Deschooling is a challenge. And the rewards are immeasurable. The education piece for was much easier for me to make the mental shifts towards Unschooling. It was the mind of my upbringing and educational experiences that have required a lot of focus and energy of me to unlearn and relearn this new Unschooling paradigm.
School was not easy for me. I remember struggling in the younger grades. By middle school I was kind of figuring out how to manage the whole endeavor, and soccer helped me a great deal. High school was another disappointing time, but sports and the options school I went to for my junior and senior years were the highlights of my public school education.
After graduation, I had no idea who I was or what I wanted to do. It was a feeling I felt alone in, as my peers seemed more at ease with the heading off to college routine. There were a few people I knew that were taking a break after graduation, but that option felt just as unsettling as going to college. I panicked and enrolled in the first school that accepted me. My first year was miserable. I thought maybe I had failed at figuring out life while also attending hours of school and a heavy load of homework.
It took me years to realize that my experience in school was not a failure on my part. That’s where the deep digging in into this knowledge, and working to re-write the narrative on how learning comes naturally for everyone. We are all born with an innate curiosity. And how we puzzle through it is unique to each person.
So if I know learning is natural, and I am not invested in my children having academic success, then why is deschoooling hard? Because it takes a long time to unlearn and relearn the fundamentals I have been carrying around for years. It is one thing to know my children are born curious and trusting the process of lifelong learning. But to really feel, in my bones, that allowing kids to follow their interests, no matter how “silly” or “trivial,” well that takes work on my part.
