so much to do!

I have been asked if not having a *teacher* would be a detriment when I got out into the work-force, and make working with a boss difficult. Most people who asked me this seemed to think that not having a teacher to practice taking direction from would mean I wouldn't be able to work for someone else. I always laughed this off - but I've been thinking about it more and more the last few weeks and thought it deserved a little bloggy attention.

Right now, I am working very hard to get my own private practice off the ground. I am a Marriage and Family Therapist intern, and I have two locations. One is in Los Alamitos, and one is in Arcadia. I just started at the one in Arcadia. I have two supervisors - in the therapy world, a supervisor is not a boss, but as someone who is willing to put their license on the line for you, meet with you weekly, and sign your paperwork. I also have two etsy sites, where I sell my jewelry. I have a job-with-a-boss as well, but at the moment I work from home.

It only recently occurred to me that all my life I have been striving to get to a place where I am my own boss. And I've always liked the bosses I've had. I am still friends with most of them, in fact. There was only one experience that I had a boss who I thought was sabotaging me. I was not the only person to have a really terrible experience with her, and I was lucky that several months later, she ended up leaving the company. So it's not that I can't get along with someone "in charge" of me - but it's just not how I want to work, long-term.

I like the idea of working for myself and have never been afraid of the fact that when you are your own boss, you don't get 8-5 hours and then leave the work at work. I always liked to throw myself into something, and would want the thing that made me money to be included in that. I want a flexible schedule, and to be able to use all the different tools I like to work with - get to design flyers, use social media, meet with people, and do art. Working for myself means getting to do more of what I'm good at, while finding resources to help with my weaknesses. I like this idea. I like being accountable to me, and frankly, I like being in charge.

Today, however, is a day where I am trying to take deep breaths and re-focus, because I am starting to get overwhelmed. I am realizing that getting my practice up and running also means there are no limits to what I can do - so there are NO LIMITS to what I am trying to do. So it's a lot. This morning, for example, I had all my paperwork scattered over the coffee table, my phone was ringing, and I have at least 15 tabs open on the computer. If I don't reach out and market myself, I won't get clients, and I won't succeed at having a private practice. I won't get a paycheck. It won't work. I suddenly got the other side of not having a boss. It's. Up. To. Me.

I love all the side-projects that come along with this business - I love making my website, making business cards, speaking at conferences - but it takes up a lot of time, and at the moment I don't really know which things are the most effective, so I am trying them all. I stay up late at night putting together blogs and email newsletters... it sort of reminds me of when I'd stay up all night collaging my journal or making a zine. Except I'm trying to make a living at this.

I am sure there is a connection between unschooling and my desires for my career and profession. I have a lot of drive and passion - fostered by my parents and the decision to unschool. I know how I work the best, again thanks to unschooling. I have high expectations for myself and a really supportive and responsive community to work within - thanks, unschoolers. I do not think that this connection is true for all unschoolers - because I know plenty who work for other companies very happily. I just know that I want a life full of projects that I get to decide how much energy I invest. Right now I am investing a lot of energy in a lot of things. Some of the things that give me the most energy have nothing to do with making money -- like the 30 Day Challenge Group I run on facebook, working with the board of HSC on their conference and newsletter, this blog!

So that's all for this post. No huge revelation or anything - just another glimpse into who I am, and some connections to unschooling.

Do you work for yourself? What are some things you've learned along the way? If you work for someone else, any stories to share on the topic?

I hope I stay idealistic

the cover of one of my blogs...late teens, I believe

I remember sitting in the middle of my bedroom floor - a dirty orange carpet with paint and ink stains, leftover from the '70s - with paper all around me. I'm not talking about one or two pieces of paper, I am talking about a thick mat of paper and paper scraps radiating out from where I was sitting in the center, scissors and magazines and photographs too. My back hurt from bending over my project. My legs were asleep from sitting there for so long. My eyelids heavy. The smell of rubber cement not even registering, anymore. It was about 4 in the morning - I had been sitting there since about noon, maybe earlier. I was working on a zine - a collection of writing, poetry, collage and photography that I would photocopy and mail out later. A zine was a one-sitting project for me, and later I could look at those folded pages and be transported to right there, that moment. It was an exhausting and exhaustive all-or-nothing project. Something that poured out of me, that sometimes I had to pull out, cut out, and glue back together. The later (or earlier) it got, the more haphazard my gluing became, the looser and more wild the content. Later, when I'd look back at it, these would be some of my favorite pages - the subconscious coming forward while my inner editor was asleep.

I remember this one night in particular, because somewhere around 4 in the morning my bedroom door creaked open, and my mom's face peeked in - squinty eyed with sleepiness. She smiled at me, sitting in that hurricane of a bedroom, and closed the door again. Ani Difranco played on in my CD player, and I went back to my zine.

the cover of one of my journals

Such a simple little moment. And moments like that happened so many times. I didn't think much of it then - at some point when I was finished I would groan as I stood up, dusting p
aper bits off my pants and hands, peel the rubber cement from my fingers, turn off the light and go to bed. I'd wake up late the next day to my newly birthed zine. I did this a lot. Nothing new, nothing special. Roya making something in her room, that's all.

Looking back on it, though, I think how special it really was. To have parents that understood what was happening during the night doing one thing for hours. To have parents who did not insist that I had stayed inside or sat still for too long, and made me go outside or change what I was doing. To have a mom who came to check on me and see if I was still up - not to interfere or judge, but to peek in on me, smile sweetly, and go back to bed, happy that I was happy. I remember that same day, hours earlier, she had peeked in and brought me a plate of apples with some peanut butter.

It matters - those moments. All those little moments, those sweet details of knowing that my parents are on my side. They add up to this - this larger philosophy of parenting and relationships and education. But the way I experienced it as their child was like this - a plate of apples, a smile at 4am from my mom, and working for hours on my zine.

Your turn. I'm sure you've had a moment or two like this with your kids today. Tell me about it in the comments?

dealing with judgment

Someone who reads this blog asked me..
"If I say that I homeschooled my daughter, then I feel that they immediately judge her, not me. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I feel that it's her right to present herself to people however she likes. For that reason, I don't usually bring up homeschooling with strangers. What do you think about this?"


My response:

It's really sweet and conscientious of you to try to let your daughter have some measure of control over who judges her. Growing up with my mom being the very vocal advocate for homeschooling that she was - in some cases, I did not have that option. Over the course of my life, I've gone back and forth about when I tell people what -- sometimes it's frustrating to have that hurdle to overcome everrry sinngggle tiiime I want to talk to someone...

There were also times of my life where I felt like representing homeschooling and talking about homeschooling was kind of my - greater purpose. So I did it, a lot. I wore the homeschooler badge in flashing neon on my head. I think what I've come down to now, though - is usually waiting a while. I don't shake someone's hand and say, "hello, I'm Roya the homeschooler ask me how" anymore. It's out there - in my bio's and blogs, and things. People can find it out pretty easily.

But I do not like feeling like I am held hostage by someone else wanting to talk about homeschooling if I don't feel like it. So I've gotten better at disengaging. I've gotten better at deciding if I have the energy right now. I've gotten better at saying "I'd love to talk to you more about it, but maybe we can arrange to do that later?" [edit: I would add that if you are worried about your children being in this position, talk to them about it before it happens. Chances are, I bet it's a much bigger deal to you than it is to them. If they are concerned, practice some of the phrases they can use to disengage. Prepare for situations where you think it's likely to happen. Be their advocate - step in and tell the other person that they don't want to have to talk about that here and now, if it does happen.]

I know my mom would never walk up to - say, our swim team and say "oh guess what girls, your friend Roya is a homeschooler" -- but neither did we try very hard not to talk about it. So, with some mishaps (although not that many, considering, and nothing irreparable) I figured it out.

really? no rules at ALL?!

When someone asks me about the rules I had growing up, I always feel the need to do a quick assessment of the person asking the question. I would answer different depending on who I was talking to. That made it hard to think about writing about rules - so I figured, why not just put a few of the possible answers? It will be like a choose your own adventure book - the question is at the top, and then you can find the response that fits where you are in your understanding of unschooling!

The question:

"Hi Roya. I just learned about your "unschooling" childhood. Did your parents really not have ANY rules for you at all? Not even about bedtime or food? Not even about TELEVISION??!"

If you only have about 2 minutes to read:

Really. It's true. Our parents did not dictate any rules - not even about tv, food, or bedtime. We turned out fine, and able to be self-disciplined, work, make money, graduate from college. We'll talk about it more sometime when you have time, but for now, rest assured in the knowledge that it's possible. I am living proof.

If you went to traditional school and your kids go/will go to traditional school, and unschooling is a foreign concept:

We did not have any rules. There was no predetermined (arbitrary) decisions about things like bedtimes or tv. We learned to respect our family's needs and boundaries, and yes, even state and federal laws, by discussion and cooperation. No rules. 

It's hard to talk about rules in the abstract. Let's pick an example. Television is a trigger one. We never had a rule about what to watch, or what time to turn the tv off, or how many hours a week, nothing like that. It's hard to believe, but it's true. There was plenty of natural regulation - we were busy doing lots of interesting things, including television watching. There are somethings I did not like (and still don't like) to watch, such as extreme gore or suspense. So I didn't watch those, and my parents would let me know if there was about to be a scene that included it, or they'd warn me ahead of time. We could watch at any time of the day, there was never a "tv and lights off" time in our house.

The Dodds and Sorooshians(/Dedeaux) at the Always Learning Live Symposium
in 2012, in NM. Right after an awesome talk about television.
Oh hey, look at those t-shirts. I see Buffy, Dr. Who...

But when my dad would go to bed, we had to turn down the volume. He had to sleep. We wanted to watch tv. The way to do it so everyone was happy was by volume control. Our parents never came and said "at 9:30pm you will turn the volume down to 24 and if you don't, I will make a bad thing happen" 

That's the thing about having a parent-mandated rule, such as "the tv goes off at 9:30pm." What happens when the kid decides to keep the tv on til 10? Or 9:31? Parents who feel the need to put rules onto their children also then feel the need to punish their children, or create consequences to ensure that their children follow these rules. I would venture to suggest that it's never about having the tv off at a certain time either - there's a reason you want the tv off. So go back to that bigger reason, and think more creatively about how to get what you really want. In our case, it was sleep for the other people in our house. It was about respecting my dad's need for sleep at a certain hour - not about the tv. The need for my dad to sleep is not arbitrary - and there's a real thing that happens if he doesn't get sleep. He's tired, he doesn't have a great day at work, he's upset or unhappy. We don't want that to happen. So there was no need for a rule at all.

But we're not perfect. There's been times when we've thoughtlessly been too loud. What happened was a few times my dad woke up and came out and said, "guys...it's keeping me awake, and I have to get up early tomorrow." So we turned it down. Sometimes we experimented with headphones. Sometimes it meant changing what we were watching because it wasn't suited for quiet-viewing (I have learned that I can't watch certain comedians after my household has gone to sleep because I can't keep my laugh quiet.) My parents asked things of us, and as a household there were expectations.

 It works because my parents were making every effort to help us get what we wanted, to the best of their ability and the best of our family's functions. I knew that my parents wanted me to be able to watch whatever tv I wanted to. I knew that if I asked, they'd figure out a way - find those cordless headphones, buy netflix so I could watch it on my computer, wear ear plugs themselves - they'd be creative and tireless in their efforts to make their children happy. So it was simple, really. I'd just turn down the volume. I say, as a parent, make every effort to respect what your child wants and make it happen in every way you can, and they will respect you and your needs right back. 

If you think that unschooling means simply "more freedom and say yes:"

We had rules. Our house and state and country and society have rules. We might call them different things (and sometimes that matters) such as guidelines or boundaries, but we have them. To pretend we don't can be both rude and reckless. What's that phrase... "your freedom ends at the tip of my nose" meaning, that you can wave your arms wildly all you want, but the second you hit me... I think it's a little less black and white than that. I don't care just about my personal body, but the environment I'm in, too.

It's hard to talk about rules in the abstract. Let's pick an example. Television is a trigger one. We never had a rule about what to watch, or what time to turn the tv off, or how many hours a week, nothing like that. But when my dad would go to bed, we had to turn down the volume. He had to sleep. We wanted to watch tv. The way to do it so everyone was happy was by volume control. Our parents never came and said "at 9:30pm you will turn the volume down to 24 and if you don't, I will make a bad thing happen" (the thing with parents handing down rules is if you have them, you have stated or implied consequences of what will happen if you don't follow them. It's unavoidable). What happened was a few times my dad woke up and came out and said, "guys...it's keeping me awake, and I have to get up early tomorrow." So we turned it down. Sometimes we experimented with headphones. Sometimes it meant changing what we were watching because it wasn't suited for quiet-viewing (I have learned that I can't watch certain comedians after my household has gone to sleep because I can't keep my laugh quiet.) My parents asked things of us, and as a household there were expectations.

 I've seen plenty of families who are working their way through to a greater understanding of unschooling who would have sleepless nights or unhappy parents, because they felt like they could not ask their children to stop watching tv at a loud volume at 2am because they were afraid of creating a rule. In this case, some of the family's needs are not getting met (sleep! It's an important one!) So where's the win? I say, as a parent, make every effort to respect what your child wants and make it happen in every way you can, and they will respect you and your needs right back. I knew that my parents wanted me to be able to watch whatever tv I wanted to. I knew that if I asked, they'd figure out a way - find those cordless headphones, buy netflix so I could watch it on my computer, wear ear plugs themselves - they'd be creative and tireless in their efforts to make their children happy. So it was simple, really. I'd just turn down the volume. 

It's okay to ask things of other people. It really worries me when I see unschoolers who don't want to ask anything of their children. I want my own kids to learn about asking things of their partners when they are adults, or about how to ask things of their coworkers. 

the details

I've been really enjoying writing this blog - the bits about being an unschooler, my childhood memories, and the fun things about living in this park. I went for a long walk yesterday through the neighborhood, and realized that when I am keeping this blog in mind I notice so many more little details than I might not have noticed before. Or maybe I would have noticed, but not stopped and taken the time to have a moment, or experience, or appreciation.

When I was little my Grandma got me a book called "Being a Naturalist." It had a dark green canvas-y cover, and I remember feeling reverent every time I touched it. It had big, beautiful photos of poppies and deer and forests, and suggestions on how to fully appreciate nature yourself. It talked about getting sketchbooks and colored pencils, about sitting still in one place... I know that for a little while after she gave me that book, I drew pictures of a lot of plants.

Not too long after that, I read Harriet the Spy for the first time. I was smitten. That was it. Although I had kept a journal since I was about 5 years old, this was the real beginning of Roya The Journalist. I carried a notebook around and wrote down the *specifics* of things that I saw - minute details, concrete and observable specifics.

When I was about 16 I read Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones for the first time. I slept with it underneath my pillow for a long time after that. I'd read bits and pieces throughout the day as inspiration. She talked about writing specifics, too - writing for ten minutes without stopping, and using that exercise to really notice. Not "the coffee cup" but "the 5" mug with the large flat handle that fits my hands, has cerulean glaze with a raw bottom, that I bought at the Los Feliz farmer's market on Vermont St. on a Saturday that broke the record for heat that year, and I also bought raspberries..."

It's always a balance between the little details and the big picture. I've been thinking about that a lot as I write these blog posts - the big pictures are my unschooling principles, my relationship ideals, my vision of what I want my family and home to look like, who I am as an unschooler, crafter, wife, explorer, writer. The little details are - that day I first walked into Cypress College, what's currently on my knitting needles, the taste of the loquat I found on my walk yesterday. These pictures of the bark on tree trunks - that caught my eye as I was walking up Fern Dell.

splish splash

When I was 11, I spent a Saturday at the YMCA watching my cousin in her swim meet. I was mesmerized. I remember watching one person in particular, his dark brown skin against the turquoise water, and how his hands sliced through the surface - I thought that the way the body moves when it is swimming was the most beautiful thing.

The coach was kneeling next to the pool yelling encouragement. Everything was exciting. The flags were waving at the ends of the pool, there was constant splashing, yelling - I loved every bit of it.

That Monday, I went to my first swim team practice.

I had taught myself how to swim when I was little - I don't remember not knowing how to swim. And I had some swim lessons at the high school nearby. But I remember at this first practice, I couldn't make it the full 25 yards across the pool. I also remember actually dancing across the parking lot on the way to my mom's car afterwards - I was spinning and twirling, so excited. I was hooked. I was in the beginner lane with 4 or 5 other kids. Everyone was nice - and I wanted to be in the fast lane more than I wanted anything.

I also heard how people complained about butterfly, so I decided that would be mine. I worked, and worked, and worked on that stroke. I was determined. It's still my favorite. There is nothing quite so wonderful as making all the parts of your body work together in such a specific way to propel yourself through, up, over, and back down, into water. The mechanics of the stroke are amazing. It takes skill and strength. When it's done right, you can tell. It's beautiful to watch. It's beautiful to swim. It is the embodiment of hard work paying off.

I stayed on that swim team for a few years. Some of my favorite moments include spending whole weekends with this group of people, eating snack shack food on towels in the sun, swimming in a pool so crowded that you get kicked in the forehead by the person in front of you, recognizing the folks you were swimming with underwater by their swim suits, driving to meets together - there's a particular summer that has a soundtrack. I can be anywhere, and when I hear anything off of Tragic Kingdom I am suddenly awash in the smell of chlorine. I loved being on relay teams, I kept track of my personal records. I woke up at 5am for practice, went to the beach for open-water swim, and then back to the pool for the night practice. I had two suits I rotated, and just lived in them. We had parties, went to the movies, worked out together. We had sleepovers at the Y, where we huddled in the locker room playing hide and seek, spaghetti dinners, beach parties.

My sisters and I (I'm the oldest) on swim team #2

I helped set up swim meets, timed swimmers, sold snacks. I think watching how they were set up is part of what got me interested in event planning. I made personal records - talked to my coach about visualization and he gave me a book to read about positive thinking and motivation. The next meet was the best I ever had. I moved up in my age group, I won things, I never felt so good.

 I joined another swim team after the one I was first on disbanded when the coach got a better job for another club. After a little while, what I was doing with the Shakespeare theater group I was a part of started being more important, and I weaned from one to the other.

I still swim. I still think swimming done well is the most beautiful thing. I still crave water and love the smell of chlorine above most other smells. I still talk to a lot of the people I swam with on that first swim team. I still think about things that my coach taught us.

I wanted to write about this in this blog originally as a response to "the socialization question" that homeschoolers hear so frequently - but as I write, I'm realizing how much more there was to my swim team experience. Yes - I was on a team, with other people and had the chance to socialize. There were people I liked, and people I didn't like. If you want to focus on teamwork, just try being on a swim team - you spend 12+ hour days together at meets and swim maybe 4 minutes of it. You get up early. You spend time wet and cold. You deal with triumphs and failures. As a team you win things and lose, too. Individually - I think it's the first time in my life I could really start articulating intrinsic satisfaction. Why I would keep doing something that was so hard, over and over again. Although I didn't know the name for it, I experienced flow (another blog post),and other things so important to my well being. It all comes back around - my BA is in Recreation and Leisure Studies, where I focused more on event planning, leisure philosophy, flow, intrinsic and motivation --

So. To address the question I first thought I'd be answering - yes. I made friends. This is one example of how eveeeen a homeschooler can socialize. There are a lot of activities outside of school. Being on a swim team - sharing a similar interest, goals, and the bonding that happens when you're "in the trenches" together - I think it's a much more valuable experience than 40 folks all crammed into one room based only on age and geographic location. Being on a swim team is only one of a lot of examples just from my childhood that I can think of to address how we got our socializing on. More to come.

mud puppy

I've been asked to write about some of my favorite memories of my childhood. I like this idea. I might think of a bigger, meaningful theme to thread them all together - but for now, here is a vignette, a little slice to illustrate the type of parents I had, the environment they created, the life we lead.

Getting hosed off in the backyard

One of my favorite memories is spending time in the backyard in my dad's garden with him. There was a plum tree in the garden, and underneath the branches was an old wooden worktable. I would climb the plum tree and look down on my dad's head, bent over the table while he - what? I don't even know, quite honestly. Sorted seeds? Wrote plant labels? I am not sure what he was doing at that table. I do remember the pencil he had there - an old pink and turquoise sparkly pencil that was about half the length it had once been. Sometime I would sit underneath the table, looking up. A lot of times I would drag over a bucket - about half as tall as I was, and load the dirt in. I'd add water, and stir. I remember looking at the bubbles I'd make in that mud, the little pieces of sticks or grass floating in the whirlpool I made by stirring.

Adding grout to a mosaic coffee table
just another way I love to get messy

On the first day of summer I had a tradition - I would make my bucket of mud, and drag it over to the back fence. I would then paint the back fence with mud - every bit of it. I remember watching the brown mud spill down my forearms as I lifted the paintbrush above me to paint.

Later, after I had exulted in the paint job I had done, I'd get hosed off by my dad, jump in the pool, eat watermelon, whatever else we would do on a summer evening. My dad would hose off the back fence. I remember the strongest feeling I had was satisfaction.

Basking in the sun and the mud at Glen Ivy Spa...
see, even grown-up Roya digs (haha, get it?) the mud!

Looking back on it, it makes sense to me that I did that, and loved it. I've always loved mud and getting messy. I've mentioned my love of ceramics here before, and later on I'd love clearing streams at the Nature Center, and making adobe at Rancho Los Cerritos Adobe Days. I also love thinking about my parents watching their 8, 9, 10 year old painting the back fence with mud. How glad I am they realized how much I was getting out of it. How they realized it was only mud, nothing permanent.

What I Know I Don't Know Anything About...

Question from a reader:

Do you ever discover any gaps in your learning?

I liked this question a lot. It made me start thinking about allllll the things I know and allllll the things I don't know. Here are a few lists first, off the top of my head, in no particular order:

Some of the things I consider myself decently well-versed in (I would have something to add to a conversation):

• current mental health practices
• sea lions
• native plant life of southern CA/Santa Monica Mountains
• the work of Joss Whedon
• ceramics
• California history
• Civil war fiction
• California's college systems
• Baha'i' culture
• developmental disabilities
• Alaska
• fishing
• volunteer management
• pregnancy and fertility
• raku
• cooking
• goal setting/accomplishing

Things I know more about than I would have thought because someone I talk to a lot is an expert:

• fantasy football
• wildlife fire fighting
• backpacking
• dog training
• feminism
• tv show structure/arcs
• sororities
• Deaf culture

I consider myself an expert in (10 years or 10,000 hours)

• knitting
• yarn
• crocheting
• mixed media art
• event planning
• journalling
• unschooling
• being an extrovert
• reading English

Things I consider serious gaps in my knowledge (that I've run into in the past)

• Geography - capitols, where in the world is...
• Wiring and electricity
• Car mechanics
• The really big universe stuff like black holes and comets, etc.
• The really tiny universe stuff like atoms and molecules
• Re-upholstering furniture
• Baking bread
• Foreign languages

Things I know I can look up online really, really fast if I ever have a question about it:

• Geography - capitols, where in the world is...
• Wiring and electricity
• Car mechanics
• The really big universe stuff like black holes and comets, etc.
• The really tiny universe stuff like atoms and molecules
• Re-upholstering furniture
• Baking bread
• Foreign languages

Ahhh see what I did there? 

So to answer the original question - do I ever find gaps in my knowledge?

Yes! All the time! I have a ton of gaps in my learning. The universe is HUGE, I know a tiny, tiny fraction of information about it. I can't presume to know everything. I know for elementary school and high school they make lists of "what a 4th grader is supposed to know," etc. Is there a list like that for 28 year old's? What would be on that list? With the help of myself, my husband, my friends, my family, and the internet I have managed to survive this many years knowing exactly what I know right now. I live a mostly happy, mostly grateful, pretty darn comfortable life. I have a Master's degree, but I am realizing that the things I learned from that degree only made it onto 1 bullet point in my list (side bar: I can come up with a much bigger list of things I learned from getting my master's, but it's interesting to note that in a quick list of Things I Know it's not super featured). In any case - this happy, comfy person knows what she knows right now. So can I really say that there's anything I *should* have learned? Nope. And as it comes up, I'll learn it.

Over my life, I have made the conscious decision a lot of times to NOT pursue more information about certain topics, and to delve even deeper into others. Our lives are trade-offs. There's no way to know everything. So I think the most important thing to learn is how to learn, and how not to damage learning. That's why I put those last two lists. I know I don't have a great working knowledge of car mechanics - just the other day my husband was stunned that I didn't know how the emergency brake worked. So you know what? I learned. I probably would have learned sooner than age 28 if I lived in San Francisco or somewhere with hills, but I never have, so it never came up.

I remember being in a marine biology class making a connection and having that light-bulb aha moment, when suddenly a bigger connection was made - and I realized how little I knew about the ocean. I remember so clearly that moment when you learn just enough to know how little you know. I felt like I really was standing on the edge of the ocean, and I could suddenly see just how wide, just how deep, just how incredibly vast and enormous it was, and that there was no way I would ever know everything. That's a good feeling to have, every now and then. To realize how much more there is to learn. I don't remember being 2 years old, but I bet I had that feeling (just not so clearly articulated) over and over and over again. I remember when my picture of the world expanded from our neighborhood to include a few other cities. I remember that feeling of expansion. I like that feeling. [sidebar: husband just switched channels and is now watching a show about marine life on animal planet. Coincidence!]

I get that feeling still, when I am watching tv and I recognize an actor from another show, and I open up IMDB and look up their entire filmography. Then that leads to this leads to this leads to that... and more worlds open up, connections are made, and I feel small but strong and looking forward to more.

What do you consider yourself an expert in? Are there areas you know you "lack" information? Is there anything in these lists you'd like me to expand on in a future blog post? Let me know in the comments!

fiberific

At every conference I go to, and lots of times in between, I have parents of young children ask, anxiously, "is it really okay that my child wants to do __________ ALLLL day??" 

I usually say - yes. Then, not so flippantly, I ask them to be realistic. Are they really doing that thing 24 hours? Are they eating? Are they going to the bathroom? A lot of times the kid actually has a lot of other activities - karate, park days, music, play dates, whatever. What the parent really means is "my kid wants to do _______ all of the hours that we are home and they are not sleeping." That sounds a lot different than "ALLLL day." For one, it makes the parent stop being catastrophic  When they are more specific in their language, they can't let themselves get so caught up in hyperbolic distress. 

Even with that new-found specificity and reality, the number of hours their child wants to do one thing still bothers parents. It's funny, too - because no one ever says "my child wants to play soccer 5 hours a day, is that a problem?" or "My child wants to read and read all day and not do anything else, will they grow up okay?" They are only ever worried about tv and video games. But that's another fifteen blog posts.

Well. Here I am. Living proof of an unschooled child who really did spent hours and hours and hours per day passionately involved with some very sedentary activities, often at the exclusion of other fun activities - and I am jeeesst fine. As a 28 year old married woman with a career, and you know, laundry to do, I still manage to spend many, many hours doing exactly what I want. 

Today, for example - I didn't need to leave the house. Not once. We had enough groceries, no park patron knocked on our door needing help. I have the 4th Game of Thrones book downloaded on audible.com and The Cabin in the Woods is new on Netflix. I had a late night last night, so I woke up around 11am, reached for my crocheting (which is next to my bed), and started on a vest idea I'd had last night. At about 2pm I decided to do some laundry, because I have committed to doing one household chore a day this month. I crocheted some more, sitting on the couch in the office listening to my headphones while my husband played his computer games a few feet away, and our dog split the difference between us sprawled out on the floor. 

I washed the dishes. I made green smoothies. I made coffee for my husband. I warmed up some leftovers for myself and ate them. I made breakfast for dinner for my husband. Oh, and I took a shower. I crocheted the rest of the day. It is now 8:30pm, which means I probably crocheted about 8 hours total. While I was doing that, I watched a movie on Netflix, and many episodes of The Office. I had facebook open and talked to a few people. I emailed my resume to a private practice I might want to work with, rescheduled an appointment, looked into a music therapy workshop I want to attend, fed the dog, and checked on my tomato plant. I jumped up happily to get things my husband asked for, and he brought me things I asked for when he got up.

So I guess I want to point out a few things -- one, that as an adult, I am able to decide when I can and want to spend the majority of my day doing one thing. I can weigh my priorities and decide what I want to get accomplished. Multiple times today I thought "do I want to do something else right now?" Sometimes I did. But mostly I didn't. Nobody and no things were harmed by my 8 hour crochet day. I did not blow off appointments or neglect anything important. 

Secondly - I got a lot out of my fiber-ific day. I had a lot of ideas spinning around in my head, and I had the chance to get some of them out in the world. I spent today creating larger items than I usually do, and I am trying to make up my own patterns. I had many really pleasant interactions with my husband. I have a lot going on, what with trying to start my own practice and looking at my upcoming week it's going to be a busy one, where I will be out of the house a lot. This was a good day for me to appreciate my house, my husband, my yarn, and time without interruption. After today, I'm looking forward to the upcoming week. It was a good and refreshing day.

I love to crochet. I love it. I would be upset if a family member tried to make me do less than what I wanted to do. I would not feel respected. I would not be able to express myself the way I want, or process the way I process. After I finish typing this, I am going back to my crocheting. Some weeks I have a lot of days like today. Others, not so many, or different things. 

The point is - I learned all of this about myself when I was younger because my parents did not think "she's spent too many hours obsessed with yarn. It's time to make her stop and do something else now." 

So here I am today - about a quarter of the way through a granny square vest. I'm improvising the pattern as I go.

And it has been a delightful day.

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.

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!