Pam Laricchia's Blog

We are back with another episode in our Unschooling Stumbling Blocks series and this time, we’re talking about unschooling with strong beliefs.

Sometimes our strong beliefs can be a stumbling block along our journey when we put the belief ahead of our relationships. When those moments come up in our families, it can help to remember that our own strong beliefs work for us, for now, but that people are different. And leaving space for people to choose what works for them can strengthen our connection and build trust. Whether the strong belief is about food, spending time in nature, early bedtimes, a particular type of social interaction, or anything else, taking time to peel back the layers and examine how these beliefs affect our relationships can be so enlightening!

We really enjoyed diving into this topic and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, coaching, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about supporting our children’s autonomy. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia. Hello to you both.

So, today we’re going to be talking about another unschooling stumbling block, which is when parents have strong beliefs. It’s a topic that comes up a lot and I’m really excited for this conversation.

But before we begin, I wanted to invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, which has been really life changing for me in so many ways. On the Network, we have amazing discussions about so many topics, since our community has such a wide variety of experiences. Everyone there is really learning and growing and being intentional with their families. It’s really unlike any other online community that I’ve found.

The Living Joyfully Network offers such powerful support, especially during those moments when questions and fears come up or if you’re new to unschooling and just need a place where people understand what you’re going through. If you’d like to learn more about the Network and check it out for yourself, you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on the Community tab. We’ll also leave a link in the show notes and we would love to meet you there!

So, Pam, would you like to get us started about unschooling with strong beliefs?

PAM: Strong beliefs, yes. I would very much like to do that, because exploring the idea of strong beliefs has definitely inspired an important paradigm shift for me on this journey. Because, of course we can hold beliefs so strongly that it feels like a truth for us, but the big shift for me around this was recognizing that it was my truth and that didn’t mean that it was a universal truth. Because, as we may have mentioned, people are different! My kids, my partner, my friends, they aren’t me.

And yes, a strong belief I hold is something that is working well for me, right, that helps me care for myself, helps me be the person that I want to be but that strength of that belief comes from so much experience. I’ve probably tried on numerous different perspectives along the way that didn’t quite click or that maybe sent me in a direction that I eventually found I didn’t like. So, trying to wholesale drop my strong belief and all the experience that comes with it onto someone else’s lap just isn’t going to land with that depth of understanding.

And as I was thinking about it, to me, it’s really like that web of learning that I talk about. So many bits of life are connected in interesting ways and that’s what’s bringing the richness of understanding, not that one point of information or a belief that is disconnected from a person’s experience.

So, I remember thinking back when I was first playing with this paradigm shift, I just kind of stopped jumping in to share my strong belief in the moment. And it felt a bit like I was betraying myself by not sharing my hard earned knowledge with the people that I loved, earnestly trying to convince them of its validity and that it’s the one right way in the circumstances, like it makes sense.

But when I managed to put the “it makes sense to me, let’s see how things unfold here,” oh my gosh, they unfolded in such interesting ways, in ways that I could see and I look back on that moment more closely aligned with the person that they were at that time, and in ways that they learned something that stayed with them. It was a meaningful experience for them instead of me popping in with what the cumulative belief of all my meaningful experiences along the way.

So, it doesn’t mean that I’m tossing my belief, because I know it works well for me. And nor does it mean never sharing what works for me. Those are like the opposite ends of that spectrum, and at first I needed to not share so I could see well, what would happen? Would the world end? Would they choose like something that I wouldn’t choose and it was a big catastrophe? Those pieces did not happen.

So, for me, it came to me just being more careful to share my stronger beliefs without the energy of an expectation that others take it on as their truth. I want to be in that space or that mindset first before I share, where I can see it has more information that I’m sharing with them. They learn a little bit about me, because this is something that is meaningful to me and makes sense for me and so they see how I kind of see the world, how I navigate things, and they’re welcome to try it out and see if it fits for them, see if they might want to tweak it without any fear of feeling judged by me if it didn’t work for them, at least for now. It’s not that this is your one opportunity to decide or not to adopt this belief wholesale. There are going to be so many experiences now and into the future.

There are experiences now where I get to revisit my strong beliefs and see if they are still working for me and see if they’re still making sense. So each moment is just like another point in that web of learning, another piece of experience that we can bring with us and it just makes the next time something similar comes up a richer moment because we have more experience and more thoughts and stuff to draw from as we come up with the plan for this time.

ANNA: Yeah, I think the thing that stood out for me that you were just talking about is how unique our journey is to the strong belief and how it is so involved. We really don’t just kind of pop with a strong belief out of nowhere. It comes from this experience. It comes from going down a road that was maybe the opposite and realizing that doesn’t feel good. We’re taking in information. So, again, so personality-dependent. Have I done a lot of research about this? And I feel really strongly and I’ve done all these pieces. But that’s what holds it up is all of that experience that I’m bringing to that moment. So, like you said, we just really can’t hand it over to someone and think that it’s going to have the same meaning to them.

And I think the challenge becomes, too, if we’re coming at people with the strong belief and not really giving them a chance to even have a chance to figure out if it works for them and try it on. We’re coming with this judgment piece. That was the other thing you said that I thought was important. I think it can lead people to believe we’re judging them if they don’t hold the same strong belief, whether that’s our children or partner or friends. And so, that’s not where we foster understanding. That’s not where we foster connection.

Because I do have strong beliefs, 100%. I have strong beliefs. But like you said, it’s from my learning what I know about me. And I can get excited about sharing those beliefs. But just like you, I had to go through a process of like slowing some of that down, making sure there was room for conversation, understanding what’s happening with the people around me so that we could have a more rich conversation and it didn’t feel like that judgment piece was coming in.

ERIKA: I mean, it is such an interesting and rich topic. And that’s why I think it comes up a lot. Because what it can feel like is, when we’re the one with the strong belief, it can feel like, “But this is a fact. And my child is going against this fact of life that I know in my heart is so true and right and good.”

And so, that’s where you get those relationship rubs. But if we come in really believing there is only this one right way, then we can put a lot of judgment on the other person, not give them room to come up with their own answers to things. And we forget about that whole history that we have of, how did we even get to have this belief? And I know we’ve seen lots of examples, just around of people who have had a strong belief that they grew up with and then change it in adulthood. Strong beliefs, even when they’re that strong, can change.

And so, I think just remembering that and noticing that there’s not one right way. And no matter what belief you’re thinking about, whether it’s something about diet or something about a religious belief or something about the right way to do a certain thing, any belief that you can kind of think of, you can find people who are doing it another way and it’s working out okay for them. And so, I think just noticing that, remembering that, and any time I start thinking, “They should do this,” you know, “They should be like this, I figured it out and this is the way,” that’s a good clue for me to kind of pause and get a little more curious about like, okay, this is probably my strong belief and not something that I need to give to everyone else.

But I think also there could be excitement about our strong beliefs that make it hard to not try to put that on everyone else, especially if we’ve been through a long period of learning and figuring out and trying to see, like, okay, what is the best diet? And then we start eating this way and we feel great and we want to convince everyone in the world. And so that comes from a good place. But once you start to see the kind of rubs in the relationship, either with your kids or other people in your lives, I think that’s interesting. It’s just another place to do that navigating of our relationships.

PAM: I think what helped me, because thinking back, that deschooling season of our journey when we’re questioning so many things, so it sparked, Erika, when you said it feels like a truth, right? And so, what was helping me was also exploring what we’ve come to describe as people are different.

Because it’s so easy to just assume other people are experiencing the world the same way we are, right? Because that is the only lens we have. So, the idea that people are different, that people could be experiencing things differently. We talk about sometimes not putting ourselves in their shoes, but looking through their eyes. All those ideas alongside, they helped me understand how a strong belief could be my truth. Instead of the truth.

And that it didn’t diminish it just because it was my truth. It’s a powerful thing, because now that self-awareness that people are different, I can now really own and embrace what’s working for me. So it was just really helpful to be able to see that separation that helped me more embrace my strong belief without feeling I had to give it up, because it wasn’t the truth. Well, then, what is the truth? It’s like, it’s okay that it works for me. And there are some really good reasons why it may not work for someone else. It may not work for my child.

Whether it’s from personality things, or just experiences, or it’s a different world 20 years later than when I was whatever age. There’s so many different aspects to it. And once you start to see the context, right? We talk about context so much. Then being able to bring that to this strong beliefs conversation going on in my head was really helpful.

ANNA: Yeah, I think the people are different thing is so critical here. And I feel like my kids definitely led the way with this paradigm shift for me. And even in little ways, like we experience temperature different. So, my mom was always like, have a coat on the kids, you know, that’s a thing. That’s a good parent. You’re bringing coats and putting coats on your kids. Not in Miami, but this is like up here where I live. And so I’m thinking, okay, that’s what you do.

But then I had a child that just ran hot. Did not want to wear shoes, did not want to wear coats. And I’m like, okay, why do I have a belief that somehow this is tied to like good parenting? And so, just that little bit of, she’s experiencing this exact same situation differently, even though that’s not a super strong belief, it started to crack that open for me to be like, okay, we actually do really have different experiences of the world.

We really do. Even something that, I mean, well, the temperature saying this shouldn’t that mean that you’re cold? But no, it doesn’t, because we’re all so different. And then it starts to go, oh, I’m really grounded outside and feel great when I move my body outside. This child doesn’t. It’s itchy and it’s scratchy and it’s warm and it doesn’t feel good and they don’t like it. Oh, okay. But aren’t we supposed to do this?

So then, it was just like slowly, this crack just got wider and wider as I realized we really do experience the world so differently. And then I feel like Pam, because you’ve been talking about open and curious for so long, that’s what I switched to. Like, okay, so if it’s not what I think it’s supposed to be, if it’s not, there’s this one right way, I want to be curious about how we’re finding our right ways and what that looks like.

And so it was, it was a really fascinating process for me. I really do remember these steps along the way, because I had a lot of strong opinions. I still do, but I was much more militant about them in my twenties, in early life for sure.

ERIKA. Yeah. I was thinking it feels like this is something that grows in with age, it becomes easier to see that everyone has their own beliefs as I get older, where in those college years and a little beyond that, it was like, no, there’s one right way and I know what it is. And so, that’s funny.

And I was thinking about this conversation also, once you start thinking about, what are my own strong beliefs? It’s possible that some of them are so externally influenced, that maybe they’re not even our own strong beliefs. Maybe they’re just part of a culture that we’re trying to be a part of. I’m thinking things like kids need to be outdoors or kids should go to bed early or things that you may see around you in parenting circles or with parent friends.

But if you sit down and really start to think about it, maybe those aren’t my actual strong beliefs. Maybe it’s just something that I’m hearing a lot and so that it starts to feel like it’s important. And so, yeah, just anytime if my kid’s pushing against being outside because it doesn’t feel good and it’s so hot and humid and sticky and terrible, it’s like, okay, so which is more important? The going outside and pushing that or is listening to them and knowing that people are different? I mean, there are still people enjoying being outside during this season in Miami and we aren’t and that’s okay.

But if I was going to take on that belief of, this is so important and everyone needs to spend time outside, it could get in the way of my relationship with my kids.

PAM: Yeah, I think that’s such a great point that some of our strong beliefs maybe were just adopted as the conventional wisdom that we hear all the time. So, that’s why it is so valuable to just take that moment to ask ourselves, where is that coming from? And is it something like that makes sense to me?

That was one of the things I did a lot of questioning about as we came to unschooling, which was like, so what does my experience look like? At first it was my experience with school growing up, that came with me wholesale, but what exactly did that look like? Which parts worked better for me? Which ones were more challenging? So taking the conventional wisdom around school and then asking, is that really true? And then looking back at my own literal experience to see what I could discover and then start to understand what it actually looked like to me and what I believed about it versus just the conventional story that I had just kind of adopted wholesale.

But it’s not like we can do this with everything all the time, right? It’s pretty challenging work and also, I mean, that’s what conventional wisdom is for, helping you move quickly through something. Oh, well, most people do it this way. I don’t think that’s going to make a big mess and we do it and totally good. Those are our shortcuts.

But it’s when they start to do things, right? Like rub in a relationship or end us up in a place where we’re not feeling comfortable anymore after we do the thing, like this isn’t working for me as I was hoping. And so, that is one other aspect I wanted to bring up too is when our strong beliefs get woven in with our personal values. Like, I value being open, as in sharing a level of details. Or I want us like to be an outdoor family. I want us to be out doing things or I want us to have dinners together or like whatever it is that we feel is a personal value but to recognize when we like a value like that actually isn’t just our own, right? It’s not a personal value. It includes other people when you have a family that you think should all be having dinner together and it can be so tricky.

I definitely had that and tried to do that, right? But navigating a value that requires other people to participate in it, oh my gosh, that’s when the rubs can start, right? And you can start to realize and question, is this really something that’s important to me? Why is it important to me? What does it look like? Because you start putting expectations on others and then you start looking through their eyes and you can see, oh I can see why this isn’t working for them, etc. It’s just like another, as you were saying, Erika, another good clue that we might want to revisit something and is it and just trying to think through like is this a value? Is this a belief? How am I bringing that into the world? Who am I expecting to not just take my belief but participate in my belief?

ANNA: Right. And I’m so glad you brought this one up. I definitely wanted you to, because I think it’s so critical. And I hope I’m going to articulate this in a way that makes sense, but there was an example on the Network around this that was interesting, because the strong belief that was kind of praised as a personal value was that everyone needs to contribute to the family as a whole. But it was rubbing. And so, it was causing friction and causing problems.

And you brought this up that that has to be tricky to have this personal belief that you need other people to participate in in order for it to feel good. And what I think is important for me to recognize is when I put it into a personal value which is really this strong belief that’s come and I now I’ve reframed it as a personal value it kind of shuts down the learning for me and for those around me, because I can kind of stand on my high horse of personal value. Like, this is this thing and it is a value that we should all hold to be good people. You can just hear it. It’s like rhetoric, almost. And it’s stopping me from seeing anything else.

And so, that was the clue for me of, oh okay if my personal value is to contribute in this way I can do that, right? That is something that I can do and show up. But if I’m wanting someone else to, I’m not taking them into consideration because we’re not even having a conversation about it. I’ve just already decided that I need you to.

And so, what was cool about the situation in the Network is they really started having different kinds of conversations and they started figuring out how to meet all the needs and they started breaking it down into, okay who feels which way about what things what feels harder? Let’s learn about each other. And so, there was all this rich learning and it became so much richer than standing here on this place of, I’m right because this is this personal value.

And so, I love that additional learning about each other. And to me these are things that are just so important about learning to live with other human beings in general and it’s not about whatever the particular value is, because we all have different ones. And like you said, Erika, it could be the early bird gets the worm so everybody needs to go to bed early and get up early, so they’re filtering from all of these cultural narratives. But then we create it as a value that you’re a better person if you’re doing that, if you’re out there getting this. And so, I think it would just be really fun for people to think about, where do I have this strong belief and is it about diet or sleep or parenting or whatever? And again, it’s not about letting go of the strong belief, because you know I’m a huge advocate for children I have a lot of strong beliefs about how I would love all children to be treated, but if I stand there I’m not learning, I’m not reaching, I’m not connecting with anybody. And so, that’s kind of what sticks out for me, and so I love that you brought that point up.

ERIKA: Yeah, I really liked that conversation on the Network, too, and I feel like what was interesting about it is that if I feel like I have a value of everyone in the family contributes and that feels like very important and sacred and wonderful to me, then I think everyone else should also feel that way and that the work that they do to contribute is coming because we have that same shared value/belief. And so, it’s coming from this deeper place.

And so, then that’s why it rubs, because if they’re not doing chores, it doesn’t just mean they were busy, it means they don’t value the family in the same way that I do. Because it’s equating two things that aren’t necessarily equal. And so, if the thing is we need to get all the chores done around the house, that’s one conversation. If it’s, I like to feel connected as a family, that’s an entirely different conversation where we could figure out other ways to feel connected to each other that don’t have to be we’re all working together to clean the house.

Because obviously people are going to have different opinions about what feels good. And so, yeah it was just super interesting and fun to unpack some of these beliefs for ourselves.

PAM: Yeah exactly. And I think what you mentioned there, Erika, too, is it just bubbled up for me how often as well that whole productivity conversation comes up. Because, oh if I can make this thing mean this and this and this that’s effective and efficient and like we bundle it all together and hand it to somebody else. But they don’t know all these nuanced meanings and all the little tick boxes that we’re checking off in our head that this means and they’re just like maybe doing the thing.

ERIKA: Like for a family dinner, I could totally picture that, where someone in the family is like, well I’m not hungry, so I don’t want to eat right now. But then it’s like, no but to me, it’s everything. This is our only moment of connection and it’s so important and deep. And so, yeah a lot more conversations and peeling apart the parts that you’re wanting.

ANNA: Right! Because, in that situation, are we even communicating that? So, we have it in our head that the family dinner means we’re all valuing each other and finding out about each other’s day, but have we said that? Or are we just saying, come to dinner? Because again, that child who’s not hungry may be like, oh but if you want to hear about my day or I could hear about your day, that might be fine. But it’s interesting to think about how much we do in our head with these ideas and how much we’re putting on it, which maybe we aren’t even communicating. And that’s why those conversations can be so helpful to figure out what are the priorities for each person. And how do we make sure we meet those in a way that feels good to everybody?

ERIKA: Well, this one has been a lot of fun! We hope you enjoyed our conversation and maybe had an aha moment or picked up some ideas to consider on your own unschooling journey. If you enjoy these kinds of conversations I think you would love the Living Joyfully Network. It’s such an amazing group of people connecting, having thoughtful conversations about all the things we encounter in our unschooling lives and you can learn more at livingjoyfullyshop.com. Just click on community at the top of the page and we hope to meet you there.And you can also check out our new Substack at whenschoolisntworking.substack.com. Thank you for listening and we’ll see you next time.

ANNA AND PAM: Bye!

In this episode, we’re sharing a conversation that Pam had with Iris Chen in 2018. At the time, Iris was new to unschooling her two sons in China and was writing blog posts about her experience at her website, Untigering. Pam and Iris talked about why she and her husband decided to move to China, her family’s move to unschooling, what unschooling in China looks like, deschooling expectations around achievement, feeling like an outsider in both Chinese and American societies, and lots more!

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

QUESTIONS FOR IRIS

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family?

I love how you describe your blog, untigering.com, on your about page: “Untigering is a blog about my adventures of trying to be parent in the tension of my Chineseness and Americanness. It’s about me moving away from being a typical tiger mom, but still wanting to hold on to my cultural heritage. It’s about figuring out what I believe about identity, family, and success as an outsider to both societies.” Let’s start with your shifting definition of success. You and your husband were well on your way to fulfilling the “American Dream” when you guys did a complete 180. How did that come about?

And then you had children. How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

I’m really curious about unschooling in China. Can you share a bit about your experience and the pros and cons you see?

You have a great blog post about the value of letting go of expectations, especially ones around achievement. When a child dives into an interest it’s so easy for us to start envisioning that as their lifelong passion and career, like we need to rationalize to ourselves that it’s okay to let them have at it. Maybe we try to convince ourselves we’re just being supportive, but it can quickly backfire, can’t it?

I’d love to talk some more about your experience with the tension of feeling like an outsider in both Chinese and American societies. Can you share your thoughts around the process of weaving together your cultural heritage with what you’re discovering makes sense to you about children, learning, parenting, and family? What does that look like for you?

You recently published a blog post titled, ‘Unschooling as an Asian American is an Act of Resistance.’ I thought it was a great piece and was hoping you’d share your thoughts about it here.

What is your favourite thing about unschooling right now?

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

Iris’s blog, untigering.com

Scott Noelle’s podcast episode

The Alliance for Self-Directed Education

Peter Gray’s article, Kids Learn Math Easily When They Control Their Own Learning

Iris’s blog post, Pros and Cons of Unschooling in China

Iris’s blog post, 3 Unschooling Expectations and Why We Shouldn’t Have Them

Idzie Desmarais’s blog post, In Praise of The Unexceptional: Because Unschooling Doesn’t Have to Be Impressive

Iris recently went to see the play Soft Power

Iris’s blog post, Unschooling as an Asian American is an Act of Resistance

Iris’s Facebook page, Untigering: Adventures of a deconstructing Tiger Mother

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Welcome! I’m Pam Laricchia from livingjoyfully.ca, and today I’m here with Iris Chen. Hi Iris!

IRIS: Hello Pam.

PAM: Hello! Iris is an unschooling mom and I came across her work a few months ago. I really enjoyed reading around her website, untigering.com, and I was super excited when she agreed to come on the podcast!

So, to get us started Iris …

Can you share with us a little bit about you and your family?

IRIS: Sure! So, I am a Chinese American, and I was born in the States and grew up in the States and Canada actually. After I got married, we moved out to China to teach English, and then we had two boys out there in China.

And I’ve only been unschooling for about a year but have really just fallen in love with it.

PAM: Oh, that’s awesome, yeah, and it’s doesn’t take too long once you start diving in, does it? If it’s for you, if it’s a good match, it just sucks you right in, right?

IRIS: Yes, yes.

PAM: So, I love how you describe your blog, untigering.com, in your about page and I just wanted to read a little quote from it.

“Untigering is about my adventures of me trying to be an parent in the tension of my Chineseness and Americanness. It’s about me wanting to move away from being a tiger mom, but still wanting to hold on to my cultural heritage. It’s about figuring out what I believe about identity, family and success, as an outsider to both societies.”

And look! I got goosebumps again just as I was reading it.

Let’s start with your shifting definition of success. That’s a big one we talk about quite a bit here on the podcast, and as you mentioned, you and your husband were well on your way to fulfilling the “American Dream” when you did that complete 180 and moved to China. I’m really interested in hearing how that came about.

IRIS: Yeah!

So, we lived in the Silicon Valley. It’s a very driven, very ambitious culture here, and, at that time, my husband had been working for five years as an electrical engineer, and was doing well, and we were living a very comfortable, good life.

But I think we just wanted something different; we wanted something meaningful. We wanted to be of service somewhere. And we wanted a sense of adventure too, something different. And so, we went to China just planning on teaching English for just a year—we didn’t expect on staying out for very long.

We were going to give it a year and have a good time with it. But once we got out there, we just fell in love with it—fell in love with the people and the culture. I mean we are both Chinese, but yeah, just really falling in love with the people and the culture there. And ended up staying for the next 15 years and have been there ever since!

PAM: Was the biggest piece when you were talking about wanting to feel like you were doing service kinds of work, helping people—that was something you felt was missing? Was that a big chunk of it?

IRIS: Yeah.

I think sometimes when you stay in your own culture, you are stuck in these scripts or these tracks that ‘everybody around you is doing this,’ ‘everybody else is buying their house and having children,’ or whatever. And I think we just wanted to be intentional about the choices we made—we didn’t want to just do what everybody else was doing. But we also wanted to make intentional choices about what we wanted to do with our lives.

PAM: That’s cool! So, it was noticing that you on this track, I guess, the definition of success for people, right? And you guys were rocking that.

IRIS: Yeah, yeah, we were doing well…

PAM: And it became time to question it. Is that how?

IRIS: Yeah, Definitely. And not to say that that is wrong, but are we being intentional and mindful about that choice. For us, we just felt like that wasn’t our path, that wasn’t our calling. We wanted something different for our lives.

PAM: I love that point too, because, just because it’s conventional doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, right? Like, you said, just knowing which path is feeling good for you and is working for you, right?

IRIS: Right, exactly! I feel that follows really closely with unschooling too. It’s not that you can’t have a conventional education, or you can’t go to college. It’s not about that. It’s about doing it intentionally and because it’s meaningful and purposeful for you. Don’t because it’s just with you do.

PAM: I love that word, purposeful, because that shows the intention behind it, right? Because unschooling lives can run the gamut for young adults. And some, when you’re looking from the outside, can look very conventional, and some can look very unconventional, but they are all, either way, lived with intention and purpose. I love that.

IRIS: Yes yes yes.

PAM: I love that.

So, you guys went, and you spent your year there, in China, and you had children. I’m curious to see how that phase went, and then how you discovered unschooling and what your move to unschooling looked like. You said that was about a year ago?

IRIS: Yeah. I had this blog called untigering, because I think I was a typical tiger mom. Like, I had very high standards for what I wanted my kids to do and to study. It was my full intention to send them—well, at first we were considering conventional homeschooling, and then we were thinking about sending them to local, Chinese school, because we were living in China. We thought that if we send them to local school, they will be fluent; they will be bilingual in both Chinese and English, and that was sort of like a high priority for me, so we were really trying to get them into a local school.

But that didn’t really work out because they didn’t have enough space for foreigners, so we went another option where we went to like a local, private Chinese school. And I think we had a good experience there, but after a few years there, I felt that there was a lot about the schooling mindset that I didn’t agree with—that didn’t resonate with me. Because I had sort of part-time homeschooled them when they were younger, I felt that there was just a lot of wasted time, a lot of busy work. A lot of it was meaningless, that you just felt like you had to do as part of school.

And I was also teaching there at that school, and I was sucked into those types of patterns too, even though I didn’t believe in them, like giving homework just to give homework, or seeing what the results of grades like a mark did. They just cared about looking at the grade, they didn’t care about whether or not they understood the material. Or, even seeing my kids. They did really well in that environment, but then noticing that they were doing things more for the affirmation of the teacher; like, they were trying to get recognition and saying, “Look! Look at this!” And comparisons and stuff like that.

So, I was noticing, even though they were doing well, attitudes that were inadvertently passed on to them because of this environment. I had not really been exposed to unschooling, but I listened to a parenting conference and one of the speakers was Scott Noelle who is part of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, I think, and he wasn’t really talking about unschooling, but at the end of his talk, he referenced it.

Then I went to the website and read what self-directed education was about. I just really resonated with it and felt like, “Oh, this is something that I really believe in; or I want to believe in.” It was a very radical way—at least for me—of looking at education and sort of letting go of the reins. But there was something very appealing for me, especially since, at the time, I had to think of other options, because the school that I was sending my kids to was shutting down.

Pretty much my only option was to homeschool, and yet I was really stressed by that idea because I knew that if I took a schooling mindset and applied it to homeschooling, that would just create so much stress in my family life and for my kids because I’d just be this really controlling mom trying to get them to do their work. And I didn’t want to do that!

And so, once I discovered unschooling, yeah, I think I just really resonated with it, and was excited about what that meant for my relationship with my kids and a way that we could homeschool that would just work for us.

PAM: That’s cool! Yeah!

You were mentioning that you were teaching at the school and you were doing all the things that were expected. You mentioned, giving homework, paying attention to grades, and using that as a measure etc. And it’s so interesting to see that, and you were doing it because you had to in that situation, and then imagining having to do that at home, because it wasn’t something that you really believed in. Is that kind of how it felt, like you would have to bring that home?

IRIS: Yeah, definitely. And actually, in the school environment, I felt frustrated, because I was behaving in ways that I didn’t believe in either. Like, maybe I was just putting on that teacher hat and feeling like I had to be very authoritarian in some ways, like, “sit in your seat, pay attention, follow along,” you know…

PAM: Yeah, you were playing that role rather than being yourself.

IRIS: Yeah. Right. Like, interacting with them in the way that I would if they were just my kids or we were just home together. So, just the role of being a teacher and being in that role meant something to me, where I needed to be the one imparting information and they needed to absorb it or whatever, so…

PAM: And I guess it might be a little bit easier trying to do that within the institution because all the teachers are doing it, whereas at home, ‘Oh now it will just be me trying to play that role.’ That could be a lot harder!

IRIS: I don’t think my kids would like it, would respond well to it either, me always wearing the teacher hat.

PAM: Yeah, that’s such a good point too. So, did the school close? Did you guys finish out they year there, and then the school closed, and then you kind of transitioned into it at home?

IRIS: Yes. So, the school closed and we transitioned to what we were doing at home. A lot of the kids—it was a private, local school, and so all of the kids are pretty much local Chinese kids—they went back to their different situations, like, to a local school, or a private school, or to other options. But yeah, for us, we ended up homeschooling.

PAM: Did you pretty much end up unschooling at home from the beginning?

IRIS: At that point, yeah. It was sort of like we had our summer off and then we started.

At the beginning, I was like, “There’s a few things that we are going to do,” so, I wasn’t in total “jump in the deep end.” We were still in the process of deschooling. So, I was like, “We still gotta do math.” You know, “We’re Asians, we do math!” At that point, I was not yet ready to let go of that and felt like that needed to be taught. And then we did other things like Chinese class and piano class, but other than that, I was really able to sort of let the rest of it go.

I would read to them—sometimes I would pick a book or they would pick a book and I would read aloud to them. But the rest of the day was pretty open and they could do what they wanted to do. But I think after a few weeks into it, because of my changing views and my philosophy of unschooling, making them do math didn’t make sense to me anymore. Because, if I truly believe that kids can learn through life and learn naturally in ways that are meaningful for them, then why was I making them sit and fill out these worksheets that didn’t have meaning for them?

And I also read, I think it was a Peter Gray article about learning math, and how kids in the future if they want to go into a field that requires math, that they can actually learn it really quickly, because they already have the skills to know how to learn. So, they don’t have to spend their entire childhood spending hours and hours doing workbooks and learning math, they can just go on and learn it really quickly if they want to. And so, I think hearing those things and wrestling with it a little more allowed me to let go of the math. So yeah, I no longer require them do math. That was part of my deschooling process.

PAM: Oh absolutely. I think whatever “the thing” is for us—whether it’s math, or maybe it’s reading, or spelling. That was something that I held onto for a little while, just for the first couple of weeks. Because, whatever that one thing is, then we see them all the rest of the time, and see how much they are learning, and we see them in action. And we’re continuing to learn and read ourselves. So, I think that’s a pretty normal transition time, because there’s always that one last thing that it’s hard for us to let go of. But as we keep going just a few weeks, it starts to gel together and we can kind of release that last big thing, right?

IRIS: Yeah. Absolutely.

The other two things that I was holding onto was Chinese—Chinese language lessons—and piano. And we live in China, so it sort of made sense. And with piano, that is something that they had wanted to do when they were younger, but it’s been four years and we were still having them do it, and sometimes there was a lot of tension around piano practice and stuff like that. So, it wasn’t until more recently, maybe a couple of months ago, where we actually again had to question why we were continuing those activities and whether or not those activities were things that our kids wanted to do.

So, we put them before them and asked, “Do you want to continue? These are the reasons that we think, from our perspective, but what do you guys think?” And it was interesting, because they didn’t really want to continue with the Chinese lessons, but they did want to continue with the piano. That was actually really affirming to us in a way, because we had thought that maybe if we didn’t force them to do it that they wouldn’t do either. But to know that once they had the option to consider for themselves and really tap into their own desires, that they realized that, “I do really want to continue with the piano.” So, now as we move forward, at least with the piano, they can continue with enjoyment, and not feeling like it’s not mom and dad making me do it, but that they are in control.

PAM: That’s a really great point. It is so interesting to see them, executing their agency, I guess, in making choices. And it’s nice to know that you get to that point in the relationship—it might have been a few months till you guys felt like you could ask that question and get a real answer from them; because at first, it could be very reactionary. Like you said, we figured at first it could be like “No I don’t want to do anything because you were making me do that.” But to actually take the time to think about it and to make a choice for what really works for them, right?

IRIS: Right, that’s a really good point.

I think sometimes they might react because we have been so controlling and we’ve robbed them of that agency for so long, so, once they have agency they’re like, “Ok, well, I’m just going to rebel, or I’m just going to do my own thing and not do what I know you want me to do.”

But yeah, I think that can be a process too, allowing them to do that until they get to the point where there is that trust and they are like, “Oh, mom and dad honor my choices, and maybe some of what I want to do is what mom and dad want me to do, and that’s okay.”

PAM: Yeah, that’s such a huge process—I call it deschooling for us—but also for the kids too because it’s building that relationship and that trust back in, right? Because if they say no to everything that’s ok too. And when you ask, it’s about being ok with the no. And none of these noes are forever. They can always, like you said, later on, say, “Hey, you know what, I think maybe I do want to pick that back up.”

But now they’ve gotten to a point in the relationship that they know they are making that choice for themselves, not to please you, and you know that too.

IRIS: So, that was something that both my husband and I had to be ok with, it like, “Ok, if they say no to both of these things, we have to be ok with this, rather than trying to manipulate them to choose something.” Being ok with the no.

I think with unschooling we are always hoping that they will say yes to something, that they will grab onto something that they really love, but I think that for kids who haven’t been given a lot of freedom, I think the first choice is to say no, and they have to have the freedom to do that.

PAM: That finally helps them to feel powerful when they haven’t felt like they’ve had a lot of power.

I’m really curious to learn more about unschooling in China. I was hoping you could share a bit about your experience and kind of like the pros and cons that you see about unschooling there.

IRIS: Yeah, I actually wrote a blog post about this, and I would be interested to know if there are any other unschoolers in China. I have no idea.

But I think one of the really challenging things is the easy access to information because we have a firewall. It’s really hard to get information online, and I feel like probably for a lot of unschoolers, a lot of the information they get is online. So, that is sometimes really challenging for us. We can’t get on YouTube or Twitter or Instagram or Facebook without a VPN—a virtual private network. Sometimes the Internet makes it hard to get all those things. I think that is a challenge.

I think another thing is just the cultural values is just very high on academics. It’s definitely the whole society is very focused on children doing well in school—getting the good grades, doing well on the tests. We are in an environment that really pushes those types of values. So, we’re pretty weird to them. So that’s also, I guess, another challenge.

And I think there’s also the lack of affordable resources. Whereas here I feel like there’s the library, the community center, there’s the free days at the museum, there’s nature, there’s a lot to work with, and there’s also a community—a pretty strong unschooling or homeschooling community.

I think in China there aren’t a lot of free resources, because most families only have one child and they are willing to pay a lot of money for their child to do cool stuff. And so, a lot of things cost a lot of money, so in that way there aren’t a lot of affordable resources, in my opinion. We do have a homeschooling community, which I’m very, very thankful for, but not necessarily unschooling, so not very many people with the same perspective on schooling.

So those are some of the cons, but those can also be pros too, in my mind. Just the fact that because they culture emphasizes so strongly on academics, people actually see the detrimental parts of that. They see how the system is really broken and they don’t want that for their kids, but their choices are limited and it’s pretty risky for them to try other things. So, in some ways they see a more extreme example of the negative things we see in schooling in the west. They know something needs to change, or something isn’t right here. They can understand the value of more choice, more freedom, more agency. Like, when I tell my friends about it, it’s something that sounds really amazing, but it’s too outside of the box for them at this point.

And I think also the bicultural aspect of living oversees is something that’s built-in for us. This sense of learning from another culture, learning a different language, eating different types of foods. Sort of like the worldschooling thing, right? We are learning from life and our perspective isn’t just based on our own experience or our own culture—you’re exposed to different people and different cultures. So that’s a big one too.

PAM: That’s really interesting. Especially the part that academics are such a big focus, and there’s so much pressure on the kids, they really see the negative effects. And yes, I can see that yeah, it’s totally too out of the box to step away from it, but I can imagine them wanting to figure out ways to support their kids, while still putting the pressure on? You know what I mean? It seems it’s quite a dichotomy, but I can see how, “This is what we have to do, this kind of pressure, but I’m going to help you to live with it, because this is just the way it has to be,” right?

IRIS: Yeah, there’s definitely that attitude, it’s like, “Well, this is the way it is. How can I help and support you? And I know it’s really stressful and unfair, but this is the way it is.”

So, I feel that I recognize that I have a lot of privilege in this in terms of the choices that I have as a foreigner living in America, and, even if I was in America, I’m very thankful for the privilege to not have to send my kids to school. So, I really try to not try to push unschooling upon my Chinese friends, because I know that that’s an unfair standard for them, I guess. All I know is that I believe in it, and I’m going for it, and I will support you in whatever choices that you make because I know that you are doing what’s best for your child too.

PAM: Exactly, because everybody’s choices to make right? And they see you living it. You don’t have to convince them or change their minds or anything. Just by seeing you living it they know it’s an option. I can’t imagine trying to put pressure on that or trying to convince them. That won’t help at all, will it?

IRISI: I have talked to some local moms who have chosen alternative ways of doing education and I’m so proud of them. I mean, it’s a really big risk and a really big jump for them. So, I do want to support them as much as I can and to help them to think about education in a different way so that it’s not so scary for them, because it is really scary for them to make choices like that.

PAM: And I mean, that’s the thing about living out in the world as you do—people know you’re there when they have questions or are even just curious. Not even that they are planning a move in the near future, but just curious to learn a little bit more and ask questions. That’s awesome that you’re speaking with them and sharing your experience. That’s awesome. And so, how often do you guys visit in the States then?

IRIS: We come back every summer. I’m not sure how my kids feel. I mean, we grew up in the States, so we are very comfortable in both cultures. I wonder how my kids feel about it? But they love visiting the States and seeing family and everything. We come back every summer for about two months.

PAM: That’s awesome. I will definitely share a link to that blog post.

You also have a great blog post about letting go of expectations especially around achievement—as we’ve been talking about already—but when a child dives into an interest, it’s so easy for us to envision this as “Oh, ok, piano! This is their life-long passion and they can make a career out of it!” And I feel like we almost rationalize to ourselves that it’s ok to let them have at it because, ‘This could be their big career, this could be what they do forever.’ And maybe we realize that that could be pushing a little bit too much, and we try to convince ourselves that we are just supporting him. But that can quickly backfire, can’t it?

IRIS: Yes. I think sometimes that our version of support is actually in the guise of support, but we are actually coming in with our own exceptions, like “Oh, they are going to be amazing at this!” Or, “They are going to go to the Olympics!” Or, “They are going to win an amazing prize!” But we’re actually coming in with our own expectations, and in a lot of ways it’s still about achievement and outside affirmation rather than about the joy and the process of learning something new.

So, maybe part of the appeal of unschooling for me in the beginning was like, ‘Oh, these kids are doing amazing things and they are following their passions, but I think I just read this headline by Idzie Desmarais who writes “I’m Unschooled…” What does she write?

PAM: I’m Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write.

IRIS: Yes, I can write. Yes! And it’s like, sometimes our kids are unexceptional, and why do we have this pressure that we put on our kids to be exceptional and to be a genius at a young age? I mean, some are, and that’s great, but how just to accept our kids where they’re at and just to be fellow sojourners with them in the process of their learning.

I think something that I’m not actually good at right now is actually empowering them and giving them the resources. Sometimes I’m just like, “Oh, just use the free app and see how much you get out of it.” But I don’t know if that’s bad either, because if they really are into it, then they will let me know, and then I will hopefully get them the resources. Maybe in the meantime they can just dabble and that’s ok too.

PAM: Yeah, I think that’s a great point, and I kinda think of it as a dance. I often call it the dance of parenting, because it’s like, you don’t want to overpower them with stuff, and step on their toes and kind of take over like you’re directing, like you’re leading—like in dance terms. But you also want to react to their lead, right? As long as you are reasonably comfortable that in the relationship, if they want more, they’ll say something.

And for us, that’s part of making sure we’re connected, staying connected. Asking them, “How’s that free app going? Did you finish all the stuff that was available there? Did you want a little bit more?” Not always expecting them to come to you. So, again, it’s the dance, right?

You don’t expect them to come, but you don’t want to push too hard, so that they feel like you’re controlling or like you’ve got some kind of expectation hiding in there. So yeah, it’s just the push and pull, back and forth. It’s living together.

IRIS: So, I think that’s something that I really had to learn to step back and hold my tongue and really not try to strew too hard. Like, we go to the library and there’s all these books that I think they might be interested in, and I like ask them, “Do you want to read this?” And they slip through and they are like, “Nope.” And I have to be ok with that! Maybe in the past I would have been like, “Well, I’m going to borrow it anyways and read it to you.” And I’m just backing off and saying. “It’s ok, you’re reading a lot of other stuff.”

My boys are really into coding and gaming and stuff, and so, we are back in the States and I know some people at gaming companies, people who are coders and stuff like that. And so, I asked them, do you want me to ask if you can visit this gaming company or whatever. And I thought this would be really fun for them and they are like, “Ehhhh.” So, there are ways that I’m trying to open doors for them and help them improve or whatever, but they are just not there yet, and so I have to be ok with that.

PAM: I love that example because I had that so many times over the years. Because, they are at a place, and you can kind of see next steps, a few steps down, but I came to realize that that’s a few steps down the path that I envision, right?

So, we are all surprised when I say, ‘I have this way to contact this person, that’s a few steps down. Would you like to go hang out with them, meet them,’ whatever, and they are like, ‘no thanks.’ Because we have no idea what path is their’s, and even if they’re ready to take a next step—maybe they are completely comfortable where they are.

It’s a lot of our work, isn’t it? Thinking that through, figuring that out, realizing that not all of these plans, all these possibilities that we are envisioning for them around the spot that they are in, may be completely different from what they are, right?

IRIS: And my kids are like eight and ten. So, I have to realize that they are still young and there’s no need to box them in yet. See, the tiger mom in me. See, I still need to do that, to untiger.

PAM: Well yeah, because they have this time, if they have the interest, they could be rocking it a few years from now, right? But but but…

IRIS: Exactly. I realize a lot of it is about my own aspirations, my own projections for them, so I need to let that go…

PAM: Because it’s our envisioning their achievement at a young age. So again, it’s our thinking, our conventional definition of success. And it can sneak up on us in so many different ways, can’t it?

IRIS: Yep yep.

PAM: Um, let’s see. Yes!

I have been looking forward to this question, about your experience with the tension of feeling like an outsider in both Chinese and American societies. I was wondering if you’d share your thoughts about weaving together your cultural heritage with what you’re discovering now makes sense with what you’re learning now about children and learning and parenting and family. I was just hoping to know what that kind of looks like for you now? How do you weave that together?

IRIS: Sure. Yeah, It’s a really big question, and I’m still in process. I just went to watch this play last night called Soft Power, and it’s like a, they call it a Chinese musical about America, so it’s written by an Asian American, but it’s sort of like a Chinese view of what America is like.

And there are some scenes in it where, it’s like, as an Asian American in America, I’m never American enough, I’m not western enough, I’m not white enough. And in China, I’m not Chinese enough—like, my Chinese isn’t good enough, my ways of communicating aren’t Chinese enough. And so, in both culture, we are outsiders, or there’s feelings of not being enough, not belonging or whatever.

But I think there is also value in that, in that we can sort of step back and be observers of both cultures, so that we can sort of critique both cultures but also celebrate both cultures so that I don’t have to feel defensive about America. If there’s like something about America that’s gone terribly wrong, I don’t have to say, “Oh, I’m an American. I need to defend it.” or I don’t need to be patriotic or defend it. And same with Chinese culture. If something says something bad about Chinese culture, I can also accept it or deconstruct it or whatever because I’m a little bit of an outsider.

And so, I’m finding that being in this position as an Asian American, I can be a lot more intentional about the things from different cultures that I am incorporating into my family life and into my parenting, so, it doesn’t have to be fully western, or and it doesn’t have to be fully Chinese. Like, nowadays we are more of a global society, and I think if we had the humility to learn from each other, that there are ways that we can learn from different cultures.

I’m just reading all these articles about the Mayan culture in Mexico, and how their children are very different from American children, and how can we learn from that culture, and just how the blessing of being bicultural is that we can be a lot more intentional about the things that we take from each culture.

For example, Chinese culture, the values that we have, the focus on family is very strong, and respect and responsibility and just working hard, and these are things that I associate with Chinese culture. And those are good values, I believe in those values, but I think the how—the way we get to that—is also important, and so maybe the how is a more western approach, because the Chinese way of getting to these values is often through patriarchy, through authoritarianism, through shame.

Those are maybe the ways that sort of get embedded into the culture in a lot of ways, and now that I can see that that’s not how I want to get to those values, I can find other ways to get to those values that are more respectful and provide more agency and freedom. Those are still values that I want to honor and instill in my family, but it’s just a matter of how we get there.

PAM: Yeah, I loved that. I loved the realization that you can still get to the same place, but a different way, with a different path. It’s not, ‘If you don’t use these authoritarian shame control tools, you’ll never get there.’ Like, that’s the message that they use to continue parenting and just structuring society these ways. But to realize that you can still get there but in different way, that’s eye opening, right?

IRIS: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I think—and I’m just speaking for myself as an Asian American—we don’t have a lot of models or examples that we have seen of a family dynamic that operates like that. I think that, at least for me, I’m feeling my way through.

Like, we have the typical white, western family, but in my experience, Asian families, the way we interact, the dynamics are a little bit different. Just feeling our way through so that we can uphold our Asian values and the things that we love about our Asian culture, while doing it in a respectful and honoring way. That seems very un-Asian in some ways.

PAM: I’m really curious. You were talking about being bicultural and the advantage in that you could choose what resonated with you from both cultures. So, it became more about, you’re already open to choices, it sounds like, right? Did that kind of help when you discovered unschooling, which is focused on choices? Did that help a bit that you were already picking and choosing things that were working for you, that this was just kind of another thing that you were going to pick?

IRIS: I think so! I think that living overseas made our lifestyle, very intentional. Because we didn’t totally fit into that culture, and we weren’t going to just bring American culture over there either, right? So, it was definitely we made very intentional choices about how we were going to live, and the aspects of American culture that we wanted to bring over that were important to us, but ways that we wanted to incorporate the culture around us too. And so I think that did give us the freedom to be more intentional and purposeful—those words keep coming up!—about the choices we made with schooling.

So, maybe if we had lived here in the States we wouldn’t have had to question it was much, because that’s just the way everyone does it, but because we had to be really intentional about that as we lived overseas. In some ways it opens the doors for us for a lot more options in some ways, because we aren’t stuck in a certain track.

PAM: I can’t remember, I’m going to butcher the quote completely, but you know “once your mind opens to a new idea, right? Or grows from a new idea, it can never go back.” Like, once you see one choice and you make a little bit different choice, all of a sudden you see more of them everywhere.

IRIS: Yeah.

PAM: Well, that’s beautiful.

You recently published a blog post titled, ‘Unschooling as an Asian American is an Act of Resistance.’ I thought it was a great piece, Iris, and I was hoping you’d share your thoughts about it here.

IRIS: That blog post was about how, as a Chinese American specifically, it adds a different layer to my decision to unschool, and I think that’s true for a lot of people of color. It’s not solely about educational choice, that there is a component of resisting racism in it. So, part of it for me was about resisting.

There are three thing I was resisting, and the first one was resisting cultural pressures, and I talked about this already a little bit, about Chinese culture in particular emphasizes a lot on academics, like, the test-based system pretty much originated in China. So, really rejecting that view of what education looks like, so from the Asian side, resisting those cultural pressures of having high academics or going to an Ivy League school or having a certain type of career. So, I’m resisting those pressures on that side, which as a culture and maybe my extended family, they are like “What are you doing? That’s very strange what you’re doing!”

And I think also as a second generation immigrant, where a lot of our families have moved to the west to provide more opportunities, to provide these educational opportunities, and then if you don’t take them, they feel like, “Why? What did we sacrifice all that for?” So, there’s a lot of pressure on that side of it.

I think there is also the resistance of Asian stereotypes. Where maybe there’s views of like the stereotypical Asian nerd, or you see Jeremy Lin, who’s a Chinese American basketball player. He has faced a lot of racism because people just don’t see him as athletic. People just don’t see Asians as athletic, or attractive, or as outspoken, or as a leader. So, there are these ways that society stereotypes Asians as not having these opportunities, especially in a schooling environment.

So, there’s ways that we can achieve. Like, if we were on the academic route and we’re smart and that follows the stereotype so people can accept that, but if you don’t want to follow that stereotype, like if you aren’t super academic but you really enjoy dance, or you want to be a football player or whatever it is, there are stereotypes that prevent you from achieving those things in that environment.

I feel that unschooling is a way outside of that. That we can provide different opportunities that hopefully can resist some of those stereotypes and not have kids boxed into being a certain type of Asian. So, there’s that.

And then I think the last one was the curriculum, and the very white-centric, very patriotic, American, information that is given in most western schooling environments is very western-centric. And I think that we are realizing more and more that the story we are telling each other isn’t the whole truth, and that there are many different perspectives out there on the history. So, not only stories about our country or about the world that are very euro-centric, but pretty much all of curriculum is. Or even sports—most schools don’t necessarily have Asian sports like badminton, but they will have basketball or golf, things that are more associated with western things. Or the music that is played in band, or just a lot of different things that are just typical, white-centric instead of a more global, multicultural, view of the world. And so, unschooling can allow us to expose them to whatever resonates with them, and it doesn’t have to be just that one canon that we are used to.

PAM: Yeah, that’s so narrow, isn’t it? The curriculum, just in general. And yeah, you don’t really realize it because, if you’re on that path, you just absorb it because that is what we are supposed to do. Somebody has said, “This is what we cover,” and somebody has said “This is the angle of the story that we are going to cover.”

I loved the idea of it’s also being a resistance to all that—conventional isn’t even the right word, stereotypical probably is, for lack of a better word—white culture that’s there, and all of the other stories are ignored. And I love that idea of it also being a big act of resistance of that main cultural story.

That the world is so much bigger, so much wider. And that we can bring that world to the kids. But also, just standing up and choosing that it’s important to us. It’s our choice too for our families. That this is an important way that we want to be in the world and that we want to share with our children. Does that makes sense?

IRIS: Yeah, definitely. And where they can be sort of the protagonist of their own stories, whereas like, if we grow up in the typical American schooling system, we are never the protagonist of our own story system, we are never the protagonist in our own stories. The stories that we read, there are very few, there are more and more, but very few books that are required reading at that age, that tell stories about Asian Americans or Asians.

PAM: I love that point too, and I’ll share a link to that too.

I really wanted to know what your favorite thing about unschooling is right now?

IRIS: There are so many things, but I really think it’s not so much just about schooling, but it’s really a whole lifestyle sometimes, so I just really love how it gives me so many opportunities to connect with my children, and just the relationship that we have with one another and the growing respect we have for one another. And just enjoying each other.

Whereas, it’s not about herding my kids through the day, getting them to one class or that class, it’s really about just enjoying life together. It’s a really slow pace that allows us the opportunity to just connect and enjoy one another. So, I’m really thankful for that.

PAM: Oh, I love that. And you don’t realize how fast that pace is until you step away, do you think? I found that I appreciated that slowness and that ability to be in relationship and be in the moment with them way more than I even expected.

IRIS: Yeah, yeah, and I think that’s sort of my personality too, I’m more of a homebody I like things to be slower. I get overwhelmed with too many things. But, yeah, just really enjoying that opportunity to build relationship with them.

PAM: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me Iris. I’m so glad you said yes. I had so much fun!

IRIS: I had a lot of fun too. Thank you for asking me Pam.

PAM: Before we go, where is the best place for people to connect with you online?

IRIS: My blog is untigering.com and I also have a facebook page that’s Untigering. I also started a facebook group for parents who are or have been tiger parents, and that’s called Untigering Parents, and then on twitter I am @untigeringmom.

PAM: Excellent. I will put all those links in the show notes for people too. And thanks so much. Have a great day. Say hi to everyone. You guys are in the States now, right?

IRIS: Yes, we are.

PAM: Yay. Thank you! Bye!

IRIS: Ok, bye!

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Boundaries, Comfort Zones, and Capacity.

The idea of boundaries comes up pretty often in conventional circles, often through the lens of self-care, encouraging people to set boundaries with their kids, their partners, their parents, and so forth, and to stay strong in defending them. But in this episode, we’re digging into the language of boundaries and exploring some alternative ways of communicating our needs and learning about the important people in our lives.

We hope today’s episode sparks some fun insights for you!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

Want the full collection of Living Joyfully Foundations podcast episodes as an audiobook (and the transcripts edited into an ebook)? Find them here in the Shop!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

EPISODE QUESTIONSThink of a boundary you hold right now with your partner or a close friend. What might be gained from having some conversations around it? Might it give them some more helpful information about you? Could it help you feel more seen and heard in the relationship?How does the idea of using comfort zones to better understand and communicate your needs land with you?How often do you operate outside of your capacity to thrive?Can you think of times that you didn’t trust someone else’s definition of their capacity? How did it play out? Did it impact your relationship?TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully podcast. We are happy you’re interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.

And in today’s episode, we are going to talk about boundaries, comfort zones, and capacity. And it may end up being a bit longer than usual, but we are really excited to have this conversation. There are some big paradigm shifts around these ideas that can really have a positive impact on your relationships.

Now, our focus with this podcast is on cultivating connected, trusting, and respectful relationships with our partner, with our children, with anyone we choose to have that level of a relationship with. And we soon discover that that means deeply understanding ourselves so that we can more gracefully navigate the edges where we engage with others. So, that’s really the foundation of this conversation.

And to start with, let’s dive into the idea of boundaries, because it comes up pretty often in conventional circles, often through the lens of self-care, encouraging individuals to set strong boundaries with their partners, for their parents, to set boundaries with their kids, and just to stay strong in defending them.

And the motivation behind that idea makes a lot of sense. It’s to encourage us to not be manipulated into doing things that we don’t want to do. That makes a lot of sense. But the solution proposed of setting and defending boundaries can often create challenges and disconnection in our relationship. Can’t it?

ANNA: Yes! I just don’t find the boundary language particularly helpful. So, the energy of it feels very final and it has this feeling of drawing a line in the sand and, “I’m going to defend that line to the death,” and also that somehow, I’m letting myself down if I don’t uphold it, which is just this double whammy coming at us.

PAM: Exactly.

ANNA: So, the alternative I found is to look at the moment in front of me, to be honest about where I am, what I can do in that moment, because it changes. There are things we can’t anticipate about the situations we’re faced with.

And I think, especially with my loved ones, I want to have an energy of curiosity and connection. Standing on the other side of an intensely drawn boundary just doesn’t have the same feel to me. And this could be a language thing. I’m definitely a word person and I tend to respond energetically to words. So, I look to my language to help me cultivate the energy I want to bring and the person I want to be in a situation. That’s why these words are important to me and why I really love teasing apart these nuances.

PAM: Yes, yes. I find it very helpful to consider my language, as well, including the language I use when thinking or talking to myself. When I use the word “boundaries,” does it mean a hard stop to me? When I envision someone approaching it and approaching me, am I looking at the line or am I looking at the person?

Because what a pre-drawn line doesn’t do is consider the context of the moment. Am I feeling resourced and centered? Are they? How’s our day been going? What does their request look like through their eyes? What does it look like through my eyes? What constraints may be at play? Can we get curious together about ways to navigate it this time?

Because I think one of the things we worry about is, if I do it this time, I’ll have to do it every time. “There’s that boundary. I moved that boundary and now it’s forever there.” But that is not true. We are not giving tacit permission forever more. We’re chatting with them about this particular moment and that is how we learn more about each other.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. Exactly. And keeping in mind that context keeps it from feeling arbitrary to the other person involved as well. We’re reacting together to the context of the situation, and that’s where the learning’s happening.

And I do think boundaries can have a place when we’re faced with toxic relationships. This can be friends or even family from our family of origin. When a relationship is harming us, when we find ourselves tied in knots thinking about it, when we see it impacting our mental health or happiness, boundaries can be a helpful step to distance ourselves enough to see the situation more clearly. Even that doesn’t have to be a forever step, but it can be a self-preservation step to gain perspective and to decide if this relationship is one that will work for us going forward.

But if we’re choosing to spend our life with someone, I truly believe that boundary language just tends to shut down communication. It doesn’t leave room for finding solutions that feel good to both parties. And I think it’s important to realize that this is not about not expressing or meeting our needs, but when we do it in relationship, it looks so different.

If we want to have a consensual relationship where the parties involved are heard and seen and we find agreeable solutions, standing behind a hard boundary can get in the way of that. And I’ve found that I can honor who I am and still be open and curious to finding solutions that feel good to everyone involved.

PAM: Yes! I think that is such an important distinction. We’re talking about relationships with the people in our lives with whom we want to cultivate strong, connected, and trusting relationships.

So, when it comes to extended family or people at work, a boundary can be a useful tool to quickly communicate our needs to someone. But with those we want a closer and more intimate relationship with, a boundary can get in the way of that. We tend to pull that out instead of having a conversation.

But it’s in those conversations where we come to better understand each other, where we cultivate connections, where we build trust. That space is where relationships flourish.

ANNA: Yes. And so, another thing that I’ve noticed, I call the pendulum. For much of our early life, we’re basically subject to others in a variety of different ways. We’re told what to do, how to do it, often subjugating our needs and preferences. And somewhere along the line, often in our thirties and forties, we have this awakening and we realize, “Wait a minute! My needs are important here, too!”

And so, you can go into this intense period of advocating for your needs. And I think this is when the strong boundary language that we hear around really resonates with people. “Yes! This feels awesome!” But I’ve also seen that as we get a bit older that things soften and we realize that we don’t have to defend our needs to the death, that we can honor ourselves and honor another, and that solutions are really there to be found.

And I want to say very clearly that there’s no right and wrong about this. There’s no timeline about any of it. It’s just an interesting pattern and I think it can help to be aware of it and maybe watch for it. Are we swinging way over here? Do we want to come back maybe more towards the center? See how it’s feeling as we play with unpacking any baggage we have in this area.

And I think pretty much all of us have some baggage in this area.

PAM: Yeah, no, I do love the metaphor or the image of the pendulum, and absolutely it can be a valuable part of our journey, a helpful part, to swing right up to the very edge, because then we’re gaining experience with what that feels like, and we notice the pieces that aren’t working.

And when we understand those kinds of patterns, it can be helpful for us, too, to help us recognize where we might be on the journey and use that information to help us just decide where we want to go next.

But I do love that idea of the patterns and just paying attention, because, for me, I enjoy looking for that and seeing those bigger picture patterns of how things flow.

And you mentioned the baggage that we can bring. Because, for me, as I thought about how the idea of boundaries feels for me, and thinking back to when I was first playing around with this, I realized that I grew up steep in the conventional culture of competition. So, as I started thinking about this myself, that’s one of the places I went.

So, when I thought about how I anticipated engaging with others in terms of boundaries, it really spiked my defensive energy. As soon as I was feeling defensive, I saw the other person, whether it was my child, partner, whoever I was engaged with, I saw them as the opposition. Like, “You’re the enemy, because I need to defend this boundary. This is a win-lose situation.”

And time and again after having brought that energy to many a conversation, just like you were saying, I learned through experience that when I did that, especially with someone that I love, that perspective and energy just hindered our interaction. It got in the way of us moving forward.

I noticed that my defensiveness raised their defensiveness, which meant that we were both less empathetic. We were just defending harder and harder. And we were each just focused on our own bits and we were only seeing it through our own lens. We listened to the other person not to hear those new bits of information that curiosity can bring and that we notice. We were listening to them so that we could find the things that we could twist in support of the position that we were defending.

So, as I sat with the discomfort of these two seemingly contradictory ideas, “I need boundaries so that people don’t walk all over me,” and, “I want to be connected to this person,” I came to see that, for me, the image of holding a boundary sparks that defensive energy, which negatively impacts my connection with my loved ones.

So, even a rule or a boundary that made sense to me, what it did was shut down so much rich conversation and learning and my opportunity to learn more things about these people in my life, things that I would have never discovered if I didn’t have that conversation in the first place. But those conversations didn’t bubble up if it was just like, “No, you can’t do that. You can’t do that.” 

ANNA: Right. And that’s the thing. We’re talking about a very different style of communication and problem solving, and so I hope it’s clear that as we’re looking at it, because we have this one side, you the zero-sum game, defend your position at all costs. That’s pretty common in our culture. We see it in governments to toddlers.

And then here, we’re talking about listening, stating our needs, listening to someone else’s needs, having those conversations, learning more about each other, moving forward together on the same team. It’s so different, but it’s so much more pleasant and so rich with the discoveries about each other and where we can go from there.

PAM: Absolutely. And what helped encourage me to have those conversations was moving away from the idea of boundaries. And instead, I started using the idea of comfort zones. And what that shift from boundaries to comfort zones reminded me to do was to bring my sense of self. So, it’s not about, “I have no boundaries now, do whatever,” again. It’s never about taking our needs out of the equation. It’s more fully bringing our needs into the moment and into that conversation without having to draw that line in the sand.

So, boundaries feel external to me while comfort zones feel internal. Comfort zones remind me to open up and lean in rather than to stand there right behind the line.

ANNA: Right. And, for me, it’s that line in the sand that I wanted to avoid. And with comfort zones, I just like the feel of it, because we do talk about stretching and growing our comfort zones, and I think all of my relationships have helped me do that.

I think we can come into all of our relationships with some pretty rigid ideas of how things should be. And that can stem from our childhood experiences, the prevailing relationship ideas around us, what’s being modeled for us. But those rigid beliefs don’t take into account the actual humans that we’re living with, how they see the world, what feels good to them, how they process information, what they want to accomplish and learn. And that’s where the curiosity and the communication that we’re talking about comes into play.

I don’t have to stretch my comfort zone, but I want to be open to examining it, especially if it’s somehow putting a limit on someone else. And so, that’s why, in general, I just prefer to look at needs. If we have a situation where we’re at an impasse, if we switch the focus to the underlying needs, then we have more room to find the creative solutions that feel good to both of us. So, I like the feel of that again. It’s just a totally different paradigm.

PAM: It really is. And I love the way you framed that as needs. For me, that shift was that these conversations really ended up being less about the thing, the thing that we were in conflict about, and just more about the people involved, which fully included me, and that’s where the needs come in.

Being curious about what the person is needing or wanting to do and understanding the motivation behind that.

Why is that the next step that makes the most sense to them? And why is that next step right at the edge of my comfort zone? Why is that needling at me? And when we better understand those pieces, we can better explain our perspective and needs to them, which gives them the opportunity to understand us better.

And then, from there, maybe they give us more information that we didn’t think of, information that addresses our need. Maybe we give them a piece of information that they missed, and together we find a different way to meet their need. There’s just so much more space for people to move when you take out the competitive nature of that hard line and just start playing, just start thinking, just start sharing what your needs are, what you’re wanting to accomplish, and seeing where that goes. We can be so much more creative when you take that competitive nature out, I think.

ANNA: Right! Because, as humans, if we’re backed into a corner, we’ll defend something to the death even if we don’t agree with it. It’s just this reaction when someone’s coming at us to start defending. But you see that very different exchange that you were just talking about. It’s like, “Well, here’s what I’m feeling worried about.” “Oh, okay. Well, what about this then? What about that?” We’re working together to try to make both of us feel comfortable, both of us feel good moving forward, and it’s just so different.

PAM: Yeah, and I like how it feels, understanding that I’m choosing to stretch my comfort zone rather than naming it in my self-talk as, “I failed to defend my boundary.” It’s night and day how that feels. “I failed,” or “I chose.” And we can also choose to just not stretch, but we can choose to operate completely outside our comfort zone for a while. Sometimes a situation needs me to do something that in any other circumstances I would not choose to do, but this is where I am right now, and that’s not a failure either.

ANNA: Right. And I think relationships give us so many opportunities to do that, to stretch, but also to just step outside for a minute to take care of business. But I always want to ground myself in the choice. And you mentioned it before.

So, I’m not great at parties. Again, this is a well-known fact. If David wants to go to a party with his friends, it will no doubt stretch my comfort zone. But instead of feeling pressured or as if I need to set a boundary around it, I can first ground myself in the fact that I always have a choice. And then I can also feel that choice and I can bring into play my whys.

In this case, I want to support him. He thinks it’ll be a fun night. And so, with some further conversation, we can figure out a way for it to feel good to us both. Maybe for me, that’s knowing where it will be, who will be there, how long will we need to stay. Should I drive separately? If that doesn’t feel good, can we agree not to stay too late?

That conversation helps us learn more about each other. He’s learning what my concerns are, also what my tender areas are, and I’m learning why it’s important to him and what parts he’s looking forward to and why he wants to go in the first place. And if I just shut that down summarily, “I don’t go to parties, I don’t like them,” we’d miss this chance to dig into that and to find something that feels good to both of us.

PAM: Yes. And that is the beauty of comfort zones for me versus boundaries. It encourages me to actually pay attention to the moment, to the context of the moment, versus, this is my line. This is always my line.

Conversations are so much richer and our relationship connections are strengthened, not strained. I love that piece. When we have that boundary, “I don’t go to parties,” that’s just what we pull out. But remembering my why, and everybody’s why, I can support the why and the joy and all those pieces.

And there are times when I’m feeling resourced, when I’m just in a great place and I can stretch my comfort zone a bit and we can enjoy this thing together. Maybe we’re not enjoying the same pieces, but we can jigger things around so that there are also pieces that work for me. That’s so much richer and there’s just so many more experiences in our lives, like not literally having to do things, but our worlds are bigger when we know more about each other, when we can navigate those pieces.

Okay, so there’s one more aspect that we wanted to explore, and that’s the idea of capacity. I feel it fits so beautifully with this conversation of boundaries and comfort zones, because sometimes we do have a pretty hard limit on what we can physically or emotionally take on in a particular moment, and it can feel a bit more definitive than a comfort zone.

So, for example, having a migraine or being very tired can definitely impact our ability to engage. So, even if we’re not able to stretch right now, I think the idea of capacity just feels more informative and less confrontational. It feels more supportive of the conversations that we’re talking about than a boundary or a limit, or, “I can’t do this.”

It quickly communicates to ourselves and to the others involved in the conversation what we are feeling that we are and aren’t able to take on in this moment. It’s more information about us, again. And capacity can be a great lens to use for us to check in with ourselves and just really feel what’s up.

If our first reaction is, “Oh my god, no! I don’t want to go to a party!” Oh, where did that really strong reaction come from? Oh, maybe my capacity’s really low and I need to do something to address that. 

ANNA: Oh my gosh. Yes. Capacity just feels so much more descriptive to me and it’s much more about the moment that we’re in, because my capacity at the end of a long day is very different from my capacity in the morning. And there can be so many things at play that come into this piece of capacity. Sleep, money, time, illness, all of these different factors.

But what I want to do with all exchanges with the people I love is to keep us on the same side. They aren’t trying to thwart me or harm me. We’re all just trying to get our needs met. And as we keep those lines of communication open, we build trust in each other to work together to help meet all of our needs.

And another idea that a friend introduced to me related to capacity is that we can operate within our capacity and survive, but we might not be able to thrive. So, we’re kind of on the edge of our capacity and we can physically get it done, but it might be taking an emotional toll or even a physical toll, so that when we keep choice in that equation, we can choose to operate within our capacity to thrive. We can communicate that to the people in our lives and help them do the same.

So, I can honor who I am and still support my partner or child, and they can honor who they are and still consider those around them. It’s really important to me to honor someone else’s comfort zone or their personal definition of capacity, even if I don’t understand it or I think they could do more.

This, again, comes into play with our partners and our children. Our honoring of this helps them develop a strong sense of what works for them and their why. I want to trust their process and that they will stretch when it feels right to them. And so, maybe it’s helpful next time we bump up against someone when we think they could do a bit more than maybe they are, is to consider that maybe they’re operating within their capacity to thrive, not their capacity to survive. And wouldn’t it be beautiful if we could all stay in that thriving zone as much as possible?

Because there are going to absolutely be times where we are pushed way outside of it to deal with an emergency or because something has happened around us that we can’t control. But what if, when we see our loved one not doing something that we think they could, we give them that generous assumption that it’s really just them knowing themselves, knowing that whatever it is may push them over an edge that is into survival mode versus thriving. I just love that framing of it as we look at another person and maybe, hopefully it stops the judgment.

PAM: Oh yes. I love looking at things through their eyes, which we had talked about earlier. And even when we don’t understand why they’re making the choices they’re making, remembering that we don’t need to, that it is making sense to them, even if we think that they should be able to do X, Y, or Z.

It doesn’t matter. What matters and what’s interesting, that’s where my curiosity goes, is, “Ooh. That’s feeling really good to them.” And remembering that their choices really aren’t about me. They are not trying to piss me off with this choice. There is some reason for them.

So, I love that distinction between thriving and surviving. Because when we honor those choices, it just gives us another piece of the picture of who they are and understanding that there can be so many reasons why for them. Capacity can be a reason why they aren’t up for it or don’t want to stretch or do the thing that you know that they are capable of doing sometimes.

And it’s especially helpful to question the boundaries that are handed to us by society. One that we see held up often in conventional culture is, “I’m not going to do something for someone else that they can do for themselves.” Oh my gosh. “They need to learn how to take care of themselves.” You see it more often with children, but absolutely you see it with adults, too, that if we do it for them, we are being taken advantage of.

ANNA: But really, we’re just missing these opportunities to deepen that relationship. And then what I’ve seen, and I know you’ve seen it, too, is that when I’m feeling out of sorts and I’m just not wanting to get my own water or whatever it is, both my partner and my kids were happy to bring it over to me because that’s the relationship that we cultivated.

I don’t want to die on a hill of, “I’m not going to do something for you, because you can do it for yourself.” I do things for people all the time that they can absolutely do for themselves. I do it from a place of love and because it’s within my capacity. And when it’s not, I know they’ve got my back. And these skills are critical in all relationships, understanding it’s about learning to communicate more about my needs versus expecting them to understand it or stand behind this strongly-drawn boundary with no explanation. It’s just more information and transparency. The more we have, the easier it is to be in relationship. And, for me, the human experience is relationships.

PAM: It’s relationships. I know. And when you think about it, the more information that you have, it is so often so much easier to find that path through those pieces of information. If I only have two pieces, “They want to do this,” and, “I don’t want them to do this,” how do you find a path between the chasm of those two things?

But as we share a little bit more information back and forth, we’re narrowing in on the path that we can travel between those. Sometimes it takes three sentences and off we go, we’ve got it figured out. And sometimes it takes longer conversations, maybe over days and weeks, but we can find our way. 

ANNA: I mean, it’s just a quick way for me to go, “Hmm. Okay. I want to turn this around a little bit. I want to look at what’s happening to get us back on the same side,” because even when it feels really hard, and it may take a couple weeks to figure out something that’s really big that we’re trying to figure out as a family or a couple, if we’re both over here together working on the problem, it feels so much better than being on these separate sides with this giant decision in front of us, and we’re not really communicating about what our capacity or comfort zones are or any of those pieces. And it feels isolating and tough. But when we’re together, even if it takes us time, it just feels better. It’s about being open about it and examining that and seeing what makes sense to you and it’s so individual.

PAM: Yeah, it’s so individual. It’s so rich. And as we talked about in an earlier episode, where do we want to spend our time? Do I want to spend my time on the same team working together? Finding a way? Because when you’re working together and finding your way together, you’re both invested in this path at the end of it, rather than one powering over another, convincing you to do it this way, or us convincing them to do it this way. But then there’s tears at the relationship. And then we need to invest the work in, in repairs.

So, for this week, we have some fun questions for you to ponder around the ideas of boundaries, comfort zones, and capacities.

The first is, think of a boundary you hold right now with your partner or a close friend. What might be gained from having some conversations around it? Might it give them some more helpful information about you, help you feel more seen and heard in the relationship?

I think that’s another big piece. A boundary only shares that little line of information. It doesn’t share all the little pieces of me that came up with that in the first place.

ANNA: And can we really be understood if they don’t understand those other pieces? They can still honor that boundary. And maybe that feels okay, but with a partner who I’m in love with and this is who I want to be with, that deeper understanding of why that is a rub for me would be so much more important to me than them just honoring what might feel like an arbitrary boundary to them.

PAM: Exactly. Without that information, it can feel like an arbitrary boundary. And absolutely, they can still respect it, but there is a richness that’s missing then that’s the only piece of communication.

Okay, so next, how does the idea of using comfort zones to better understand and communicate your needs land with you? Does that make sense? Maybe try that framework and that language next time and see how it unfolds. Remember, as we talked about, let’s play with this. Let’s see. Nothing is a forever commitment. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to try this comfort zone thing, and now I can never use any other language.” No. Play with it.

ANNA: We’re just having fun. We’re just learning things. We’re just trying to learn more about ourselves.

PAM: Yes, yes. Okay. Next one. How often do you operate outside of your capacity to thrive? Another great question, just to dive into that self-awareness piece. It may not be something that we communicate very often, but understanding it about ourselves, noticing how often we are stepping outside of our capacity to thrive more in survival mode. And then that also can help us understand why we’re feeling tired, why we don’t feel like we have a lot of energy, what kind of self-care pieces that we can bring in there. Anyway, it’s a great question to start with. How often do you operate outside of your capacity to thrive?

ANNA: Because I think it also impacts our relationships. So, our culture values this operating at just survival mode. And so, it’s something we all fall into, schools and work and all the things that we’re doing. And so, it is a really interesting question to say, “Am I able to thrive and have the relationships that I want and do the things that bring joy to me? And what can I change?” So, it’s like, “Am I operating outside of that and then what would that look like?” So, I think, yeah, that’s going to be really interesting.

PAM: Yes. And our last one, can you think of times that you didn’t trust someone else’s definition of their capacity? Ooh, that’s a good one. How did it play out? Did it impact your relationship? It’s very curious to see what other people’s lens of their capacity is. As you were saying, are they just living through the cultural expectation that we survive, we go till we drop, put it all in, we are productive to the max. Are they bringing that in? 

ANNA: And I want to add to this one a little bit, that sometimes when we are in that survival mode, when we are pushing, pushing, pushing, we can have resentment towards someone that’s choosing differently. And that resentment may not even make a lot of sense to us, but I think when you look at it through this lens, it’s like, oh, wait a minute. Do I really want to be resentful or passing judgment on someone that’s actually taking care of their mental health and doing this for self-care, just because I’m running my nose to the grindstone?

So, I think it’s really interesting. For me, again, it’s this awareness. It’s like, when we name these things, we’re able to distance ourselves. It doesn’t feel like it’s all who we are. We can go, “Okay, this is something I can examine. I can play with it. I can see how it feels.” You don’t have to make changes, but playing with it just gives you so much more information. And especially if you see it causing a problem in a relationship, it’s very much worth your time to look at those pieces.

PAM: Yeah. Oh, that’s one of the reasons why we are so excited to be sharing these questions, because we are not trying to get rid of some rules or paradigms and then being prescriptive about how, now you must do it this way. No, let’s play with these ideas. These are things that we’ve found helpful in our relationships, paradigm shifts that have helped us. There is no expectation that it will work out any particular way for anyone else, but it is so worth the time to play with it. 

ANNA: And especially if you’re feeling pinches, because I think that’s the thing, if our relationships are humming along, then we’ve got a good understanding. Whatever we’re doing is working.

But when we start to feel the pinch, when we start to feel a distance, when we have a rupture for whatever reason, using these things that we’re talking about can help us really kind of zero in versus standing in a place of hurt or not really knowing how to make the repair or not knowing how to change it even if we can make the repair, because we don’t know how we got there.

And so, these pieces allow us to play with that and to look at it and be like, “Okay, I’m going to be more intentional about this piece for these relationships that are important to me.” 

PAM: Yeah. And for the moving forward piece, like standing there, “I don’t know how we got there,” and two weeks later, “I don’t know how we got there.”

ANNA: We’re here again!

PAM: Okay. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you next time. Bye.

ANNA: Bye bye.

On this episode of Exploring Unschooling, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about when school isn’t working. In the northern hemisphere, many children are going “back to school” and so, we wanted to share some thoughts about what can happen when school just isn’t working for your child.

In our conversation, we talked about changes you might notice in your child, about the choices that we have when it comes to living and learning, and about the value of community during that big transition away from mainstream schooling.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey and in your relationships!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello everyone! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts today, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about what you might do when school isn’t working for your child. But before we dive in, I’d just like to take a moment to invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network.

There is just so much value in walking alongside others on this journey, particularly any kind of unconventional journey like when school isn’t working for our child, because while everyone’s journey is unique, many of us face similar obstacles and challenges. And that is where the power of community shines in feeling seen and heard by others.

In the Network, you can learn from the experiences of other parents on similar journeys, draw inspiration from their a-ha moments, and gain insights from the unique and creative ways they navigate both their own and their family’s needs. To learn more, just follow the link in the show notes or go to livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on Community in the menu. And Anna, would you like to get us started?

ANNA: I would. Oh goodness. This topic has been coming up a lot over the last few months, really this year, and we just thought it was important to create a space to talk about it. I’m excited about today, because the truth is school doesn’t work for everyone.

Instead of the message that people tend to hear, which is, “There’s something wrong with your child. Let’s do X, Y, or Z to fix your child,” we wanted to say, it’s okay. It’s okay if a particular environment doesn’t work for your child. Parents will tie themselves up in knots trying to make it work and make themselves sick thinking that there’s something wrong with their child or that they’ve done something wrong as a parent, when again, it really just is an environment that doesn’t work for everyone.

And when we think about how people are different, which if you’ve been here any amount of time, you know we talk about a lot, it can help so much in this situation. Because we just are so different. Our brains process information differently. We prioritize things differently. We have different sensitivities and capacities and all of it is just fine.

The journey is in learning more about ourselves and what we need to thrive. And often that just can’t happen in a one size fits all environment. And honestly, how could one size fit all? We’re so different. It’s amazing that it works as much as it does, and we know there are a lot of issues along the way, even for those where it “works”.

I feel like when we think about people and how we work, some people need to move to think, pacing around helps them really solidify an idea. Others like music to help calm a busy mind and that focuses them on the task at hand. Some people like to deep dive into a subject and are not coming up for air for weeks to understand all of the nuances. Others like to flit around and find patterns. They’re pulling from different arenas, to get this bigger web of learning and picture for themselves. None of those types are served in a school environment where it’s, “Sit still. Be quiet. Do this now.” Bell rings, “Do something completely different now.” That’s the way they play the game there. And it doesn’t work for a lot of brains. 

And as soon as we turn a discerning eye to it, we can see why they need to do it that way. It often boils down to crowd management. And this is not about teachers. Teachers are incredible.They’re devoting their lives to creating a wonderful environment, but it just can’t meet the needs of all children. I mean, it just can’t.

So, we see then that it’s not about something being wrong with our child, but it’s more about what our particular child needs to thrive and learn. And it just might not be able to happen in a traditional school environment.

The good news is there are options. Whether it’s an alternative school that maybe can address particular needs of a child or homeschooling or unschooling, there are so many different ways to find what works. Because we’re learning creatures. In a safe, affirming environment, we have almost an unlimited capacity to learn.

Here, we talk a lot about unschooling, because it is what worked for our families. And I do believe it provides a great environment for us to learn more about ourselves and what we need to thrive. Then with that knowledge, we can take that into all sorts of environments and find our own unique path.

I feel passionate about this particular thing because we’ve met so many parents along the way on the Network and in other realms and they are feeling so terrible. And I just want them to know that there’s nothing wrong with a child that doesn’t fit in traditional school.

Seeing children shine for being exactly who they are is a beautiful gift that changes that child. And honestly, it changes us, too. And I’m going to even say it changes the world. So, I’m pretty passionate about this. 

ERIKA: I think it does change the world. I don’t even think that’s an exaggeration. This is such a beautiful topic. I would love to pass along the message that there is nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with your family. There’s nothing wrong with your child if you’re finding that school is not a fit. It just makes sense. People are so different.

It makes sense that the one-size-fits-all model is not going to work. At the beginning of my unschooling journey, and I think for a lot of people, there are these huge paradigm shifts. When you’re first starting to just even consider, “Should I, or can I, opt out of this system?”

I remember reading John Holt and reading John Taylor Gatto and really, Gatto in particular is very vehement in his arguments against school. And as someone who went to a lot of school and did very well, I feel like reading those kinds of alternative voices did help me a lot in those beginning days.

They helped me to wrap my head around this huge paradigm shift, realizing I didn’t really think about all of those negative pieces when I was just doing what I was told to do and achieving in that system. My children are what sparked me to do that investigation and dive into those topics.

But it did help me to listen to this podcast, to read Pam’s books, and all of these other voices giving me alternatives to what I had always heard my entire life growing up. And so, I don’t know if scary is quite the right word, but it was a really big moment in my brain. 

I felt like school worked for me. I thought it was going to work for my kids. Now that I’m looking at it, maybe it didn’t work as well for me as I thought it did. I can now see new possibilities for my children and especially when I’m looking at kids who are neurodiverse, who have very particular interests and strong interests. I was just picturing that kind of bustling, busy, loud school environment and just not seeing how that could work well for my sensitive first child.

And the journey began there. But it is fun to know how many options there are. And to me, the way that I view unschooling is it’s like we have every option now. If they do want to go back to school, that’s okay too. Because it’s all about learning, learning more about ourselves, learning more about our kids, and then making choices that feel good and feel empowering to us and being able to shift when things aren’t working. So, yeah, I love it.

PAM: Yes. Love it. Love it. And I think that is a place that we get to too in that, at first, I didn’t even know it was a choice. So, for me, that was one of the reasons when, way back when, when I started writing and sharing a little bit more online.  It was just so people knew it was a choice. That was an a-ha moment. Mind blown. Like, oh, they don’t have to go to school. This was, I was just doing the calculations, 23 years ago. 23 years ago. It is so interesting when you can recognize, oh, it is a choice. It doesn’t have to be that way.

And then you can get to that place of learning, like you said, Erika, that these other choices are valid too, that it’s not a failure. I didn’t fail because this environment doesn’t fit for my kids. And a lot of the messaging still is around fixing the kids and getting the kids ready so that they are ready to fit into this environment, et cetera.

But yes, there are more and more voices now and it’s much more well known that these are options and these don’t work for everyone, each one doesn’t work for everybody. And then, if the kids do come home or you just choose not to go, and like you said, Erika, it is totally cool too if they at some point decide they want to try it. At that point, it’s not about school or not school, it’s about what works for this child? What would this child like to do? What things do they want to try? I like to think of learning as a big buffet table and school is a plate on the table, that is a choice you can make.

But before I learned about this, before my mind was blown, it was the only plate on the table. That’s all I knew, right? But now there are so many plates. There is truly a buffet there, and you’re less tied to a particular choice and it’s more about helping each person, us included, because we don’t stop learning just because we’re adults, right? Seeing what choice we want to make in this moment and trying it out and knowing we still have a choice. We can try something and we’re not getting out of it what we thought we were going to get out of it, or we did for a while and now it’s no longer working. That’s totally okay. We can change our mind or we can say that’s enough of that dish. It comes back to our choices. 

And I came to that understanding and realization for my kids through learning that school was a choice, and coming to the point to see that when school’s not working, it’s not about blaming the child and needing to fix the child.

This environment, like you said, Anna, is set up this way because it’s efficient. Teachers are doing their best with the environment as it is and stretching it. When my kids went to school, we had teachers that worked with us, but still there’s only so much they can do. 

There’s the constrained environment of, these are the hours, these are how many kids are in a class. All those pieces. So, it really was, for me, just getting through that initial tendency to blame or to feel like it was a failure to move away from it and to recognize that buffet table that’s really there and that those choices all have value, more or less, just depending on the person who’s at the table trying to decide what they want to partake of in this moment.

ANNA: I love that, because I feel like it’s an empowering place, to realize that it’s a choice and we get to choose. Because I think environments that are big systems like that, I think of medical systems, but also the school system, they drive off of a sense of urgency. And so it’s very much like, “You have to do it this way.” There’s one way and you’ve got to do it and you’ve got to do it now, or there are going to be dire consequences. So, there’s a lot of language that is directed at parents that feels very intense and scary. “If you don’t do this, it’ll never happen.” 

And that’s what’s so valuable about the Network, but also these podcasts, but other environments as well. But in the Network, you see all of these children who have learned to read and who are pursuing their passions and who are doing all these different things that did not follow that one very narrow course that school lays out. And so, it can help you build confidence. And that’s looking more externally. 

Because I would also say, just look at your child, because look at what kids learn without any help at all. Maybe not any help but facilitation, but learning to walk, learning to talk, all the things that happen before school even comes into the picture. Just ground into, okay, I have this unique child in front of me. Look at how much they love this thing. 

And especially, and I love that you mentioned neurodiversity because, if you have a child that’s deep diving into this passion about dinosaurs or trains or something that they love, you see the learning that’s happening. It just doesn’t happen to be fitting into what they need at school. It’s not across these multiple things. But what we talk about in the network and what you know, being around other people that are living this lifestyle can help you see the web of learning that’s coming out from those individual interests.

The web of learning that child is creating as they understand where the trains go and how the trains are built, and who’s running the trains and all the things. That is actually what learning is. So yes, in a school environment, they need to make it. What’s the word?

Conform? They need to make a system that they can plug people into, but we have the ability in our individual families to create the environment where we each can thrive. And I think even if you just take a minute to think about just the people in your immediate family. Look at the differences there.

I think that, again, will help you see it. Because I can think about my husband who is a very tactile, experiential learner, and he’s brilliant, but it’s different from me. I like to read, I like to take in information that way. I’m not really an auditory learner. And then I look at this daughter and she learns this way and this daughter, and I realize there are so many ways that we can learn and move through the world. I think as soon as you recognize that choice, like you said, Pam, it just opens up everything.

ERIKA: I love that you mentioned that, individualized versus standardized. And I think even in school, they want it to be individualized. If it could be, that would be the dream, but it’s just not feasible. There are too many kids, not enough teachers. You just can’t make everything individualized for every kid. And so, by doing it on our own and just following our children’s interests, we’re able to make their lives a perfectly individualized instruction plan, if you wanted to call it that. 

That looks nothing like school, but is allowing them to dive so deep into the things that are interesting to them. And I know on the podcast in the past we’ve talked about learning and school learning and natural learning. In school they’re really pulling the skills out away from, from the context. That’s something that is hard for many children. If growing up it felt like math is so hard and doesn’t make sense, it’s probably because in school it’s completely divorced from any reason to do it, any kind of context at all.

And so what’s great about taking the learning out of school is that then context is everything. If, if there’s a reason to learn something, then they learn it. There’s a reason to read, which there is in every field. There’s a reason to want to read. And so, then they want to read and they learn how to read.

I’ve seen that happen over and over again with other children that I know as well. And just the feeling that I have from watching my children get to these big learning moments in their own way. In a way that they have ownership of that. It’s just so amazing and beautiful that my kids feel like they have done it on their own.  I don’t think they would say they taught themselves to read because the word taught doesn’t really even make sense. But it’s they did that themselves. They know how to read because they figured out how to read. And of course I have played a big role in it, but that’s not what they remember.

They remember that they figured it out. It made sense to them. And so, when you’re coming out of the school environment or starting to question school, it might be those things like, but what about math? And what about the reading? And I don’t know, my child isn’t meeting these benchmarks and how are they going to do it?

It really is just a complete paradigm shift to realize there’s plenty of time and people don’t need to learn things on the same timetable. Following our interests is a path towards learning these underlying skills that will be necessary, for anything that you want to do in life. And learning them with that context makes it so much easier to learn.

PAM: Yeah, I love that piece because I think when we can recognize that school isn’t working for our child and even look for alternative ways, choose homeschooling, choose unschooling, etc., but so much of that journey away is our work to do our paradigm shifts because. School can often be so ingrained for us.

So even if we take our kid out, we can be looking for learning that looks like school learning. We can be looking for progress that looks like school progress because learning in school feels so linear. So step by step by step and learning in action really doesn’t look that way. It can look like

soaking up like a whole bunch and then looking stagnant for a while as it percolates, processes in the background and builds our web of understanding, our connections, that context.

Or something’s hard right now, it’s just not clicking right now. And then maybe just moving on to something else. And then we are finding the next step is this, and the next step is this and you’ll see them get there, but it will look so different. It can come from somewhere different and then just zoom up. It can be months and months and months, and then all of a sudden, a whole bunch happens, big leaps. So, it really doesn’t look like school learning.

Marks go up and down and people have good, easy seasons and harder seasons at school. It’s not so much that it fits with everybody, but it is the way it needs to be presented because we have so many days and we have so many topics that we have to cover. So, it gets chunked out that way, very linearly.

And we have a big group of kids, so math does look like a worksheet. It doesn’t look like how we use numbers out in the world because we don’t have a lot of time to create those situations. But we can create worksheets where you can practice those skills. 

So it is that shift for us. Not only choosing not to send our kids to school. But also then it comes to understanding that the way we thought learning looked, the way it looks in school, the way it’s marked, graded in school, etc. It looks really different when we take out the school environment or take the child out of the school environment. We need to also take all the school think and school lenses that we’re using and, and find new ones. 

Because when we look to our child and we engage with our child and we watch them in action, we see this learning in action. And it’s not that it’s not happening, it just looks very different. I remember like people fresh from bringing their kids home and they’re like, they’re not learning anything. Yes, I know it doesn’t look like they’re learning anything, but that’s because you’ve got your school glasses on and you’re only looking for learning that looks like learning does in school. But actually, if you try to take those off and look at what they are doing. You can see it. 

It just doesn’t happen to look that way, the way school tells us it will look. It’s so fun.

ANNA: I think looking at ourselves, I loved that you said that Erika, you even took the lens looking back at your own journey because you were super successful in school. Most people from the outside would say it worked for you, but you were able to look at it and go, oh, maybe not.

But it’s interesting, because it reminds me of a story with my dad who was an engineer and he did well in school and did graduate work and all the things, but he was also just so engaged and loved learning. And so when my kids were young and I had all the unschooling books everywhere, all over the house, he would read them and we’d have conversations when they were little and he said, ‘School was fine for me. But I can see that it wouldn’t work for everyone and how different it would be if there were choices.’ Because he had friends that he thought of how different it would’ve been for them to not be carrying the weight of thinking there was something wrong with them because they didn’t fit in the environment.

But he said, we just didn’t really have another way to look at it. And so I loved that he could recognize that because again, some people do fine but others don’t and there’s nothing wrong with them. Those are brilliant minds that just look at things in a different way and that linear path, I mean it’s more narrow regardless. I think people that even do well on the linear path, it’s fine, but if they were to stay there, their life would be a little bit boring. But I think they take it and then they move beyond it, especially after school. But there are some kids that just want to move beyond from the beginning. They look at things differently and take information in differently.

And so allowing that context and for things to make sense and having conversations really understanding how our brain works is just so valuable. I would love for people that are thinking about this to get excited. To think, this thing that I’m looking at, maybe it has been judged as a failure or that something’s wrong. But I can get excited about learning about myself and about my child.

We can find the ways that work for us. So because it really is so fun and amazing, and I think community can be helpful, that is why we talk about the network, especially in these situations where you’re making a big transition because really seeing the thoughtful, amazing, brilliant other people and what they’re learning and what’s happening for their families and what’s happening with their children can just really just bolster and give us this beautiful space to share our own journey with people who understand.

ERIKA: Right, especially if the environment we’re currently in does not have much space for alternative thinking. Finding the people that you can have those deeper conversations with when you’re first doing all of that questioning, I think is really amazing. And of course the network is an awesome place for it.

I was also thinking that it’s a fun little exercise to think back about what you remember from school. Because for me that was a big one where it was like, okay, wait, I could say that it’s so important that they learn all these things, but then do I remember those things and does it matter now?

Just little thinking experiments like that to think about, what are my big takeaways from being in school? And what did I get out of it? I think we’ve talked a lot of times about the unschooling journey and how it just opens our brains up to questioning everything.

And this moment of being curious and wondering, is school really the best option for my kid? It can be that moment of, let me question this and then let me question this. And then everything opens up. And what I’ve found is that in the meantime, the kids just keep on living their best life.

And because they already know what they wanna do, you know? And so if we can support them in the things that they really love to do. And then we see that, okay, when they’re really having fun, they’re learning a whole lot. Um, like that really was a, that was a big turning point for me. 

And I remember having the realization that I could follow their happiness and joy.

We are having a really great life. They are learning so much. If I’m constantly there as the support in helping them live their best, most joyful life, I don’t know, that became my focus, especially when they were young, when I was turning away from the idea of putting them into school.

That was a new thing for me to focus on. And when I saw them, just getting so excited and pumped up about a certain topic or whatever, and then they wanted to learn more and then I could bring something else. Those moments were so fun and really gave me confidence in our decision to not go to school.

ANNA: And just to build on something you said real quickly before we wrap up, kids are learning before they go to school. You can see it. Again, acquiring language, walking, colors, animals, all the things. And we as adults are learning long after school as well. And so when you can just go, oh yeah, I don’t have to go to school to learn something and put yourself into that process of, what do I need when I’m interested in something, what do I do? I gather information, I find a mentor. Whatever the things are, then you start to realize they don’t have a lock on learning. That’s  what our culture wants us to think, that you can only learn in this one type of environment.

But there are so many examples across the spectrum of how we all learn at different ages without that one environment. So, you can let go of that weight and really find what works for you and your family.

PAM: Yeah, and I think what Erika was saying, leaning into our kids, that’s the great next step because that’s what helps us see, like you’re saying, there’s not one way to learn in this age range, right?

Recognizing that we do it before and we do it after, and then leaning into seeing our kids doing it to help us realize and recognize how much learning happens even without school. So, like I was talking about earlier, looking for learning to look like school. We don’t need it.

And when we lean in and watch our kids, we see they have their interests. They’re thrilled to have the time now to dive deeper into things if they’re leaving school. It’s just beautiful to watch and just helps us shift and really open up. We realize what learning looks like and it’s just so beautiful and fun.

ERIKA: Can I share one more thought? I just was thinking maybe we could also put a few links in the show notes to Deschooling, a few deschooling episodes. Because that word deschooling is what we use to describe that process of getting rid of some of those school thoughts. That might be a good next step as well.

PAM: Yes, we will put those in the show notes. That’s awesome. Thank you. And thank you so much to both of you. What a very fun conversation. And as we mentioned, we invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network to dive into these kinds of conversations anytime with other kind and thoughtful parents, and we are very excited to welcome you. To learn more and join us, just follow the link in those show notes or go to livingjoyfullyshop.com and click on community in the menu. Wishing everyone a very lovely day!

In this episode, we’re sharing a conversation that Pam had with unschooling dad Alan Marshall in 2018. At the time, Alan was a professional musician and a university music professor with three kids at home. Pam and Alan talked about his family’s journey to unschooling, his eldest’s transition to junior high, ways to approach music lessons, and advice for dads just starting out with unschooling.

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

QUESTIONS FOR ALAN

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family?

How did you discover unschooling and how did your family’s choice to embrace unschooling unfold?

You’ve been unschooling for almost a decade now. What has surprised you most so far about how unschooling has unfolded in your lives?

Your eldest chose to go to junior high school a couple of years ago. How did she find the transition, and have found it challenging to weave school and your unschooling principles together?

You’re also a university professor, teaching music, and I’d love to dive into that with you. When a child expresses interest in music or an instrument, so often the first thing parents jump to is lessons. Piano lessons. Guitar lessons. Violin lessons. In your experience, is that the best first step?

When a child has expressed an interest in an instrument and parents have rented or purchased one, the conventional advice is for us to strongly encourage them to practice regularly, if not daily. Yet that can soon be met with growing resistance. What are your tips for navigating that situation?

In the bigger picture, how do you see unschooling and learning music—or any other art—weaving together?

As an unschooling dad, what piece of advice would you like to share with dads who are considering or just starting out on this journey?

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hi everyone, I’m Pam Laricchia from livingjoyfully.ca and today I’m here with Alan Marshall. Hi Alan!

ALAN: Hello.

PAM: Hello! Alan is an unschooling dad, a professional musician, and a university professor. I’ve come across him online, and I’m really excited to get to chat with him in person! To get us started …

Can you share with us a little bit about you and your family?

ALAN: Sure. My wife Melody and I are both musicians, and we have three kids. Our oldest daughter is Adie, our middle daughter is Kate, and our youngest son is Gabriel. They are fourteen, nine, and five years old.

We have been unschooling from the very beginning. We started learning about the principles of unschooling back when our oldest, Adie, was first born. And we did a lot of research at that time and decided that we would unschool when she became school age. So, all of our children started unschooling from the beginning of when they would have gone to school, which here, where we live, we live in Oklahoma, is age five. We live in Oklahoma in the US, in a fairly small community, in southeastern Oklahoma. Ada, Oklahoma.

How did you come across unschooling, when your first child was born? Or around that time. I’m always curious as to where people actually hear it.

ALAN: Around that time, yes. Just a few months old.

I had thought about the idea of homeschooling, and so started to do some research online with the idea that we might homeschool. And before too long, came across a lot of resources about unschooling and found that really appealing, and so got a lot of information when our oldest was really young, and started to apply the principles of unschooling very early.

For all intents and purposes, from birth, in terms of sleep times and sleep patterns and baby wearing and unlimited nursing and, so, that’s something that’s been part of how we parented from the beginning.

PAM: Oh, that’s really wonderful. So when school age came, your days didn’t really change at all, did they?

ALAN: No they didn’t at all. Where we live in Oklahoma the school requirements are really easy. You literally don’t have to do anything. You just don’t ever sign up for school, and there’s no other requirements. So, for us, there was really no change that came when they became school age.

PAM: And now, you guys have been unschooling for almost a decade. Right?

ALAN: Right on 10 years…Yes.

PAM: Ah, yay. Good math!

ALAN: Our oldest became school age in ‘08. Age five here, compulsory kindergarten. She could have gone to compulsory kindergarten, but that is not required here.

What has surprised you the most so far about how unschooling has unfolded in your lives?

ALAN: Well, there have been a lot of common surprises as far as how things are for the children. Learning things in ways that my wife and I grew up believing sort of tacitly, aren’t possible. Like learning to read in a week.

With our oldest daughter, something that was really surprising for me, even after doing research and understanding the principles behind it, the fact that my daughter just decided to set her own bedtime at a very early age, without being coerced or told or even had it mentioned to her, really, as I pointed to before, was just not on the list of possibilities. But starting at about age seven-ish, seven or eight or so, she just decided that she wanted to go to bed about nine o’clock every night and to wake up at about six in the morning every morning, and that’s what she still does all the time today.

The common point of view is that that’s really not possible, that if you let somebody, or a child, stay up as long as they want, they will just stay up late all the time, for their entire life, and then sleep in, unless they’re given a reason not to. But for some people, maybe that’s true, but for her, she prefers to go to bed early and to wake up early.

There were some humorous times that we had early on that we would ask if she would be willing to stay up a little later so that we wouldn’t need get up quite so early in the morning, back when we would need to get up with her to be safe, and you had the inconvenience of needing to get up at six in the morning with her, either my wife or I, because that’s what she preferred.

PAM: It’s so fun to see how they explore just all their choices, right? All their options and find what is unique to them. I always love hearing about all of the individual kids, because they’ve all hit on things that, like you said, totally unexpected, but they work so well for the individual, don’t they?

ALAN: Yeah. And it ended up working great for what she prefers to do and her priorities. It works perfectly for her. I’m kind of a night owl, so it doesn’t always work perfectly for me. We work that out.

You had asked what was surprising. Something else I think is surprising and continues to kind of surprise me is kind of how deep school-ish thinking and school-ish thoughts kind of run, for us as the parents. About the time that I think I really understand and really have it all down and feel like I know how unschooling should work—and it is good that I have some confidence having done it for a long time—but I always discover a new schoolish thought, or hear my father speaking, hear my father’s words coming out of my mouth, inadvertently, and have to rededicate myself to thinking differently and to doing things differently.

Again, you know, intellectually I knew that that would probably be the case, from having thought about it and read about it for a long time. But then something like that will happen and it’s a surprise, like, “Yes, indeed, it’s ingrained in me!”

PAM: That’s such a great point! Exactly, you don’t realize it. It’s buried really deep inside, and then things happen and all of the sudden it’s been chipped free and out it pops. Like you said, I know, you can realize it intellectually, but I think something that’s been helpful is to also be nice to myself when that happens, you know what I mean? You need to work on it and everything, but not beat yourself up. Because that gets in the way of moving through it, doesn’t it? That just adds yet another layer you have to work through.

ALAN: Oh yeah, absolutely. I don’t think it’s really helpful to feel like it’s not a big deal, like “All parents are like that. It’s just the way it’s meant to be.” That’s not good. But also, it’s not good to be so down on yourself that you made a mistake, that you don’t have the emotional ability to correct the mistake, to do better next time.

PAM: Yeah. You’re not like throwing up your hands, “I can’t do any better and this is just the way it is, right? Like you said, it’s amazing what you can find down there that’s like ‘WOW!’

ALAN: My oldest is 14, so puberty and the teenage years have recently brought out some of those surprising “Oh yes, here’s my dad, coming out.”

PAM: I know. And it’s true that as they reach different milestones, different ages, you just reach things that, in the context of unschooling, just haven’t come up before. Even as young adults, there’s so many conventional messages that we’ve grown up with that we all encounter along the way.

Your eldest chose to go to junior high school a couple of years ago. I was wondering if you could share a little bit about how she found that transition and whether or not you guys find it challenging to weave school and your unschooling principles together.

ALAN: Well, the transition for Adie has been surprisingly easy and positive for her. I’ve told a few people who I’ve talked to about it that unschooling was the perfect preparation for her to go to school because her attitude about school is just very different than any of her peers. I mean noticeably, very different.

If you go to talk to any of the teachers, to hear them talk about a student who wants to be there is really eye opening. Just the excitement they feel, to be able to have her there, because she truly wants to be there. That this was a decision that she made one her own—that this was what she wanted to do. And she has been, by any measure, successful so far in doing that. It’s been a positive experience for her, but also the feedback that we get from the school is that she’s wonderful. That she’s great. And I think that’s because she had a choice, she wants to do it.

And this was something that we made a careful decision about. It was actually a few years between when she first started expressing an interest in it. We explored it then, and then we took some time to really help her understand what it is, and to be sure that this is really the choice she wanted to make, that she really understood what would be expected of her, and that she had all the information, and that she didn’t have any misinformation about what school was like, where she might be surprised by things not be what she was really wanting.

But it turns out, for her—I think she’s pretty rare, but for her—it’s exactly what she wants. She wants to learn in that environment. She really likes structure, so she thrives on the rules and the structure. For her it’s really something that she enjoys. And because she could stop at any time, I think that makes it easier for her to submit herself to that structure. Because…

PAM: Absolutely. She’s got choice, right?

ALAN: There is no doubt in her mind that if she ever decided that she didn’t want to do that, she immediately could stop that. That really makes all the difference. And to experience that with somebody I’m close to and that I know—it’s really a revelation. Like I said, even for me, it was a surprise.

And she’s caught up in school, in what would seem like record time. When she first went to school, she couldn’t write at all. Like, she had literally never written anything more than her name. And it was just a few weeks, and she was writing like all of her peers can. And she’s taking algebra this year. She had a little help with math her first year, kind of individual tutoring a little bit, and now she’s taking algebra.

And I remember just a few days ago, she asked me to help her with some homework, because I was good at math in school, so I’m kind of the math parent, you know, kind of, “go ask your father.” And she was doing some kind of algebra thing that I’ve never heard of, and I was like, “I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can help you with this. When I was in school I didn’t really do this.”

So, she taught me to do it. And you know she’s doing the equations and stuff, and she’s like, “Well, you just do it like this.” So, she’s completely caught up. There was no effect of her not going to school that I know of, that I can think of or have heard about. A few weeks, a few months, and she’s just like any other peers, which of course you hear about quite often, what you learn, particularly in the early years in school, you can learn in a few months, if you want to, and she needed to, so she learned it!

PAM: Exactly. So, did she do much preparation schoolwork wise?

ALAN: She didn’t do any preparation.

PAM: Yeah. I just wanted to get that out there.

ALAN: I mean, literally nothing. She’s a late reader, and she learned to read not because she was going to go to school, but because she got a phone. She learned to read a few months before she went to school, just because she had exposure to letters and words visually. She would look up how to spell things on her phone, and that went on for maybe three weeks or so, and then she could read. So, I guess you could say she prepared by learning to read but she wasn’t thinking, ‘I need to prepare to learn to read because I am going to go to school.’ She just thought, ‘I need to learn to read because I want to read my phone.’ So, she just did it.

PAM: Exactly. A reason. A personal reason.

ALAN: Yes.

How have you and Melody found how to weaving that schedule into your lives? I would assume you don’t bring a lot of the school’s expectations into it, right?

ALAN: Of course not.

PAM: And that’s kind of the end of it, right?

ALAN: Yeah, and really, I kind of avoid knowing what her grades are. I don’t want that kind of school-ish thinking to kind of invade my attitudes. So, I just try to keep myself kind of ignorant of all that.

I mean, there have been some minor inconveniences in scheduling and getting her everyplace. She rides the bus, so she’s at school before I wake up in the morning, and she’s home in the afternoon. In many ways, I’m unaware of most of the school things.

Another impressive thing that she’s done to go to school, to decide she wants to go to school, she has completely done it independently. She makes her own lunch, she gets herself up, she goes to the bus. She’s responsible. She’s just taken responsibility for everything she needs to do to do it. Because, in her world, that’s just how you do it. It just didn’t occur to her to do anything other that everything she needed to do to do this thing that she wanted to—that was important to her.

So, in a lot of ways, because of her and because of her initiative, it hasn’t been too much of an inconvenience, or hasn’t interfered very much at all with what we want to do with our other children who are still unschooling. She just leaves in the morning comes back in the afternoon and joins us when she gets home, and everything is as it was before.

And so, again, I think we are fortunate with the way things are structured here where we live, that there’s not a lot of expectations on parents who have parents in school who we might think of as unreasonable or getting in the way or being heavy handed.

And we try to be involved in an appropriate way—go talk to the teachers and show our interest and support her, so we are not keeping it at arm’s length, or anything like that, but we don’t have a lot of pressure on us to do certain things. There have been some minor expenses involved with, as you’d expect.

PAM: That’s cool, and that’s such a great point: to be supportive of her and as involved as she’d like you to be, without that tipping over into expectations. Which is one of the reasons why you’re not interested in seeing the grades and stuff like that—you’re being careful not to tip over into having expectations or even, I guess, letting it play with your mind. As in, it’s just easy to think of: ‘good grades, that’s wonderful’ or ‘bad grades, uh oh.’ You know what I mean? It can affect your interactions.

ALAN: Yeah. The danger is that I could be really proud if she got As or something, and the impact that that could have on then, if I’m really proud, or if I’m sort of being effusive about that, and then sometime she doesn’t get As, or something, than what message is that sending, that that’s what’s important. It would probably be subtle, I would probably wouldn’t be obvious about it because I’m an unschooler, but there could probably be some subtle message sent there.

PAM: I know! Even not school-wise, with other things that my kids choose to do, I am careful to be as excited for them as they are for their accomplishment, because once you get into that, ‘Oh, I’m proud of you for…’ it kind of becomes about us. And then, you’re right—next time, if it doesn’t work out so well, then you’re stuck, and you’ve set yourself up for that judgement. Because it feels like a judgement coming from you, rather than support and excitement for them having accomplished whatever it is that they wanted to. It’s a subtle but really important difference, isn’t it?

ALAN: Yeah.

PAM: OK, now I wanted to dive into your experience as a professor teaching music. Because I think that music is another area that is really interesting to think of how we might bring an unschooling context to that. I came up with a couple examples that I have seen questions about over the years, and I wanted to get your perspective on them.

When a child expresses an interest in music or in an instrument, so often the first thing we jump to is lessons, because it’s often not something that we are personally skilled at. So, we sign them up for guitar lessons or piano lessons or violin lessons. I was wondering, in your experience, whether or not that’s the best first step when a child expresses an interest?

ALAN: I would say that it really depends on the situation very much. I would be really hesitant to make a blanket statement like, “Lessons are always the best thing to start with,’ or “Never start with lessons—that’s a disaster,” or that unschoolers should never have their children take lessons, because I think it really depends on the interest of the child and how the child acquired that interest.

It also depends on the reality of how you can learn to play the instrument, or whatever musical or artistic endeavor you’re doing. If you get interested in playing the harp, you know, the classical harp. That’s hard, that’s fairly hard to do on your own, for fun. It’s a very expensive instrument, it’s very specialized. Probably the best way to learn how to play the harp is to find somebody who already can play the harp and have them help you. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to give that person a cheque and have them give you formal lessons for 60 minutes per week, necessarily. But if you want to do something that specialized, you’re probably going to have to find somebody to help.

But the guitar, you can go on YouTube, and even if you don’t know anything about playing guitar, or anything about music, your child can go on YouTube and get free guitar lessons 24 hours a day. Guitars are more ubiquitous and inexpensive, and I think we all know of people—people who aren’t even unschoolers—who just learn to play the guitar for fun. And they don’t necessarily need formal lessons. They might want to take formal lessons at some point, or they might be a rock star and never need a lesson in their life.

So, it depends a lot on each individual situation, the temperament of the child—or the person who’s wanting to learn, doesn’t always have to be children. Adults can learn instruments and learn music too. And enjoy music too.

And also, the availability of lessons. And how, in your individual situation, taking lessons could involve pressure that isn’t helpful from the teacher. Sometimes the culture of music education is not as helpful as it could be in some places as in other places. If you can find a teacher who’s willing to work with your child and make it fun for them and not put pressure on them, then lessons could be a really great experience for them. But if you are in a situation where, it’s all practice, “You have to practice five hours a day, and I’m the teacher and you’re the student and you have to do what I say,”—they’re very regimented—taking lessons could decrease their interest in music rather than nurturing it.

I hate to give such a non-definite answer, but …

PAM: I’ve gotta say, it’s really an unschooling kind of answer, right, because it depends on the individual!

ALAN: What I can offer as a musician that non-musicians may not know is, how much it depends. There are a lot of variables, and if you’re not a musician, you may not think about those variables.

I think it depends on the person too! I mean there are people who are like, “I want to be a concert pianist one day!” Rather than, “I’d like to play piano for fun sometimes.” And there are probably more people doing it just for fun than people who are really serious about it. Understanding, there’s a lot of in between too, it’s on a spectrum.

And understand really what the interest is. I think that really might be the most important thing, is really getting into the details of what the interest is. To play the piano or sing or play the clarinet—that’s not specific enough of an interest of an understanding of what the interest is that the child has. Why do you want to play the clarinet? What kind of music? For how long, maybe? Even though it’s okay to change your mind about that. So, I would encourage getting lots of information about what your child wants and also about what the situation is and what the possibilities are.

The thing about lessons is that it’s perfectly legal to stop taking them. I would encourage making short-term arrangements at first. Like, “Hey, we want to try this for a couple weeks and see how it works.” Like, “Could I just pay for a few lessons and see if she or he likes it?” Rather than making a big, long term commitment.

PAM: I think that’s such a great point, about just meshing with the culture of that teacher or that music school or whatever. Because so often I think that we can latch on to ‘we’ve heard something good about it’ or ‘it’s the closest music school’ or ‘it’s the only one in town!’ or whatever, and we can try to get our child to fit into that environment, right?

So, if they tell us “They have to practice for X amounts of hours,” or “They have to start with this book and don’t skip ahead—they have to start with lesson one,” you think you have to. It almost puts us back in a student role, right? And then were like, “Oh, we gotta do this, we gotta do this” and all the sudden we are pushing that on our child.

You really can pick and choose the environment that meshes well with your child, and, like you said, what are they looking for. Are they looking to just be able to play and make some music that they recognize? Or do they have bigger goals with it? that kind of stuff. So, the conversation is with them, and what they are seeing in the future of this interest, and then finding the environment that meshes well with them, right? Does that make sense?

ALAN: Yeah. Absolutely, right.

And I think sometimes when it’s something we are not experienced with ourselves, like if somebody’s not a musician, it might be music. For others, it might be something else that they don’t have a lot of background in. That could be a time for caution, to not let other people tell you how it should be because they supposedly know more. And sometimes musicians, I’m afraid, can be a little bit bad about that, about using their expertise to sort of impose their view of how things should be on others, because, “You don’t know about music and I do!” And so, this is how it should be. “How would you know? You can’t even play an an instrument yourself.”

It helps to just have the confidence to say “I appreciate your expertise and your knowledge, but this is what’s going to work better for my child, so I’m going to find a situation that works best for them.”

PAM: That’s a great point, and that’s basically the next question.

Tips for navigating situations with the conventional advice of encouraging practice, or “Do it this way! I have this expertise!”

PAM: Like, yes, absolutely, you know your child, and what your child is wanting out of this situation and it’s ok to bring that with you, right? So, even though you aren’t the expert in guitar or piano or whatever, it’s ok to say, “You know what, he wants to have fun, and it’s ok if you follow his lead.”

I know I’ve done that a couple of times, that with karate, it’s like, “No, it’s not a big pressure for the next belt, I want him to enjoy! It takes as long as it takes!” I remember once, it was a computer programming camp, and there weren’t many students who came in the summer, and I said, you know what, don’t worry about it, you don’t have to show me some working program at the end of the week. Just do whatever he wants to do and don’t worry about it.

I didn’t know either one of those things in any detail, but I knew what my child was wanting out of the experience. Because that’s where the best learning is going to happen, too and that’s where they are going to learn more about how they feel about whatever the activity is that they are doing.

Maybe they’re more excited and they want to continue with lessons, or maybe they find, ‘This is enough for now,’ etc. But I think they get a better experience with what they’re interested in. It’s an interest of theirs and if they enjoy it, that’s my goal, rather than whatever steps of progress they have set out, I guess to prove that they are doing their jobs, maybe?

ALAN: Yeah. I suppose they are used to needing to provide evidence to justify the expense. So sometimes it could be as easy as letting them know, “You don’t need to justify your work. I’m just happy that they are having the experience and that’s enough.”

PAM: Yeah, that’s great.

I was wondering how, in the bigger picture, you see music and, or really any, art weaving together with unschooling?

ALAN: Well, you were talking about practice, and that made me think about the idea of formal practice.

And actually, I would discourage, particularly someone starting to do music and most other arts from doing practice. I would say, ‘don’t practice.’ And really, I think the problem is formal practice. Like, ‘I’m going to sit down now, and I’m going to practice the piano for an hour because it’s my practice time.’ Because I think that just doing that is pretty doomed to be counterproductive.

In my opinion, as a musician, and somebody who wants to help people who want to learn about music, that has discouraged a lot more music making than it’s helped. For most people, if you start by saying, ‘I’m going to practice an hour a day,’ even if they are motivated, even if they want to do it, that is often not the best way to help them learn about music.

I think it is much better to get involved in music-making, and if you child wants to be involved in music, for example, or in any art form, particularly something that involves performing, getting involved yourself in music-making with your child in some way, I think that might be the unschooling way to do it—not, whether or not you take lessons, or whether or not the child chooses to take lessons or that’s the best option for them. I wouldn’t just send my child off and just say, “Go take lessons,” and then pay your money and then, “You’ve learned your music from the lessons and you’re done,” but get involved with them. Help them find ways to create opportunities. Cause that’s what real practice is.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s “thousand hour rule”…

PAM: 10,000 hours, yeah.

ALAN: 10,000 hours, Yeah, I wish it was a thousand hours!

PAM: I know, right?

ALAN: 10, 000 hour rule.

You have to have 10,000 hours in order to master something. I don’t know if that’s true or not. It’s certainly true that practice is important. You aren’t going to get 10,000 hours of practice sitting down and forcing yourself to practice an hour a day or five hours a day. You’re going to find ways to not really do it if it’s drudgery—and that’s even if you want to do it.

You’re not going to practice an hour a day if you don’t want to. You might tinkle around on the keyboard and seem like you’re practicing so you don’t get in trouble, but you’re not going to practice. But if you’re involved in making music that you’re interested in and you care about, than that counts as practice, particularly if you’re doing it with other people.

PAM: I love that. If you are just weaving it into your life. So, becoming a part of that experience with your child. Like, not sending them off to lessons, but even if it’s, “Let’s sing some songs together,” or, “I’ll sing while you play on the piano.” Making it just something that you’re doing with them so that they’re doing it, not “I have to sit for an hour and practice my scales.”

ALAN: And I’d say, if you can, if your child is learning an instrument—and I understand that some people have bad experiences with learning instruments and they really don’t want to do that, so I understand that that’s really not everybody’s choice—but what could be greater than “I’ll learn to play the violin too, because I’ve always wanted to, and then maybe someday we can play some violin duets together.”

So, the ideal is that you’re actually physically there doing it with them. You could find them opportunities, help find groups they can play in. They could sing in a choir, or play with a band or an orchestra, some community bands and choirs and orchestras, they take you and your child, maybe, if you can, if you play—if you don’t, that’s ok too.

And then, often, if you’re doing that, then lessons come up naturally. Like, “Oh, I want to be able to do this and I can’t. Could I take some lessons so that somebody could help be able to do this better? Because now I’m really interested in it.” And I think, often, that’s a better way to get to lessons than, “I’ve always wanted to play this instrument so I’m going to go get lessons.”

Again, I don’t want to say that that’s never ok, because, actually, my daughter had wanted to play the flute, and she actually said, “I want to take flute lessons.” First time she ever played the flute was at her lessons. Again, that was very specific situation, she had a very definite idea of what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it.

But my daughter loves to sing. She kind of inherited that. My wife and I are both professional singers. She wanted to sing, and it was because we are a musical family, it was just really part of the background always. She just started singing with us in choir, in church choir, and just started doing little performances. She’d learn a song, and then she’d find a way to perform it.

And then, after she’d done that for a good three or four years—starting very small, doing it very occasionally and then doing it more and more—then she decided she wanted to take voice lessons, as a continuation of that. It can happen both ways, but in both cases, we are with our daughter, making music, almost every day.

It’s not just musical families that can do that. For anything, you can find a way to do that. And to me that, for the arts, for anything, that’s the unschooling principle that can be the most valuable. And, if your child is interested, it can eventually lead to that traditional, ‘wins a contest’ or something. Eventually something like that will happen, but if you just aim for that from the beginning, it’s less likely to happen, and much less fun along the way.

PAM: That’s so true. When you’ve got a goal, like something that you want to accomplish, it’s just more intrinsically motivating to get there, when it’s not something that’s 10,000 steps away, you know what I mean?

Something that is achievable, it’s on the edge of your competence, so you need to learn to get there, so you’re motivated. It’s something that you want to do so you’ll pick up the instrument or the art or whatever it is, whenever you have a moment, because you want to, right? So, rather than, ‘I need to do this for one hour because someday I want to be able to do X,’ if you’re excited to get to that step that you can just see really close, you’ll do it whenever you have a moment.

My son Michael, he’s somebody who wanted to learn the guitar, and he has learned through YouTube. And I sit in the other room, and I don’t know if he’s playing music, or he’s literally playing it himself. So that has been a good experience for him.

We went into the local music store a couple of years ago now, because he finally gotten to a place where he actually wanted his own guitar. We had a few lying around, and he wanted his own guitar, so we went to the local shop and he talked to the guy for an hour, and he had a grand old time picking out his own guitar. But he comes from home from work, and he gets home 11:30, 12 at night, and I wake up and hear him playing—he picks it up whenever he’s got the time. There’s just something, whenever someone tells you you have to do something, that you resist, that instead of that hour, you find that, whenever you have an hour, you just dive into it. It’s just a different mindset.

ALAN: And I don’t think that anybody has ever become truly a master at something or really great at something or achieved something remarkable, in music or in any other field, by forcing themselves to be interested in it. You don’t practice 10,000 hours or whatever it is, in order to become interested in being a musician. You practice the 10,000 hours because you’re interested.

PAM: That’s a great point, yeah.

ALAN: And there’s a lot of evidence that a lot of the talents that people have actually comes from that intense interest and practice. That a lot of people who are so talented that they practice more than anyone else, but to them, it doesn’t seem like practice, so it comes naturally.

PAM: Yeah, they’re just doing it, right?

ALAN: Yeah, it seems like an amazing talent, right? And it’s not necessarily that you couldn’t have that talent too, it’s just that you’re not that interested. You’re doing something else that you’re talented at.

PAM: Exactly. And that comes back to choice again.

ALAN: I wouldn’t want anyone to feel like in order for a child to be interested in music that they have to have the, sort of, genetic background in being a good musician. That could be one way to get interested in music. Your child could be a great musician even if you’re not. It’s possible. But you just have to let your child decide for themselves, to discover whether they have that gift, and also whether they want to pursue that gift. And it’s ok if they don’t! But don’t assume it can’t be done because it’s not you.

PAM: And you know something that I’ve found through unschooling, I have found an interest in so many things that I did not know that I would enjoy before having kids by being introduced to it by them. And then, all of the sudden, “Wow, this is fun!” and “I’d love to do this with you” etc. So, like you said, even if you’re not musical, and even if you don’t think you could be music, when you keep that open mind and support and try to engage in things they are interested in, you may be surprised at all of the interesting things that are out there in the world that you may find yourself enjoying. When you keep an open mind, our kids introduce us to so many fascinating things that we wouldn’t have ever imagined we’d be interested in. Have you found that?

ALAN: Yes! For me, my youngest son, he’s only five years old, but he’s only interested in boy things. You know, trucks and guns and so. I’ve always been a music nerd and not that interested in those sorts of things, but now I’m starting to explore that side of myself which I didn’t really even know existed.

Just by, you know, video games. I’ve never played a video game in my life! So, I’m helping him play his video games, just in the natural course of just helping him do what he wants to do, I’m having some different experiences, so it’ll be fun to find out if that continues.

PAM: Our children expand our world so much, I think. OK, now we’ll get to that last question.

As an unschooling dad, I was wondering what piece of advice you’d like to share with other dads who are maybe considering unschooling or just starting out on this journey.

ALAN: For me, the thing that I’ve had to try to be conscious of the most, and I think this is related to my gender, as far as I can tell—to the extent that I am self-aware, I think this might be gender related—I have to really think about being involved day-to-day, moment-to-moment, with my kids.

This may not be something that all men share, but, in my example growing up, the male parent was maybe a little bit at a distance. Kinda maybe didn’t do the day-to-day, nitty-gritty work of parenting, always. That’s not necessarily because of traditional gender roles only. Sometimes it can be more subtle than that.

I’m kind of the stay-at-home parent, my wife and I switch off—we both work, but she works more than I do. So, I would be considered the stay-at-home parent if you had to name one of us as the stay-at-home parent. But even though I’m the one at home often—kind of reversing that traditional gender role—still there’s more subtle male gender role thing of, “You kids play, and I’ll go do my adult stuff over here.”

I don’t know, for me, I’ve found that I really need to be aware of that. And to make a conscious decision to, ‘I’m going to do this a little differently than what was shown to me when I was younger, or what the cultural expectations might still be.’ Even though I’m not a traditional dad, in the moment, when I’m actually interacting with my children, I need to decide that I’m not going to be the traditional male—I’m going to be playful, I’m going to joke around, I’m going to do guy-stuff with my son, even if that’s not my immediate natural inclination.

So that’s what occurs to me that it might be helpful to talk about with other men, to maybe be aware of that tendency. Whether you’re a traditional sort of bread winner and you come home in the evening and see your kids in the evening, or even if you are a stay-at-home dad and you’re the primary caregiver, that might be going on. That dynamic might be there.

I just think that’s something that might be worth considering.

PAM: Yeah, that’s a great point. And the tendency, especially if our kids our occupied and doing things, the tendency is to pull back and do our own things. There’s just so much that we get out of that connection when we do engage with them, right? So, you’re finding that to be a positive experience, yeah?

ALAN: Yes, absolutely, yes!

I wouldn’t want to force myself to do it in an, ‘I’ve gotta go play with the kids now so that I can be a good unschooler,’ way. That’s not an attitude that would be helpful at all, I don’t think. More just, when the opportunity arises, you know, go out of your comfort zone a little.

And also use your partner as an example. My wife is sort of always just been great with kids, so she is just silly with small children just to make interacting with them fun—if I can just be silly, I can make a joke or make things into a game I can get things going so that I can have some interaction and get something out of that. Observing moms, and particularly my wife, and learning a different way of doing things—it might be a little different than what I’m used to, but to avoid doing it in a resentful way. Not like it’s a job, like “I’m required to do this much interaction with the kids in order to be a good modern dad.”

PAM: Back to ticking off those boxes.

ALAN: I don’t think that would be helpful. But the time you do spend with them, just kind of expand your idea of what that means a little bit.

PAM: That’s such a really great point, Alan. Thank you for bringing that up.

And I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me today! I really appreciate it. Especially your perspective on music and lessons, and I always love hearing about other families and their unschooling experiences. So, thank you very much.

ALAN: Thank you. Thanks for asking me!

PAM: It was wonderful!

And before we got, where is the best place for people to connect with you online.

ALAN: Facebook, that’s the best, easiest place to find me. Alan Marshall. A-L-A-N Marshall. And I’m in Radical Unschooling Info.

PAM: I will put those links in the show notes. Thank you very much! Have a wonderful day!

ALAN: You too. I appreciate it.

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Consent and Consensual Living.

Consent is really the backbone of everything we talk about. Everyone, regardless of age, wants agency. When we can shift away from control, because we truly can’t control other people, we move from a power-over dynamic to a collaboration paradigm, leading to more connected relationships.

We hope today’s episode sparks some fun insights for you!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

Want the full collection of Living Joyfully Foundations podcast episodes as an audiobook (and the transcripts edited into an ebook)? Find them here in the Shop!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

EPISODE QUESTIONSWhat does consent mean to you? How do you see it weaving together with agency?Think about a recent argument you had and how you expressed yourself. Could you reframe/reword some of what you said as an “I” message? That can be both less confrontational and more accurate. For example, instead of, “You’re not listening to me!” maybe try, “I don’t feel heard.” Rather than getting stuck in an endless round of “Yes, I am”/”No, you’re not”, it encourages the conversation to go deeper.What barriers do you see to living consensually? How would it feel to just set them aside?This week, practice contemplating the underlying need that your friend or partner is trying to meet through their actions.TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello again and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We’re excited you’re interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.

So, in today’s episode, we’re talking about consent and living consensually, and I have to say, this is one of my very favorite topics. It is really the backbone of everything that we talk about. When we understand that everyone, no matter their age, wants agency, and that we truly have no control over another, we move from a power-over dynamic to a collaboration paradigm.

And it’s interesting, because I think intellectually most of us would agree that consent is important, that we should never push past another person’s consent. And yet, in our desire to control outcomes, we often do, and this is especially true for children. And yet, how can we expect children to honor consent as adults if they have never experienced what it means to work together to find solutions to that feel good to both parties?

And it comes into play in adult relationships as well, in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. We look to change people. We have expectations and agendas that we push without regard for who that person is and what they want and what they value.

PAM: Yeah, exactly. And for me, consent and by extension, living consensually, was one of those ideas that once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I soon recognized how often I was trying to very subtly wield control to move through situations in ways that made sense to me, especially interactions with my partner and my kids. And looking through this new lens, I notice now how disconnecting those control tactics were for my relationships. Basically, someone was almost always disappointed or disgruntled in a family of five.

But I also observed that many of our interactions were steeped in power. And at their root, they were about me, often very politely, but I was convincing, coercing, or guilting the other person into doing what I wanted them to do. Gee, that calls back to our last episode as well, doesn’t it?

ANNA: Yeah. It does!

PAM: And I realized how draining that was. My understanding of consent grew exponentially once I realized it wasn’t about me convincing someone to agree to do the things my way. That’s consent, right? Instead, it was so much more about seeing through their eyes and recognizing that there are many valid paths forward, not just mine. Consent meant working together collaboratively to figure out an often new path forward that made sense still and felt good to everyone involved.

ANNA: Yeah, right. It definitely hearkens back to that episode and also to when we talked about how different people can be, because when we push our agenda without consideration of how the other person feels or moves through the world, when we have ultimatums or even just expectations that are kindly and politely put out there, we’re taking away that other person’s agency, and that is just not a solid place from which to build a strong relationship.

Humans want autonomy. They want to have agency over their lives. So instead, we can learn about one another. We can commit to deeply understanding what makes each of us tick. We can set up an environment where we find solutions to problems together, trusting that we’ll keep at it until both parties feel good about the plan.

And that’s really the core of choosing to live consensually. The process involves listening and validating, being able to clearly articulate our own needs, but in “I” messages, not demands. After everyone feels heard and seen, that’s where we can cultivate this open curious mindset, this brainstorming-type idea about how to solve the situation at hand. At that point, we’re all on the same team. We’re working together to solve for all the needs, instead of standing on opposite sides, defending and advocating only for our own needs.

And a big part of this is understanding that there are almost always underlying needs at play. So, very often, a conflict is sitting at one level that can feel impossible to solve. One person wants to go out, the other wants to stay home. Where do we go with that? But if we peel back a layer to see the underlying needs, then we have more to work with. We have more options to consider. But we can’t get there if we’re stuck in that place of thinking their actions are about us, if we think our partner is just being difficult, if we’re taking it personally. There are needs on both sides of that argument and understanding those opens up the options.

So, maybe one wants to just really see their friends. So, could the friends come over instead? The other had a long day and just needs some downtime. Is allowing a bit more time before going out the fix? Solutions are everywhere when we assume positive intent on all sides and start working together to understand each other and the situation more.

That quick reminder that they’re just humans trying to meet a need helps us remain connected and curious. And now we have a puzzle to solve together, instead of two or more people digging in their heels on opposite sides of this surface-level disagreement.

PAM: Yes, yes, yes. And, for me, it made all the difference in the world when I felt we were truly all on the same team, trying to figure out a way to move forward that met each of our needs. It was such a big energetic, feeling difference. So, we can just take a moment to envision what that might feel like. So, when each person feels seen and heard and trust that their needs will ultimately be met, it is so energizing. It opens up so many creative possibilities, rather than locking two people, as you said, into that battle until one comes out the winner. There’s a winner and loser in that situation. Who has the power? Who can convince the other one to do it their way?

It definitely takes time and patience and practice to bring consent into our everyday relationships, but it really is life-changing. I do want to acknowledge the time that these conversations can take as you work together to figure out those underlying needs, to figure out a path forward that works for everyone. But the other path, which is the argument, the power struggles, and then the aftermath of needing to repair the relationship, that takes up time, too. So, which process feels better to experience with those you love, trust and collaboration or judgment and power struggles?

ANNA: Oh my gosh, yes. So, that right there was really a big part of me wanting to move in this direction. It takes time and energy to argue one’s position and to try to win everything, energy that I found draining and disconnecting. And I knew I didn’t want to live in that energy every day. It felt very assaulting to me.

What I found was how rewarding and connecting it was to live in a house with no top-down agendas, no punishment or control, just connection and collaboration, whether it was with David or if it involved our kids. We were all invested in helping each other meet our needs and do the things that we wanted to do. That deep level of trust that you will be supported and unconditionally loved is the energy I want to cultivate and bask in every day.

And so, somewhat related, over the years, David has had a lot of hobbies that people would consider dangerous. They’re a part of who he is, and I’ve always wanted to support him in those pursuits, even when I didn’t understand it. And by putting that out there, what I found in return is someone who supports all my wild hair ideas and whom I trust will always be there for me.

That is worth so much more than me trying to control who he is and shape him into someone who may feel safer and easier for me. That’s my work to do and, for me, it was rooted in gratitude for the time we have together and letting go of fear. Because fear is so often the root of control and letting that go allows us to find gratitude and connection to truly love those around us for who they are and how they move through the world. And that unconditional acceptance was what we both wanted to continue when we had children.

And honestly, raising children in a consensual environment where we were all trusted and supported, where we learned to understand and express our needs and knew we would be heard and that solutions would be found, has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.

PAM: It’s been a life-changing and amazing experience, and I wanted to take a moment to talk a bit more about unconditional love and acceptance. I love that phrase. And, for me, it doesn’t feel like throwing my hands up in the air and thinking, whatever! Whatever they want to do!

I think when we hear unconditional at first, that can be what we think. Okay. No conditions. I have no input. Whatever they want to do, just off they go.

For me, unconditional means without expectations, so without conditions, not withholding our love and affection if the person makes a choice that we don’t agree with, even more so not using judgment and shame as tools to try to get them to change their mind.

But not having conditions doesn’t mean not trying to understand them as a person, like we have been talking about. If they make a choice that doesn’t make sense to us, unconditional love doesn’t mean we think, “Whatever. I still love you. Off you go,” and then burying our feelings of concern.

So, instead we can be more open and curious. We can learn more. Maybe it’s in direct conversation with them or by paying extra attention to how the choice unfolds for them. How are they navigating it? What are they enjoying about it? I am so curious. What the heck do you enjoy? But either way, we learn more about them. We have a better understanding of who they are as a person.

Because even if we often say, “I love you!” it is hard for someone to feel loved for who they are if they don’t feel seen and heard. They think, “Sure, they said they love me, but they don’t really understand who I am.”

Being in relationship with a person means understanding who they are, which also isn’t a one and done thing. We all grow and change over time. To embrace consent and consensual living in our relationships with the people we love is to choose to be curious about who they are as a person, because that is a great place to start just right there. Like, who is this person?

ANNA: Right. And like you said, when we say, whatever, I love you, whatever, do whatever. That doesn’t feel good. So, even if I don’t understand something, I can ask questions and just like we’ve been talking about over these last few weeks, learn more about them. And then as we leave ourselves open to that, we’re seeing through their eyes. We’re starting to see like, okay, it does make sense that they love this. I see how that’s feeding them. I see what they love about it.

And so, that moves us from this place of, okay, I’m not going to stop them, to, I’m celebrating who they are. And that switch is so big, moving to celebrating. Even when it’s something we may not participate in ourselves or fully understand, we do understand through their eyes what they’re getting from.

PAM: Yes. And we can connect. So, maybe it’s a thing that, “Yeah, I don’t want to join you in your thing. I’m glad that you love it.” But where we can also really deeply connect with them is thinking about something that we love that much. So, when we know that, it’s like how much I love this thing, then I can get a real feel and sense for how much they’re enjoying the thing we’re doing, and less about having conversations later about the facts of what happened.

It can be, “I bet you had so much fun.” You can talk about the energy, you can talk about the experience. That’s where you can connect with them and share and celebrate them. I love that point that you shared about getting to the place where you can celebrate their love of the thing. You can celebrate their choices without having to make the same choice, without having to join them, but we can celebrate that energy and knowing how it feels for ourselves, too.

ANNA: Yes. I just love how you’re saying that, because that’s the piece. We can celebrate how much joy it brings to them. We can celebrate their excitement about something, even if we can’t celebrate the individual piece of it, because we maybe don’t understand it or it doesn’t appeal to us. But that’s irrelevant. When someone you love lights up about something, be it a child or your partner or your friend, that’s energy we can get on board with. And celebrating someone for something like that, it builds this deep trust and bond, that I’m seen by this person that they really see me and it’s just really beautiful. So, I love that.

So, let’s give a few questions to ponder as we’re thinking about consent and living consensually with your loved ones for this week. What does consent mean to you? How do you see it weaving together with agency? I think this is going to be good.

PAM: Yeah. That is so interesting, that connection between those two things. And just thinking about agency, is that something I want to step on? How does it feel to have agency? To have choice? How does consent weave in with that. I think that’ll be really fun to play with.

ANNA: Yeah, to peel a little of that back. Okay. So, think about a recent argument you had and how you expressed yourself. Could you reframe or reword some of what you said as an “I” message? That can be both less confrontational and more accurate. So, for example, instead of saying, “You’re not listening to me,” maybe try, “I don’t feel heard.” Rather than getting stuck in the endless round of, “Yes, I am listening.” “No, you’re not listening,” and we have this meta fight that starts happening, it encourages the conversation to go deeper. “Why are you not feeling heard? I don’t understand. I want to understand.” It just takes it to a different place.

PAM: Yeah. And that’s a great example of getting to the underlying needs, because so often, we can take that need and jump to the solution and share the solution. Not feeling heard, the solution is for them to listen to me. So, I say, “You’re not listening to me.” But they feel that they are. So, that doesn’t click for them. So, if you go to the root, to the need, the need is, I’m not feeling heard. Then maybe there is a different way. It’s less confrontational and it’s also more fundamentally accurate.

I’m not feeling heard. That’s where we are. If you can come up with new and interesting ways for me to feel heard or for me to see that you’re hearing what I’m saying, that’s where the rub is right now. I don’t need to give them the solution that I think they need to do.

ANNA: Right, Exactly. Because again, that gets us in that meta argument, which just never ends well. Okay, so, what barriers do you see to living consensually? And how would it feel to set them aside? And I think this one’s important, because I think for most of us growing up, we may not have had choices and consent in all areas our life. So, it’s not necessarily something that we have a lot of experience with, but I think you can feel the difference. And so, I think even just the thought experiment of setting it aside, what would it look like to have this collaborative relationship with all the people that I live with? How would I feel?

Think of the areas that rub or that feel draining for you in your day. Would changing that paradigm soften some of that? I think that’ll be interesting.

And the last one is, this week, practice contemplating the underlying need that your friend or partner is trying to meet through their actions. I think write out some examples so that you can start to see patterns, because we can see patterns of, when they’re tired, they get a little grumpier. It can be hungry. It can be things like that. And it can just be, oh, okay, this one thing kind of triggers this same type of argument each time, so there must be something else under it.

And so, I think when we start to look for patterns, when we start to think about it, for me, behaviors are always a reflection of a need. So, when we see a behavior, whether we like it or don’t like it, look at what’s the need that’s playing out here? And so, when this is not in a charged situation, as well, then we start to just be better at recognizing the behaviors as a reflection of needs. And then we get better at it. Like we said, it’s just practice and learning. And so, then we don’t get stuck at that rubbing point of the behavior.

PAM: And I think it is so valuable for us to start with contemplating it, because if you all of a sudden start, when you’re having a conversation or conflict with someone, saying, well, what is the need underneath? Why are you asking for that? That can be off putting. And they’re not thinking in that way yet, so they may well not be able to answer that question for you.

But when we start thinking that way, like that example that we just talked about, you’re not listening, but I want to feel heard, when we start practicing that, over time we get better with identifying those. And the other piece being, I also love your patterns note, because there can also be patterns to when those things bubble up for them and we can even play with addressing those needs.

When somebody starts to feel a little bit grumpy and you’ve seen over time that it’s often when they haven’t eaten or anything, even if we just like grab a glass of water or whatever, bring a drink, bring a quick snack. Don’t say anything. Just hand it to them while you’re starting into the conversation and just see how that goes, back to the playing with it.

But yeah, being able to contemplate it ourselves and start to see it without putting expectations on other people to meet us right there. When we start doing this, they will get curious. We will have opportunities outside of the charged moments to mention these things. So, it’s something we can all get to, but again, needs time to practice, needs time to just kind of soak in the ethos.

ANNA: And having that self awareness piece. When when I make it have an action, what’s my driving need? What need am I trying to meet with this action? From simple things like I’m calling a friend. “Hey, I’m feeling lonely, or I’m feeling like I want to be heard by someone, or I’m just wanting to connect.” It can be anything. But if we start to just understand that the behaviors are always driven by a need, it just gets easier and faster to recognize them.

PAM: It does. It does so much. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much for listening everyone, and we will see you next time. Bye.

ANNA: Bye bye.

Join Pam, Anna, and Erika to talk about bids for connection. John and Julie Gottman from the Gottman Institute coined the term “bids for connection” to describe many moments through our days when people in our lives try to connect with us.

In our conversation, we talked about what those bids can look like (sometimes it doesn’t feel connecting at all!), what turning towards, turning away, and turning against a bid feels like, and we shared lots of examples from our own lives. Getting curious and looking through this new lens can really help strengthen our relationships with the people we love.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey and in your relationships!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello and welcome. I’m Anna Brown, and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Hello. And if you are here with us and enjoying the podcast, I invite you to join us at the Living Joyfully Network. It’s such a beautiful, supportive space filled with intentional people exploring ideas and sharing their journeys, and it just fills me up so much and I just want everyone to experience that.

You can learn more about the network at the Living Joyfully Shop, which also has resources and support in the forms of books, courses, and coaching as well. You can find the link in the show notes, or you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com. In today’s podcast, we will be talking about bids for connection.

I love this reframe. It has helped me so many times, so I’m really looking forward to this discussion and I think Erika’s gonna get us started. 

ERIKA: I would love to. I just love this topic so much and I would like to give a brief introduction to the idea of bids for connection. Doctors John and Julie Gottman from the Gottman Institute have been studying relationships for many decades, and they came up with this concept of bids for connection as a way of viewing our interactions with the people we love as opportunities for validation and connection. So a bid for connection is just a little action. Something someone says that indicates that another person would like to connect with us.

It could look like someone saying, look at this, or I’m exhausted. Or it could be a hug or a request for help, or a loud sigh. It’s basically an opportunity to make a choice in how we respond and the Gottmans describe three possible directions we could take. So the first is called turning towards, which means enthusiastically meeting the bid with connection, looking towards the person, responding with validation, increasing those feelings of connection. The person is feeling seen and heard, and the relationship is strengthened. 

The second is called turning away, which could look like just staying mostly unengaged by the bid. So maybe just continuing to look at whatever you were already working on. Glancing up for a second to say, mm-hmm. Or wait a minute. Something like that. Sometimes it feels like this is the best that we can respond in this moment, but over time that type of response will lead to disconnection in the relationship and the person can feel rebuffed or like you’re not very interested in them. 

And then the third is called turning against, which is usually the result of being in a state of overwhelm. So turning against would look like aggressively rejecting the bid for connection. Like, can’t you see I’m busy? Or, oh, here we go, what now? Or rolling your eyes. So turning against damages the relationship and makes it more likely that the person is not going to make future bids for connection. 

So I found some examples of what these three options might look like with a couple different bids.

So if someone says, can you come here for a minute? Turning towards, might be, sure what’s up? Turning away. Might be, in a minute. I’m almost done with this. And turning against might be, can’t you see? I’m watching the game here. You can imagine how different those three responses would feel. 

If someone says, whoa, check out that view. Turning towards might be looking at the view and saying, whoa, that’s amazing. And turning away might be like not really looking up at all and saying, mm-hmm. And turning against might be really, you had me look up for that?! 

I thought that one was kind of an obvious example. But this next one was super interesting.

So say if someone says. I’m exhausted. Turning towards might be. Is there anything I can do to help you feel more rested? Turning away might be, I know me too. And turning against might be, you don’t think I’m tired, and so I thought the turning away was more subtle in this case, since basically saying “me too” might feel validating in some ways.

But I think the point in turning towards is really to keep the focus on the person who’s making the bid and making sure that they’re validated in their experience first. And so rather than turn it around and immediately make it about both of us being tired, validating them first may feel the most connecting.

And one of the aspects that I find so interesting about this topic is just how varied the bids for connection could look like. That sigh just walking in the room and sitting down, getting louder and louder, which some children will do or asking for help. The possibilities are really endless. And there was a great network thread about bids for connection that looked like requests for help getting food, which I think we see a lot with our kids.

So anyway, I love this topic and I’m super excited to dive with you both.

PAM: Yes. I love this topic too, and I remember so many conversations over the years and the big aha moment for me when we first started using this lens of bids for connection was that defining things that felt like an upset kid or that felt like more of a challenge, right? Just seeing it as the challenge, but then realizing, oh, really, I can frame it as a bid for connection because they’re wanting help with it or maybe they’re expressing more frustration than they really feel because they want to make sure that the bid connects.

They’re just trying to get some interaction. So I found that to be a super useful way to look at it. And also, if I ever in the back of my mind said they can do that themselves, why are they asking me to get them a drink or make a sandwich or, pass me that thing that is like five feet from them that they could get up and get, reframing that and understanding that really so often it is more about connecting and interacting with me than it is about the thing.

Because they could just get up and get it if it was just about the thing. And just through the experience of responding as it was a bid, turning toward it and seeing how fruitful choosing that action was. The connection that actually followed, just reinforced the idea that so often these really were bids for connecting with me or with someone else. Right. So I think it’s such a useful lens to bring to our days.

ANNA: Yeah. I love that point, what you just were talking about there, because I think sometimes people will ask and wonder, how do I cultivate these close, connected relationships? Or we’re not in a good place and what do I do?

Or it’s a teenager and it’s feeling harder. This lens is so helpful because it is so rare that a teen is going to come up and say, Hey, I want to talk to you and have some attention now. Let’s make a connection. It is going to be sitting in the room, walking in, and in my case, she’ll come sit and sit. Just sit. And so, then it’s like, oh, okay. She’s wanting a little bit of connection with others. Or It can feel like a demand. Like why? You’re right next to the water. I’m way over here. Why can’t you get the water, you know? Oh, they want me to look up from what I’m doing.

So, I think there are a couple steps that were helpful to me when I would hear something that kind of plucked me the wrong way, you know, something that maybe felt like a demand. I would look at the whole context,  am I present with them? Am I busy with something else? Is that something they feel like will get my attention away from what I’m doing?

And so then I can check in and make a choice. But like you said, what I loved about what you just said, Pam was when we choose to lean into these bids, even when they feel a little unconventional or not like what we’re expecting. It’s so fruitful. You just see it opens up or the energy changes or a conversation that maybe wouldn’t have happened unfolds.

And with my quiet one that comes and sits down, it takes a long time, but then she gets to what she wants to talk about. And if I short circuited that, because I’m like, why are you here? You’re not saying a word, then I’d never get to, I’m worried about this thing or this thing happened and I’m kind of excited about it, or whatever the thing is that she wants to share.

It’s just a really fun lens to bring to all of these interactions and because my kids are older now, but when you have little kids and you’re doing all the things, it can be really hard when there are lots of bids for connection coming at you.

And so I tried to be mindful. I knew that every second I couldn’t drop everything and turn towards them. That sometimes that just wasn’t a reality when you had a baby with a diaper, you’re in the middle of changing. And so instead of that, like you were talking about earlier, Erika, In a minute, I’ll be there in a minute. That kind of has a rushed or hurried or annoyed tone to it. Even if my hands were deep in something, just making eye contact, smiling and, oh my gosh, I cannot wait to see that. I will be right there. I need to do X. Give them more information.

That narration that we talk about. So that they know, okay, it’s not that I’m valuing this thing, I’m doing more. It’s that I’m in the middle of it and I need to finish it to get it to a place where I can stop. But wow, am I interested in you and what you’re bringing to me. And I think that can make it feel so different.

So don’t be hard on yourself if you can’t just stop everything and turn straight into the bid, but you can do that little tweak of the eye contact, the smile, the turning towards, even if you have to finish something.

ERIKA: Oh yeah. I love that slight adjustment to make the turning away feel more connecting as well, because it’s in between turning towards and turning away and then making sure to follow through when we do have time. 

That follow through is like a mini repair that improves the connection again. So maybe I couldn’t immediately do the thing. But if I’ve had a pattern of turning away and being busy and being busy, then making the repair of, and now I have time and I’m going to do it, it can help. But also noticing if we have a pattern of turning against, if things have been really hard, and then making that repair and watching for opportunities to turn towards.

I think that’s what it’s all about. Just noticing. And I love what you brought up too, about it being a good place to start when you want to improve your relationships. Just using this lens as a place to start. It’s never going to be a bad thing to assume that everything’s a bid for connection.

You might as well just start there, and just see if maybe the more I turn towards all these little things, that I’ll just strengthen our connection. When I think about those ones that are harder, when someone’s being super grumpy, when someone is snapping at us, when someone is sighing or whatever the things are that can sometimes trigger us, when we’re busy ourselves, showing kindness and turning towards those hard moments for other people, I think it has so many positive outcomes to the relationship. I know when I’m having a hard time if someone can respond to me with love and kindness instead of getting irritated that I’m being snappy or whatever it is, it just feels better. 

These are just like little shifts that can make such a huge difference in our connection with our people.

PAM: Okay, so two things. Number one, yes, understanding when it’s a much sharper kind of bid for connection back to then it’s just little reminders to help us process and move through.

For me, it helps to remember that, okay, this is much more about them than it is about me. Something’s up, something’s frustrating, and if I can turn toward that and help them move through it, then that is relationship building. And then the piece you said Erika, about, just for a while, especially if we’re feeling disconnected, assume that everything is a bid for connection is brilliant. 

And then the following through piece, right? Because that’s where the trust is built. It’s not a dismissive statement when, maybe we connect, we’re excited about it. And we’ll be able to come when we’re finished. This thing, like narrating what’s going on and following through with that is again, connecting.

Because that builds trust. It doesn’t need to be immediate, but that you can trust what I say. You can trust that I will follow through or I will come and say, oh, this thing came up and, but just keep following through. So keep responding to the bids, keep following through, and then the narrating piece.

When we can’t turn toward it, in that moment, we can still make it a connecting moment. We can still look them in the eyes, unless we’re using a knife, but we can stop. Just stop cutting for a second. Because sometimes we can get so in our head and we’re wanting to, we’ve got this task that we’re doing and we’re wanting to finish it.

But taking that moment, if that relationship is a priority, that can help us remember and remind ourselves, yeah, this is something that I want to do and life is not a race. I don’t need to be completely focused on one thing to the detriment of everything else.

And then switch. It just helps me with so many layers of moments in the day.

ANNA: I love it as a trust building piece, right? That this is how we do it. Because it’s work to build trust. Trust, and especially if it’s been broken or there’s been some kind of a rupture, this is such a great way to build that trust, to build that rapport.

But I really loved, oh no, did I just lose it? I may have lost it, but it was about… I did. I lost it. I’m sorry. I’m gonna come back ’cause it was important. I’m going to get it again.

ERIKA: Okay. One thing that popped into my head was that sometimes, especially when I had little kids, their request for help could also be an indication that something about the environment is making it difficult for them to do the thing.

So even though this is not related to bids for connection, I wanted to mention it, just because it can be draining when kids are asking us for things all day, every day. And so I think it’s both like I’m always going to want to turn towards, but maybe part of what I’m turning towards is with curiosity to figure out is there a reason why getting water is hard for them?

And trying to make those changes in the environment so that they’re feeling like things are doable for them if they’re wanting to do it. And so maybe they’re asking you for water all the time, but it’s because the fridge squirted water on them once and now they’re afraid to use it.

There could be any number of reasons for an individual person. And so, figuring out a solution for that, being available, being curious, turning towards them, but then also digging a little deeper. I feel like that helps strengthen our connection and then also helps empower them if there are those kinds of things that are trickier.

ANNA: Yeah, I mean I think that really changes, really enhances the connection, right? Because if it is a problem, something happens, you tuning in and showing them they are important to me. I want to understand why this is feeling hard. Is there something I can do that feels really connecting? 

But I did remember what I was going to say, which was when you were saying to look at everything as a bid for connection.

What I think is so fun about that is we can kind of get in our head, or maybe it’s just me, but I think it happens to other people where we feel like they’re trying to thwart us, or why is everybody making everything so difficult? Why are there so many demands on me? Why does it have to be me? 

And that’s about me, obviously. What’s my capacity in that moment, but when I can change it to, they’re not trying to thwart me. They actually want to connect with me, and maybe I’ve made that hard because I’ve been busy doing other things, and so they’re getting a little grumpy and trying a couple different things, playing around with ways they can connect, but it has such a different energy to think, I don’t need to be exasperated here. 

This is somebody I love and they’re wanting to connect with me, and gosh, I’m going to take this opportunity to sit down and help them tie their shoes, even though they can tie their shoes. Or I’m going to get them that glass of water because I can use it as time for me to calm down and get a glass of water and then come back and give it to them.

And so, I love that reframe. I think it can really help us when we get caught in our head thinking people are trying to thwart me. It can really help me just calm down and remember, actually these are people that I love and they want to connect with me and I want to connect with them. And yes, maybe we’re having a difficult day or we’re all at low capacity. And that’s okay.

I love the narration reminder. Again, if we can narrate a little bit more about that, it helps. So, the bids for connections are not always smooth and perfect, you know? But they’re there. And when we look at them through that lens, I feel like we’re looking at the people around us with love.

PAM: Yeah, I love that. And there was another piece too, as you were talking there, feeling all these bids coming in, bids coming in. And also remember that we can put out bids for connection as well. The thing that helps me anyway, when I think of it that way, through that lens is like, I am lightly putting out these bids, and for me it just helps not to have expectations attached to them.

It’s just so handy and then handy and helpful for me to even notice like we’re talking about that capacity piece and feeling overwhelmed. We too get to notice when we might like to connect with somebody else when we’re in a space where it’s like, it would be nice to just go chat with somebody.

Even change where my head is right now because maybe I’m having a hard time. Getting out of something that I was super focused on, et cetera, something like that. So to remember that it’s a tool that I can use as well is super helpful and helpful for me too when I know that I’m actively wanting to do that, to take that moment to see through the eyes of the person I’m wanting to connect with.

Come to them because the goal is the connection. I’m not trying to accomplish anything in particular, other than that connection. So, if I’m feeling a little disconnected from my kids, it’s not inviting them to come do something that I like to do.

My bid for connection can be to come and join in what they’re doing, because that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for the connection, and the easiest way to do that is to join somebody in what they’re already doing. Or offering up something that we enjoy doing together, et cetera, so that it’s about the connection, not about me per se.

That was always a very useful kind of mindset shift for me.

ERIKA: I love that it feels kind of like reframing all of that stuff coming at us in such a way that then you can feel almost excited about it. Because it’s  going to build my relationship with them. This is something I can use to increase our connection.

So, yeah. I love that.

ANNA: Yeah. I love that. And really loved Pam, you talking about us putting bids out and I think one of the things of just recognizing this whole idea, because we do it almost unconsciously, right? Where we’re needing connection, we’re stuck in something and we do the, can you get me some water or can you do X, and maybe our partner’s like, uh, okay, but you’re next to the kitchen.

And so what has been helpful for me, and this goes back to narration. Is to start using more clear language about it. Like, Hey, I’m just needing to be taken care of for a minute. I’ve had a really hard call, or something’s been going on. And what’s interesting about that is it can help give everybody that language.

So it’s not unusual to just say, you know what? I just need to snuggle on the couch, or I just need your help with this or I need this. And so it’s interesting to think that we take something that’s kind of subconscious and we can bring it into the conscious with that narration and it really changes things.

And so, I love that piece that you’re talking about, being aware of our own bids for connection as well. 

Okay, this was fun and I think everybody will be going, ding, ding, ding. There’s lots of things to think about in a new lens, to look around the house and into your relationships. I’m excited about that. 

Thank you so much to the two of you for joining me today and for everyone listening, and again, I would love to invite you to check out the Living Joyfully Network and just join the conversation because it’s so much fun. See you next time!

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Seeing Through Someone Else’s Eyes.

“Seeing through someone else’s eyes” is a shift from the typical phrase, “walking in their shoes.” And it’s a valuable paradigm shift to consider when trying to learn more about the people in our lives. By considering people’s unique personalities, interests, and sensitivities, we can better understand their choices and avoid a lot of conflict and misunderstandings.

We hope you find this conversation helpful on your unschooling journey and in your relationships!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

Want the full collection of Living Joyfully Foundations podcast episodes as an audiobook (and the transcripts edited into an ebook)? Find them here in the Shop!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

EPISODE QUESTIONSTake a moment to think about a close friend or loved one. How would you describe their aspirations and goals, their strengths and weaknesses, and their interests and passions?Pick an issue or challenge you recently navigated with family or friends. What did it look like through your eyes? Now try to see it through the eyes of someone else who was involved. How does it look different? How does it look the same? Why?Remember a time you judged someone else about their choice or decision. Where did that judgment stem from? If you released that judgment and got more curious about why that choice made sense for them, how might things have played out differently?Let’s explore the story of you. What are your current aspirations and goals? Strengths and weaknesses? Interests and passions? How do they inform the day to day choices you make?TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are thrilled you’re interested in exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.

And in today’s episode, we are going to talk about seeing through someone else’s eyes. This was another big paradigm shift for me in how I choose to be in relationship with others, because over the years, I have often heard the advice to walk in the other person’s shoes so that we can better understand them and what they’re experiencing.

But I discovered that, for me, that didn’t go quite far enough. So, I put myself in my partner’s shoes or my child’s shoes, see what challenges and constraints they were facing, and come up with what I thought was a great plan for moving forward. And then they didn’t agree. And I was like, “What? Why not? This is perfect!” I just didn’t understand why they wouldn’t follow my suggestions and I judged them negatively for their lack of cooperation. Like, “Let’s move through this, people! Here’s a great way to do it. You’re just being stubborn.” They must see how well my plan would work out.

So, when that wasn’t working, I dug into it more. And jumping off what we talked about last week about how different people are in so many ways, I realized that putting myself in someone else’s shoes meant that I was still using my experiences and perspectives, my ways of processing, and my preferred ways of engaging with the world. I was still filtering this new view of the world through the lenses that made sense to me.

I discovered that beyond walking in their shoes, I wanted to try seeing through their eyes. Oh my goodness! The picture is so much richer. It holds their experiences and preferences, how they prefer to process information, and how they prefer to engage with the world. It holds their aspirations and goals, their strengths and weaknesses, their interests and passions.

And their choices now made so much more sense to me, because I can see how they were the best choices for them. In the same situation, I, in their shoes, may well make a very different choice, but that is entirely because I’m me. Because people are different, when I want to connect with someone, when I want to more fully understand their experiences and support them as they move through their days, putting myself in their shoes isn’t as helpful as seeing it through their eyes.

ANNA: Oh my goodness. Yes! I really loved when I first heard you talking about this, because it really puts this very helpful visual on why my attempts at solving things for everybody falls a bit flat. And I love to solve things. And in my early days, my inclination was definitely to look at someone’s concern and set about finding a solution for them. And it was often rooted in how I would want to handle it, how would I want to move through it? But like you said, as soon as you start digging into this, really even at all, you see why it doesn’t work. And, as is so often the case, turning it around really helps me see why.

So, I have this close friend and she moves through the world in a very different way. She is a go-getter. She makes the call. She finishes the thing. She tells people what she needs in this very direct way. So, when I would share something with her, she would offer advice based on how she moves through the world and it would often just leave me feeling misunderstood, really. Disconnected.

It wasn’t that her ideas weren’t valid or even amazing, but they were not likely to work for me, because it just isn’t as easy for me to make that call to someone out of the blue or to be super direct about what I need from them. But when someone understands those pieces about me, they can help me find ways to get what I want that feel comfortable. Maybe there will be some stretching and that’s okay, but it’ll be grounded in who I am and give me the best chance of actually being able to do it and to solve the problem that’s in front of me to begin with.

So, that realization really helped me stop doing it to others. And instead, I focused on listening and learning and seeing through their eyes, helping them find ways that resonated with them and who they are and how they want to move through the world.

PAM: Yes. And I think it is really important to just note that seeing through someone else’s eyes is a skill that we get better with over time. We need to practice with releasing our lenses. Sometimes we’ve got lenses in there that we really don’t know that we have until we start pulling them away. And how can we not value our way of seeing it and being in the world as better? It goes back to last week’s episode. We’re all different, and that’s okay. One way isn’t better than the other, except that that’s our natural tendency to do it. So, it can be hard to just release that valuing, because it really is better for us.

And also, our relationships with our loved ones become more connected just because we come to better understand their aspirations and goals, their strengths and weaknesses, and their interests and passions, which means we can more accurately bring those aspects into the picture and vice versa. We are sharing ours and they learn more about us. It just takes time, doesn’t it? We always like to think, okay, this makes sense. I’m going to do this right now. Let’s go.

ANNA: Forever more! But it does take time and I think with everything, be gentle with ourselves as we figure it out. And do little steps, like starting with, “Well, this is how I might move through that.” Just that little qualification, being clear about that as opposed to saying, “I think you should do this,” which is sometimes where we go, but that’s a great start. That little qualification, “This is how I might move through that.” It leaves room for connection and learning more, because at that point, they can say, “I don’t think I could do that.” And then you’re able to learn more and have more of that conversation.

But dropping the judgment piece that you were just talking about, I think, is really the most important and sometimes the hardest. “Well, if they would just do it the way I want them to, it would be solved.” Well, if the “this” is not something that feels good to them, it won’t solve it and it actually will just leave the person feeling like there’s something wrong with them or that they’re completely misunderstood and it definitely can impact our connection and relationship. And there isn’t anything wrong with them. There isn’t only one way to do something. They just may not want to move through the world in the same way that I do.

So, we can let go of that judgment and commit to learning more about who they are and what feels best to them. Sharing our ideas, absolutely, but with this open, curious mindset that they might be seeing it in a very different way.

PAM: Yes. Exactly. This tool of seeing through their eyes, how it works, is also really helpful when we just want to understand a choice they’re making. Maybe they’re not looking for our input.

So, when we see a choice and it doesn’t make sense to us, maybe it’s not a choice we would ever make, but when we take a moment to see it through their eyes, all of a sudden it can make so much more sense.

And, that said, sometimes no matter how hard we try to see through their eyes, we just don’t understand why they want to do the thing they want to do. So, in those moments, what works for me is leaning on my understanding again, that people are different. And not taking things personally, like we talked about. They’re not making this choice to piss me off. They’re making it because it makes sense to them.

So, that helps me move through any judgment of them that I might be feeling, and instead get curious. Because judgment is not only disconnecting, it’s often a clue that I’m just missing something. So, I might ask more questions to try to better understand and absolutely, sometimes that helps. Sometimes I was just missing this little piece. It’s like, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Sometimes they can’t explain things in a way though that makes sense to us. That again, doesn’t mean that they’re wrong. I can choose to trust them to make their own decisions, and we will all learn more as things unfold over time. That is beautiful. When we see how things unfold, when we see their next step and their next step, we see a bigger picture of what’s happening.

And if things do go a bit sideways for them, when I’m not bringing that judgmental energy of, “I told you so. I had a better idea,” when we’re not bringing that to the conversation, we can support them as they tweak their path over time to get where they want to go.

Or maybe I discover a new aspect of them that I didn’t know about. Maybe it’s a new aspiration that’s been bubbling up. Maybe it’s a fear, a new interest, a sensitivity, like we talked about before, that may be developing.

So, when we’re open and curious about the people that we’re in relationship with, we all grow and learn and change alongside each other, which is so much more connecting and fun than trying to coax and control each other to do what we think is best. 

ANNA: So much yes. My goal is connection and part of that is understanding these differences and not only learning to understand, but the next step is really celebrating. And when we can celebrate even when we don’t fully understand, that makes such a difference. The world is richer for us all playing to our strengths and supporting one another to do that. This is especially true for the people we are choosing to share our life with. But, I mean, for me, it really goes for all people.

It’s back to that generous assumption and cultivating an open, curious mindset, so that we can begin to understand why people are seeing the world differently. Why are they choosing differently? And knowing that those different ways of seeing and doing are not attacks on our way of seeing and doing. Both can and do exist. And to be in relationship with someone, celebrating that instead of judging helps us avoid conflicts and misunderstanding, and it really deepens that trust and bond we have with each other, because we feel deeply understood, which is so important to us as humans, often.

PAM: So much. Just take a moment to sink into that and just feel, somebody knowing us to that level, which also includes us knowing ourselves. We kind of need to get there ourselves before we can even share those pieces of information with others. But, as you said, it does help us avoid so much conflict and misunderstanding and taking things personally and judging others and having expectations of others, and instead, deepens our connection, deepens our trust, deepens that whole bond that we have, within our whole family.

And then, as you said, it’s our choice how deep and strong a relationship we want with anybody who passes through our lives. So many of these tools are also useful, at least I have found, in my extended relationships as well.

So, here are some questions that you might want to ponder as you explore this really fun difference between walking in someone’s shoes and seeing through their eyes. So, the first one is, take a moment to think about a close friend or a loved one. How would you describe their aspirations and goals, their strengths and weaknesses, and their interests and passions? It’s really fun to do that. And then, you know what? It might be really fun to check in with them. And say, “Hey, this is what I’m thinking. This is how I’m seeing you. What have I nailed? What have I maybe gone a little sideways on?” It could spark a really, really fun conversation.

ANNA: Yeah. I think that’s a great conversation.

PAM: Yeah. Especially when we just come at it that way, rather than it coming out after a conflict or around a conflict or something. There is no energy and judgment in the air. It’s just like, let’s have this fun conversation. Okay. Next.

Pick an issue or challenge that you recently navigated with family or friends. What did it look like through your eyes? Now try to see it through the eyes of someone else who was involved. How does it look different? How does it look the same? Why do you think that is? Just start playing with that, as well. Where are the the places where you see the same things and where might we see things differently? And then maybe play it through a little bit more, like the choices that people made throughout whatever issue or challenge it was, do they make more sense to you now that you’re looking at it through their eyes?

ANNA: I think what happens when we do this piece, where we step back and go, how are they seeing it? It takes some of the charge out of it, because when we are only seeing through our eyes, we’re bulldozing down the tunnel to get to our end point. But when we step back and go, oh my gosh, I can see how they’re seeing that in a really different way, suddenly, the charge comes out of it and we can get on the same team. We can go, okay, I’m seeing it this way. You’re seeing it that way. Let’s talk about that. It just changes that whole dynamic of the head butting that can happen, you know?

PAM: Yeah. And just think how that helps everyone involved feel seen and heard, no matter what the end path is. When we recognize how other people are experiencing it, that can be so valuable. All right, next.

Remember a time you judged someone else about their choice or decision, and now let’s do a thought experiment with that. Where did that judgment stem from? If you released that judgment and got more curious about why that choice made sense for them, how might things have played out differently? One thing that’s important for us and why that playful attitude helps is it’s not valuable for us to judge our past actions and thoughts. We’re learning more now. We’re playing with things now. The stuff that we’re figuring out, we can bring with us into future encounters, future engagements, conflicts, choices, all those pieces.

So we can, in our own thought experiments, play around with anything. It’s okay that, man, I felt really judgey about that person that day or this thing that I saw. Maybe I know nobody who was involved, but it’s worth it to think, okay, where did that judgment come from? What does that mean for me? Why is that important to me? All those pieces can be really helpful for understanding ourselves and for making maybe different choices as we move forward.

ANNA: Right. That’s what I was going to say. I think when we play around with some of these ones in the past, again, this is not to judge how we handled something in the past. This is not to make ourselves feel bad. But it’s giving us a chance in a lower charged environment to look at that. And I think when we recognize where the judgment came in and recognize how it maybe didn’t serve us in that situation, when we feel it bubbling up when something comes up ahead of us, we can go, oh, okay, this judgment, do I want to look into this now? Do I want to dig back and peel some layers back now? And so, I think that practice can help us actually help in the moment or the things that are to come.

PAM: Exactly. And lastly, let’s explore the story of you. What are your current aspirations and goal, strengths and weaknesses, interests and passions? How do they inform the day-to-day choices you make? I think sometimes we can kind of disconnect. We can think of these big things like, what are my goals? What are my strengths? How do I like to do things? What are my passions? And yet, we don’t bring those down into our day-to-day. Or we don’t make the connection. They may be subconsciously directing our choices throughout the day, because our mind knows these are the things that we value.

But when we can recognize that, we can also notice that we’re making more progress than we think towards our goal, et cetera. So, understanding how all those pieces weave together can be so valuable for ourselves. So, it’s absolutely helpful to do this.

ANNA: Yeah, and I think, too, it kind of reminds me of the priorities episode, too, with that intentionality we’re bringing it, but I think what I really want to say about this question, and we’ll keep talking about this, we need to develop our own self-awareness in order to be able to communicate with our partners. So, in order to be able to say what’s important to us and what we’re doing so that they can understand, because none of us are mind readers. So, this work of really digging into, what am I excited about? What’s making me tick? How am I looking at these things? is so valuable on so many layers for us and for those in our lives.

PAM: Exactly. Yes. We hope you have so much fun with these questions and we would be happy to carry on the conversation, whether you want to comment on YouTube, whether you want to comment on Instagram. We would love to hear some of your processing through these questions if you’d like to share. And thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next time. Bye!

In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about building confidence. We had an interesting month in the Living Joyfully Network recently where we dove deep into this topic and it was fascinating how many layers we found to uncover. In this episode, we talk about letting go of comparisons, cultivating trust in ourselves and our children, remembering our ‘why’, and lots more.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey and in your relationships!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello everyone. I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Larrichia. Today we’re going to be talking about building confidence, which was a really interesting topic of conversation on the Network recently, and so I’m really excited to dive into that.

But first, I want to encourage you to check out our online shop where you can find more information about joining the Living Joyfully Network, a selection of unschooling and relationship courses, Pam’s books about unschooling, and a variety of coaching options. The shop has resources and support for every stage of your journey. You can find the link in the show notes, or you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com.

And now, Pam, would you like to get us started with our conversation?

PAM: Sure, sure. I am excited to dive into this because confidence is an interesting topic and to see where it comes from and how we can build it and how it comes together.

Because there are actually many different aspects to building our confidence. So, I thought I would start with one shift that I found really fundamental to building my confidence and that was letting go of comparison. Especially when we first came to unschooling, it was really easy to compare myself and my family to others and kind of find myself wanting, and what would happen each and every time is it would just send me spinning, right?

I’d start questioning my choice. It’s like, why are we doing this and undermining my confidence in things working out, right? So as I came to notice that pattern, I dug a bit deeper. And soon realized that comparing myself or my kids to other people just invites judgment into the conversations that I’m having with myself.

As I’m processing and trying to figure things out. It ended up being more noise in my head that distracted me and even sometimes drowned out my own thoughts and perspectives, they could get really loud and I learned, I noticed, I know that my brain needs some time and some space to think things through.

I want to feel my feelings, want to understand my emotions, all those pieces. And I found I wasn’t getting to the processing pieces. I wasn’t developing that deeper level of self-awareness when I was staying stuck at that more superficial level of comparing myself to others and then just trying to fix those differences.

That was very surface level. Here’s what they’re doing and I feel I’m not doing it, so I should do that thing, right? There wasn’t a lot of learning in there for me. And I came to see that part of building confidence in myself is better understanding myself. So that little interesting nuance for me is that it is not about forever shutting out what others might share with me.

At first it just feels like judgment because I’m noticing it. But what I found in the longer run was that it was more about recognizing that what they’re sharing with me is merely information. I didn’t have to take that in as judgment. I didn’t have to compare myself immediately. I could just see what it was, because so often, as we’ve talked about before, that kind of information often tells us more about them.

Then it tells us about us, and that’s that pendulum swing we have talked about before as well. At first, we sometimes need to swing all the way to the other side to spend some quiet time without other voices so that we can start to more clearly hear our own. And when I think back, I definitely remember that when the kids left school. We pretty much cocooned as a whole family basically for about six months. 

It was really helpful for me to remove myself from those outside voices for a while when I was so busy, learning so much about unschooling, learning about my kids, learning about myself. Because I noticed that when others expressed confusion, I immediately left to compare myself and my kids to them, and I immediately felt defensive and I didn’t yet have the language to express our new direction with any confidence.

So, letting go of comparisons with others. Really was a big first step for me on the way to building confidence in the whole shebang.

ANNA: In all the things. I think it’s so valuable to spend some time here thinking about what confidence looks like and feels like and how we can get there and cultivate it, because it really does change how you move through the world. When you’re feeling confident about your relationships, about your situation, about the decisions that you’re making, it changes everything.

It just doesn’t invite all of that. It just doesn’t invite it all in. I think it really changes our experience, so it’s worth digging in. I’m glad we’re doing that and I think comparison is such a great place to start because if we think about it, that’s so external. And like you said, surface level, whatever we’re seeing from other people is a tiny slice of their life.

Often what they’re choosing to put on Instagram, or even if it’s what they’re choosing to tell the story at Christmas, it’s very surface level. It’s cultivated to create an image and that’s great because I love them writing their story and feeling good about what’s working for them.

There’s no critique about that. It’s just me recognizing, oh, okay, that’s  what’s happening for them. That’s interesting for them. That’s what’s going on. But also knowing it’s not the whole story, but what I can do is focus on my kids and see what’s happening here.

What do we love? What’s going on for us? And it really changes that piece because if I am out looking and comparing, I actually really am not present with my kids or with what’s happening in my life and in our home. And so that was the first thing for me, realizing just can almost energetically feel it pulling me away from actually where I want to be, which is present. Where I wanted to be at the time, present with my kids and looking at our life and enriching our life.

So, I do love that we’re starting, with letting go of comparison.

ERIKA: Yeah, I love this topic as a whole, this building confidence. It was interesting on the network to see people noticing it’s that lack of confidence that’s really causing a lot of the issues that are coming up in their unschooling lives.

When you have that feeling of, I have to do things like this and then, oh, but I should be doing this. And just kind of flailing around with this kind of decision making and then thinking we’re doing it wrong. We need to do it differently. It’s that lack of confidence. And so the letting go of comparisons is such a great little place to start looking.

Just because people are so different. And so I really think, at the beginning of my unschooling journey, I did not have that so clearly in my mind, this idea of people are different. But that’s such a huge paradigm shift that I think would’ve helped me with this earlier on if I had only understood that part because comparison doesn’t really make sense anymore once you realize how different people are. 

And so what works for one person won’t work for another person. Then when we’re looking at what other people are doing, it’s just that information. It’s just noticing, there’s one thing that’s possible to do and see how it’s working for them or not working for them.

It has nothing to do with me, my kids, our family, or what’s going on with us? And so once we can tune in more to what’s true of my kids, what’s true of me, and really start making decisions that make sense to me, rather than trying to copy the decisions that someone else made that made sense to them.

It’s like all of a sudden that confidence starts building because I’m listening. This makes more sense. It’s not just following these steps that logically don’t make sense to my brain. And so, I just love that and just remembering like what you were saying, Anna, what we’re seeing of other people is also just one story of their lives.

That’s not the whole picture. And so yeah, that comparison is, it can really derail us along the path. I love the reminder to let go of that.

ANNA: I love what you said there about it just makes sense and I would even argue that it’s easier. Because I think if we’re trying to do something that works for someone else, we can feel like, this is hard, this is not flowing.

Why is this not feeling good? Why are we getting resistance here? What is happening? My kids don’t want to do that, or this is not happening. But when you’re really tuned in and doing what works for you, it’s like, oh, this feels easy. This feels fun. We’re still going to have our regular bumps, but it’s not going against the flow.

Something else that’s a part of this is. A trust, right? A trust in ourselves, a trust in our children, a trust in the decisions that we’re making so that when we have that really innate trust, if we are confident, we project that confidence outside of ourselves.

When we can think about it. How do we build that trust? A lot of that is really just being with our kids, just seeing what they’re doing, really bringing in what’s happening here. And look, they are learning, they are growing, we are improving our relationships. We are getting through hurdles.

And I think one piece of this, I want to say that I think happens more at the beginning of the journey, sometimes we’re trusting in our decision. I know I’ve made the right decision and now everything’s going to be great. I’ve pulled my kids out of school, or whatever change I’ve made and now it’s going to be great.

And it’s like, no, it’s not exactly that. We don’t get to do that. It’s more that we start building trust in our relationships. I think that’s why we talk so much about how to cultivate these relationships. Because the trust that I had was a very deep trust that we could figure anything out.

It was not about school or not school, it was about how we could figure out how to meet our needs, how to work together, how to move through difficult situations, how to move through conflict, how to move through things that life threw at us, and that deep trust was just unshakeable. Then when people would come at me with things they didn’t like what we were doing or didn’t understand what we were doing, I was so solid that I know us. I know our relationships. I know we can figure out what’s best. So, it’s not about a particular thing. Again, unschooling, going to school, doing whatever. It’s really about that. We are so in tune. We figure things out, we know what’s happening. We work together. If we have found a need that isn’t being met.

We’ll figure it out. So, that deep trust, I think, is a part of this too.

PAM: Yeah, and I think that trust flows so nicely after you can let go of those comparisons because now, I can see, I can hear my own voice. I can now lean, as you said, lean into the kids and as you mentioned Erika, that realization that people are different.

That just releases so much weight for other people’s, um, shares. And like you said, Anna, nobody’s trying to lie or fake things or anything. They’re just excitedly sharing what they’re wanting to share, et cetera. So yeah, that’s where we can now lean in and when we’re hearing our voice and now we can learn so much.

We can learn so much about our kids, ourselves, learn the tools and the processes to be in a relationship with them too. Figure things out. Right? And that is where I remember, like you were saying, that’s where we learn the language. So, that we can not feel defensive and also have the language to share if people are interested in learning more.

That confidence is building and building and building. When we’re shutting out those noises and now actually leaning in, hearing ourselves, our actual kids in front of us, and instead of just trying to copy other things, we’re actually in there learning these kinds of tools to be in relationship, to build connection.

And that’s where the trust comes. It’s like, oh look, we figured it out. We figured it out. Things went sideways and the world didn’t end, and we figured it out. Just through that experience for me anyway, it just built more and more trust and the confidence came along with it.

ERIKA: Oh, I really love the trust part. I’m just thinking, I think back in the old days, I would’ve thought confidence comes from thinking that I did everything right and so I can feel good about where I am and what I’m doing because I made all the correct decisions, you know? And so, trusting that there’s no one right way, and trusting that this is a long game, trusting that there’s plenty of time, those are the things that if I can trust in that, that’s going to be what builds my confidence because, there are going to be ups and downs.

There are going to be things that we think are going to work and then they don’t work, or they work for a while and then they don’t work. And so that doesn’t mean my confidence should be shattered. That just means, this is life. And so being confident is more about trusting that we can make it through when things don’t go the way that we expect them to or that this kind of longer game and plenty of time view of childhood, which I think is really kind of a radical change from the way we grew up.

A lot of us grew up in school. It makes it feel like there is definitely one right way and time is of the essence and you better check these things off in the correct order at the correct time. My trust in our unschooling journey has taken a lot of paradigm shifts in my own mindset in order to get to that place.

I wanted to also bring us to the idea of understanding our why. Because I think that’s such a huge part of building our confidence too. It’s something that I love. Every time we talk about it on the network, it’s always such an amazing, fun conversation to read why people came to unschooling.

What is the reason that they are doing this with their children? What did they see in their children that brought them here? What happened in our own lives that brought us to these ideas? 

And so I think when we really dig in and start asking ourselves these questions like, why is unschooling appealing? Why are we doing the things we do with our kids? What makes our kids tick? Who are we, what things do we like to do in our lives? 

Digging down to that, why gives us a lot more confidence and revisiting it can be a little confidence boost. When we are feeling a little bit shaky. That’s why we always go back to that, when people are feeling shaky, like what is your why?

And that grounds you back into that confidence about your decisions.

PAM: I think that has always been such a great tool. When I remember to do it, when I start getting knocked off, when my confidence is faltering, when I’m wobbling like that, once I remember that as a tool to help me rebuild things, it is always so valuable because fundamentally there is a reason for this choice in the first place.

And revisiting that reminds me, right? Oh yes, this is why we are doing this thing. And even playing around with it like, so what if we weren’t doing this thing anymore? That helps me remember, because like you’re saying, as things are flowing before. It can start to feel easier. Right? And you forget how challenging things might have been before you made these lifestyle changes.

And then if your confidence gets knocked for a bit and you kind of forget, go back to the beginning and really steep in that understanding why we made this choice. Even though this moment seems challenging, even though my confidence is a little knocked around right now, fundamentally, this is the life that I want to live with my family.

This is the kind of person I want to be, et cetera. It just really helps me reground really. I think that’s what it is, and that helps so much with my confidence.

ANNA: Yeah, and honestly that’s a tool we can use in any realm of our life. Because all of us are making thoughtful choices about how we want to move through the world.

And so right when something knocks that confidence a little bit, we can sometimes throw the baby out with the bath water, and question the whole decision. But I think if we can pause and take a little bit of time to say, okay, but why did I make this decision? And I love the point that you made, Pam, that it can feel easier.

So sometimes we forget because that is so true. And then it just takes that little bit of reflection to go, oh my gosh, we were living in a really difficult time before we made this decision. And look at all the things that have changed. So, this little bump is nothing compared to when we were kind of flailing around, figuring out what worked for all of the personalities and all of the different pieces and all of our brains.

So, I love that point because I think, again, when we get knocked by something. It just shakes us. And so we just start, why did I change? I need to go back and just take that time, pause, really soak in why.

I think it can be valuable to write it down, throughout the journey at different times because our whys can change, and even the decision can ultimately change. It’s not about you have a why, you make a decision, you stay with it forever. But as you tune into the why, you will fine tune the journey, which may involve changing parts of the decision. But it’s so important, I think, to just slow down when you’re feeling knocked by something, because then you’re going to get your confidence back and from that confident place you can all decide if this is still the path we want to take. And that just feels very different than deciding and then running.

PAM: Yeah, I think so. I remember those moments, I was going to say, especially early on, but I mean, you still can get knocked. But that’s why, that’s why I liked understanding our why. Sometimes we talked about remembering our why, but I like understanding because like you said, Anna, it can definitely change over time as we learn more, as we gain more experience with it.

It’s like, oh yeah, this is what I want. Revisiting it and like you said, even writing it down or wherever your brain likes to keep things. To just keep track or keep those things top of mind for a while. It is really helpful just to bring that back top of mind to help recover and build our confidence again.

And I think when we bring all that together, I know in my experience, that’s when, as my confidence comes back, as I’m remembering why we’re doing it, as I’ve sunk back into that trust that we’ve cultivated, I’ve let go of the voices recognize that people are different and the things they’re sharing are great for them.

That doesn’t automatically mean that they’re great for us anyway, through all that process, I really start to find my voice again because that’s one of the first things I lose when my confidence gets knocked, right? I can’t share with any enthusiasm because I am not confident in our choices or how things are going in this particular season.

So that, for me, is kind of a sign that my confidence is coming back and just having these various tools to help me find my voice again. And it’s, I really like that image because it’s finding our voice with the other outside world, extended family, whatever, but it’s also finding our voice again, maybe within our family. 

That kind of knocked our confidence again. Knock our confidence so we can find ourselves again, ground ourselves again. And then that really does, at least for me, help me find my voice again so I can continue showing up in all the various moments of life.

ANNA: Right. And now I’m thinking it’s almost circular in a way, and that if you find that you have lost your voice or you’re feeling shaky about your voice, then I’m wondering is that because maybe I’m taking on other people’s expectations, or I’m trying to present something that maybe I don’t fully believe or that doesn’t fit with my family, or I’m trying to perform in a way, that’s what I’m supposed to do. And so then that gets you to start the process again, letting go of the comparisons, letting go of the side noises.

How do I build trust in myself and in my kids? And so I love that because I think from that grounded place of just trusting in your relationships and really understanding your family, you do have a voice. And whether you choose to shout it from the mountaintops or in a casual conversation or just your own self-talk, which is so important, you know that you have this strong self-talk of, like, look at this, look at what we’re creating. Look at what we’re creating together. Look at this life that we have. And so wherever it is, if you’re feeling shaky, then run through it again because you’ll get back there as you tune into your kids.

I really love that piece.

ERIKA: Yeah. Oh, me too. Finding our voice doesn’t mean we have to be going and telling everyone either. And so I think that’s a fun nuance that finding my voice, to me, really is that self-talk, inner voice,  that to me is the most important one.

And so, just clarifying for myself why I’m doing the things I’m doing. Gaining that confidence and trust in my ability to do things and having that be reflected in my self-talk, that is really where that finding my voice comes from. And then I feel like that grounded, calm, confident self can succeed in any interaction, right? 

It’s not like I need to share everything with every person I meet, but I’m feeling good about myself. I’m feeling okay and my decision’s feeling good. That grounded calm energy helps, Pam, like you were saying, in our own families, finding our voice in our own families.

I think it makes such a huge difference. With all of the kids’ ups and downs, just being able to be to know that we’ve got this, that kind of energy just feels so reassuring to them as well. And it just helps me in conversations with everyone. So, I really love the finding our voice piece.

This has been a really fun conversation and we hope you enjoyed it and maybe had an aha moment or picked up some new ideas to consider on your own journey. And if you enjoyed  this type of conversation, I think you would love the Living Joyfully Network. It’s such an amazing group of people connecting and having thoughtful conversations about all the different things we encounter in our unschooling lives.

And you can learn more at livingjoyfullyshop.com. You can just click on community at the top of the page, and we hope to meet you there. So thanks for listening, and we will see you next time.

This week, we share a conversation that Pam had with Adrian Peace-Williams back in 2019. At the time, she was 24 years old and in college. Pam and Adrian talked about her childhood unschooling, her choice to go to high school, her years of traveling the world after high school, where she was at the moment in her journey, and lots more. Her understanding of herself and her needs was so inspirational.

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

QUESTIONS FOR ADRIAN

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family?

What were some of your interests growing up and how did you pursue them?

Over the years, was there a time you found your unschooling lifestyle challenging? How did you move through that?

I know that you enjoy traveling. What is it that you love about it and can you tell us some of the trips you’ve been on?

You’re in college (university?) now and home for the holidays. What are you studying and how did you find the transition to school?

What do you appreciate most about living an unschooling lifestyle growing up?

What are your plans for the next year or two?

As a grown unschooler, what piece of advice would you like to share with unschooling parents who are just starting out on this journey?

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Listen to our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Welcome, I am Pam Laricchia from LivingJoyfully.ca and today I am here with Adrian Peace-Williams. Hi, Adrian!

ADRIAN: Hi, Pam. How is it going?

PAM: It is going wonderfully. Adrian, if people do not know, is one of my friend Alex’s daughters. I have enjoyed getting little updates over the years as to what she has been up to. I am thrilled that she agreed to come on the podcast to talk about her experience growing up unschooling. So, to get us started Adrian …

Can you share a little bit about you and your family?

ADRIAN: Yes. I grew up in Nova Scotia and I have two sisters. I am the middle child and I am twenty-four at the moment. I was homeschooled up until I was fifteen then I decided to go to public school. I did that and that was a whole adventure. I am attending university. We live in the woods. I love being outside and reading books and learning and I love my sisters dearly and my parents as well of course.

Pam:

What were some of your interests growing up and how did you pursue them?

ADRIAN: It changed of course as I grew up but a theme for my whole life has been the outdoors. That was a big one for me when I was little too. Luckily, I did grow up surrounded by woods in a pretty rural location. I was able to go outside all the time and play in the woods.

My parents would facilitate that and bring home books on trees and birds and plants. I would kind of look at them and think this is cool but mostly just wanted to be outside. Now I am valuing those books a little bit more and turning more towards the books. I want to know all the details now.

Being outside was kind of an easy one. I could just be outside. I also loved drawing and painting and so I would do that a lot as a kid. Mum would often take us to art galleries so I could see different paintings. We had painting board games where we could pretend it was an art auction kind of thing. We actually did that the other day too.

PAM: Masterpiece, we loved that game.

ADRIAN: Yes, Masterpiece.

We would just draw and paint a lot. I went to a lot of art camps as well. We could choose what camps in the summer we wanted to go to and I would usually go to the visual arts and also theater too. I really enjoyed being in theater so I took some improv classes.

Again, mum and dad would say, “Okay these are all these classes you can take and here are your options.” I would always choose an arts one. I took painting classes. As I got older, I got involved in community theater which was amazing. One of them is just a woman’s group where they put on a variety show every year. The profits go to woman’s charities that they pick. So, I love that.

I liked to read too, so I would read a lot or get mum and dad to read to me. I loved reading so much. I would actually sit for so long and being read to, that mum and dad were like, “Okay I cannot read to you any more I am too tired.” I would want them to sit there for like six hours and just read to me. So, eventually I got more into audio books and then just reading to myself.

PAM: I remember that transition for my daughter, Lissy too. I was reading the Harry Potter books to them for the longest time, for hours. Then my voice would go and even water was not helping it. Then we found the audio books at the library and then, she could just go for hours and hours and hours.

ADRIAN: Yes, same. I think those were my main things that I love. Of course, just playing games and hanging with family. Canoeing, I loved camping too. I would always if there was an option of, “Hey what do we want to do as a family?” I would always choose to all go camping together and be outside. Nature awareness camps too, those I loved. I learned a lot through them.

PAM: That is awesome.

Was there a time over the years that you found your unschooling lifestyle challenging?

ADRIAN: Yes, I was thinking about this question, because of course life is challenging. And it is also hard to separate okay is this because I was homeschooled or unschooled or is this just because life is hard.

PAM: It is true, it is just about living, it is true.

ADRIAN: I think I thought about my transitions in life. And those, I think have been the hardest times for me. Transitioning from when I chose to go to high school. I was fifteen and kind of felt I needed something more but I did not know what that was. And so how do I move forward through that? Okay, what I am doing now is not quite working, how do I figure that out?

Then once I did graduate high school and was like okay, I have done this stage of my life, what is next? Then after traveling a lot I am like, okay I am ready to not travel but what is the next thing? It was these transitions I think, that have been the points in my life that was kind of hard to go through.

I think the things that helped me were remembering what brings me joy and what my values are and giving myself time to listen to myself. I think I learned I personally take a lot of time to come to decisions sometimes. It is important for me to give myself that time. And to remember that is okay to make a mistake and decide something and start it and then no this obviously is not the right thing. Then do something else and maybe that keeps happening and then eventually you will find it and you will love it.

PAM: Yes, you hone in on things over time but through your experiences right but I think that time piece is such an important point. Because you do have to keep giving yourself permission because that is not something society kind of in general supports, does it? It is like boom, boom, boom, right?

ADRIAN: Yes, and I think during those transition periods, sometimes I can feel this pressure. Okay, what are you going to do, what are you going to do now? I think remembering to protect myself from that and realize I am going through my own journey right now and that is okay and I do not need to please these people in society that think I need to being doing this or be doing that. I think giving myself time and just remembering yes, what brings me joy and trying to follow those things, trying to follow those paths.

PAM: I think that is such a great observation about what works for you. Knowing that it is okay to not know and that is okay to just kind of follow that joy. And say okay, ‘I think I am going to try this that might bring something into my life that I will value.’ Then it is like, no, that is enough. That is not what I was looking for out of that experience, right? We are, as a society, goal obsessed. I need to know where I am going and I need to doggedly pursue that all the time. And to change my mind or make mistakes are some horrific thing, you know.

ADRIAN: Yes.

PAM: Rather than just life experience and me getting to know myself better and what brings me joy better.

ADRIAN: I think I always thought if I am doing something that makes me happy, I will probably make the world a little more happy because I will be happy and that will just be spread.

PAM: It trickles out.

ADRIAN: I thought that was a good way to guide myself. But I think it might be different for other people too.

PAM: Oh yes and all you can share is your own experience, right?

ADRIAN: Yes

PAM: So yes, you mentioned that you know it was one of those transition pieces where you decided to try out high school.

Could you talk a little bit more about that experience? Parents might be curious about how you found that transition.

ADRIAN: Yes, it was really interesting actually and relatively easy, I guess. I think I was at a point where I had a couple of friends that had moved away and I was kind of lacking in my social community. I had a couple of friends who were in high school and thought you know what, this could be interesting, why not just try this. I think I went into it with a very casual mindset.

Which going back is a really interesting thing and not a lot of people have that experience with high school. It was like a summer camp or like a class, you know. I thought, I will just try this and see how it goes and if I do not like it, I can just stop because I am getting a perfectly great education.

PAM: Because you just can.

ADRIAN: Because I just can and so I think just having that relaxedness or relaxation around it was really helpful. I did not feel a lot of pressure necessarily. I think I had some misconceptions about high school. Like I thought okay these people have been in class learning their whole lives. I was curious to see what my skill level would be. Because we were very free in terms of our structured learning which is very different from high school.

When I went, I picked classes that I thought I would be interested in. Which were some art, some drama and some food science I think and an ocean science class. I realized that I know how to learn and they are teaching and so it was actually really easy. Oh, I just need to know how to listen and how to take notes or how to ask questions, how to talk to people and have fun.  I got this, I know these things.

PAM: I love that.

ADRIAN: Yes, so it was really cool that I got to have that experience. I also had a lot of help too. My older sister also transitioned to high school and she was there and I had some good friends there so they were kind of able to help. I did know people so I was not going into this totally new space. And my teachers also were amazing.

My spelling and reading was not at the level of my other peers and they could have been much harder on me about my spelling but I think they knew that I understood all the material and they could see it was getting better and it was. I found that it easily got better really quickly and was fine. I also had lots of help from my community with that transition. I met lots of great people too. It was interesting to get to know a lot of people my own age. I think homeschooling I had a lot of friends that were a bit older and a bit younger and kind of usually hang out in a group of multi-aged people.

And so, then we were all the same age and it was interesting. I think I realized that Nova Scotia where I grew up is a different too. I was exposed to a very different community which I really valued. I think it made me realize that I knew myself a lot better than I thought I did. Or I did not even realize that I knew myself but when I was with a lot of other people that were still learning who they were it made me realize, ‘Oh, I have had this time to just be with myself and not always be comparing myself to people.’ Yes, I think I realized I had a bigger sense of self than I knew I did.

PAM: Yes.

ADRIAN: Which was really interesting. Yes. I went in at half way through grade ten and then I did eleven and twelve. By year twelve, I think hard part for me, I lost a bit of the mentality that my parents tried to teach me through homeschooling. I think I started caring too much about the things I did not actually care about. If that makes sense.

PAM: Yes, yes.

ADRIAN: Yes, but I am also glad that I had that experience too, I also learned from that. I think now I know a little bit. Okay this is what a public school can be like and this is what homeschooling can be like. Now I have these two perspectives which have been really valuable in my life as well.

PAM: That is so interesting. I love the way you were able to articulate that. Those are really great pieces to differentiate between the different kind of lifestyles and be able to choose it. And to choose to stay, to know that you could leave if you wanted to helps you almost be there to observe and to notice those things. You knew. It just feels like it is a choice. You come to the whole experience with a different mindset.  A more open kind of mindset. It sounds like that helped you.

ADRIAN: Yes, completely.

PAM: Became more self-aware too about yourself within the bigger picture of it all, right?

ADRIAN: Yes, and I think it was a concept that a lot of my peers had never considered. When I was explaining, I am here to kind of try it, they were like, “What? Oh my god.” Some really interesting, fun conversations came out of it. It was almost comical because I am just doing this. It was good.

PAM: Oh yes. That is so interesting, so interesting. Okay so after your high school experience you ended up doing some extended traveling, right? And that was part of that transition out again.

I would love to hear a little bit about your traveling time. What is it that you loved about it? And maybe a little bit about the trips that you went on.

ADRIAN: Yes. I did a lot of traveling and I guess it was a transition. I was done with high school and I think I knew that I needed to ground myself a bit from that experience because towards the end I was feeling not quite myself. I was ready for a less structured learning environment.

I just got caught up and I was like, ‘Okay, I just need to see the world a little bit.’ Because I traveled a bit with my family when I was young and really liked it. Liked seeing new places and learning new things so yes, traveling sounded really good because what is the rest of the world doing. I am here but what else is going on.

So, I went to New Zealand with Unschooling Adventures which is run out of the states. I went there for six weeks. It was with a youth travel program, they organized the trip. We were in charge of certain things. The goal of it was to learn how to backpack and hike and travel as a young person and how to do that. And how to meet other young unschoolers or people who had been in public school—other young people who were wanting to travel and learn more about the world.

It was fantastic. We backpacked across the south island of New Zealand. I learned how to live out of a backpack and hike with one and how to cook on the trial and how to navigate from different places. How to stay in a hostel and all these traveling skills and also it just really reminded me that there are so many different ways to look at the world and be in the world.

It was really lovely after high school where I think my world view narrowed at the end. This really broadened it and my leaders especially were just amazing people and had great stories and great experiences that they shared with me. I was like, ‘YES! This is fantastic!’ It was perfect. It was what I needed. We were outside all the time hiking in the woods, which I loved.

So, that was a great experience. After I was like okay, I want to keep doing this. I was not done with this style of learning and traveling. I guess I thought this was really cool to just be able to live out of a backpack and this is all you need. I liked that idea of being really minimal because I think when you have less stuff you are able to see more and experience more because you are not caught up in a lot of the things that you have. But I wanted to challenge myself a little bit so I said okay, let’s do this on my own. Let’s not go with a travel program.

I thought Europe was a good place to start because a lot people speak some English but I also want to learn a bit of French and Spanish. My ancestors are from England and Whales and I thought it would be really interesting to go to Europe. So, I worked at a farm for a season and went in the winter. I booked my flight and packed by backpack, just one. I went to Europe for three months and booked some work stays, some work exchanges I should say.

I did that in New Zealand and was like oh this is a really cool way to get to know a place because I think it is really nice to stay with someone who lives in the place that you are visiting. I find it gets a more local perspective and you do not just feel like a tourist. You actually get to be in the place. So yes, I did some work exchanges on a farm and with a couple of families. I did some hiking and sight-seeing. My mom and my younger sister came to visit me for a little bit. I went to Spain and France and Italy and England.

PAM: Wow.

ADRIAN: It was fantastic. It was probably one of my most challenging trips. I learned a lot about myself because being alone in a foreign country with just a backpack you just, it is just like, ‘Okay…I am just doing this I guess and I need to figure it out. Where am I going to stay? How am I going to get there? How am I going to afford that? What am I going to eat?’

I feel like I started to connect more with my cooking because that was probably the first time that I was like really totally in charge of my own food. Which was interesting because before I was either living with my family where it was more collaborative or traveling with a group where it was more in a communal way. So, this was like, ‘Okay yes, I need to figure out how I want to eat and cook. Where am I going to do that, in hostels?’ You know and trains and meeting new people and speaking new languages. I definitely learned a lot.

I think my most important lesson from that trip was that people really matter to me. I went alone and I had this idea about proving something to myself, that I can do this alone. I remember standing looking at the Colosseum in Rome and being like okay this is really cool. I have seen this in tons of movies, this extremely famous thing, so much history. But I do not have anyone to share this with. So, what does this mean? It was kind of like, not much. This doesn’t really mean anything right now because I miss my sisters and yes, I just missed that connection of sharing with people.

PAM: Sharing an experience.

ADRIAN: It was really interesting, yes. But I think it was really good for me to go through those things alone and to realize those connections are really important to me.

PAM: Isn’t that a wonderful way to learn these things about ourselves, right? Is to have experiences. To have experiences that like you were talking about before, these are not mistakes or wrong. These are things we are learning along the way. That make us more whole because we are learning more about ourselves. Now that we know more, our next step can be closer toward the stuff that we know more about. Does that make sense?

ADRIAN:  Totally, totally and so yes, my next traveling, I knew I wanted connections. I also realized that I really enjoyed learning Spanish. So, I went to Nicaragua and volunteered for about six weeks in the same place. Because I was also moving around a lot in Europe and that ended up being exhausting. I wanted to connect with one place and so I went and volunteered and got to know a community and people and took Spanish lessons and that was incredible.

It was awesome to really see into a different kind of world and speak a different language. It was on a permaculture farm for a bit so also following my interest of being outside and working with my hands. Then also working with kids a little bit and doing art too, I also like doing art.  So, it was teaching art classes for about week and then working on a permaculture farm for about a month. It was lovely. I was like, ‘This is it!’ Because I am coming to this place and actually feeling like I am contributing to the community a little bit. Instead of just being a tourist. Which is also great to do sometimes; but it felt more meaningful to me to make those connections.

PAM: Yes, exactly it is all about the stuff that we are learning about ourselves and what is meaningful to us. Like you said before, it is not a judgement on other people making other choices because those are the choices that work for them. It is that whole piece that you figure out that we are all individuals and as we you know step towards our joy, does not mean that everybody else’s steps need to look same or that our steps are wrong because they look different. It is a bigger picture appreciation, isn’t it, for everybody doing what they love.

ADRIAN: Yes, and I think I came across, like you were saying, like everyone is following their own joy. Because a lot of my peers were going to university or college at that time and that was the mainstream that everyone was going towards. But, I kept choosing to not do that I guess and to keep working and traveling. I was working really hard in between all my trips. I think that was kind of cool for me because it taught me that I can keep making my own decisions and that is okay.

And to keep following what I love has turned out really well. It was nice, it was like a continual affirmation of yes, you can keep making your own choices and everyone is doing what they want to do and you do not have to do what other people are doing. Or you can and that is great too but as long as it feels right in your heart.

PAM: Yes, as long as it is your choice. Because now you have made the transition right now you are going to university, right?

So, do you want to talk a little bit about that transition and how that has been going for you?

ADRIAN: Yes, yes for sure. Now I am in university and there is also a certain relaxation about that. It is interesting to have been doing something that not a lot of other people are doing for it was about five years that I was working and traveling and now I am doing something where a lot of other people are doing that. And to notice being in those two different worlds is really interesting.

After traveling and working, I had been working was on organic farm and I loved it there. When I first started working on farms, I think it was my first job when I was twelve or something which was mostly weeding or mowing a lawn, it was just for pocket change.

I live in a rural place too so there are not a lot of other jobs available. But over the years I kept working on farms and a couple different farms and this one that I worked at for about five seasons now, I do not work there anymore but I did. Something about the farm, I think it was the perfect size and the family is amazing but I got to see the whole picture of the farm. I got to be a part of different parts of it which is something that I really like.

I think my brain likes to look at the big picture and then put different pieces into it and see how it all works together. I love being outside and working with my hands and I got to work at the farmer’s market where we sell our products and see how my work was connecting to the community. Which is something also I learned that I really value. Feeling like am helping my community and contributing to the world in a positive way.

Because I love being outside and I love being in the natural world I realized I guess, by working through this farm that it’s connected to a lot of the things that I love. I took a summer off and did more traveling in Canada. I did a road trip with my friend. The whole summer I was thinking about the farm. What is happening and what is growing and is this turning out? I miss it so much. I just realized that I love it but also that I had been working at this one farm for a while and feeling like, I wanted more of a challenge.

I need to make a shift so I am taking on more responsibility or like I am learning more. Because I feel like I know how to weed really fast and I know how to harvest but I want to know how do I plan this and what is happening in the soil. How do I market my produce or these more theoretical or different than just the day to day stuff? I was thinking bigger picture things and I was thinking I like learning with a group. I kind of just came to where yes, university is the way that I want to learn about this.

I also thought that I could just start reading books and start farming because you do not really need a degree to farm you can just do it and it will work or it won’t. I was kind of like, ‘No, I think I want this more structured way.’ I do like some structure in my learning. Yes, I wanted to be with other young people who were into farming. I knew we could have lots of conversations.

So, now I am going to Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. I chose that program because it focuses on sustainable and alternative forms of agriculture which is what I am interested in. Instead of the more large scale industrial farming. I really, really like it. I was a little nervous but more just because I was moving to a different town and community. Also, because I have not been in kind of this system for a long time and how is that going to go. But really it was fine because I think I know how to learn and I know how to reach out for help.

Luckily, I have amazing parents that help me a lot and the school is great too. There are so many resources that I can use. It has been really good. I think the thing that has been important for me is to find peers that also have a similarish mindset around school. I was kind of like okay, what are my peers going to be like are they all going to be younger more like eighteen coming right out of high school? Will they be older, will they be mixed? But I found that it is more diverse actually with my program. I think a lot of people come to agriculture maybe at a bit of an older age instead of right out of high school. But, it is a diverse group which I really appreciate because they have lots of different perspectives that we can talk about. Not everyone wants to farm, some people are just interested in agriculture and food policy and some people do want to farm and some people they want to do livestock or vegetables so it is diverse which I really appreciate.

PAM: That is lovely. So, it sounds like you are enjoying that so far.

ADRIAN: Yes, I feel like the program has been really perfect because it is not very hands on but that is kind of great because I have already had a lot of hands on experience. I am taking an organic agricultural class next semester which I think is going to talk about policy and certification methods and then environmental implications of agriculture. So, how are agriculture and the environment related, which they completely are.

Last semester I took world food systems so looking at how does food move globally and how is it traded. I think that is really important for me to know. All the classes so far have been like, ‘Yes! This is what I need to know, this is important for me to learn.’ But I still do question how important graduating is to me. Because there are some classes that are required for my degree that I do not necessarily think will be extremely interesting. So, I am still trying to figure out, how important that piece of paper is to me and how valuable those classes will be. Is it not interesting because I do not know anything about it or because I haven’t tried it or is it because I really just do not want to take this class? How do I work with this? Because there still is a lot of pressure from within the university to get that degree. That is the whole program is setting you up to do, that is the point.

PAM: That is their job.

ADRIAN: Right that is their job but my point is learning and using this information to hopefully one day apply it to my life as a person growing food for my community. So, there are slightly different agendas happening here. It is sometimes tricky to balance that but so far it is good. I think it will be more towards the end of my degree when I how it will work. I do not ever want to sacrifice my time for something that I won’t necessarily care about because I think towards the end of high school that was what was happening. It was just doing this for someone else now not necessarily myself so it did not feel good. So, I am wary I guess and cautious to observer, this is what the university wants or this is what I want? Just make sure I keep on my path here.

PAM: Oh, Adrian I love all those questions you are asking yourself. That is perfect and that is how you are going to kind of feel your way through it. I mean, that is how you feel your way through life, right? Really because there are always pushes and pulls and things from various directions. You know, what it’s like to really get clear on what we want out of it. What you want out of it and the implications as you said, you know that tendency to easily get sucked into someone else’s agenda. That even sounds too harsh but other people’s agendas, they are everywhere. It is not necessarily a bad thing but being aware of it so that even if you choose to not lose sight of the fact that you are choosing, right?

ADRIAN: Yes.

PAM: Because you can easily kind of slip over into, I know I am not making these choices from a personal perspective anymore they are choices that have showed up here and I fell into it. You are asking yourself such wonderful questions, it is fascinating. Thanks so much for sharing.

What do you appreciate now, from your perspective at this moment, most about living an unschooling lifestyle growing up? Or just being free to live because like we were talking about before to label what is unschooling versus you know what is living, eventually it is just living your life doesn’t it.

ADRIAN: Yes, it does.

PAM:

What do you appreciate most about just being able to live your life just growing up?

ADRIAN: I think it is time and space that was really important for me. And freedom and not being constantly judged and evaluated on my decisions and choices. I was really, of course when we were working as a family so not totally free like I had to work with my sisters.

PAM: Yes, in the context.

ADRIAN: Yes, within the context but yes, the freedom to get to know myself. And I did not even know I was getting to know myself. I did not even realize that was happening until I was in a situation where that had not happened for people. I think yes, the space to just be, the space to have time to listen to myself and know and learn how to listen to myself. Learn how I work and how I learn what brings me joy, what does not, how do I deal with making these decisions? Having the time to even think about that. I do not want to take this class, okay why do I not want to take this class? So, the time; the time is so amazing. The time to just be and learn how to be. Be in relationship with nature and my family and my community. I think if I just explore, time to be a kid a play.

PAM: That leads nicely into our last question.

As a grown unschooler, what piece of advice would you like to share with unschooling parents who are maybe just starting out on this journey?

ADRIAN: I thought about this question and it is tricky because I think every parent and every kid and every community and every environment is different so it is going to look different for everyone.

I think what I came to, the things that I have valued the most from my experience of being unschooled was the tools that I have now. I think being an unschooler got me and the parents that I have got me those tools. Like how do I listen? How do I communicate my needs? How do I listen to other people’s needs? How do I know how to ask questions when I do not know the answers? How do I go into a new situation feeling okay and feeling that I can do this?

Even if I do not know how to do it, I know what next steps are; how to figure it out. Okay, this did not work where do I go from here? How to live and how to love too. How to love myself and how to love other people. How to figure my way around a city and how to take care of other kids. How to have a conversation with an adult when I am there. I think knowing how to learn is much more important than knowing math or knowing how to write an essay perfectly.

Because if you know how to learn then you can go into most any situation and figure it out. And know how to have the confidence that that is okay. You know, teach your kid that it is okay to not know something, it is okay to be wrong or make mistakes and it is okay to do these things. Those are the situations where you learn.

Because if you know how to learn and you know how to fail, then you can do anything, I think.

Because if it is okay to keep failing eventually you are going get it and you are going to learn. How to love and work in a team.

And listen to your kid because they will tell you what they need even if it is not verbally. I think that yes, letting them be the leaders is really important too. Focusing on skills instead of specific things and then just following your kid I think are important things.

PAM: Oh, my goodness Adrian, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. It was so much fun, thank you, thank you.

ADRIAN: Yes, thank you too Pam it was really, really nice.

PAM: Oh, good I am glad you enjoyed it.

ADRIAN: Yes, it is fun, it is.

PAM: Best of luck next semester. I hope you really enjoy your classes.

ADRIAN: Thank you, thank you. Yes, I am excited.

PAM: Thanks again.

ADRIAN: Thanks Pam, bye.