I started unschooling back in 2004, when my two kids were 4 and 1... My oldest had his unschool-graduation and moved out last year! I now have five kids, ages 18, 15, 10, 8 and 6--we are still unschooling with zero plans to change it.
I unschooled thru a divorce, thru extreme poverty, health issues, lack of social or family support. It was hard AF, but I'd still do it all again (just maybe with less fear on my part).
My son has a job he loves teaching gymnastics and martial arts to kids, and he's preparing to go RVing around America with his girlfriend and her parents for two years. He's already visited Iceland. He never wrote more than a paragraph until he challenged himself to write a paper for graduation, and it turned out to be 16 pages of amazing, college-level critcal thinking.
My 15yo is on Steemit, posting nature pics from her job at a local nursery. She's a better grief counselor and life coach than most adults I've met, and she's been writing poetry and creating art since before she could read.
My 10 yr old is currently studying herbalism, and making bath bombs. She's launching her business website next week, and is on her 5th re-read of ALL the Harry Potter books.
My 8 yr old is strong, and proud of it. He wants to train his body to become better. He practices yoga with us and can cook meals and tend chickens, all on his own. He's also got amazing balance and is teaching himself to solve a Rubik's cube.
My 6yo takes no shit, even from adults. He has a solid sense of mutual respect and awareness of others beyond his years. He's naturally good with numbers and patterns, and has a keen eye for precision and detaisl that he's currently applying to learning computer coding.
ALL our kids act like people--capable of holding conversation, managing their environment, helping each other and solving problems together.
Unschooling is about allowing kids to step into their natural abilities, to thrive and to succeed--free of fear or coersion.
Fish swim, birds fly--they can't help it. And human beings LEARN. Trust the process and UNSCHOOL!
What an amazing testimony of what unschooling can do!! Did you put limits on them or give them any curriculum at all? I've decided to give it a go over summer break and just see how it works out. Thank you for your comment!! :)
it's been a continual dance of stepping back, reevaluating, stepping back more in some places and forward in others. We always involve them in decisions made for the family and for themselves.
We ask the kids for feedback on what they think can be handled better, and we set goals together for things like keeping up with the housework which affect everyone in the household.
As they get older, they have asked to learn specific things, and we've offered curricula, textbooks, online learning programs, etc. My 15yo is learning French, for instance, and she's got a 150-something day streak on the DuoLingo app.
My oldest searched out Khan Academy, a free online resource which teaches things like algebra and world history thru videos. He completed a lot of those programs because he felt like he wanted some structure, and wanted to make sure he wasn't missing anything major.
When my 15yo was about 12, she went thru a phase of "feeling dumb", and felt like she needed to go to school. We talked about the many things that were driving those feelings, and one tangible thing that worried her was that she felt like she knew nothing about math.
We found online videos for her, fun lift-the-flap books on fractions and decimals, workbooks, and even the old school primer texts from the 1850's that are full of nothing but word problems.
She pored over those things by herself, and then asked for help, because "she wasn't getting it". When I went to help her, it turned out that she was second guessing everything because it was all so easy she thought she must be doing something wrong. "All my friends think this is hard--?!"
Yes, go for it, and just keep going! Unschooling is full of ups and downs, and sometimes the payoff of "evidence that it's working" doesn't fully show up for many years.
It's so worth it, all the same.