This is the question that’s been posed for the 10th edition of Unschooling Voices. It’s an optional question, but one that I’ve been thinking about so I thought I’d answer it! We fell right into unschooling after pulling the kids out of school, so we didn’t go through some of the other steps that other parents might have dealt with who maybe came from a school-at-home or maybe with more public school time served. It always felt right, so we never suffered from second-guessing ourselves. We never had the urge to push workbooks etc, in fact, we probably went too far second-guessing ourselves in the opposite way…”OMG they WANT workbooks???” so maybe one piece of advice would be to follow their lead. We DID however, get defensive about our choice. Instead of sharing our choice, we felt we had to defend it to people. Not that we thought we were making the wrong choice, it was never that, but that we felt on edge; that people wouldn’t want to understand, and this made the first little bit uncomfortable. So my advice would be to let it go. Don’t explain, don’t defend, just move forward. If people were genuinely interested, then explain.
Another piece of advice would be to maybe stop worrying. Yeah, I know everyone’s going to say that one, but from time to time, we both worried. About one little one in particular, but as he’s gotten older, the worry is lessening.
Maybe I’d tell myself that I couldn’t imagine how much fun it would be to be exploring and learning and doing and being side by side these amazing kids. I liked the whole SAHM gig before they came home, but it’s almost more fun now.
I’d tell myself that one computer isn’t enough for 6 people, and a second one would be the first thing to buy, along with that second TV. And that I should be prepared to answer a million and one questions a day, and that some of them would shock and amaze and stump me. And that I would be utterly speechless about what the kids learned and from where they learned it.
Really though, I’d not have too much advice or would want to do much differently from when they first started unschooling, until now. Maybe in 10 years I’d have a different answer…maybe not though.
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