It’s just the puzzle piece for you. This is the one, for some reason, that gives you the flash of insight. All of a sudden, you can see the picture you’re building, and how the pieces are going to fit together.

So, the naivete, it’s so easy to write, less so much to say. But this naive urge to judge something becomes clear, and our understanding of the value of all experiences, good, bad, otherwise, medium, whatever word you’re using, or words you’re using to judge things, rises out of the confusing free-for-all that we first envisioned at the thought of moving beyond. If we’re not judging things, everything is just, everything’s good then? What does that mean?

From this turning point, this epiphany, our perspective shifts. We stop desperately trying to avoid or escape bad moments. Understanding that they, while, absolutely not what we’ve hoped for, are just moments. And, as you often talk about, Anna, we grow to trust ourselves to handle whatever kind of moment comes our way.

A deeper sense of confidence begins to take root, as we more mindfully engage in all the moments of our days. And, we more clearly see our children living this trust and confidence. I think it’s something humans are born knowing. But, we lose track of it growing up when we’re immersed in judgment, shame, and fear. And those being used to control us. Going back to that last episode of Control and Connection. And, it hits us now. We’ve got this puzzle piece.

Life isn’t about trying to avoid the bad moments, so we can finally live our good lives. And, we’re just like, I want this good life. I want this good life. We have been living our full lives, our rich lives, all along.

ANNA: I think there’s just such a beautiful freedom in recognizing that life is going to contain it all. It’s not about optimizing. It isn’t something we can control. There is not one path that will lead to everything being perfect. I think, as the Buddhists would say, the suffering is in the attachment to that outcome. And so, to me, it really plays out.

If I’m gripping so tightly to control, thinking I can somehow make the right choice, and then everything will always be great, it feels so dysregulating when it doesn’t happen that way, when I’ve tried so hard, and then the mark has been missed. Again, that goal that we talked about a little bit earlier. If instead, I’m just open and curious, and greeting things as they come, be them obstacles or gifts, with the same open energy, I can stay regulated, and I can find the growth available to me in all of those areas, in both, in obstacles and the beautiful gifts of life.

And that’s where I got to the place that you mentioned. The epiphany for me was seeing how well we worked together, how we survived whatever came our way. We had tools to get through it, and that doesn’t take away the sting of disappointment or loss when it happens, because it still can sting. But our relationships were solid. Nothing felt shaky there. And from that foundation, the bumps felt more manageable.

So, instead of the acrobatics of trying to miss the bumps, my focus was on strengthening our connection and our communication, so that we could roll over the bumps together. That was something that I could actually influence. Attempting to stop the bumps never worked, no matter how hard I tried.

It’s outside of my control, and it ends up taking me out of the moment, and I’m actually not using the time or energy to strengthen my relationships. I’m over here juggling and trying to do something perfectly. And I think this can be really hard at first, though, because we really have been taught that there are answers, that things fit nicely into good and bad and right and wrong.

And so, when something so widely accepted, like school, isn’t working for your family, it can feel very intense. We become invested in finding the next right answer, but it’s not about that. Life is about nuance, growth, exploration.

It’s messier and more unpredictable than that. But again, I think once we embrace that and understand what we can control, which is basically just how we show up and who we are, there is a freedom, a release that happens. It opens you up to see the beauty in all of it, the beauty and the value in all experiences.

So, back to the theme.

ERIKA: I love that, and I know it feels hard sometimes, because it really does feel like maybe I can control everything, and then I’ll know how it’s going to turn out, and it’ll all turn out perfectly. But life shows me that it doesn’t work like that. But that’s not failing. That’s just life. And so, I can connect with other people, because we all are sharing this human experience of all of these parts. Life has it all.

And if someone in my life seems unable to see that for themselves, I know that’s just where they are on their own journey. I don’t have to pull them to where I am. Life has it all, the ups and the downs, and we’re just going to roll with it.

If someone’s not ready for that, I can’t get them there. It’s one of those things that I think just has to click for us in time, and I guess that’s why we’re calling it the epiphany here. So, yeah, I love that.

PAM: It has to click for us. I love that. I love that.

And, okay, so this last aspect that we want to dive into is embracing the value of time. And just imagine, time is what we’ve been talking about to see how good and bad are actually linked together, and they don’t need to be judged. They’re things that happen.

They’re things that have happened, and this led to this and maybe to this. Anyway, I had mentioned earlier that I think the key shift for me in understanding this stage of the journey was really in your mantra, Anna, there’s plenty of time. This is the piece that I wanted to bring out because there’s two aspects of time for me that came to me.

One was giving moments more time and space to unfold. That’s what we’ve been talking about. Most often, we don’t need to solve moments, right? I don’t need to ride the high of good as long as I can, and I don’t need to fix the bad as fast as I can. That is just something that fades alongside the urge to judge them, that this is what comes with the epiphany. But the other was more time to ponder things.

There’s a deeper level of understanding that comes with continuing to poke and prod our thoughts, to look at our ideas from this way and that way, up close, far away, sideways. Giving myself that time and space allowed me to see how seemingly good and bad moments actually weave together. It’s just the up and down and in and out of playing with things.

It’s like, oh, it was so useful to me to recognize when I get stuck in something, right? I need to change how I’m looking at something. And truly, if you are persistent, you will reach deeper levels of understanding, moving from the comprehension, if this is kind of your first engagement with these kinds of ideas, that makes some sense to experience.

Then you see these ideas in action. So often for us, it’s seeing them in action with our kids, right? And then to the truth, you’ve seen them play out multiple times in multiple circumstances, and you’re starting to see how they might actually apply to you as well.

And this stage is just a great example of this. If discovering the truth around learning and parenting in the last two stages was akin to adding new landmarks to your map, this stage was about taking the time to explore them more fully, eventually revealing like the secluded trails that connect them. We also get our first taste of the fruits of this inner journey. Releasing that need to be constantly judging things is just so freeing.

I mean, the curiosity that bubbles up from that, it was just life changing for me. Time is a priceless and integral part of both our journey to understand and embrace unschooling, but also the practice of unschooling itself forevermore. We’ve gone from intellectually understanding that life encompasses good and bad moments to experiencing the learning about the world and about ourselves that is found in both kinds of moments, to embracing the truth that all moments, good, bad, and all manner in between moments have value in our lives.

We are learning through the ups and downs, through the good and bad. This is life or as Campbell describes it, which I thought was cool, the nature of being. Yeah, that lands for me.

ERIKA: That’s beautiful. I love that. I can definitely find myself clinging to time when things are feeling good, and just wishing it would slow down. But really the only way to slow down time that I’ve found is to get really present, and take note of all the things that are happening in this moment. There are all kinds of feelings, experiences, things to see, people to be with. And so I don’t typically wish away time even when things are hard.

I think it’s a human impulse to do that though, like I just wish this day was over. But I think my personality specifically tends to cling to time rather than hope it goes by faster. But I have found there’s plenty of time to be just such a soothing phrase.

It’s a reminder for me to just relax, let go of my intensity about finding that solution or getting to a certain place. I mean, even physically getting to a place, we have to get to whatever, get to the party on time. And I love how we all hear Anna’s voice in our minds with that reminder.

It really helps me move out of that kind of tunnel vision and to a more grounded place where I can see what’s actually in front of me and make decisions about what to do next. And even just taking a breath can be so helpful too, just to settle down my nervous system. There’s plenty of time. We’ve got this. And just let me be present in this moment.

ANNA: Yeah. Oh my goodness. How many times do we remind each other that we’ve got this during any given week and that there’s plenty of time?! It really does calm my nervous system and sometimes it feels cheesy to type or hear. But it also calms my nervous system every time because it’s true because we have a history of having gotten it.

And so I know we will keep doing it, but I do think it’s fun to think about time. It’s just such an interesting concept and it can drive so many feelings and behaviors, or I guess maybe more accurately our reactions and interplay with time drives the feelings and behavior, but understanding that helps us see the choice, right? So time can seem to be crawling and then it can fly by in a blink and can often feel out of our control.

But I like the pieces that have been pulled out, like the idea of giving space to a moment, not needing to rush in with solutions or move quickly through it. I think we do that sometimes because we don’t like to sit in discomfort. But that discomfort has messages for us.

It’s not a scary place. It can be a place of growth and we miss that if we’re rushing through it, just like we miss the joy present in those small moments, as well, if we’re always rushing ahead to the next thing. And the unfolding became such an important concept to me.

I was a planner. I still am, but with a lighter, more playful grip. Allowing moments and days to unfold, I started to see this organic flow that was always present, a flow I had really missed in my tightly controlled timelines.

And I started to feel a real difference in my body. The tightness that I was literally carrying as I was trying to plan and control all the things versus the softness, the openness in my body when we just allowed a day to unfold. And that learning could happen in a moment when I stopped talking and observed.

These things were not easy for me. That is why ‘there’s plenty of time’ is such an important mantra for me, because I could feel myself relax with that reminder. And it is not my natural state of being. I am wanting to do, do, do, maximize, go, do. There’s not enough time.

But boy, it really helps ground me. And then the part you mentioned, Pam, about time to ponder, that was also really critical. I had to slow down and trust in the time to find the deeper layers, to better understand myself and the people around me.

And it doesn’t happen overnight. It happens with an intentional commitment to take the time to feel the feelings, to dig into the layers, to understand the connections, the reactions, the context, the ideas that we’re holding on to. I don’t think you can grow, have growth without time to be in that space.

And so what I learned about myself was that my kind of go, go, tight control and planning was really me trying to outrun some past trauma pieces and things I didn’t want to look at about myself, and maybe even about the world and the things around me. And slowing down felt really scary. But I really allowed myself space to feel the feelings and understand how my patterns from childhood were showing up now.

And that was really the only way I could make changes and show up in new ways to be the person I wanted to be for my kids. So that shift is kind of what you’re talking about Pam, the ideas, they feel great, this kind of intellectual understanding. But it took me doing this slowed down work to really get to feel it in my bones and be able to act on it from my bones versus just this intellectual understanding.

PAM: Yeah. Oh, and just to wrap things up, as I was writing the book and really thinking about the phases. I could see how those three ideas came together. That’s why I love choosing Kali, here’s a goddess who is time, creation, and destruction, those three things good, bad and unfolding, are just so integral to growing as a human being to understand what’s going on at some level. There are always more layers, as we talked about, but it’s just fascinating for me to see how these things so beautifully weave together as part of this tapestry. I love that image, too.

Okay, so thanks so much to everyone for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this dive into the third stage of the de-schooling phase of our journey, as we explored the idea of accepting the value of all experiences.

And we invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network to continue this conversation because we love talking about this stuff. It’s a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents, a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional unschooling ideas, and just start to explore and talk about what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. Your first month is free, so you can get a sense of whether the community is a good fit for you. We are excited to welcome you.

To learn more and join us, just follow the link in the show notes or go to livingjoyfully.ca and choose Network in the menu. Wishing everyone a lovely day. Thanks so much, you guys.

Bye.

For this new Growing Up Unschooling episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika were joined by 26-year-old Halie Barrick, who has always been unschooled. Halie shared about her experiences growing up, her journey through college and grad school, the business she created with her mom, and her advice to newer unschooling parents. She also reflected on the connections between what interested her as a child and what she’s passionate about today. It was a beautiful conversation with so many deep insights. We hope that you enjoy listening to Halie’s thoughts as much as we did!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

QUESTIONS FOR HALIE

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

What were some of your interests growing up and how did you pursue them?

You decided to pursue a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. Can you tell us about that experience?

You have started a business called Growing Edge Equine*imity. What made you decide to start a business? Can you tell us about your vision for it?

As a grown unschooler, what piece of advice would you like to share with unschooling parents who are just starting out on this journey?

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us.

Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more!

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

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

Pam and I have known Halie since she was quite small. She grew up and was involved in a group that started online, but then began meeting in person a couple times a year, and that went on for many years. We all have a lot of really fond memories of it. And honestly, it’s a testament to the kind of lifelong friendships and connections that can be made through online communities. It’s how Pam and I met, and some years later how Erika and I met, online first too. And all that grew from those early years is one of the reasons we started the Living Joyfully Network, so please check that out in the show notes, or go to livingjoyfully.ca and click on the network to join us.

But we are so excited to reconnect and see what Halie’s been up to, and so Pam, do you want to get us started today?

PAM: Absolutely, absolutely. Hi, Halie, and it is so lovely to see you again. I was hoping, could you share a little bit about you and your family, just to introduce everyone else?

HALIE: Sure, so I’m Halie. It’s great to see Pam and Anna again and meet Erika. So, I am 26 now. I’ve always been a radical unschooler, never set foot in a classroom a day in my life. My mom and I traveled a lot when I was younger, lots of cross-country road trips to visit friends and family. We’d have wonderful, rich, deep discussions on those road trips and cover so many topics. It was so much fun learning about people and visiting local bookstores and shops on our travels.

When I was seven, we moved to Vermont, my mom and I, to be closer to my grandparents. So, I’ve mostly grown up in northern Vermont, although I lived in North Carolina and Utah when I was little. My grandparents have been super supportive of unschooling. They were a little skeptical at first, but we took them to the Live and Learn conference in 2005, and they got to hear from grown unschoolers, and that really helped them understand what this whole crazy thing was.

I’ve just been super close with my mom and my grandparents and living in the woods in northern Vermont, tucked into a little family cabin in the woods. We have the same driveway as my grandparents. And I’ve got horses and miniature donkeys on the property, so it’s just been a lot of fun getting to follow my interests and grow up in nature.

ANNA: I love that.

ERIKA: That’s beautiful. So, I’m curious, what were your interests when you were growing up, and how did you end up pursuing them?

HALIE: Well, two of the biggest passions I’ve had that have lasted the longest have been reading and horses. When I was young, I had a huge collection of toy horses, a very particular brand that was very realistic. That was important to me. And my cousin and I would spend hours and hours, months on end, with these imaginative, in-depth games. All those toy horses had personalities and magic powers and complex relationships, and we processed a lot of world issues through our games.

And then when, I guess let me back up, when I was five, we lived in Utah, and my parents and I audited a college course on horsemanship. And so we would go, I have been in a classroom. In my first college course, I was five. We learned about horse breeds, and then we would go for weekly riding lessons. And while we were in Utah, we ended up with a few horses. And we didn’t really know what we were doing, but we had a lot of fun.

And then when my mom and I moved to Vermont, we were able to bring Garnet, my older horse, she’s my older horse now. Just one of our horses from Utah came with us. And the year that I was nine, we, together, my mom and I spent the full year driving an hour to our mentor’s barn and learning natural horsemanship.

In Utah, we learned traditional horsemanship, which is very power over, dominance, control-based. And that didn’t sit right with us. So, when we moved here and started learning natural horsemanship, it was a whole new paradigm.

It was basically the difference between traditional parenting and education and unschooling and peaceful parenting. My mom loved to see those parallels. And my mom’s master’s degree is in early childhood education, family mental health.

She’s done tons of research and always knew we were going to be unschooling. And so we would go together every day from like 10am to 7pm and help this lady with her barn chores and work with her horses. And she coached me in kind of unlearning the old paradigm and relearning natural horsemanship with my horse Garnet.

Garnet had to unlearn those old power dynamics that she was fighting against and relearn this new relationship built on communication and trust and partnership. So, that was my deep dive into horse training, which then has continued my whole life. Off and on with that particular mentor, then bringing Garnet home, getting my mom a horse, then I got miniature donkeys for my 12th birthday. So that passion bled into what I’m doing now and wove through my time at college as well.

The other passion that I’ve always had is reading and how it’s connected to fantasy books and therefore medieval history for me. My parents read to me when I was little, my grandfather would read to me for hours on end every night. And it was an interesting conversation about unschooling at that point with my grandparents because I didn’t learn to read independently until I was 11.

And they kept getting very nervous and trying to push me and would say, just read the first page. Okay, well, just read the first sentence. Okay, just read the first word. And my mom would have to talk to them and say, back off, trust the process. If you pressure her, it’s just gonna cause more resistance. Just make it fun. Take the pressure off.

I have very fond memories of my grandfather reading to me. And then I got to the point where when he was at work, I wanted to know what happened in the story. So I started teaching myself how to read. And he had read me the Harry Potter series twice. And so that ended up being the first series that I picked up on my own. And I’d say in the first book, I was actually reading maybe 20% of it. But I knew the story. And by the last book, I was reading probably 90% of it.

ANNA: I love that. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it, Pam?

PAM: That was very familiar, because I was reading the series. And as the books came out, we would have a big to do and I’d read and everything. But yes, I couldn’t read all day, which was what Lissy would have loved. And so we picked up the audiobook versions. So she started reading along with the audiobook as well. And that was it, one day, she just came down and said, Hey, I’m reading. I read the first three chapters or whatever, whatever. So, that was a very familiar introduction.

And that’s the difference between thinking about learning to read as an end goal, like I need to learn to read or my granddaughter needs to learn to read. And then picking easier readers or whatever to try and help that process along versus when an interest and a need, like your interest and the interest in the Harry Potter books, both of them came together to where it just felt like a time where you wanted to dive in, into it, right?

Because sometimes our brains just aren’t ready for it. I feel like when your mom was easing them into, just trust the process, just let things unfold. That doesn’t mean sitting back and doing nothing. Reading the books to people getting the books, finding the books that are super fun and interesting for them.

Because you don’t have to be behind in anything. Just because the act of reading is not a skill that someone’s picked up yet. There’s so many other ways to get at that, the stories and information, all those pieces. So yeah, that’s super cool, Halie.

ERIKA: I just love the threads, the through lines when you grow up and you can look back and say, hey, this is something I’ve always been interested in. Playing with the toy horses when I was super little. And then that is a through line through your life. And with all that, it just feels like all this space and all this support for you to really dive as deeply as you wanted into your interests. I just love that story.

ANNA: Just make it fun, just share that love of reading, share the love of whatever the thing is we have with our kids. And then it’s so beautiful.

HALIE: My grandmother, once I learned to read, she was like, well, when are you going to stop reading and go outside again? Because all you want to do is read.

ANNA: That’s how it works a lot, isn’t it!?

HALIE: I’ve always gone all in with whatever I’m doing for a long time. And the love of reading then translated to a love of medieval history and getting really interested in Renaissance fairs and archery and sword fighting.

And then I connected that with my love of horses. And I taught myself mounted archery so I can be shooting the bow and arrow while riding my horse.

ANNA: I love seeing how the threads weave together, but over the course of a decade.

PAM: That space. Yeah, yeah. I’m just gonna leap off that for a second, Halie, just for people listening to get an idea of just how these things flow. We’re going to a Ren Faire this weekend. My son is working at it. He’s doing the jousting and the fighting. He’s a stunt actor. So, that piece is super cool. His interest in stunt acting started way back as a kid. He was always a rough and tumbley kind of person and then started with karate. So, that just wove over the years.

And then Lissy’s interest in Harry Potter. Then she got into reading fan fiction. Then there was a fan fiction writer who would use music quotes at the beginning of their chapters, which got her interested in music. She was also interested in photography at the time. And then eventually photography and music have woven together.

Now she mostly photographs musicians. I love hearing the stories about all the interests and how they weave together. It’s not like you were interested in horses, so you have to be interested in horses forever. I would look at how it all weaves together and weaves through various interests, right? It’s like interest just almost seems like such a small word.

ANNA: But it’s that space and time, right? It’s that space to pursue and find the weaving. I think when we think about a curriculum or if we’re trying to do something for our child’s learning, it’s so limiting, right? Because it’s this one very linear path and you can see through Halie, your story and all of our stories that we’ve talked about so many times, it’s never linear. It’s just all of these different bits weaving together and the web that we create. So yeah, I just, I love hearing about those threads and I think we’ve got more coming. So, I’m excited for what’s next.

PAM: Now, a little bit earlier, you mentioned college and you did decide to pursue a bachelor’s and master’s degree. So I was hoping you could share about that experience as well.

HALIE: Sure. So, I wanted to go to college because I wanted to get a master’s degree because I wanted letters after my name. And part of that was that my parents both have higher degrees. They didn’t push it. But I also felt like I wanted to prove to the world that unschooling worked, which is maybe not the best way to go into that.

But I did not want to go to a traditional college. I was very against that. It did not feel aligned with how I learn or what I wanted to do at all. And so I was really thinking about it for a couple of years. And my mom knew of Goddard College, which happened to be an hour and a half from us. And they were like unschooling for college.

They were entirely self-directed, self-designed, low residency. So we would go for a week at the start of the semester, work with our small advising group, like four to eight students of all different ages and interests, with an advisor. And through that process, create our study plan.

There were no tests and no grades. It was all about communicating with your advisor, writing things, getting really detailed feedback. And then you would write a self-evaluation and your advisor would write a narrative evaluation at the end of the semester.

So we went to Goddard for an open house the same day that we went to a college fair, and it was a very stark difference. And I immediately knew I was home when I got to Goddard. The people were lovely, very social justice oriented. My cousin, who was living with us at the time, she and I went to Goddard together. And it was a nice kind of buffer. We could support each other as we expanded out a little bit more into the world.

So, Goddard was really special. I got my four-year undergraduate degree there, graduated in the fall of 2022. I took a year off and then I went back with the plan to get a two-year master’s program.

And I was a year in when Goddard closed, which was super, super sad. I think largely it was for financial reasons. They had a partnership with Prescott College out in Arizona that helped take Goddard students and continue their path and help them graduate. So, I completed my master’s a year ago. And yeah, it was really special. I think we need more schools like Goddard.

I started my first semester with something that I was comfortable with, which was horsemanship. And then I moved away from that for the middle semesters and explored everything from creative writing to astrophysics. And then the way Goddard worked was they wanted you to explore lots of different things for the first three years and then hone in on a big senior study project that would be like your major.

And so I came back around to partnership-based horse training, horse psychology, and I ended up getting a young horse, Chantilly Lace. She was only 14 months old, a little Arabian filly, and she was my senior study. Training her for that first year and doing a lot of research and journaling and writing about horsemanship in general, and particularly natural horsemanship.

So, that was my undergraduate senior study. And then part of that senior study, I was learning about equine-assisted psychotherapy. And a big part of our conversations, between me and my mom, growing up have been psychology and sociology and trauma-informed care and social emotional learning.

And so, I was researching equine-assisted psychotherapy and I decided I didn’t want to be a therapist, but I did speak that language and I did see the value in working with horses to develop interpersonal skills. So, I went back for my master’s with this focus of can I start a business to support people through activities with the horses? And that was my master’s program.

So my master’s was also self-designed equine-assisted learning and business design.

ANNA: Nice. So cool. I think it is really interesting. I didn’t know that Goddard had closed. I was familiar with it before, but I didn’t know that it was closed. So that is sad.

But I love how you were able to take all these different pieces and that they really encouraged that and then weave it together to find this path that felt good in that moment. I love that.

And so that kind of leads into my question, which I’m super excited about, because I also am very into horses and have been since I was little and natural horsemanship and all the things involved with just that beautiful relationship and how it translates so beautifully to humans as well.

And so you have started a business called Growing Edge Equine-imity. I’m curious, what made you want to start that business? Can you tell us a little bit about your vision for it? Just a little bit about how that it sounded like that really started in your master’s program, thinking, OK, I want this business. And so what that looked like, where you are now, and what your hopes are for it.

HALIE: Yeah. It’s been a year since I technically started the business and it’s feeling like a really exciting point in time. Things are beginning to come together. So, Growing Edge Equine-imity. I guess I’ll start with the name.

I wanted it to be Growing Edge because it’s about personal development and finding your growth edge, having a growth mindset. And I wanted “growing” to show it’s a process. It continues. And my mom, I’ve got to give her credit for the equine-imity part of combining equine and equanimity. She thought she was very clever with that. I love it.

So it’s an equine-assisted personal and professional development business. And the goal is to empower parents and educators in understanding self-directed education and shifting adult youth relationships from power over to power with. And I think a lot of that is about reflecting on how us as adults were raised and what kind of cultural conditioning we’ve received and unpacking that and really thinking about what are our values and what are our hopes for our children. What kinds of baggage do we need to unpack, what conversations do we need to have, and what skills to develop so that we can show up and support the children in the way that we want to.

It doesn’t have to be about unschooling per se, but since that’s my experience, I really wanted to start there combining my love of horses, my unschooling experience, and the fact that this psychology and sociology has been so interwoven into my life.

So, the business was really a way of pulling these threads together in a way that I could hopefully make a living while also supporting people and making a difference in the world in a way that’s really fun and meaningful to me and brings my personal passions together. So that was the goal of the business.

ANNA: Wow.

PAM: I love the way. I feel like. I was just going to say I love the way the threads all weave together, right? That, to me, that’s the beautiful piece, like Anna was talking about before, the space and time to really discover these various threads and then finding and exploring ways to weave them together so that it’s not like, okay, I have to choose one now and ignore the other things that I’m interested in, at least for a while I can pursue this one thing.

And it is really beautiful the way you’ve been able to find those pieces and then bring those into your masters. And through that lens, because you had said you were doing some business stuff too in your masters as well, right? So just weaving all those pieces together.

I love that so much.

ANNA: Yeah. I was just going to say it too, very similarly, but I feel like the best ideas and the ideas that change the world are that, right? It’s all the pieces, it’s bringing in these passion-driven pieces and these explorations.

I am super excited about what you’re putting out into the world. And I think so many people will be drawn to it because it really hits so many notes for people. And I think just your passion and love for it is also just going to continue to attract things.

I’m excited about your journey with that.

ERIKA: Yeah, it’s so beautiful. And I love contrasting that with, if you get that tunnel vision of, I’ve become an adult, I’ve got to just go get a job. I have to make money and kind of losing parts of yourself. Which I feel like a lot of people do in our culture. I just love the creativity and the intention and thoughtfulness that you’re putting into your path where it’s like, no, I can make a difference and I can continue to explore my passions and there’s value to this, all of these interests.

It’s so much more personal and it’s so connected, which I think then makes the work really land, for other people. So yeah, that’s so beautiful.

PAM: I was just going to add, I happened to be at an extended family picnic last weekend, a few days ago. And somebody, of course, has been asking what my kids were up to. And I explained what they were doing. And they looked at me and said, they’re just doing the stuff they like to do, but as adults. And I was just like, yeah, it doesn’t have to be just what you were saying, Erika. Now I need to get a job. Those don’t have to be separate things, right? We really can weave them together so beautifully.

ANNA: From the start, because I feel like the piece that I see in the work that I do with people is that in their 40s, they’re going, wait a minute. And they’re trying to re-tap into those feelings from when they were younger and had these driving passions and had these visions for what they wanted to be in the world and do in the world. But like you said, Erika, they just set it aside because, oh, okay, it has to look like this.

And so I do think this is one of the gifts of unschooling is that you really can have a head start on that, on really understanding yourself, self-awareness, just all of those pieces that you don’t have to unlearn later.

ERIKA: It feels like we have taken the interest seriously all along, not as this is a little side thing that if you have enough time, you can squeeze into your life. It’s like, no, if you’re able to really dive in and pursue your interests, then you’ll actually be able to use them in a meaningful way for your whole life. It just makes such a difference because people are so different.

There isn’t one right path to being an adult and working. And so, yeah, I just love that so much. And I know everyone loves hearing these conversations with grown unschoolers.

I know people will be excited to hear what you’ve learned along the way. So my question is, what piece of advice would you like to share with unschooling parents who are just starting out on the unschooling journey?

HALIE: That is a good question. How much time do we have? I mean, I think trust is the most important. I think trusting yourself and your own instincts and also trusting your children and that they also know what’s best for them.

I think with trusting your instincts, being able to separate what’s actually your instinct and what’s cultural conditioning and being able to figure out where the difference is and trust your instincts and critically analyze what the cultural messaging is. And then have real authentic conversations with your children so that you can ask them what they need and you can be partners and be on the same team.

I was thinking about this this morning and I have a little flow chart in my head. If you think about what’s your end goal, what’s your why? Why are you doing this? Why does it matter? Where do you want your children to be as young adults? And then backwards map it and think about what are the steps to get there.

In my mind, if the end goal is collaboration between you and your children in this journey of life, then what does that collaboration need? And I think it needs trust and communication. And trust, for me anyways, emotional trust means congruence.

So, your inner experience and your outer portrayal need to be aligned in a way that’s not dumping your emotions and needs on everybody around you, but being authentic and honest with what you’re feeling and who you are. And so part of getting to this point of healthy congruence, which is really what the horses help you with too, because horses live in the moment and are totally authentic and respond to that congruence. But to get there, you need this self-responsibility aspect and this self-compassion aspect of also doing what you need to support yourself and give yourself grace for when you’re not perfect, because no one’s ever perfect.

And then also the communication aspect of learning how to communicate with your teammates, if that’s your friends, your family, your children, and how to work through conflict. There are obviously tons of resources out there. We’ve particularly been drawn towards nonviolent communication with Marshall Rosenberg and Ross Green’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions.

But the other concept I wanted to mention is the idea of rupture and repair in a relationship. You’re going to run into dings, and that’s an opportunity to literally practice resilience. Because if you can come back in a calm time and address those issues, your relationship grows stronger because of that. And again, there is no real perfection, which drives me crazy.

I’m a person who wants to know what’s perfect and then wants to meet that standard. The thing that I’ve had to realize is not only are we incapable of being perfect 100% of the time, but the definition of perfect is fluid between moment to moment and person to person. And so really it’s about showing up with full presence and having compassion for yourself and others and being willing to have real, authentic conversations and go back and address things when things feel sticky.

ERIKA: That’s awesome. I feel like you’ve talked about a lot of the things that we have recently been talking about too, just about paradigm shifts in parenting. And I think that is so huge about realizing we can’t be perfect. And that in fact, those moments where we are imperfect are the perfect time to then be building trust in our relationships. That just takes so much pressure off of me as a parent, but it also, it’s true.

I’ve seen it happen for us. And we can’t be perfect, but when we can repair, we’re all stronger. We all have this shared experience with each other that we can build on for the next time.

So I loved those answers, Halie.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. So, so much.

And I love that idea that perfect is fluid because I think all of us can get caught up in that, wanting to do the best job, the right thing, that piece. But it is, the people are different idea that we talk about a lot. It is different in every situation.

And those are the perfect opportunities to learn and grow and make that repair and deepen the relationship. And so I think it is helpful for parents to realize that this is not about doing X thing perfectly. It really is just about the presence.

And so I loved that, that kind of an opposite of perfect is letting it go to just being present, being present, that’s the work that we can do to show up for the people in our lives, to learn about ourselves, to learn about each other. And so, yeah, I just thought that was so beautiful. Thank you.

PAM: That presence is really how we can learn and navigate that moment. Like being truly present helps us see the next baby step of repair, right? It’s hard to have a rupture, then come up with this whole repair plan and then bring it back and do the thing, right? It really is a team effort, it’s in that presence and that trust. Their trust in us, to hear us as we come and approach a repair, but also our trust and our developing trust with experience just in the process itself.

Because for me, again, I’m another one who wants the right answer, just tell me what to do, tell me how to fix it, and I’ll do it. But time and again, through experience, just showing up and having those authentic conversations leads all of us into the way to execute in the right word, but for the repair to happen, right? And it’s not a one and done.

I can see so many people, I want to have this repair conversation and be done. And now we’re all back to normal, right? But that fluidity of perfection, that fluidity of life, it’s just showing up again and again and being present and being open and curious and trust.

And yeah, that was all beautiful.

ERIKA: I liked how you said that there’s resources for this too, though, because I feel like so many of us as parents, we did not grow up with this being modeled. What does validation look like? What does this kind of communication look like? But there are resources out there. So we can learn and just try things out with our family. So yeah, I loved that point as well.

ANNA: Yeah, for sure. Well, Halie, thank you so much for joining us. It was just such a treat.

And I just feel like we will definitely be staying in touch. I feel like we’ll see you again down the road because I think there’s just so much to what you’re doing and all that you’re putting out into the world. That’s so beautiful.

And I want to thank everybody for listening. And we hope that you enjoyed this conversation. It was just so great to catch up with Halie.

And I know, like Erika said, people really enjoy hearing from grown unschoolers. And sometimes we’re like, it’s not about a product or it’s not one path. Halie’s path is her own.

But I think it does show this weaving in of these different pieces, these threads and how it can look so different than what the traditional paths are. I do hope you’ll also check out Halie’s website, which is growingedgeequineimity.com. But we’ll also put it in the show notes so you can find it there.

And before we go, I want to invite everyone to join us at the Living Joyful Network. It’s a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents, a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas and explore what it might look like day to day in your family and ask questions and just see it in action too. Your first month is free so you can get a sense of whether the community is a good fit for you and we would love to see you there.

To learn more and to join us, just follow the link in the show notes or you can go to livingjoyfully.ca and choose Network in the menu. So thank you everyone again and take care. Thank you, Halie.

PAM: Thanks, Halie. So nice to see you.