3 Common Stumbling Blocks for Unschooling
What does it take to Unschool?
3 Common Stumbling Blocks Parents Face
Sometimes we hear parents say,
“I could never do what you do.”
And they may be right. Even though we sometimes think (usually to ourselves),
“Yes, you could. You just have to make some adjustments, some sacrifices even, and you could do this too.”
That is, after all, what we did to make it work. Lots of shifts are often made - shifts in how we manage our days, our finances, our relationships - all of it. Not all at once though. Perhaps that’s what looks so scary to onlookers. Maybe you’re a little further along and… those first few steps? They took a while. They didn’t happen over night, in a week, or even in the first month.
Before we dive into that, I’m Sue Patterson and this is the Unschooling Mom2Mom podcast. I started Unschooling my own kids back in the 90s when school just wasn’t a good fit for us. And we liked what we created - the freedom, the flexibility, they connection. So we kept going!
My own kids are 33, 31, and 28 now - all living typical young adult lives with degrees, businesses, families - AND they really enjoyed their childhoods! So now that they’ve moved on, I’ve circled back to share what worked and what didn’t - from our own family and the hundreds of families I’ve come to know over the years.
I have all sorts of ways to get this information to you - in whatever way works best for YOU!
Courses, community memberships, 1:1 coaching, books, guides, blogpost and podcasts like these. I try to get in here weekly to give you an unschooling pep talk! So be sure to subscribe so you’ll be notified when I post a new podcast.
What does it take to unschool?
What’s the starting place like?
It usually starts with being dissatisfied with the current option.
Maybe your kids are in school - and it’s not working out. Maybe you started homeschooling in a traditional way - and it’s not going how you envisioned it. So you’ve heard this word unschooling, and you want to see if it’s something you could do.
Maybe you’re discovering that all of the trappings (or shackles) of school take a while to remove. If you’re new, you may still want it to go more quickly.
But there is no “magic pill” or “flip this switch and it will all make sense.”
It just doesn’t work like that.
You have years, decades maybe, of conditioning to undo. But it’s not a race. There's no finish line. And learning to stop making comparisons and seeing the world as one competition after another? That’s something that will come.
Yes, we have to rethink how we look at learning.
And we have to rethink some of our parenting choices too.
It’s probably not going to look like anything from your own childhood.
While there’s a lot to unpack from a deschooling standpoint, I want to talk about these internal challenges ahead.
1. It’s going to take courage.
You have to be brave enough to say,
“I know, millions of you are going that way, but I’m not going to.
It’s not working for my kid or my family. We’re choosing something different.”
And to be honest, that’s really hard to do for most people. Some can’t. They have too much other stuff going on, emotional baggage they don’t want to unpack, life circumstances presenting conflicts that are really hard to work around.
That doesn’t mean I believe they’re terrible parents - it’s just an easier path. And some people choose to take it.
Next stumbling block…
2. Dropping the ego-based decisions.
It takes being able to make changes without defensiveness or your own ego getting involved. And that IS hard.
For years I’ve talked about unschooling parents having to have a willingness to do the internal work - this is a big part of it. Noticing our own people-pleasing traits or conditioned responses about being respected and what that should Look like. That all loops back to the ego.
It helps to do this with others working on their responses to their kids, their thoughts about parenting and children. That’s why I created the private membership group where you can brainstorm, get coaching and feedback on how things are going at your house. You’re welcome to join us anytime.
Looks like these all kind of connect because the third issue is…
3. Letting go of the stories in our heads.
We may have stories about what we thought this was going to be like - whether it’s parenting, relationships within our families …even what we wanted or hoped our kids to be like. These are completely different humans with DIFFERENT ideas in their heads for their own lives.
We have to shift away from the story and move toward the reality of our lives and those kids standing in front of us.
It’s interesting that NONE of this has to do with academics and education, right?
Truth is, that’s the easy part. Seeing the learning weaving through various parts of our kids activities- that’s just a skill to develop, a lens to learn how to use. I can definitely show you how to do that pretty easily. And it’s one of these things where once you do it for a little bit, you can see how subjects happen without major orchestration on our part.
But these other things. They’re harder. Some people do it, others don’t. It explains why some people are happily unschooling and then it starts to fall apart. It’s those beliefs and deeper concepts we carry with us that ALSO need to be dismantled.
This is why I believe all kids can unschool.
But not all parents can. Some will simply will choose not to.
It’s also why when you talk to people who are successfully unschooling or maybe they’re like me and already done, we’ll tell you that the parents sometimes have a tougher path than the kids.
But the advantage is that we get to level up and parent in a way that we can feel proud of.
We get to create a family life that offers fabulous childhoods to our kids
- because we didn’t walk away from the heavy lifting.
So there’s a little to think about this week. Certainly not ALL there is for successful unschooling, but some ideas to think about if you’re hitting rough patches - or wondering why it’s feeling like a struggle.
Reach out - I have resources for you. And I’ll be back to talk with you again next week. Happy Unschooling!
