Unschooling is not ignoring your kids or letting the wolves raise them. It is a very interactive type of parenting and requires, for most of us, a great deal of effort and restraint. It means really sitting down and listening to your children, taking them by the hand and acting as a guide through this complicated thing we call youth. It is answering endless questions and searching for countless resources. It is occasionally doing the unthinkable such as allowing a pet snake in your home, mummifying apples in order to learn how mummies in Egypt were made, or finding a person to mentor them in calculus because the book doesn't make any sense and your child really wants to understand.
I find unschooling is more about what I do not do as a parent, than what I do. It is hard not to insist that they be reading by 6 and multiplying by 8. We have all heard the stories of exceptional families where children are building working robots or composing operas at age 8, but we must sit down and realize that for many of us this was never a reality in the first place. Some of our children do have exceptional gifts in one or two areas, but all of our children are special and have the right to lead their lives as independent and self fulfilled human beings.
Because unschooling doesn't usually involve pre-packaged curriculums it also means though that you are taking the ultimate responsibility. There is no fall back position, no blame to be laid after a rough week. You and your child must simply fly by the seat of your pants and make it up as you go along. It is scary. It is also wonderfully freeing and empowering to know that you can do what you feel is right for your child at any given time!
Carol Burris remarked that:
This doesn't mean that we do nothing. Not at all. Our jobs are to be the facilitators, the
drivers, the librarians, the buyer of craft supplies, the askers of interesting and sometimes
difficult questions, not so often the answerers, but that sometimes, too. I think one of the most
important things we have to show our children is how to find out what they want to know, to
leave them feeling that there is nothing they can't learn about when and if they want/need to.
We do that by helping them find resources for their interests and by pursuing our own at the
same time.
The "pure" unschooler would not *require* that any particular area be studied but would be
open to the opportunities that everyday life presents to make those areas (typically, math and
reading) of intrinsic interest. In an ideal world, these things will come naturally and at the
child's time table. Unfortunately, some of us live in states that require some form of
evaluation and we are not always free to let certain areas go totally. So, each family does
what they can within the constraints society places around them. For most families, though, it
is the process of unschooling that "convinces" them of its appropriateness for them, as over
the course of time you see what has happened.
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