Why we Unschool

Today I would like to tell you about my school experience and how it led me to unschool my own children, what some of  my favorite parts of living an unschooling life are, and the struggles and uncertainty I experience while our family navigates a road less traveled.

My name is Chris Knox,  I live in Portland Oregon with my wife Katie and our two kids. Astoria, who  is 9 and Marin, who is 7 if you can believe that! I contribute to our family financially by driving the city bus in Portland, but in my heart I am an artist and I have always been. I have been considered an artist by my community ever since I can remember. It was the thing in elementary school that granted me positive attention and because of that, I kept doing it. When I was 4 or 5 my mom and I lived with another single mom. When they were trying to figure out who had drawn on the walls, my mom asked the other mom, “How do you know it wasn't your child who did this?” and she said “Because my kid can’t draw that well.” Being an artist has always been a part of me. 

I am a multi-disciplinary  craftsman. Over the years I have explored a wide variety of mediums from sculpture and ceramics, to performance and video.

For the last decade I have been focusing on comics.

I write a daily comic called Honored Citizen staring this little derp I call Batman Boy, who has the lower torso of Batmans upside down head for some reason. Honored Citizen is about social structures, education and the working class.

Currently,  I'm writing a graphic novel, Judy, a story about this kid Rus who is tormented by the phantom of his 5th grade teacher Judy Turnkey.

I also design games, I just finished my first roleplaying game, Guardrail, amd mu son and I have created a card game, Sir Crab which I'll be hosting as a funshop this year at the conference.  

You can find my work here, www.catchvalve.com

So that's me, I love to tell stories and I love to work with my hands. 

OUR FAMILY

We are all artists in our family and value relationships and connection over most things. Building community and strong family ties is, we believe, essential to a peaceful, fulfilling and simple life.  We love camping and being in nature, board games and video games with friends, meals and birthday celebrations with family. We search for life paths that are simple but not always easy.

Katie is at home with the kids. She is a seamstress, a gardener, clothing designer and artist. She does the heavy lifting of our life. She cooks most of our meals, does bed time, schedules our flights, does the budget, finds the best deals on groceries, refuses to buy anything new and seems to pull clothes out of thin air for the kids.  She works much harder than I do, has loved me more fiercely and completely than anyone ever has and is on a never ending quest of self discovery. She is a gift.

Our daughter, Astoria, who we call Story, is currently exploring gothic syles, has been dressing in black a lot lately, has had a lifelong admiration for strong women like, Adele,Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Wednesday Addams and Princess Mononoke. She is finding her voice and independence in her community and finds it perfectly acceptable to  draw designs on her face with markers  before going out.  She has this laugh that erupts like a cannon that makes me smile no matter how I am feeling. She laughs like she does most things, not considering what others might think.  Astoria and I talk alot in the car about social structures, world leaders, the concepts of good, evil and love. She is a wonder.

Marin is our youngest, he is a wealth of knowledge of all beasts real and imaginary. He loves to act out creatures and uses up every second of time we are able to give him. He loves youtube and roblox.  When Marin and I talk I give him detailed information about D&D monsters and he gives me detailed information about Pokémon. We love making up card games and playing video games together. He is sensitive and has an innate sense of fairness and justice.  He is the first to tell me how it could have been worse and the first to tell me how I could have done it better.  He is a force.

MY SCHOOLING XP

In order to talk about unschooling in our life I would like to share with you a little about my own schooling experience because my school experience and Katie's school experience had to exist in such a way to make us receptive to the idea of unschooling. Had our experience been more positive I don't  know if we ever could have arrived at unschooling today.

HARDSHIPS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

I started school in rural Maine in 1984. I don’t think I ever understood why I was there. I mean, I knew that they were going to teach me about stuff that I was going to need “later on”’ but I went to see my friends, and to have fun. I loved seeing all the other kids. I loved running around the classroom, I loved pretending to be a dog for Christine Storman so that she would touch me, I loved drawing monsters for the other kids then pretending to be them at recess. I loved making all sorts of animal noises. Sometimes I would be so overcome with joy I had to just jump out of my seat, or pick someone up and shake ‘em. WHOO!

So of course they labeled me as disruptive and even better slapped me with an ADHD diagnosis early on. Sweet! Now they had options. I was observed by “experts” who promptly  put me on a regiment of ritalin. Problem solved.

Much to the chagrin of the administration though, the ritalin was short lived thanks to my mother seeing the drastic personality shift, and by third grade I was taken off it, which proved to be a major inconvenience to my third grade teacher. 

Mrs. Ford was, at the time, known for being of the Old School. What she was in reality, was a bully and an abuser.  The only thing I can remember her teaching me was the importance of  staying in your seat “or else”. And no matter how many times I told myself I was going to be “good today” I still found myself being the recipient of Mrs. Ford’s “or else’s”.  I don’t know, I just had more fun when people were looking at me and they seemed to be having more fun as well. I would call out things I saw outside, try to get people to laugh, or get them to look at my drawings. Often, these were all inappropriate times to be doing this. Sometimes I would find myself on the other side of the classroom with really no idea how I got there, Mrs. Ford had no problem showing me where I was supposed to be.   

“3rd grade is such an important year.” they said over and over again, I guess what they meant by that was, this was the year they showed you what teachers were really like.  Before this I was having a great time. But all of a sudden it seemed school could be a cold, scary and dangerous place. I mean yeah, there were kids you had to watch out for, especially those 2 meatheads from Clifton, but I didn't know the teachers could be dangerous too.  

So the summer of my 4th grade year I spent praying to god that I would get into Mr. Betterly’s class who was kind and sweet and respected. And thus began a long career of teacher hot potato. “Summer’s over son, Roll the dice and see who you git!”

MIDDLE SCHOOL

By 6th grade my ability to sit and listen had improved greatly. It would appear public school had accomplished its job! My friend Adam, who I had known since second grade once said, “You know, I think you’ve really started to grow up, you don't grab me and shake me nearly as much as you used to.” And all without the use of stimulants! Now is that a sign of success or what?

But there were always going to be teachers and staff who found my behavior problematic or disturbing.  I didn't need to be running all over the place not following instruction to gain raised eyebrows or looks of disgust from faculty and staff. Whether it was my sense of humor, or my drawings, or I don’t know…I have never really been too sure what else to be honest. I think if I had known exactly what made some people not like me, I would have changed it early on.

In 8th grade I landed the role of The Beast in our production of Beauty and the Beast and knocked their socks off.  It was the most successful I had ever been in school, I fell in love for the first time that year, I met teachers involved in the show who really saw me as a likeable person. It felt like I had finally found a home in school.  The behaviors that I was critiqued for and told needed to be changed were now celebrated and encouraged. “You’re not being loud enough Chris”, or “Really throw that kid across the stage.”

“I think I can do that.” 

But one thing I did not expect was how the opinion of the teachers who were so concerned with me making animal noises in class and exhibiting a “strange and disturbing sense of humor”  were now going up to my parents saying, “I never knew…”  and “what a talent.” 

THE TRAGEDY OF TRANSITION

In my home town, Middle School is 5th-8th grade so  just as I was experiencing my first real success in school I was preparing to transfer to a whole new one. This is nothing new to most of you I'm sure. All of us have had to transfer from one school to another a few times in our lives, but for me, as I have reflected on it over the years, I have come to believe it was a devastating and life altering event.

My options for highschool were limited. I could go to Brewer Public, where the bullies of my early middle school years now resided, who, I was convinced, had been lying in wait, for their chance to resume their long tradition of tormenting me. The other “option” was John Bapst, a prep school that had a GPA threshold and interview process that I had no chance of getting into because of my preference for making animal noises, drawing when I wasn't supposed to be and making people laugh over getting good grades.

Audrey Stanton was the director of our play, she was instrumental in helping my creative development that year, was a lifelong lover of the theatre, one of the best teachers I ever had and just so happened to be transferring to John Bapst as head of their theatre program the following year. The last time we talked I told her I was going to have to go to Brewer and I was scared and felt like my pursuit of acting was over.  Mrs. Swanton, who had worked at Brewer as assistant director to Mr. Button, the long standing Theatre Teacher, went on a long diatribe about how inept and unqualified he was to lead a production and that if I was going to pursue theatre I needed to do it outside of highschool. Not the most encouraging thing to tell your 8th grade student. It was all so overwhelming. Here we have this kid who just started to blossom and now we’re going to  tell him he can't go to the school that may serve him best because he didn't do well enough. I watched everything that made my 8th grade year special, everything that made me stand out in a positive light, vanish. 

I'm not telling you this to lay the blame of my unfulfilled dreams entirely at the feet of the  compulsory school system and I certainly do not tell you this story today to absolve myself of my own personal choices. As we are all aware, a human life is constructed from a limitless amount of variables and conditions and no single event or even series of experiences can account for where a person is in their life. However, I think we can all agree that school, in theory, is meant to give young people tools to discover what interests them and help them be successful in adulthood. What I seem to have experienced is less of a person giving me a toolbox and showing me how to use the tools inside and more like, someone giving me access to a few tools for a limited amount of time and then chucking them into the woods and telling me to go find them and build a house. By the time I was in the woods I had pretty much forgotten what I was doing there in the first place.

HIGH SCHOOL 

I had become convinced that my high school was not going to be able to accommodate my needs. For the next three years I was in survival mode, desperate to regain any of that acceptance and positivity I had felt in 8th grade. 

I never was able to find a reliable outlet for my time at Brewer HIgh. I had a few promising leads, I joined the dramatic interpretation club and learned to do a mean Tell Tale Heart, played Reinfeild in a completely student organized production of Dracula. But all of these interests, like so many subjects in school, allowed me only the most cursory amount of exposure. This system of education we have designed allows one to take a subject only so far, because it needs to compete with all of these other subjects in the pursuit of creating “The Well Rounded Individual”.

So without the ability to dive deeply and sincerely into these subjects and activities that interested me,  my areas of focus became what was easiest and safest and most of all, reliable. By junior year my areas of study in order of importance were as follows, My Girlfriend, My Friends, Smoking Pot and then Drawing. 

In the 12 years that I was in school, I had been told that my behaviour was inappropriate, my time was owed to this institution,  and my interests were not as important as the curriculum the institution provided. The system that I was supposed to be educated in consistently denied me a chance to learn about myself in any in-depth  or fulfilling way  because that system took up all of my time with subjects that were not going to prepare me for the person I was. It was preparing me to be a person I was never going to be. And because I resisted and did not or could not play ball, that system spent a lot of time telling me that I was failing and could get me extra help,  either through special education or special medication. But now I know for certain I was not the problem,  school was.  The school I was in could not serve me, or at the very least it was serving me something I did not need.

I don't think the mistakes and failures I made in school would have been as devastating had I been given the opportunity to pursue the subjects I was interested in fully.  Had I been able to engage with them in a way that was not superficial I wouldn't have felt the need to invest so much energy in my relationships or at the very least consider them defining features of my personality. I certainly wouldn't be so bored that I looked to drugs for entertainment or self medication. 

It was this long, inefficient  journey  I was hoping to spare my children from. Not that we should avoid journeys of self discovery, but they don’t have to lead to dead ends and when we encounter bad actors on these journeys we should feel empowered and supported to say ”this isnt working, this isn't the direction I want to be going.”

We wanted our children's childhood to be directed by their own interests and desires. So in order to do that, Katie and I considered what life without school would look like.

UNSCHOOLING OUR KIDS

Three things happened that led us to unschooling

Katie was laid off, we discovered the word “Unschooling” and COVID.

CHILD JUGGLING 

In 2018 Story was 3 and Marin was 1. Katie and I were both working, she had an 7-3 career designing children's clothes for a high end brand, and I had just started my own illustrious career as a bus driver and life for me turned into, working, getting ready to go to work or sleeping. I didn’t know what my shift would be from one day to the next. Sometimes I would come home at eleven pm and sometimes I would come home at three am. Either way Katie needed to be out the door by six or six thirty am and the babies were up shortly before or after. No matter how much sleep I got, Katie was going to work and those babies were going to wake up. It was hell. I would give anything to do those days over.

I would try to swaddle them back to sleep or walk around like a zombie going through the motions, seeing to their needs but not really being with them, just, processing them. I had these brand new babies that I had waited my whole life for, and now that they were here, I barely had enough energy to hold them, or time to hold them for that matter. It seemed that most of our life had turned into maintenance. Was this a sign of  what was to come? Was this what parenting was for the working stiff? Getting my children to the appropriate care professionals so that I could get to my own profession to earn money to pay the care professionals? 

They told us we were “in it.” They told us this was the hard part and that we would “get through it.” we would “endure”. But I didn't want to endure anything when it came to these babies. I wanted to experience it fully. (And fully awake for that matter.) I wanted to be in a place where I could enjoy them and not have to worry how I was going to function the next day. The only reason why I took this mind-numbing job in the first place was to support them. What's the point of working and making all this money if we were just going to pay someone else to be with our kids?

When did the act of raising our children become a job best left for the professionals? When did our society say there were more important things for us to do with our time?  Why isn’t being a parent and raising good confident children, who will grow up into smart productive citizens, enough for our society? I don’t know, but evidently parenting is a thing I do alongside my other jobs. Just like they told me in school, I “can’t just do this one thing all the time.” 

This was not how we wanted to parent. This was not going to form a deep and meaningful connection with our children. We were working to support our family, we couldn't risk losing a close and meaningful connection with our children because we had to be at work so much.

Because from the moment I saw my daughter's long legs come kicking and flailing out of Katie, I knew this was the rest of my life. The days were numbered and I would  be goddamned if I was going to spend a single day, trying to get through it, trying to endure it, waiting for it to be over, so I could get to some “better” part.  

LAY OFFS

At the children's apparel company that Katie worked for, they laid people off every January, One year it was Katies turn. They laid her off on her birthday. Oof. Turns out, it was the best thing that ever happened to our family. I don’t know if we would have been able to gather up the courage to go to a single income, but we made adjustments, we received many blessings and Marin, who still needed his mom so much, could be back with her. Story, who did really seem to like her day care, was able to stay for a bit longer with a very generous scholarship to account for our income being cut in half. 

STORY AND SELF ADVOCACY

Around this time Story was getting ready for kindergarten and there were some growing concerns about her ability to self advocate. She has always enjoyed alone time. From the beginning, whether at  home or at daycare, Story spent a lot of her time quietly sitting looking at books or deep in pretend play. Her voice is not always the loudest one in the room and she has always taken her time when approaching things that are new. Katie had a hard time envisioning Story sitting at that little desk, surrounded by all those voices, without the ability to choose and her success contingent on her ability to use a loud voice. Katie knew from her own experience that a quiet voice will earn you your teacher's favor but often leaves one overlooked while the lion's share of the teacher's time goes to the loudest ones. 

Lisa, our daycare provider, was one of Story's first friends and advocates outside our home. She agreed that Story could benefit from another year before starting kindergarten.  So we made plans to keep Story at Roots to Bloom for one more year with the intention of starting kindergarten the next.

COVID-19

But the next year, COVID happened. We watched as public schools shifted and contorted themselves in ways to accommodate students in a world the school system was not built for.  We saw that space our daughter would have to occupy soon looked even more stark and lonely than before. Masking, social distancing, no touching? This did not seem like a very hopeful way to start your first year at school.  Then classes via video calls for 5 year olds? What are you guys talking about? It just seemed the world was so desperate to hold onto this system that was clearly not working. If we weren't going to go to school why did we have to pretend that we were? We decided to pull Story from daycare and just endure the storm and send her to school whenever this thing was over.

But Katie was still having trouble seeing what school would look like for Story. During her time at home, Katie and I had reflected a lot about closeness and how it felt to have the kids here with us.  How the simplicity of this life  brought us peace from having to run all over the place to make sure the kids were getting a proper education and well rounded fulfilling experience. We were constantly talking about our own school experiences, the successes we had,  the overwhelming anxiety and trauma we experienced.  But I was still seeing school as this sacrifice for the greater good. School was something you just had to do. We all had to do things in this life that we didn't want to do. It was best that kids figured this out early …right? 

Yeesh, what a grim assessment. “Yeah this is awful, but we all have to be places we don’t want to be.”   Here I had this little girl that, to me, life didn't really begin until she came into the world and now, literally overnight,  I was just going to take her from playing on the floor of our home to  this big strange building  and say, “GoodBye sweetie, these people will take it from here! Sorry but we aren't qualified to give you the training you will need for this complex and changing world.”

Give me a break. Like we have any idea what skills are going to be valued in the future. How many times did a math teacher tell me I wasn’t always going to have a calculator in my pocket. How much trouble  did I get into during English for talking or trying to make people laugh with my “‘Nother Day at the Fishin Hole” routine. (a real hit by the way) Spoiler alert, my math is no better than it was in 5th grade and here I am speaking in front of you all, reading from a script I wrote myself. 

If the subject is important to the individual they will persue it. If its not, they wont. Why are we wasting our kids' limited childhood on subjects they are not interested in, and making them go to places they don’t want to be?

THE WORD UNSCHOOLING

One day Katie was talking to her sister about what life without school might look like for our family.  Melinda has been a dedicated elementary school teacher for over a decade and an inspiring mother. She is  knowledgeable and wise and her opinion has always meant a great deal to both of us. Melinda said to Katie something along the lines of “You know some homeschoolers don't even have a curriculum, they call it Unschooling.”

Just one word, like a hot ember being brought back to the cave of a prehistoric family, she laid this idea down and from that one word we stoked this idea back to a roaring flame. We read everything we could get our hands on, Peter Grey, John Holt, Kerry MacDonald, Sandra Dodd, Linda Dobson so many unschooling podcasts I was put to sleep by the gentle laughing of mothers talking about their children almost nightly for years. 

I fell in love with unschooling almost instantly. How could this be real? There needed to be a catch. Why wasn't everyone doing this? The principals were so simple, the outcomes so obvious. It wasn't a lifestyle held for the rich or elite. Why hadn't I ever heard of this before? Why had I never met any unschooled people?

I began to think of friends I had a strong admiration for, I have always enjoyed people that were not smothered under the idea of what was the correct way to live a life, people who were  not easily embarrassed, or were scared to take chances. People who had a clear understanding of who they were and what they wanted. I have always tried to emulate those who think for themselves and have a clear sence of self. Clair, who dropped out of highschool to hike the Appalachian trail, Justin, whose dad showed him how to cultivate hemp to make his own clothing, Crampton who paddled the Mississippi with his dog, Verity who never went to school and who retains a child-like wonder into her 40’s that is truly inspiring. 

It turned out that throughout my life I had known a number of  unschooled people. They may not have used the word, but the principles were the same.  These people were  always working on some project or another, and often worked jobs where they were deciding when they would work, for how long and for what pay.  If I had a chance to raise kids that could turn out as happy and brave and confident and wise as these people, I was going to take it. 

Simply, Seeing and Sleeping

Some of my favorite parts of an unschooling life.

SLEEP

Choosing when they wake up is, to me, one of the greatest gifts this life awards our children. When you create a school system that emulates factory work you can expect your sleeping routine to be the same.  Trying to squeeze in life at the end of the day, knowing that the start time for the next day will remain the same no matter what, has been robbing us of our sleep and meaningful connection with our families since the industrial revolution began, creating generations of sleep deprived children who grow into sleep deprived adults. It is just one of many accepted hardships that come with the institution that have us saying “well that's just the way it is.”  

Having to get up before you are ready in our family, is the exception, not the norm. Since Katie was laid off and the kids have stopped being scheduled,  they have gotten the sleep that they need. It hasn't always been pretty or routine.  Story has been known to wake up at 4 in the morning and get on her ipad and there have been plenty  of nightmares with hours of back rubbing, but no matter how restless we are throughout the night, it simply means we sleep longer in the day. We rarely lose that rest. 

Being in a place where the next days demands are not impeding on sleep, allows us more options at night. Options to watch another show if we choose, eat more if we are still hungry after dinner, and most importantly,  if there was a problem during the day that warrants discussion we know there will be time to talk it through when we are ready.  We don’t have to talk about hard stuff in a rushed or clumsy way because we are trying to prepare for the next day, or worst of all, not address the hard stuff at all. Knowing that our family is going to get their sleep most nights no matter what the next day has in store, is a freedom families who have enrolled in school rarely enjoy. 

Now I would not be completely forthcoming if I failed to mention my own schedule. As I said before I’m a bus driver and of course that means that I have to get up at a certain time. As I have also mentioned I am a practicing artist and for the last year I have dedicated myself to quite a strict morning routine that affords me about  2 hours of studio time before I go to work. It can be rather tight and these next day obligations do weigh on me. Sometimes it seems if the slightest thing goes wrong in my nightly routine, we have an obligation after work, there is some tough emotions to work through, or we just get carried away having fun playing video games or NIght Time Lurker, (A Knox family favorite game we made up) I can find myself stressing that I wont have enough time in my studio or I wont get enough sleep.

So how does dad deal with his looming wake up time when the rest of the family enjoys a morning without an alarm clock?  Well the first trick is to chill out. That studio time is vital to my well  being and mental health, but it comes before my work day so it still remains flexible. Sometimes it’s 2 hours and sometimes it’s a half hour. Knowing that it's there before my work day is huge and knowing that it will be there the day after and the day after that,  is even better. No matter what happens the night before I know that there will be at least some time this week for me to get the things done I need to. It’s not always perfect, sometimes I get frustrated that I am still doing dishes at 8;30 or a member of our family is having a hard time and needs help, but I try to remember that tomorrow is just one morning and if I have to use my studio time to catch up on the sleep that I lost because I had to do bed time, or be available, more studio days will come.

One way or another, we all get the sleep we need, we are mostly always rested and I feel like this is just one more way we show them they are in command of their time. It’s with rest that their unschooling journey begins.

SEEING

Almost every time that I begin to have fears about this life, when I start to question whether or not the children are getting everything they need to become “well rounded” individuals, I can almost always identify the root cause, one thing I am not doing. Seeing.

Sometimes I can't see because I am too busy working and running errands. Sometimes I don't see because I am wrapped up in my own interests and sometimes I don't see because I have been sitting around the table with the other adults while the children are playing somewhere else. Seeing is just paying attention to what the kids' interests are, recognizing what they are pursuing  in a way that is genuine and authentic.

Sometimes I will ask myself “What are the kids into right now?” Can I answer that? Do I know? Is my answer flippant? “Oh, they just watch screens all the time.” 

Not true. 

“Story loves Adele”, “Um she hasn't loved Addel  since she was 4.” 

If I can’t speak about their interests with confidence, or my answers are dismissive, I am either not paying attention or I am letting fear assume the worst. Seeing means I am taking the time to understand the importance of the things they are excited about.

I believe that when I am seeing the children, when I am paying attention to what they are doing, that act alone puts my fears to rest. My imagination doesn't wander, I don't see each difficult moment with them as a sign of some larger systemic problem. When I am connected with the kids they can have a hard time without it being the result of me not providing enough for them. 

I feel the most successful with our choice to unschool when I see them engaging in materials and subjects that interest them, not when they are following some objective I have laid out for them, or done well in some game that is designed and orchestrated by adults.

 It’s easy for me to lean into a leadership role, to try to explain the rules of a game or to  assume a teacher's position, but I must remember to find a place in this moment as a participant and only a guide when asked to be. That's when learning happens, that's when growth occurs.  If I can quiet the noise in my head and stop myself from getting up to go do this or that, if I can stop myself from trying to direct the moment, I can see why this thing they are into is so important to them and the fears that we aren't doing it right vanish and our connection becomes stonger.

LIVING SIMPLY

Our unschooling life is pretty simple. I tend to think the more simplistic we live, the happier we are. That is easier said than done. We live in the city which is complex to navigate and to survive in.  Living in the age of the internet alone brings with it a host of complications for raising children that we are constantly revaluating and second guessing. We are bombarded by a litany of images and products begging for our attention promising a happier life and we are trying to raise compassionate emotionally intelligent children while passing people on the street everyday who are in clear and desperate need of assistance we are not equipped to give them. Despite our best efforts to make things simple we find ourselves periodically taking inventory and asking, why are things so difficult, where did all this shit come from?  It takes a lot of nuance to differentiate between what is needed and what is wanted. What will be useful and what will pacify. 

It is the simplicity of unschooling that attracted us to this path of education. In the Knox family we like to believe that the simplest solution is usually best. It is better to walk than to drive, it is better to cook than to go out, it is better to make than it is to buy. It is better to provide for yourself than it is to receive a service.

Unschooling allows us to live a simple life. Our obligations are owed mostly to our family and if we find organizations or clubs are not meeting our expectations the kids can walk away. And they do, without judgment or guilt. 

As a parent sometimes it’s hard to have those conversations. Boy Scouts was instrumental in my development as a young man, and it was something that I really wanted our kids to engage in. But after a year of us all trying to make it work, it proved to be something the kids were just not excited about.

We had to sit down and have a serious conversation about leaving. 

I am constantly being reminded that just because something worked for me in my childhood, that same thing  is not necessarily  going to work for my kids in theirs.

Living simply and slowly gives us all time to reflect on how we want to spend our time. It is truly a gift.

FEARS AND SCREENS

When there is a struggle in our family, like the kids are arguing or in my most fearful moments when I’m feeling ungrounded with my family and disconnected from my kids, I blame our lifestyle. I look outward at all the stuff instead of looking inward at the self. I blame where we live and how there are “no children around”, that things would be better in the country because that is where I grew up. I blame not having enough money, and  I find myself using always and never statements. They never want to go outside, they are always on screens.

Some days I come home and have to step over half of a pillow fort and push the art cart out of the way so I can  set my bag down before stepping over a marble run to go downstairs and see my kids sitting at their computers. The computers we bought for them by the way “Ugh, they’ve just been on screens all day. We have to do something different around here” 

What are you talking about? You just had to cut your way through the remains of the day, but this one thing is what you’re gonna focus on? The screens aren't the problem dad, not seeing is.

So once again, when the voice of doubt lurks up behind me and I feel like Unschooling is not working, and I start using these problematic parenting techniques that I was exposed to in my own childhood, I have to make a conscious effort to change the tradition. To not yell, to understand, to not assume to have faith in my children.

The first thing I do, is shut my mouth. I’ve already created more problems at this point with my words. The only thing that I can do to solve the problem now  is to stop using them. The second is to listen to what this person wants. To recognize  that by agreeing with this person I love so dearly I am not caving into some demand, I am not losing something vital by saying yes. I am not creating a spoiled little brat or a future drug addict because I let them watch another episode of Bluey. The third thing is to forgive myself,  I cannot ask for forgiveness if I’m wallowing in my own self pity.

I fall back into these parenting techniques I don't believe in a lot, sometimes for weeks at a time. A  family culture of “Because I said so’s”, and “Can you just do it’s” creates a place where we aren't connected. And to be honest those parenting techniques are being implemented in the first place because of a lack of connection. My kids are much more willing to help out if I have taken an interest in what they are doing. How likely am I to help you out if I am in the middle of drawing and you come crashing down the stairs dictating to me the importance of helping out with the groceries and how some people don't even have them. 

Good grief! I was just sitting here drawing and now I have to stop what I am doing and help with the groceries so I can prove to the world that I am grateful for having them? 

No matter where I am in my process everything has to come to a crashing halt because the adults in my life have determined that this task is more important than the one I am doing.

Sound familiar? Katie and I were raised in a system that put its own needs ahead of ours and so we come by this behaviour honestly. But we are always trying to correct it. We  learn from our mistakes, we forgive ourselves and we ask for forgiveness the  we try to do better tomorrow. 

And usually we do.  

PLACES YOU DON'T WANT TO BE

We didn’t choose this path because we think we are smarter than the teachers. We don’t hate school and we know that we do not have all the answers. We understand that in order for our kids to pursue their interests we will need to introduce them to the masters of those skills and are willing to spend the extra effort to make connections with those teachers. 

What appealed to us about this unschooling journey is its focus on giving children a choice, not in a Fast Food menu or Netflix streaming service kind of way where one is crippled under the endless options. No, the choice this life provides reveals itself while children explore the world in their own way on their own time and we as parents are recognizing those interests and guiding our children to places and people that can help them explore those skills should they choose. 

This is the most important thing we teach them, that their interests are valuable and we respect their decision to pursue them. 

From an early age we are told that we have responsibilities and that our time is owed to a spectrum of people and institutions. Now is the time to eat, now is the time to sleep, now is the time to be apart, now is the time to be close. Grandma is coming to pick you up, dad is dropping you off, the bus will be here in 10 minutes, you're going to start school tomorrow. 

I remember learning to watch the clock from an early age. In elementary school waiting for the day to be over so I could get back to being a kid and doing what kids do. The excitement of the weekend and the glory of summer vacation, all of these special moments that make a kid's life seem magical only exist because of what has been taken away. I would gladly trade all of my weekends and summer vacations for a childhood of self directed play and exploration with my friends.

So here I am, from an early age conditioned to endure. To be okay with sitting in a place I didn't want to be, waiting for the chance to be who I was. And that's the way it has been for most of us for most of our lives. Learning to be okay with sitting and waiting so that when we are grown up, and are paid to be in a place where we would rather not be, its not a concept that is totally foreign to us.  After all, we've been sitting in places we would rather not be since we were kids.

But what if we didn't? 

What if since childhood we had been choosing what our day looked like? What if we got to pursue our own interests and spent zero time doing things that did not interest us. Furthermore, what if the adults in our lives showed only excitement and support for those interests and accomplishments, never asking us to qualify our interests by completing a task or filling out a form. What if we never had to “prove it”?

Would those children, when grown up,  be okay with sitting and waiting for a better day? Wouldn't those children recognize this job for what it was, a waste of their time and energy. You see, they had never had to settle in childhood. They were never told that their interests were less than the desires of the system or the will of adults. They  lived in a community where they were not empty vessels that needed to be filled by the wisdom of their supioros but gifts who, if allowed to run and grow and play, would reveal their talents and importance.

Katie and I began to see how little we ask these very capable young humans what they want. In school they try to give choices, but they are serving so many children that not all of them can be awarded this “luxury”. So only the ones that stand out for good or for bad get the choice. I got choices because I was disruptive. “Chris, why don't you just go to the back and play with those toys.” or because I was talented,  “Chris would like to be The Beast in Beauty in the Beast?” Those that follow the rules and stay in their seat… well, they stay in their seat.

Why we Unschool

Our time here is a flash. We are a blooming flower in time laps. Each individual, a momentary expression of a species that is still in its infancy compared to other life forms on this earth, and here are our children not even 10 waiting for the day to get over so they can start getting to the business of living and learning. 

“But we all have to do things we don't want to do Chris.” 

Yes, writing this was difficult,

Hunting an  animal for dinner is hard

Building a house is a challenge”

But the things in our life that are difficult should not have to be amended with, “You'll need this later.” That is an arbitrary hardship, a constructed challenge that seems to validate a set of tests that people who have committed their lives to a subject have proclaimed are important. Well of course it's important, to them, ask  a butcher the importance of meat in one's diet, ask a baker how bread can change the world, ask a bus driver the importance of having your fare ready before you get on the bus.  But I'm not going to teach my 5 year old how to transfer from the 75 to the 4 at Interstate Transit Center because studies show that 5 year olds are capable and that “They might need this later.” 

We see how unschooling helps our children to figure out real problems that are happening now, that require them to develop skills now, in this moment. Like advocating for themselves when an injustice has occurred, or knowing the difference between how an alligator walks to how a crocodile walks so they can portray it correctly in pretend play. 

We don't have to create arbitrary problems for them to solve and try to convince them that these problems are important. Children are masters at finding problems to solve, and within those self directed problems lay the answers to all the subjects we have been taught are so important. Our children don't need us to dictate to them, they need us to guide and to advocate and be excited about the problems that they solve.

This is why The Knoxes unschool. We want to give them time to master their interests.  We want them to know that no matter what their community looks like, no matter what their society is telling them is important, they are the keepers of their own time, and they owe it to one. We want them to be able to explore their interests fully, without dead ends or false starts. We want to provide them with a place where they can focus on the actual study and practice of  the subject that interests them not the system that is meant to support it. 

We unschool so our children can grow the way they want to and we as parents have a chance to see that growth first hand.

We unschool to be closer to our kids.

Thank You