unicorns playing accordions.

So I am sitting inside, knitting, listening to The Office on in the background, when I look up and see this happening...

It's sorta hard to see, but they are all either in pajamas or straight jackets.

Then they broke out the accordions.

And they started singing.

And swaying. Accordions, singing, and swaying. While someone records them.

And then, without any warning - they break out the full costumes.

I don't know what the blue thing is, but the other one is clearly a unicorn.

Just another day in my little house in the big park.

black and white unschooling

I went to my very first homeschooling park day in the fall of 1995. That is almost 20 years of park days, field trips, conferences, camp outs, and sleeping on homeschooler couches in homeschooler houses. I mention this because I've been around enough of them that I have seen many trends in unschooling come in, take their turn, and flow right on back out the door. I've seen the compensating and then the overcompensating. 

Right now there is an interesting dynamic happening where I have started to see some unschooling parents decide to remove themselves, that unschooling and "child led learning" means minimal parental involvement. This makes me cringe. I wrote in a previous post about how much work I think it should take to unschool - it should take more involvement, not less. Involvement might look different than what you think, but it should all be based on your specific kids, and you should know your specific kids because of how attentive you are, which should guide your involvement. 


Other people are noticing this, and there has been a new backlash - of parents saying "oh, those froofy unschoolers are just neglectful and I am An Involved Parent which means If I Know what Is Best but my kid disagrees, they still need to do what I say." That ALSO makes me cringe. Both are so knee-jerky and reactionary to the other.

An example I saw on facebook today was that if you are trying to go somewhere, but your kid doesn't want to wear their seat belt - one type of parent would say "fine, don't wear your seat belt, I don't want to say no to you." The other type of parent is saying "the bigger picture of loving you means keeping you safe so wear your seat belt even if you are crying." 

This is so black and white it makes me crazy. And one of the problems with this type of black and white/either-or thinking is that it makes two teams. You become adversarial with your child. It's suddenly you versus them, instead of you and your child on the same team. It becomes What You Want and What They Want, and so now it's a matter of winning, and if you win your child is still unhappy. So where's the parenting win there? There are so many other things to try - that protect your child's safety and your relationship. All it takes, and that I have been seeing people lack, is creativity.

In the seat belt example, some creative ways of doing this, just off the top of my head are: find out if there is something physically uncomfortable with the seat belt and adjust, explain the reasoning behind seat belts, leave your kid at home with someone else, take the bus, don't go where you were going to go, take them to somewhere they want to go, decorate the seat belt with stickers..... whatever the situation is, it seems to me that with a little bit of thinking outside the box and creativity, you can come up with a solution.

The thing that kills creativity is panic and desperation. I think that's what happens when a parent is sitting there, looking at their unhappy kid, thinking "if only you understood you'd do what I asked AND be happy about it!" I can imagine the panic rising, the breath getting short, the tunnel vision zooming in, and soon the voice starts rising, and you speak in the language of your own parents, or your worst version of you. It's when the threats, commands, and punishment happens.
So instead? A deep breath. Think logically about "what is the worst thing that could happen now if we don't get in this car." Re-examine your "have to's" and "need" and "should's." Do you HAVE to pick up the dry cleaning right now? It might be inconvenient for someone? Is that worth more than your relationship with your child? Someone needs their medication ASAP? Call a friend. There are options. Go back inside (or go outside) and come up with a few. And then, after this situation has passed, think realistically about the future. Might this come up again? What can you set up or talk about or put into place now, to make the next time better? Don't wait until things are desperate again. 

my little sisters, playing backgammon at a camping trip, the year we started homeschooling

What do you think? Do you agree with this? Do you have your own examples? Post them in the comments section below.

atwater village vest

Yesterday, an unschooling mom who lives surprisingly and delightfully close to me, took me on a tour of the neighborhood. We went to coffee shops, toy stores, parks, and more. I got a bunch of practical how-to-park-here advice, and a humongous list of places I want to explore further. This awesome neighborhood tour will get more detailed blog posts in the future... but first...

One of the stops we made was at The Little Knittery in Atwater Village, where I spent an agonizingly long time choosing a skein of yarn to buy. I ended up with this - Noro taiyo silk/wool blend. It's a frustrating yarn - catches on my fingers, it's super tightly spun so it knots up, and it fuzzes together with the other pieces easily. However, once I've knit up a few rows, it's really, really pretty and falls really well.

I've never successful knit a garment for myself to wear larger than a pair of socks. I've decided it's time to change that. Find an easy pattern and copy it? That is not the Roya way. Instead, I am making up my own pattern. Let's see if I am the knitter I think I am.

I'm using this blog entry as a way to update the pattern --

Cast on 500 stitches (to figure it out for your size: figure out the widest you want it to be at the bottom [for me, 53 inches wide] knit up a gauge swatch [for me, 25 sts in 3 inches. That turns into 475 stitches, but then I decided I wanted peaked edges, so I added 25 more stitches, and I'll decrease later on]

I forgot to do stockinette stitch, and knit the first 3 rows. Then I remembered, and began purling on the wrong sides, knitting on the right side.

Continue stockinette stitch for the length you want from bottom hem to under armpits.
I decreased to 475 stitches by knitting 2 together on either ends every 10 rows (ish).

---
I'm only about an inch into the stockinette right now, haven't even done my first decrease. I'll check back in with edits, and the next steps when I get there!

will I homeschool my own children?

For anyone reading who doesn't know, I have been homeschooled since I was about 10. My mom removed me from school the summer between fourth and fifth grades, and we never went back. My family "unschooled" - which is a lifestyle where not only have we chosen to remove ourselves from public school, but we also do not try to mimic it at home. We did no lesson plans, no testing, no standardized anything. Instead, my parents spent a great deal of time and energy in providing a really interesting life, where we had time to follow our passions and knew that our parents respected what we were interested in.

My awesome mom, letting me practice my fine art technique

I speak at a lot of conferences, and am sometimes the only homeschooler, much less unschooler, in any group. I get asked a lot of the same questions pretty frequently. Recently, one of the first people I met in our first homeschooling park group, started a blog with her mom. They also get asked some of the same questions -- this blog is in response to those folks.

So! The question - will you homeschool your own children?
Like I said, I've been asked this question since I was about 10 years old. For many years, it was just a vehement "yes!" Since then, and now being married to a very real husband with a different background than mine (he was not homeschooled) instead of a hypothetical one who of course agrees with every decision I make, how I arrive at my answer has changed. I still say yes, but I have three conditions:

1. I will always have to do a better job than the alternative.
2. I will make decisions based on prioritized values that my husband and I determine, together.
3. It does no harm (to my family's happiness, to my relationship with my husband)

Painting on the most available canvas

1. I will always have to do a better job than the alternative: Putting a child in school is easy. There's even a chance that they will have a perfectly nice experience, and limited damage will be done. There are even alternative private schools, with a focus on the arts or lots of free time. If I choose to keep my children out of these, our life has to be better than it could be if they were there. I think it will be -- I think I can do a much better job than any school. I will be an expert in my children. That means more time spent with them, for them, and about them. It means more money spent. It means a huge amount of attentiveness and energy. It means going places, seeing things. It means that when my kids love horror movies, and I grew up disliking them, I will jump into their interests with both feet and watch with them, look up characters on IMDB, take them to movie premiers and exhibits of movie costumes and tell them about nanowrimo's screen play camp, and more. It means when they are absorbed in a video game, I will ask if I can learn how to play also. I will make characters, improve my hand-eye coordination, bring them plates of food so they don't have to stop, and take them to the store at 6am on the day their new game comes out. I will watch for when they are tired and cranky and do what I can to make the environment what they need. If I can't do these types of attentive and engaged things, I should put them in an environment that would be better.

2. I will make decisions based on values that my husband and I prioritize: There are going to be things I want my kids to learn, but I have to be able to think big-picture to make day-to-day decisions. For example, I already know that I really want my kids to play piano. But more than that, I want them to appreciate music. So if there is ever a situation where my desire to have them play piano might damage their appreciation of music, then I have to make the choice in favor of them appreciating music. My mom said that she made her decisions based on what made our eyes light up. I have some ideas as to what my guide would be, but have not had this particular conversation in enough depth with my husband to say definitively (I would imagine it will be a number of conversations, continued over the rest of our lives). And if we strongly disagree? That brings me to point #3...

3. It does no harm, specifically to my relationship with my husband or with my family. If there is a clash about homeschooling that is so strong as to do harm to any of these relationships, I choose the relationships. I think it is more important to have a happy marriage, working together and on the same team for our children, than it is to homeschool. Now, based on my experience and what I've seen happen, I think that unschooling does amazing things for all types of relationships. So I do not have much fear in this area. But it could happen - I've seen it happen. I've seen mothers cling so hard to the label "unschooler" that they alienate their partners. I've seen people want so desperately to Be Unschoolers that they forget other values while they hang on to the title. First things first, I suggest losing attachment to the name. If my husband doesn't like the idea of "unschooling" but does like the idea of supporting our children in their interests, respecting them, engaging with them, etc. then why do I need to call it anything? At this point, the principles of unschooling are a part of how I live my own life. I can't imagine the personality transplant that would have to occur for me to not treat my children this way, no matter what the extenuating circumstances.

So. Will I unschool my own children? Yes!


Were you homeschooled? Do you agree? Will you be homeschooling your own children? What other questions do you have for a grown unschooler? Ask in the comments!

lizards and firemen and ground squirrels, oh my!

A few weeks ago I went with my book club to a coffeeshop in Claremont village to discuss the novel we'd just read. It just so happened to be the weekend of Earth Day, and Claremont was having a street fair! We walked through, enjoying the demos and all the people dressed in their finest hippie-wear, and one booth was giving away free tomato plants!

I may have forgotten to mention that the garden I so delightfully planted a few months ago...got eaten. Super de duper destroyed. Ground squirrels came in and ate everything, down to the stems (except the basil. Note: ground squirrels are anti-basil.) And they did it really fast. Suspiciously fast... ahem. What is having a giant German Shepherd good for unless they are scaring the squirrels out of your garden? (the dog is snoring right now. I feel bad talking about him this way when he is asleep and can't defend himself). 

Anyways - so I was glad to be gifted this tomato plant, but felt a little guilty, fairly certain I was taking it home to be the amuse bouche for a tree rodent's meal.

My solution: put it in a movable container, and move it around, a lot. I figure the squirrels won't catch on, and I might get to eat a tomato by the end of the summer. It has actually been working! No squirrel teeth marks, and the plant is growing! Maybe one tomato plant (oh and the basil plant, can't forget about that one) is all this newbie gardener can handle for the time being. Caprese salad garden it is!

This dude lives on our front porch, with a couple others. There's a really big one, with the stump of a tail that I see a couple times a day in the backyard. Lizards are awesome. 

I spent the sunniest portion of the day in my backyard doing this. I'm crocheting little granny squares to make earrings for a few upcoming craft fairs. There is something so insanely satisfying about granny squares. Oh, see those plastic water bottles? I've got 3 loquat seeds in those, cross your fingers that in 8-10 years I'll be reaping the rewards......

So here I am. Netflix is on, my shoulders feel nice and warm and toasty from being out in the sun, I feel all good and virtuous cuz I did chores too, I had a visit from a bunch of firemen who thought our house was a nature center (it happens), I mentioned the dog snoring loudly on the floor, and it is time to switch to a project suitable for a warm spring evening in my little house in the big park.

Every Day for Thirty Days

One of the things I have been doing lately that has given me so much energy and makes me feel so motivated is running a 30 Day Challenge Group on facebook. (The group's blog is here). I started it for myself -- I just wanted to accomplish one goal, every day, for thirty days. I did it for a month by myself, and then other people commented that they wanted to do that too. So I opened up the next month as an open facebook group, and was stunned by the participation. So far we've done 2 30 day challenges, and one "mini" 17 day challenge, and have just started day 2 of the next monthly challenge. 

People pick goals like - drinking water, crocheting every day, 20 minutes of exercise, writing in a journal, editing their book, doing yoga, hula hooping, drinking a green smoothie, or working towards their career or business. As founder of the group, I think it's my role to help people be successful, and the easiest way is to assess the goals themselves. So I go through and ask people questions to help make the goals realistic, measurable, and that they don't load so many on themselves that they'll get overwhelmed. Throughout the month we post every day, celebrating our victories, bemoaning when our plans get derailed, asking for help in creating Plan B's so we can stay successful.

Running this group, and watching as people post their accomplishments, and especially how the benefits keep rippling out and out - it's been the highlight of most of my days for the last few months.

There's something about this - this group of people, some who know each other, some don't - who are doing one little thing every day to make themselves better. It's motivating, but there's more to it than that. They hold me accountable for my own goals. It's energizing - it's positive - and I really, really, really like doing it.

This group has helped shape how my days have been spent, here, in my little house in the big park. I have been making a green smoothie every morning for breakfast for my husband and I, tracking my food, going for hikes and walks almost every day, and through that, exploring where I live. I have always had a hard time doing things by myself, and now that I have moved further from most of my family, I had to make sure I *made* myself explore, or I would end up inside and unhappy. Going on hikes, so I could post a picture in the 30 Day Group has been a big part of how much I have loved living here. I have been walking and exploring new parts of the neighborhood all the time. The yards overflow with lemon, orange, and loquat trees. There are so many people, dogs, and even folks riding around on horseback. There are squirrels, coyotes, lizards, deer, and snakes. 

I feel adventurous. I feel successful. I feel stronger and prouder. I feel warm and fuzzy and nurture-y about my house, watering the plants, dusting the table. 

It's a good day to live in a little house in the big park. It's sunny outside, I have the 4th Game of Thrones on my audible app, and a new neighborhood to explore.

nighttime noises

It's been a strange few days -- the weather is warming up, so there are far more people in the park. That also means we have had more visitors to our door -- yesterday one at 5am asking if our house was a "safe" house ??  I have just started to get used to the creaking of this house, the new night noises. We had a lizard in the kitchen a few days ago. Sometimes the noises are just noises... other times I am fairly certain there are animals in the walls.