How to talk to teenagers and young adults

A lesson or reminder for all who need it (including me).

1. Happy to see her? Say so. Show it with your face. Light up your eyes.
2. Unless it’s to offer an enthusiastic compliment, do not comment on his clothing, shoes, accessories, tattoos, hair, weight, or anything else appearance-related—especially in the first five minutes. If you don’t feel complimentary about any aspect of his appearance, go back to #1.
3. Ask what she’s been up to. Listen to the answer and then DON’T JUDGE. If you don't like the choices she is making regarding college or career or how she spends her free time, do not say so or in any way reveal it. Don’t offer advice. If you can’t think of anything else to say besides judgment and advice, simply ask what she likes or doesn’t like about what’s been going on.
4. Ask him for a movie, book, TV show, or game recommendation. Young people are often voracious consumers of media of all types, and the choices they make about what to consume are hugely varied from week to week. If he knows you at all, he is very likely to immediately think of something he’s seen or read that will be up your alley, or he’ll say, “I don’t think you would like what I’ve been reading,” and that’s a great conversation starter right there.
5. If her skills lean that way and the timing is right, ask her for help with that problem you’ve been having with your electronics, car, cat, leaky faucet, whatever. This shows that you know what her skills are and that you value them.
6. Listen, listen, listen. You are in the presence of a great mind that has matured in a completely different culture from the one you grew up in. Take a peek at his perspective on life and the world.
7. If she doesn’t seem interested in talking to you, don’t take it personally. By the time most kids turn 16, they have given up on adults' ability to really talk to them. It might take a while for her to recognize that you are worth her time. Meanwhile, find a way to set her free. “Would you like to go out to the yard and see the dog?”
8. Make yourself available for a conversation as equals whenever he gives you a chance to show what you’re made of.

Got more? Add them in the comments.

How to raise a good writer



The true alchemists do not change lead into gold;
they change the world into words. ~ William H. Gass

This is my tried and true approach to raising a good writer.

1. Make words a fun, happy, safe, communal thing in your home. Play with words (knock-knock jokes, Mad Libs, magnetic poetry, any of dozens of genuinely fun, noninstructional card and board games, etc.). Point out clever phrasing when you notice it. Read great (fun!) novels and interesting (fun!) reference books together. Talk about how ads in magazines and signs on businesses are worded and why it might or might not generate any business. Laugh together over words and about words.
   
2. Love words yourself and let it show.
   
3. Fill your home with paper, notebooks, a large variety of pens and pencils, computers with word-processing software and access to the Internet. These are toys for writers! A trip to the office-supply store is bliss.
   
4. Learn to distinguish between writing (content), handwriting, and adherence to rules for spelling and grammar. They are very different things, and a person can be great at any one of them without having any special talent for the others. Also, real writers have keyboards and editors; your child can rely on that, or get through life with spell-checkers and grammar-checkers like most of the known universe.
   
5. Never, ever, ever point out spelling or grammatical errors in a young person's writing. Some people's passion for writing will stand up to this kind of abuse, but it shouldn't have to. Keep in mind that using creative spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure is a natural phase of early writing. Most of us do eventually learn where the period goes and that "cat" is spelled with a "c." Trust.
   
   And meanwhile, focus on content. Share your natural enthusiasm for that, and be cognizant of the fact that by sharing his writing with you, your child is bestowing an honor. Appreciate it!
   
   Note: There is one time when it's okay to offer yourself up as proofreader and that's when your kid is submitting his writing for consideration in order to meet his own goal: winning a prize, getting published, gaining admittance to college, things like that. Otherwise, wait to be asked.
   
6. Protect your child's creativity from writing curricula and well-meaning friends and relatives. The approved essay format, with its rigid structure and counted sentences and paragraphs, can stifle creativity. And Aunt Martha's kindly meant comments to your seven-year-old about subject-verb agreement might serve only to dampen a budding writer's joy in all that is wondrous about writing. Step up and step in, if for no other reason than to show your child that she has choices.
   
7. Respect every writer's privacy. The things your child writes are his to share or not share as he chooses. In the absence of an invitation—and, no, that paper or journal left in plain sight is not an invitation—do what you have to do to control your urge to peek.
   
8. After creating a home where writing is valued and considered fun, check to see if your kid is a writer right now. She might not be, and that's okay! If she is, you will know it; writers write and nobody has to make us do it.
   
   If she isn't, repeat steps 1 through 7, not with the goal of making her into a writer but because words are a playground you can enjoy as a family.

Unschooling my cat, part 2: Letting go

My cat continues to remind me of unschooling lessons I had supposedly already learned.

We made the decision when Rigby was young (she's going on 2 now) that she would be an indoor cat. Indoor cats are safer, live longer, and have lower veterinary bills, and they tend to be cleaner and free(er) of fleas. It was a very sensible decision with her and our best interests at heart, and when she was a kitten, it worked beautifully.

But there developed a problem: Rigby loves the outdoors.

She began to cry to go out, sitting at our sliding glass door for hours--really--yowling like the Siamese she is for her freedom. She'd take periodic breaks from the yowling to come over and bite my ankles to make sure she had my attention. On the occasions when we would give in and take her outside, usually on a leash which she tolerated sort of as a fair trade for some outside time, she would romp and run and chase bugs and look like, well, a cat. A happy cat.

She loves it. LOVES it. Loves it. It is her favorite thing.

Like good unschooling parents, we've paid attention. We remembered that our comfort level is not the most important thing, and that being uncomfortable isn't fatal. We began to prepare for Rigby to be an indoor/outdoor cat, with some safeguards to make us feel better about the whole thing but primarily focused on this clearly communicated preference of our youngest, furriest daughter. We took her to get the feline Leukemia vaccine we had previously declined. We bought her a collar with a tag so kind people can help her find her way home should she wander. And we kitty-proofed the yard as much as it is possible to do, so that mostly she will remain in our yard.

Then we opened the door and let her out.

I wish you could see the changes in her. Outside, she moves with obvious pleasure around our yard, satisfaction in every step and radiating a clear sense that she is in her place. If you're out there with her (which she loves), she comes over to rub against you and head-butt and let you know how pleased she is with life in general. She climbs trees and stalks everything that moves and hides from loud noises. If I kick the soccer ball, she will sometimes chase it, and she has taken to sitting near me when I hula hoop, apparently not concerned by the fact that I drop the hoop nearly as often as not.

She has struck up a fascinating and hugely entertaining friendship with Roxie, the dog next door. They peek at each other through the knotholes and gaps in the fence, sticking paws or noses through, swat at each other, and then race together down the fenceline to the next peekhole to do it again there.

Inside, she's calmer, more affectionate, and just happier. I don't know how to explain it, but we can all see it.

We have seen the law of diminishing marginal utility very much in practice. She used to be desperate to go outside. Now, she still loves it, but if we leave the door open for her, she's in as much as out.

And she just thinks we are pretty darn cool. As I write this post, she is wandering the yard apparently giving me no notice. But when I went inside a moment ago, she immediately came to the door to call me back. Like most unschooled "kids," she enjoys being with her parents! :-)

Money, money, money, mon-ey

This started out as a comment on an unschooling forum. I think it works as a standalone post too, and it's LONG, so I'm saving it.

Our kids are 19 and 20. The older one doesn't live at home right now but soon will again. We support both of them financially. Come September, they will both be in college, which we are paying for right now but which will eventually need to become a group effort. They each get a weekly no-strings allowance, which they don't have to do chores to earn and which they spend on whatever they want.

That's our situation.

Our philosophy is one of cooperation and sharing, with a healthy dose of ignoring society's arbitrary, different-from-country-to-country rules about the ages by which kids **should** be doing certain things like driving cars, paying their own way, moving out, and so on. Society doesn't get to decide those things, we do.

The ways this philosophy has paid off are many, and somewhat immeasurable.

Where to start? The biggest benefit has turned out to be that they get a modicum of relief from the pressure they are under -- that ALL kids are under, no matter what their parents say and do -- to become independent adults. Our kids talk to us, so I can see that this pressure is staggering and probably worse than any "gotta earn a living" pressure they will feel later in life. ANYTHING I can do to ease that pressure and give them a little breathing room to "figure this shit out" is a good thing. We reassure them repeatedly that there is no hurry. They don't cost more now than they did at 13 or 15 or last year. We know we can afford this lifestyle, just as it is, which means we can joyfully continue to be a safe haven for them as long as it takes them to find their paths.

Do I think I will still have kids living with me five years from now? Judging by their personalities and by what their older unschooling friends have done, the answer is, sadly, no. I'm on Empty Nest Watch whether I like it or not.

The other benefits are more, well, ordinary, and the reasons we went with the no-strings allowance to begin with. They got to practice budgeting and math and learn what it feels like to have money on payday and be broke by the end of the pay period. And Frank and I got to stop always being the bad-guy money decisionmakers. "Can I have this?" they still ask, and all we have to say is, "It's your money."

If you want a little friendly feedback, your setup [kids do chores to earn allowance, with commentary about kids beginning to pay their own way at 16] sounds pretty stressful and somewhat adversarial! All that keeping track. All that wondering about where YOU should draw the line. Don't draw any lines. Figure out what the allowance is, hand it over with a smile, and then sit back and watch *them* figure out where the lines are and how to make the most of what they have. I bet they'll surprise you. (I should tell you sometime about the $5 megaton of candy the girls bought.)

When they make mistakes -- and they will, we all do -- I make purchasing mistakes all the freaking time *g* -- don't say, "See! I told you this wouldn't work!" Instead, recognize that it HAS worked. Mistakes lead to learning. If they buy too many potions and lose them [on a gaming site where cyber items are purchased for real money], they will learn how yucky it feels to get nothing for their money.

I have lots more to say but this is a novel already. Here are a couple of relevant posts from my blog:

http://zombieprincess.blogspot.com/2010/06/stuff-and-money-and-space.html

http://zombieprincess.blogspot.com/2010/05/date-with-reality.html

Geographically inclined

I shared this image in Facebook. Neat, isn't it? As I introduced it there: "Fun way to learn geography *and* put some popular (and not so popular) movies into a geographical context." My friend Emily asked me to talk a bit about what we did for geography as an unschooling family, and about how learning geography can be fun.

To answer the first question, well... First I have to admit that we didn't consciously do a darned thing to expose our kids to geography. What we did, as always, was have fun as a family. But in retrospect, I can see that we did a lot. We traveled. We talked. We pulled out maps, nautical charts, globes, atlases, and Google Maps often and with bright interest and a need to discover something in particular. Geography is not some esoteric subject in our house but an extremely valuable tool. Plus, it's just interesting. Topography is interesting. Distances between places we'd love to visit are interesting. The impact of geography on world events, current and historical, is interesting.

Another thing we did was to become part of the unschooling community. We have friends and online acquaintances all across the U.S. and Canada, plus several other countries. The unschooling community has personalized the entire world for my kids. Destinations are not foreign and distant but possible. This means we don't hear a mention of a destination in England and think "oh, yeah, that place where the Queen lives." We think, "What part of England? I wonder how far it is from Schuyler's house. Maybe someday we can go stay with Schuyler and go there! Yeah, wouldn't that be cool?"

And there's the Internet. Cool stuff like the map above abounds. Maps come up automatically with many Internet searches. You can see graphical representations of voter patterns, Native American tribe locations, current weather conditions (with useful tools like hurricane trackers), and the paths followed by favorite fictional characters. Maps are everywhere.

Books! Every time my kids read a book they add to their knowledge of geography. When we travel, we visit places that we previously visited in books. Some books have maps as the frontispiece. Some maps are fictional, which inspires kids to draw fictional maps of their own. This gives them a gut-level understanding of scale and the challenges faced by map makers to show topography, distance, and relative size.

And music! Do you know the song "Battle of New Orleans"? We went to that battlefield! When my kids sing the line about "til we seed their faces well," they know where the Americans were waiting. They know the Mississippi River was a stone's throw away. They know how far the field is from New Orleans, and how far New Orleans is from our home near Seattle.

Planning for travel has been huge. Road trips. Unschooling conferences. Not Back to School Camp. Visiting friends in other states. Sailing in the Gulf of Mexico. Looking at maps and deciding where to *actually* go is FUN. (You can have this same experience with a city map, by the way.)

Kids learn geography when geography has context and meaning. And to answer the second question, the learning is fun for those very same reasons. It's fun because it's attached to fun things, and it's memorable because it becomes an integral part of the kids' personal memories.

Unschooling my cat

Catchy title, right?

This is my cat:


She's bigger than that now, but you get the idea. This amazing, bright-eyed little being has entered our lives and transformed our home and our routines.

Sound familiar? Yeah, it's a lot like having an infant again.

Several years ago, I read something Sandra Dodd wrote about things she did to make her dog more comfortable. She didn't say she was unschooling her dog, but somehow hearing the changes she was willing—no, happy—to make, to her home and routine and the arrangement of her furniture, in order to meet her dog's needs and make her dog happy really helped me see what the unschooling lifestyle is all about.

Fast forward a few years and my kids are pretty much grown. While we continue to adapt our home and routine as needed to meet their needs, everything is pretty settled these days, and we take even the surprises in stride because adapting is habitual by this point.

And then along came Rigby.

She is named for Eleanor Rigby, thus continuing our mini tradition of naming cats after Beatles' characters (our last two cats were Desmond and Molly). I am allergic to cats, so she was only supposed to be a visitor, and I was quite prepared to fall head over heels in love with her and give her away anyway.

What I was not prepared for was for her to fall in love with us. And she did. Within a day after I found her cowering under the neighbor's car, beyond thrilled to be found, she had bonded completely with all of us. This is where she slept:


And there I was, an unschooler and attachment parent riding on nearly nine years of unequivocally meeting the needs of the beings I love, confronted with a little loved one who clearly did not need to be separated from another family. Surprise!

So we adapted. We kept her (and my allergies are learning to live with it). She's a fair bit bigger now, but she's still attached. She sleeps on whichever of us is not moving, and she struts and sprints around the house like she owns it. Which I suppose she does.

My next surprise was the unschooler refresher course that having her in our home provided.

She likes to play with the cords on the mini-blinds. We don't especially want the mini-blinds to come crashing down, so we tied a string to chair. It has a bead tied on the end, in as close an appromixation of a mini-blind cord as I could conceive on short notice. She loved it.

She has daily periods of astonishingly high energy. We call this Satan Cat Mode, and Honey Badger has nothing on Satan Cat. What Satan Cat Rigby needs is someone to romp with her. It doesn't matter that we'd rather sit on the couch or go to sleep. (Cats are mostly nocturnal, remember.) We have acquired a collection of toys and other items that she finds entertaining, and I spend close to an hour every day creating opportunities for her to chase, tackle, climb, pounce, sneak, destroy, and gnaw. Very often with me as the target. This is in addition to the time that Frank, Chloe, Emma, MJ, and whoever happens to be visiting contribute to the cause.

She loves plastic bags and cardboard boxes. We have had varietal bags and boxes littering our floors for eight weeks.

She needs to claw something. She would like to use the oriental rug, while we would prefer for her to use one of the alternatives we have provided. We can occasionally be found dragging our fingernails over the surfaces of these alternatives to show her how it's done. She's getting the idea.

She needs to be with us. We leave doors open so she can follow us around. We make sure not to leave her alone for too long. We talk to her and generally provide companionship. I sit in weird positions so she can drape herself across my neck or my lap while I work.

She needs to cuddle. I know this is true because if we are too slow about noticing when she's ready for a cuddle, she will climb on shoulders, laps, keyboards, books, or faces until someone does their damned job, thank you very much. It's usually not too hard to get someone to cooperate. She prefers cuddling on her favorite blanket, so this blanket is usually adorning one or the other of us. (This last might become more problematic in August.)

And of course she needs a litter box and good food and medical care. Check, check, check.

But in terms of illustrating unschooling principles, the need that is the most interesting and, yes, entertaining is her obsession with the bathroom. She loves the bathroom. She needs to explore the bathroom. We have no idea why. It is the strangest cat behavior we've ever seen. If someone goes in to pee, she literally runs after them so she can watch. She hangs out in the sink. She sleeps on the toilet lid (the seat is heated so this one is less puzzling) and considers the toilet tank a prime perch. If someone goes in and closes the door, she sits outside and waits for them to come out. And she showers with me every day, spending some of the time hanging out at the foot of the tub and the rest in the safe zone between the shower curtain and (clear) shower liner.

We don't get it. But the thing is, we don't have to understand her need in order to respond to it. We just have to care that her need is met. That is pretty much the prime directive of unschooling.

Gotta go. My cat needs me.

Self-care

There is a fair amount of content out in the self-improvement sphere devoted to helping us see the difference between self-care and indulgence. You will get more genuine comfort, they say, from a brisk walk than from a jelly donut or a trip to the Nordstrom shoe department. Maybe so.

But unschooling with my kids—accepting and staying calm about their choices—has shown me something very important:

Self-care is not only doing the things that you know are good for you—eating right and exercising and getting plenty of sleep—but loving and accepting the part of you that can't be "good" all the time.

Unschooling snapshot

On Friday, Mary Gold and I spent over an hour in Barnes & Noble watching our 17-year-old unschooled daughters, Qacei and Chloe, as they lusted over a particular display of books. The sign on the display? Required School Reading.

Trust

This is an excerpt from one of my talks at LIFE is Good 2009. It was titled, "Unschooling Teenagers: RATS in the House." RATS stands for Respect, Acceptance, Trust, and Support.

Here’s my little bombshell: I don’t trust my kids.

What I mean is, I don't trust my kids in the way traditional parents mean when they talk about trusting their kids.

Think about it. When a mainstream parent says she trusts her teenager, what does she really mean? I think she means she trusts her teenager to make good choices. And what does that mean? What constitutes a good choice?

Well, that’s subjective, isn’t it? I knew a woman once whose father had encouraged her to be promiscuous when she was a teenager. To him, sleeping around was a good choice. But maybe more conventional philosophies come to mind. Maybe you think about abstinence, or condom use, or saying no to drugs, or putting money in a savings account, or looking both ways before you cross the street. Maybe you think about safety issues.

Fair enough. So, teens who make good choices keep themselves safe.

It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? But here’s a question: When are our kids safe enough? Where do we draw the line between safety and experience? And more importantly, where do they draw that line?

A couple of years ago, Frank and the girls and I loaded ourselves into a small sailboat and crossed the Gulf of Mexico. During hurricane season. My mother probably thought we had lost our ever-lovin’ minds. And, considering it was the year of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, she just might have been right.

But my point is, we made our own choices. My parents didn’t choose for us. Now, was our choice a good choice? That’s debatable. Every one of you probably has an opinion on that. I'm sure my mother does.

But here’s the thing: The right and wrong of every single choice each of us makes is debatable. All we can know when we judge another person’s choice is what we would have chosen in the same situation.

So what a traditional parent really means when she says she trusts her kid to make good choices is that she trusts her teen to make the same choices she would choose for him. She expects her kid’s brain to be an extension of her own, to assess and react to a situation just as she would, and to choose the behavior that she would choose.

Well, like I said, I don’t trust my kids that way. The idea that their brains are an extension of mine is silly. Their brains are their own. They will assess and react and choose in their own ways, not mine.

How many of you have seen the movie "Risky Business"? Joel’s parents are out of town, and when they call to check in one evening, they can tell by the noise level that he’s having a party. “Just a few friends,” Joel tells them, and his mother says it’s all right. “You know we trust you.” Of course, at that moment, Joel is running a brothel out of their home and there are prostitutes wearing his mother’s clothes.

Now, my point with this little story is not to say that teenagers are not trustworthy. It is simply to say that even good kids like Joel make their own choices. And then they handle what comes. In the movie, Joel does a lot of scrambling to handle what comes, but he does in fact handle it.

And that is where my authentic trust for my kids comes in. I trust my daughters to make their own choices and to handle what comes. I also trust them to ask for help if they need it.

Learning mystique

On Twitter today, someone referred to unschooling as "the lazy parent's approach to school." The author's username includes "sarcasm," so I didn't take offense. But this opinion of unschooling is one we hear from time to time. It has its roots in the multilayered belief that (1) teaching is hard,
(2) the stuff they teach in school is terribly important but so obscure that no one in the real world is likely to stumble upon it anywhere else, and if they do they won't be able to figure it out on their own, and (3) learning the terribly important things must be insisted upon, enforced, and even coerced.

Viewed from that belief system, I can see why unschoolers look like lazybones. We skip the hard part, let our kids play video games if they'd rather, and don't seem to care very much about the terribly important stuff (obscure or not).

But let's take a closer look...

Teaching is hard.

You bet your ass. Teaching is damned hard. Classroom management is hard. Engaging one or two little brains that would rather be playing video games is hard; engaging 25 to 30 of them is all but impossible. Butting up against district policies that get in the way of that engagement is hard. Sacrificing class time to idiotic curriculum choices is hard. Hurting kids to make a living is hard (see the last paragraph on the first page of that link, which is the resignation letter of John Taylor Gatto, who at that time was NY State Teacher of the Year).

And at home? Sitting your kids down at the kitchen table with a lesson plan and standing over them until they complete it is hard. In many cases, it is so hard that the kids end up back in school because neither the kids nor the parents can take it anymore.

Do unschoolers skip all that? You bet your ass.

The stuff they teach in school is terribly important...

Let's do a little experiment. Yesterday, somewhere between playing Minecraft with some friends from Not Back to School Camp and looking at vlogs, Chloe learned about Queen Ranavalona the First.

So, let's pretend I'm the school board and I have determined that it is terribly important for people your age—yes, your age, the exact age that you are right this minute as you read this blog post—it is terribly important for you to learn what Minecraft is and how much it costs, what the policy is on bedtimes at Not Back to School Camp, and all about Queen Ranavalona and why she might be of interest to an unschooler.

What's that? You don't think those things are terribly important? Welcome to the life of a schooled child.

But since we're pretending, let's pretend that one of those items in my little curriculum has piqued your interest. Maybe you're a teen or the parent of a teen who is interested in attending Not Back to School Camp and you would actually like to know about the bedtime policy. Or maybe you've never heard of Minecraft or Not Back to School Camp or Queen Ranavalona or vlogs, and I've made you curious.

Welcome to the life of a lucky schooled child.

But what about the basics?

They call them the basics for a reason. To reach age 15 without learning everything that is taught in elementary school is virtually impossible, provided no one has gotten in your way.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the typical course of study for grades 1 through 5.

But what about math?

At the very first LIFE is Good, my friend Mary Lewis gave a talk about math in which she discussed the work she was doing teaching math to math-phobic adults—that is, adults who had been through 10 to 13 years of school math and were so traumatized by it that they would freeze in terror if someone asked them to add some numbers together. Mary said these people would be far better off if they had never had a math lesson. This article by David Albert certainly makes her point.

But what about core concepts/a balanced education/learning history so it doesn't repeat itself/etc.?

I could argue (and if I can find an article I read recently about the origins of the phrase "balanced education" I just might). But let's say I concede the point. Let's say there is a core set of knowledge that an educated person must have. Terribly important stuff.

...so obscure that no one in the real world is likely to stumble upon it anywhere else...

But the obscure stuff—like Queen Ranavalona to your average American—is stuff that doesn't belong in the core set.

...and if they do they won't be able to figure it out on their own.

The rest? The not-obscure stuff? Kids will encounter it in the real world. When they do, they will have a reason to learn about it, and they will seek out the latest information about it instead of relying on some possibly propagandized, probably censored information they got a decade or more ago.

How will they do that? Well, let's go back to our pretend school and find out. I am your teacher now, working from the curriculum I've received from the school board, here to give you your assignment for the day: Open a new tab right now and find out who Queen Ranavalona was. If you already know who she was, find out the bedtime policy at NBTSC or how much Minecraft costs.

Everybody, get to work! You have two minutes.

Two minutes later... I suspect at most a third of you have done your assignment and the rest of you are faking it and hoping there won't be a test.

But even the fakers should be able to get my point here: what a person needs to know, she finds out.

Learning must be insisted upon, enforced, and even coerced.

Today, after hearing a radio snippet about the U.S. cutting aid to Egypt, Emma asked why we send money to other countries instead of spending it here. Why did she ask me that? Because she didn't understand. Because she was curious. Because it's relevant to her life, being related to current events that we've been discussing a bit here and to the financial situation of people she knows who are struggling in the recession.

Also today, Chloe finished reading "Lord of the Flies." Why? For entertainment. Because it's relevant to her life, having been mentioned in a vlog she's been enjoying. Because it's classic fiction that gets mentioned occasionally and she was curious.

Also today, you are reading the blog of an unschooling parent. Why? Why are you here? You don't have to answer that. Just think about it. What drove you to come to this page of the Internet? No wait, I changed my mind. Leave me a comment and tell me why you're here. I am curious.

And that's the answer to the test we're not having: Human beings are inherently curious. We seek out new information instinctively, even greedily. Learning does not need to be coerced; it is a given.

The greatest trick the educational system ever pulled was convincing people they couldn't learn without it.

The school system is not what it appears to be. It is past time to start looking beyond the disguise.



Point, meet counterpoint.

The other origin of unschooling as "the lazy parent's approach to school" is the idea that unschooling is easy. Umm, no. Unschooling is fun, make no mistake, but it is also quite a lot of work. My post The cons of unschooling describes some of the work that is involved.

Do you really want to be that guy?

We all have our preferences. Frank hates finding electronics left on in an empty room. I hate reaching for the scissors only to discover that whoever used them last didn't put them away.

When I was growing up, it often seemed that our house revolved around the preferences of my former stepfather. We weren't to have snacks after school for fear of spoiling our dinner, even though lunch had been several hours before. My mother was not to drive us to school because it would do us good to walk. The primary result of his tyranny was a lot of quiet rebellion: Mom drove us to school anyway (despite his occasionally spying on her to "catch her" doing it!), and my sister and I had snacks anyway.

The secondary result was that we all lived in fear of his anger. He was that guy, the one whose family dreaded his arrival home from work, the one whose family was quietly relieved when he went away again.

I think a lot of families have a guy like that. I have been that guy, and I don't mean before unschooling. Up until a couple years ago, I was going into work every day and then arriving home to whatever state the house was in. My unschooling readers—especially the working parents among my unschooling readers, and doubly especially my mom who occasionally drops by my house—can understand what it's like to walk into an unschooling house at some random moment. To the untrained eye, it's chaotic. To the trained eye—meaning the eye of a person like me who knows that life and learning are messy...

It's still chaotic.

There is a rhythm to an unschooling day, but you kind of have to be in it to see it. When I'm in the house with her, I know that Chloe's pile of notebooks is spread across the couch while she herself is painting at the kitchen table because something she discovered or thought of while working in those notebooks inspired her, and she rode that inspiration straight to her easel. Or maybe she was writing and needed to look something up on the Internet, and then she got drawn into a really fun Facebook conversation with her friends (socialization!).

When I'm home with her, I understand how this happens. I see the sparks. I hear her peals of laughter from the computer, or I see a painting in progress and hear her animated descriptions of her vision. And I know that she knows the notebooks are there, and I know she has every intention of getting back to them. It all makes sense. There's no chaos. The abandoned-for-the-moment notebooks are part of the rhythm. Do I know there might come a time when I need to ask her to clear the couch so we can sit down? Sure. But there's typically no urgency around that awareness.

When I'm working away from home, it's easy to forget all that. It's easy to walk in the front door and see

M E S S

"Come on, guys," I whine or snarl (depending on how tired I am). "Can you clean up a little, please?"

What changes for my family is the insertion of that guy into their happy unschooling rhythm. I become the random moment at which they must interrupt their flow and take care of MY needs.

In a little more than a week, I am starting a new job that will take me out of the house again. This post is my statement of intention to not return to being that guy. I am resolved to enter my home as if I'm an explorer, one who has every expectation of discovering all the wonder and creativity and unique joy that I missed while I was away.

Un-class photo

It's been six months since LIFE is Good 2010, so I figured it was about time to get my photos off my camera. Here's my favorite, our poor isolated homeschooled kids in their version of a class photo. The age range in this classy, classless group is about 13 to about 20. Click the photo to see it larger. Friends on Facebook can see it with name tags here.

The red badge of unschooling

From time to time, one encounters people who really, really want to call themselves unschoolers. In some cases, they do this even though their lifestyles are way off the mark. "We're unschoolers," they say, even as they sit their kids down for lessons. Or they say, "We unschool on the weekends." Other times, the lines are fuzzier, and the people claiming the label are so close to what I consider real unschooling, but they can't quite let go of x, y, and z. So they cling to both the label and to x, y, and z.

People in either of these categories will occasionally be challenged by someone to live up to the label they are claiming. In certain forums on the Internet, they will be challenged with vigor.

That's side A.

On side B is an online friend of mine who recently rejected the label of unschooler. She did this not because she grew to dislike the term (as some unschoolers do) and not because she's doing anything more schoolish than she was before. What happened was, she got tired of feeling guilty for living her life the way she wants to live her life.

As someone who has issues with guilt, I can understand her decision. (Living up to unschooling ideals can be work, and there do come times when you want to stop all the work and just live.) And as someone who is weary of the side-A people who insist on using label when they reject one or more of the ideals, I found her approach quite refreshing.

Personally, I love calling myself an unschooler, and the pressure and ideals that come with the label are a big part of why. The pressure and ideals keep me mindful. They keep me on my toes, and they keep me aware during my interactions with my kids—and with other people's kids for that matter.

Putting together side A and side B leads me to offer these guidelines:

If you want to do whatever you do and call it unschooling, people are going to challenge your use of the term from time to time. If you don't want to be challenged, find another label, or do like my friend and live without one.

If you keep the label, use it. Use it to question yourself and your assumptions. Use it to help you give your kids the benefit of the doubt, always. Use it to help you say Yes more. Use it as pressure to tolerate the discomfort that comes from having your kids make choices that you wouldn't have made for them. Use it to encourage you to choose the kind, generous, cooperative thing in every interaction. And use it to inspire you to go after more of the benefits that real unschooling offers.

A Must Read for newbie unschoolers

A few weeks ago, Chloe and I attended a talk by Blake Boles. He's a staffer at NBTSC and an advocate for unschooling and teen (ad)ventures of any stripe. During his talk, he recommended Drive by Daniel H. Pink. I put a hold on it at the library and have been waiting my turn.

Well, I started reading it tonight, in between trick-or-treaters and football plays. In the first few pages, I found all the reassurance I would have needed back when I was a newbie unschooling mom.

You should read the book. But I think this is too important not to summarize.

In the 40s, Harry Harlow and a couple of other researchers gave some rhesus monkeys some mechanical puzzles to play with. Their intent was to give the monkeys time to get acquainted/comfortable with the puzzles before they began testing their ability to learn to work the puzzles. They thought that without basic-needs motivation (food, water, sex) or extrinsic motivation (punishment or rewards), the monkeys wouldn't learn. What happened instead was that the monkeys learned to work the puzzles just fine, thank you very much. Just because it was fun to work the puzzles. Just because they were curious.

This was a major psychological and cognitive discovery: intrinsic motivation not only exists but works.

But what really surprised the researchers, and what would have made a big difference to my nervous newbie self, was that when they began their formal study of the monkeys' learning and began to introduce rewards, the monkeys' performance got worse. Harlow wrote, "Introduction of food in the present experiment served to disrupt performance..."

For some reason (and maybe Pink attempts to explain it later in the book), our educational system has completely ignored this research. Our educational system is entirely based on extrinsic motivation.

But unschooling? Unschooling is entirely based on intrinsic motivation.

Q.E.D.

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Update 11:09 p.m. -- A friend directed me to this cool animation based on Drive.

NaBloPoHalfMo: Playing with history

One of the professors in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books is the history teacher, Professor Binns. His story is that after he died, he got up (as a ghost) and went right on teaching his classes. He is exceptionally boring, and his classes are a good chance for the students to catch up on sleep.

Ms. Rowling couldn't have chosen a better metaphor for how schools approach the study of history.

There is a nice scene in one of the books (Chloe could tell me which one) where the kids realize that Professor Binns might be able to supply some information that they need. He is quite startled to find himself suddenly facing a roomful of attentive students. That, too, is a good metaphor. First, history is chock full of helpful information, and it is, sadly, all too rare for people to look there for answers. Second, kids are more attentive—their eyes light up!—when presented with information that is relevant to their lives. The books make it clear that the more typically dull eyes of Professor Binns' students reflect a problem not with them but with his snooze-fest teaching style.

Some real life teachers might take a lesson from that.

NaBloPoHalfMo: Equivalency test

More musings about guarantees...

I hosted a little "Intro to Unschooling" a couple weeks ago (coinciding with the James concert because some really amazing unschooling voices were gathered together for that). I gave a little talk about some unschooling basics and then my fellow concert-goers plus Heather and TJ and Frank formed a panel for a nice little Q&A session.

During my talk, I touched on how some unschooling newbies are looking for guarantees. "Do unschoolers go to college?" many ask. My personal question back in my own newbie days was "What if I ruin their lives?????" (Who's a drama queen, me? Naaah.) The answer to my question was, "What if you leave your kids in school and that ruins their lives?" My answer to the college question is, "Do high school kids go to college?" Some do, some don't. Unschooling is no different and offers no guarantees (except that your kids will know a lot more about what they want and enjoy than your average high school grad).

What I didn't address and wish I had is the question of whether unschooling provides an equivalent education.

Short answer: Not even close.

Longer answer: Schools offer a pretty limited set of classes. Much is typically* excluded from the standard high school curriculum. Here are just a few examples:

• Philosophy
• Comparative religions
• Art history
• Accounting
• Japanese
• Organic chemistry
• Hula hooping
• Peaceful resolution of conflict
• Gourmet cooking

* Emphasis on typical. Yes, I know some schools offer classes in some of these subjects. More power to them.

Unschoolers might learn about one or all of these instead of taking a class on biology. Or they might learn copious amounts about some specific aspect of biology (e.g., cellular mitosis) instead of taking the "quick dip" survey-style course that was all that was offered at my high school.

But the way that an unschooling education is decidedly not equivalent to a high school one is that everything our kids learn is grounded in their real lives, driven by their own interests and experiences, fueled by the love, support, and creativity of their parents, and enhanced in immeasurable ways by the resources offered by the unschooling community. That is something the schools come nowhere close to matching.

NaBloPoHalfMo: Playing with Dinosaurs

Frank brought home this gigantic library book. (Click to see the Amazon listing.)

It is quite eye-catching due to both its size (it covers a good third of our coffee table) and the gorgeous, photo-like illustration on the cover. Even so, it sat there untouched most of the day. Long about ten p.m., though, Chloe picked it up and started leafing through it. She began giving the dinosaurs clever, funny names, such as "WasInJurassicParkasaurus" for the compy, and "BadAssMohawkasaurus" for a dapper dino with a snazzy fringe on top.

Emma was staying over, so she was soon drawn into the game, adding her own names and laughing a lot. I pointed out that a few of their made-up descriptive names probably closely matched the meanings of the Latin-ish ones, and sure enough, Chloe started noticing that to be the case.

It was a happy, communal hour, and as such provides for a very nice moment in my imaginary Unschooling Highlights film.

1. When Frank brought the book home, he was strewing.
2. When the book sat there untouched, he and I both were refraining from being bothered by that. (Sometimes strewing "hits," sometimes it doesn't.)
3. When Chloe picked up the book, she made her very own personal use of it. (Sometimes strewing hits in unexpected ways.)
4. Fun and learning happened.

That's how it goes.

Unschooling in 140 characters or less

Another great unschooling conversation, tracked in tweets:

Tweet #1
Convo in the other room: ROUSs, urination, internal organs, prophylaxis, body scans, modern surgical methods, weather patterns.

10 minutes later
The convo continues: kidney donation, stones; hydration; fuel for bodies; waste filtering; blood circulation, types, donation.

6 minutes later
More convo: shock, amputation, wilderness survival, outswimming sharks and outrunning bears, decoys, plans for the day.

Warty, warty mom-warts

Ronnie today

I am in an exceptionally bad mood for no good reason. This seems like an excellent time to post about my flaws.

Attention: You are now entering a shame-free zone. If you are feeling judgmental, go somewhere else. Thank you.

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My best buddy, Steph, said something to me in a recent email, in response to my comment that I was looking forward to our upcoming empty-nest trial period. She said, "In public you are the invincible 24-hour RU mom. I forget that you are susceptible to weary-of-momness."

Steph knows me very well. We've been friends since, oh, about 1985, and we have talked or corresponded most days since the day we met. If Steph can be surprised by my moments, it means I am not being forthcoming enough about those moments, and I am painting an unfair picture of what being an unschooling parent looks like.

So, here, for the record, I state unequivocally that sometimes I just simply SUCK.

I have bad moods. I snap and snark at family members. I get tired and overstimulated and sometimes decline to engage with a kid or spouse who is interested in talking with me.

I have helicopter-mom tendencies that occasionally eclipse my awareness that my kids don't need that kind of parenting. I say things I shouldn't say, offer reminders about things that are none of my business, and ask for "courteous" status updates at times when the real issue is my own fears.

I am sensitive to noise and too often ask people in my house to quiet down or take their movie-watching selves to the other TV. I am ridiculously irritated when other people fail to adhere to my systems and do really heinous things like attempting to recycle the lid of a bottle, or not putting the scissors where they go, or leaving a dish on the counter even though I for once have emptied the damned dishwasher.

I am currently going through a period of life-weariness that feels like swimming in molasses, so, yeah, I am looking forward to our upcoming empty-nest trial period. In the meantime, I am more than usually self-involved and reclusive and grouchy and prone to resentment.

So, what does all this mean to our unschooling?

Short answer: Not a damned thing.

Long answer: The members of an unschooling family really live together, and our particular unschooling family is fully together a lot since I work at home. There are not many secrets in our house, you know? Frank and my kids know my flaws and failings all too well; whatever smokescreen I manage online does not carry over to our in-person life. They have no choice but to be used to me.

This means that, while they do not necessarily take my lesser moments in stride, they certainly know that they are moments. I am not defined by my bad moments but by my whole self, and my whole self is
Ronnie Maier, dedicated unschooling mom, peaceful partner, and woman who never stops trying to do better.

Unschooling and the relationships between family members in an RU household don't flourish because we have found some magical way of avoiding bad moods, screwups, and sad times. No, they flourish because the philosophies we live by—my infamous RATS: Respect, Acceptance, Trust, and Support—are not just for good moods, successes, and happy times; they're for all times. And those philosophies don't flow only from parent to child but from child to parent and partner to partner.

We are not perfect, and I am certainly not. But we are in this together. We give each other the benefit of the doubt, a Get Out of the Doghouse Free card, or simple forgiveness as needed. And we never stop trying to do better.

Morning conversations

When people first learn about unschooling, and usually react negatively thereto, there is much that they don't understand about what it looks like and how it works. A prime example is the starring role that conversation plays in our daily routines.

Now that school is back in session, niece Emma is spending her days with us again. She arrives about 7:30, well before Frank and Chloe wake up, so she and I spend the mornings chatting, just we two. These conversations are sometimes, oh, mundane I suppose: what we did last night, what we're thinking about doing today.

Other days—many days—these conversations are simply brilliant unschooling gems. Last Friday was one of those days. In the space of about an hour, Emma and I talked about green smoothies (I was making one), multiplying 9s and all the cool patterns you end up with, the formation of the Traveling Wilburys (I started singing "Handle Me With Care" after spilling something), how the Beatles and the Stones fit into rock culture, Dr. Hook and "Cover of the Rolling Stone," and then—because of this cool story from Wikipedia:

In the United Kingdom, the BBC Radio network refused to play "The Cover of the Rolling Stone," as it was considered advertising a trademark name, which was against the BBC's policy. The song was re-released with a host of BBC DJs shouting 'On the cover of the Radio Times!' over the band's vocals in the choruses. The song was released as "Cover of the Radio Times" for the UK market. The BBC found no problem in playing the record, since they published the Radio Times, weekly. The single found real cult status after that.

—trademarks and copyrights.

This free range conversation—especially when combined with ready interaction with Google—is a core element of unschooling, since it is in exactly that type of conversation that we weave the web of learning, making connections between apparently disparate subjects (even Dr. Hook to trademark law!) and providing the foundation for future learning. Sometimes the connections are conscious—"Oh! That reminds me of..."—and sometimes they're not—I can't remember how the 9s multiplication tables fit in there—but they are always effortless and uniquely our own and fun. And that makes all the difference.