OK.

Let’s set the stage here.
Maybe you started homeschooling back during covid. You were kind of thrust into it.

Maybe you were homeschooling before that and your kids were little. Much more open to all your wonderful suggestions.

Or maybe you’ve just pulled your kids out of school and you’re tapping into the homeschooling families that you can find easily where you live.

Odds are, you feel like you need more people in your life. When you walk away from the mainstream, the status quo, you may look around and feel like… hmmm… where’d everybody go?
Lots of times on these podcasts, I talk about being on a conveyor belt. Because that’s the typically passive way people move through life. Their learning is because the teacher decided that’s what they’d learn today. Their friends” (more airquotes) are determined by desk proximity or who’s in their class that year. So when we step away from all that, get off the conveyor belt, we have to lace up our own shoes and get more active. This is how we create a life that FITS us. It’s not hard to do, it’s just that no one really showed us how. 

BUt I will. If you’re wishing you had a few more people in your life who are navigating off the beaten track, venturing into what feels like unexplored territories, you’re in the right place. 

Let’s talk about 4 ways to find your people - truly YOUR people and not the people your birth year or your neighborhood selected for you.

Homeschool Co-Ops or  1-2 Day "Schools"

Lots of families tap into Co-ops or One or two day “schools. They’re pretty easy to find now.. Some are pretty fun - offering cool science projects or art programs. Maybe theater options or even big PE kinds of things. My kids did one like that.

But often they also have a lot of academic options. And if you’re deschooling, and trying to see the subjects weaving through life WITHOUT signing kids up for classes in the typical reading, writing and ‘rithmetic…. you can feel a little pressure.

Sometimes it’s internal… you’re not super confident yet, so you get triggered by other kids who know something your kid doesn’t. 

Sometimes it’s external… and other parents say, “Aren’t you worried they don’t know any math?” or “can’t ready well yet” or Don’t know… idk, the list goes on and on, right?

They don’t know the capitals.

They don’t know their times tables.

They haven’t written a research paper.

They haven’t memorized all the parts of speech.

You know the list. And no. They don’t know those things.
Or at least not in the same way the other kids who’ve been schooled in this way, know them.

If you’re new to all of this, you can get a little panicky thinking you’re screwing this all up. You’ve mentally dismissed the things that they DO know, because they’ve been exploring their interests and diving deeper into them. They’ve DEFINITELY been learning. A TON of things. But those things aren’t showing up on the standardized tests or the scope and sequence for various grade levels.Or in what people tend to want to mention as a comparison.

OK. If this is you, I get it. Part of the problem is that feeling that you have to hit the ground running or your kid will be behind. And since you haven’t done all the deschooling that YOU need to do, you’re sometimes blowing whichever way the strongest breeze blows - or most opinionated mom pushes. And co-ops often have quite a few of those.

Deschooling may be an issue

I’m not going to dive into the deschooling aspect of this. I have a playlist at youtube that can really really help you work through deschooling. I’ll link to it in the notes. Work your way through those videos - or read the transcripts if you’re more of a reader than a watcher. I’ll get you the links.

Getting on solid ground from a deschooling standpoint will help you SOOO much as you interact with other people who are choosing other ways of parenting or homeschooling. You don’t have to stay away from them. You just have to grow your own confidence in what YOU are choosing. I promise, it will get easier the more you learn about deschooling. 

So this podcast is about finding your people. I mentioned the co-ops because that’s how I started to identify the people I was going to really connect with.  The co-ops were already in place. It was pretty easy to find them - even back in the 90s. More so for you now. All you have to do is ask in any homeschooling facebook group or email a local homeschooling group and ask what’s near you. Those groups may not be your particular religious or political affiliation, but it’s a starting place. 

I did this, signed my kids up for art and PE, and went on a hunt for people who seemed a little on the fringe. 
Other moms and dads who were more interested in connecting kindly with their kids. Less interested in the academics. Maybe even spoke of the word, “unschooling,” without curling their lip or wincing like it was a problem. When we first used the co-op, we weren’t unschooling yet. So we were sharing catalogs of cool resources - and that kind of gave you a clue to what the people around you were like.

Mom's Night Out

Another way to find your people is to create a Mom or Dad’s night Out. Ours was at a coffee shop midweek, once a month - I think it was the 3rd Wednesday of the month. This allowed people to see it on their calendar for a little while. We were able to have conversations about parenting, what was working, what wasn’t. And because we were new at this, and it was starting up new, no one was seen as The Expert who was telling us what The Right Way to do everything was. From this group, we even created a Book Club and read a different book each month, like, Punished By Rewards, or the Unschooling Handbook, or one of the books by John Holt. That was an interesting way to get to talk with other parents about how they were approaching everything.

Online Support Community

And don’t forget that you can still find your people in the comfort of your own home - still in your PJs, unbrushed hair, we won’t even care! And that’s in the membership I’ve created for parents all around the world. Parents like you. Parents who thrive on community but for one reason or another, just can’t pull that off in this season of life. For only about $10/week, you can tap into a group of parents on this unschooling path, willing to help you find resources and grow your own confidence. We have group coaching calls twice a week - a community check-in and a more general Q & A… a huge library of resources to help you no matter where you on this path.

 I really love this group because it’s exactly what i would have used - if it had existed back in the 90s! Actually, I probably would have done all the other things AND this online community too!

Sometimes people have asked,
“Couldn’t I just get that from a free Facebook group or Instagram?”
And my answer is, “Maybe.”

In the past, we’ve had really active groups where people made all kinds of connections. That seems to have shifted over the years, and it’s harder to get really GOOD unschooling support out there. So that’s why I’ve created this private community where you can ask questions without falling down rabbit holes that don’t help. Some people come for a month, others have been in there since 2016 when I started it! And some come for a while, leave, and then come back later when they need more support. I’m fine with however you want to use it. I just know that many of us need to find our people to be successful with this.