Zen-Mother

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What IS unschooling? Basically, as I understand it….unschooling is allowing children to learn from life and not from a structured school setting. According to Wikipedia, Unschooling (also sometimes referred to as “natural learning”, “child-led learning”, “discovery learning”, or “child-directed learning”) is the term given to an increasingly popular method of homeschooling. Under unschooling education, parents act as “facilitators” and are responsible for having a wide-range of resources available to provide their children with a quality education.

I have become increasingly more interested in this theory of schooling because it seems to be the way I also like to learn…even as an adult. I also tend to “facilitate” learning as a parent and not be a “teacher” so much. I would much rather take my children to COSI once a week to learn about the science that interests them rather than sit down with them and do some sort of structured science lesson. That being said I am not even homeschooling at this point…let alone unschooling but my thoughts keep getting pulled in that direction more and more and since I do not believe education ends after your child officially gets out of school for the day…unschooling is sounding more attractive.

The other day I began to question unschooling when I met a couple of moms who subscribe to “radical” unschooling. Basically the thought that kids can direct their own schooling is taken even further into other aspects of their lives. These kids had nearly no boundaries….they could play video games 24/7, hit their siblings and parents, neglect personal hygiene, use foul language, etc. all because their mothers felt that it was their right to experiment with these choices. They also felt that allowing these things created a sense of peace in the family because everyone makes their own choices and no one tries to exert control over any other family member. Of course as they are describing this I am not seeing the picture of a very peaceful household…as a little girl strikes her mother in the face and the mother tells her that she had every right to hit as that is what she felt she needed to do.

Well, I am glad I did not let that sway me from unschooling. I think it is just safe to say I will never enter the realm of “radical” unschooling…or will I? Today I heard from another radical unschooler or RAD as she calls herself and she described how she handles bed time….or perhaps I should say how she doesn’t handle it. She trusts her children to follow their own instincts about when they are sleepy and ready for bed. This often means her kids are up as late as she is. I guess many would consider this pretty radical but I finally found a common point I could relate to. I do not have bed times for my kids either…much to my own mother’s dismay. She absolutely hates the fact that I let my kids play and watch videos until late at night. But I have never seen a reason to enforce a bed time because I am always up late too and I did not want to create discontent in the house over an issue that I feel is not very important. I did not let my children “cry it out” when they were babies and I do not let them cry it out now either. I put on a video for them to watch usually, turn the lights out to make the environment conducive to sleep, and I let them fall asleep on their own or they can stay up until I go to bed too and we can all get in bed together. When I tried to enforce a bed time after being guilted by my own mother my household became one of strife and I just don’t see the point…at least as far as the sleep issue is concerned.

So while I am not uncschooling…yet…I have found the experience of learning from these other moms to be wonderful. And if I can see their point on this issue then I wonder what else I might change my mind about in the future. It is wonderful that so many moms follow their natural instincts and allow their children to explore their own instincts as well. Learning from life is not a bad way to learn.

This post is part of Scribbit’s monthly writing contest.

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