Competence Is Built, Not Automatic: Your Worry is Tapping Into Something Real, but Let’s Reframe It.

Have you ever found yourself in the worry spiral over the years, thinking:

Is my child doing enough?
Are they falling behind?
Shouldn’t we be doing more worksheets, more structure, more… something that looks like school?

Your instinct that a child needs to be actively working and practicing to build competence is not misplaced. Decades of learning science back this up. But the way we tend to think about it is often too narrow.

Think back to when your children were babies and toddlers. How did they learn to talk or walk? While you likely provided a supportive environment and lots of encouragement, it was an innate process of trial and error, not direct instruction, that built those skills. Researcher Karen Adolph found that toddlers take thousands of steps and fall an average of 17 times in an hour of free play. It is precisely this kind of active, self-directed effort that builds competence, and that mechanism does not disappear as children get older.

Psychologist Robert Bjork’s research on “desirable difficulties” shows that the conditions that feel hardest in the moment, like repeated, spaced-out practice that requires a child to actively retrieve and apply a skill rather than passively review it, are often the very conditions that build durable, lasting competence.

Competence requires stretch, effort, and a certain amount of friction.

To build competency, we have to stretch ourselves. It is reasonable to assume that children who do not push past their comfort zone or who give up too quickly when something gets hard are slowing or stifling their growth. That does not mean they will never grow, but in that moment, they are not. So if you have a nagging sense that “nothing hard seems to be happening here,” that instinct may be pointing to something real. I would simply offer this reframe: maybe work and friction are happening, you may just be looking at it through the wrong lens.

Photo by Nenad Radojčić on Unsplash

Competence Is Built in Many Ways

Because school has been part of our lives for so long, we assume that schoolwork, as in content taught through subjects, assigned tasks, a set curriculum, and dedicated time at a desk, is how children build competence. And while that can be true, it is not the only way.

As a homeschooling family, your children have the freedom to engage in a variety of activities that do not look anything like school. They are not bound by a bell schedule or a curriculum timeline.

Imagine your child loves dinosaurs. You can visit museums, watch documentaries, build dioramas, play games, and read endlessly on the topic. There is no bell cutting them off and no pressure to move on because the curriculum says so.

The result is learning that tends to stick, and often leads to even deeper exploration. What looks like “just play” is often repeated practice, problem-solving, and skill-building in disguise. Add in interest, and the brain is engaged in ways that allow children to learn more quickly, more efficiently, and with more willingness to challenge themselves.

Play, self-direction, and interests are not distractions from competency-building. They are often the engines that drive deep, meaningful learning in ways school schedules and timelines cannot fully support.

So your child who builds with Legos, creates elaborate domino runs, designs race tracks, draws intricate mazes, or spends hours baking is not skipping competence-building? They are engaging in repetition, critical thinking, and iteration which are the very things that build strong skills. It does not look like school because it isn’t. On purpose.

Built-In Practice Engines

Think about how you learn and build your own skills. If you want to learn something or strengthen a skill, do you enroll in random classes, or do you go straight to the people, tools, and information that help you improve? Do you practice by doing? Children are no different.

When a child is genuinely curious about something (bugs, horses, drawing, engines, soccer, instruments, or even 12th-century poetry) their brain turns on. They do not need to be told to practice; they circle back to it naturally. They also tend to push through frustration because they want the payoff. They know something is waiting on the other side of the hard part.

You can even use that kind of language to support them:

You have been working so hard! You are about to unlock a new skill level!
Look at how much work you have put in. It is about to pay off. Way to stick with it!
Your practice has truly paid off. I bet you could teach me so much!

When my children were developing new skills, whether it was hitting a ball with a bat, bouncing on a Pogo stick, trying to land a flip on the trampoline, or learning to write their name, we talked about how challenge was built in. When they got frustrated or upset, I reminded them that learning new things takes time, persistence, and practice.

I also reminded them of past challenges they had overcome so they could draw on that memory and feel encouraged.

If we help our children see frustration and difficulty as signals that they are growing, they are more likely to embrace a growth mindset instead of avoiding challenges or playing small.

Getting back to curiosity-driven and self-directed learning, it is clear that intrinsic interest itself is a practice-generating engine. Unfortunately, our school-centered society has led us to believe that children will only build competency through scheduled, organized, compulsory schoolwork. That is not just narrow. It is outdated.

If you are creating an environment where your children can safely pursue their interests, play regularly, and use tools and resources that help them build their skills and talents, they are developing important abilities like adaptability and problem-solving. Free play is inherently repetitive, effortful, challenging, and self-correcting.

I often say that play is a child’s love language, but it is also built-in code we would be crazy not to support. It would be like impeding a child’s desire to babble or crawl—two clearly built-in, biological mechanisms for growth that we already know to encourage.

So What Do We Do With the Worry?

As caring parents, we worry. We all want the best for our children. We do not want to let them down or fail to support their talents and potential. That instinct, that sense that you should be doing something, is valid.

You cannot simply step back and hope curiosity and interests will do all the heavy lifting. We do not abandon our kids or leave their lives to chance. That would be like putting a sailboat in the water without raising the sail or placing anyone at the helm and letting the wind push it about. Instead, we can respect that each child’s path will be different, but we need to be present, responsive, and attuned to their unique needs. In fact, being a homeschool or unschooling parent can be more labor-intensive than sending children off to school. It is not for the faint of heart, but it is not complicated either.

As a recap, here are ways to support, encourage, and guide your children so you can quiet the voices of worry and be confident they are building real competence even if it doesn’t look like “doing school”.

• Notice what your children are drawn to and treat it as legitimate practice, not a distraction from “real” schoolwork. The horse obsession, the nonstop doodling, the constant singing—these are all examples of active skill-building, even if they are not the result of a lesson plan.

• Create an environment with usable materials that align with their interests. Sometimes that means investing in better markers for the child who loves drawing or helping a child buy the right parts to build a computer well.

• Shift from letting a curriculum lead to following their questions. When you move from 24/7 instructor to resource provider and engaged conversationalist, it is fascinating to see where things go.

• Reframe struggle from “I’m failing” to “this is part of growing.” When a child hits a wall, remind them that friction is part of development instead of rescuing them from it. Avoidance of hard tasks is the real threat to competence, not difficulty itself.

• Let go of a specific number of hours or worksheets as your proof that you are doing enough. Instead, ask:

  • Are my children returning to something difficult on their own more than once?

  • Have their skills grown in some way?

  • Have they shown understanding that surprised me?

The relief in all this is that curiosity is built in precisely to help children develop and grow. You do not need to manufacture practice when they are young. You do not need to be the enforcer of effort. Competence does not arise from “school work” alone. It comes from meaningful effort, repeated practice, and supported curiosity. When you trust that, you really do stop chasing proof and start seeing your children’s growth everywhere.

Thank you for reading and supporting my work!

~Missy

Other Essays you May Enjoy:

➡️ Is Unschooling Too Easy?

➡️ Are Unschoolers Bringing Back Vintage Kindergarten?

➡️ Make the High School Diploma Mean Something Again

➡️ Unschoolers Are Uniquely Positioned to Follow the Science of Learning (& Human Development)