Gifted?

One of the stereotypes about unschooling is that it's just for kids who are spectacular in some way. Well, I'm going to break a mommy rule and say: my kids aren't particularly special. I mean, I adore them and all, but they're not geniuses. They're quirky and strong willed, and in some ways that makes unschooling easier - it keeps me honest ;) - but nothing earth shattering here. What unschooling lets them do is be who they are and focus on what's meaningful to them. It lets me, as a parent, focus on who they are and what's meaningful to them, rather than what they "should" be doing to stay on some educational timeline.

Unschooling kids don't learn because they're geniuses, they learn because people are naturally curious. The trouble is that there are things adults would really rather kids learn for reasons that, frankly, aren't about kids as they are. They're reasons about an imaginary future that may not be related to our kids' strengths and interests and personalities. And they're reasons about our own desire to seem to be "good parents". So it's easy to read articles about miraculous unschooling poster children and think "well that's not my kid." It's sure not either of mine! Most unschooling kids are just kids. Wonderfully unique and beloved, but just regular kids doing regular kid stuff. The kind that mostly doesn't make for good blog posts. And yet they still manage to pick up basic skills and a fairly standard body of culturally relevant knowledge - because people are curious and want to know how to navigate the world they live in.

In some ways, one of the most striking things about being an unschooling parent is getting to see the extent to which school obfuscates learning. All that hard work school kids do turns out to be a lot of sound and fury.

Lazy teens and self-motivation

There are several different issues with the idea that your teens are "lazy". The first is that it takes a good bit of time for kids to re-learn how to self motivate! School - and often homeschool, too - strips that away from kids. "Deschooling" as it's called takes months - for teens, expect nine months to a year, and know that, depending on how big of an impact school had on them, it could even be longer. :( It helps to imagine that your kid has had a serious long term illness and needs time to recover. Let them chill and recuperate. Hang out with them. Watch some shows and play some games together. Gently offer to do fun things together, but don't push. Take time to get to know each other in a different way than before.

Another big thing to know about young teens, though, is that the big developmental processes going on in their brains takes a lot of energy! They may need a lot of down time, time to ponder, time to daydream, they may even sleep more. Around the online home/unschooling community at large, this has been dubbed a "cocoon stage". Not all teens "cocoon" but many do.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that natural learning won't look like school learning. It will look like kids pursuing their own interests - even their non-academic interests. Things like doing hair and playing video games. So it will help you and your kid for you to treat those as "legitimate" interests from which they will, inevitably learn. There's plenty to learn! And it doesn't need to be directed toward any particular goal. School sets you up to think there's this big race toward a finish line, but it's not true. It's really okay to give your kids a chance to breathe and discover who they are and how they learn, naturally.

Something that comes up a lot in the autonomous education /unschooling movement is the way kids learn these kinds of skills without necessarily being taught. And often the ways they learn them are by doing exactly the sorts of things that parents and teachers commonly try to limit. There's a disconnect in adult expectations between the skills that we want kids to learn and the way we want them to learn those skills.

So parents will panic when a kid shows good attention span or focus when those aren't directed at chores or school work (Kohn mentions worthy subjects). Or worry when a kid keeps trying and failing at a game over and over, maybe crying and swearing, but persisting. Or when a child insists on using Just these materials in Just this way to do a project. Or creates a detailed plan and wants to stick to it, despite obstacles. When kids do those things independently - self confidently pursuing their natural curiosity - it's often seen as problematic.

basic principles

A question that comes up fairly often is whether it is possible to "apply unschooling principles" but still put children in public school or are the two mutually exclusive?

A useful way to re-frame this question might be to ask yourself "which principles?" What do you think unschooling is or does that can intersect harmoniously with the life of a schooling family? There certainly are aspects of unschooling as a philosophy that can have a place in virtually any life, because they're principles of human nature and relationships that people have explored for centuries. The only thing really special about unschooling is extending those principles of human nature to children.

One of the fundamental principles of unschooling is that people (including children) are naturally curious. Teaching can dull that, true, but even school kids are curious - in school that's just called things like "being distracted" or "inappropriate socializing" ;) You can support your child's natural curiosity at home by stepping back from schoolish assumptions about how learning "should" look and instead see how it really happens. Which may include socializing with friends, playing video games, and watching tv rather than glamorous poster-child activities.

Valuing socializing and goofing off are also important because people are naturally social - we frequently like to learn from other people - and natural learning itself is mostly enjoyable. Applying those principles at home, with a school kid, means looking for more ways to connect with your child, and to have fun with your child. It means looking for ways to both invite your kid into your adult life and find welcome in your kid's life - which can be difficult if you've gotten used to connecting over school and homework and otherwise expecting your kid to "go play". It can take some stretching and softening to learn to enjoy some of the things that light your child up.

One principle that adults tend to like in theory but struggle with in practice is that it helps to be open to a spirit of enquiry. We struggle with that because we want to direct it with leading questions, Socratic, and outright criticism of kids' natural interests - all of which tend to shut down enquiry if they're the main mode of interaction. The occasional Socratic question isn't a bad thing, but there was a reason people didn't like Socrates ;) Creating lots of projects that lead kids in the direction you want to go is more of the same. It's all back-door teaching rather than supporting natural curiosity.

But the other most fundamental principle of unschooling that anyone can use any time is that thoughts and feelings matter. Specifically the thoughts and feelings Of Children matter. They matter to learning - they have a direct effect on what is learned in the moment. They matter to relationships. Taking your child's thoughts and feelings into account, taking them seriously, and being mindful of children as people is the heart and soul of the unschooling philosophy.