What does your "School Story" have to do with your child's learning journey?

We all come to parenting with opinions, beliefs, and attitudes that shape our expectations and ideas about how to raise children. Many of us are aware of these influences and either try to recreate what we experienced in our own childhoods with our kids or we try to change the script and raise our children differently. However, some of us are unaware of the patterns we may be repeating and tend to operate on autopilot for several reasons:

1. Our nervous system craves familiar even if familiar isn’t the healthiest. (Wild, right?)

2. In order to change our behavior and attitudes we have to SEE them and then try to be as objective about them as possible. This can be a difficult thing to do AND it takes time and concerted effort and support to unravel.

3. We just don’t know any better.

Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash

When it comes to learning and education, we follow scripts, as well. We each have a “school story” that influences how we think children should learn and what we think an education is. If we are not aware of how our school story is influencing us, we may operate on autopilot here, too, and just keep doing what has always been done:

send our kids into the standard schooling model from age five until age 18 “to become educated”.

or

implement the standard schooling model in our own homes and call it “home school”.

To take it one step further, we may even force our kids to stick with this imposed model even when they ask us to remove them or change things up, and/or we know they are not doing well.

Why do we do this?

I can’t answer for everyone and in some cases, I know it’s complicated, but I can make an educated guess as to why it is socially acceptable. For several generations now, we have been trained to believe that the K-12 model is a social net good and should be supported whole-heartedly, even when our kids protest. It’s also understandable that families want to stick with the status quo when they’ve been told it is what responsible parents do. Some even think going to school and being made to follow the curriculum is a necessary rite of passage for kids and to opt out is preventing them from growing up, facing challenges, and becoming independent and educated.

As you know, I beg to differ, and have witnessed and experienced the amazing results and relationships of raising children without school. It’s true that I did not become a confident unschooling mom overnight, though. It took some time and it took digging into my own beliefs and attitudes about learning and education. I had to sort out what were really my own experiences and opinions and what were someone else’s that were imposed upon me.

If you are finding yourself seeking something other than the schooling status quo or find that the typical schooling model is not working well for your child or your family as a whole, and you aren’t sure where to start, first, ask yourself these questions:

• What is your specific school story? What emotions, beliefs, and attitudes do you attach to learning and education?

• Are you trying to recreate your story with your own child or are you able to see that they may need something completely different?

• What would your life look like if your kids were able to create a “learning story” that might not have anything to do with going to school?

• Are you attached to a certain outcome?

And if you’re ready to embrace a customized learning experience for your own kids (that may or may not involve attending school), but would like some guidance check out the e-book I wrote with Ann Hansen of Inner Parent Coaching…

Life Unschooled: A Guide to Living and Learning Without School

She and I have lived the unschooling life with our own kids through the K-12 years (and beyond) and we are excited to bridge the next generation to this autonomous way of living and learning.