Click here for more “20 Questions Answers from Unschoolers” around the world. If you’d like to answer these questions yourself, please read this post.
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DoLifeRight: Tell me a bit about yourself and your family (name, children’s ages, where you live, etc.).
Liz: My name is Liz, and my husband Nate and I have two kids: Meredith, 7, and Simon, 4. We live in Tucson. I grew up in Michigan and lived in Minnesota before I moved to Arizona. Nate grew up in Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and has also lived in New Mexico.
DoLifeRight: How long have you homeschooled your children? Do you consider your family an unschooling family? What does this mean for your family? Did you consider yourself an “Attachment Parent” when your children were infants? How did this (or didn’t this) affect your choice to unschool/homeschool your children?
Liz: Our kids have never been to school, preschool, or daycare, and have never been schooled at home, so depending on how one defines the beginning of homeschooling the answer could be since birth or since reaching school age.
We absolutely consider ourselves to be unschoolers. To me this means living a full, rich life in which school is irrelevant. I rarely think about what my kids would be doing if they were in school. I don’t gauge their knowledge or skills against grade levels or slot their interests into school categories. Those issues are just not part of our lives.
Our unschooling life is a logical extension of how we lived with our babies. The principles of providing them with a rich environment and lots of parental support are the same, and the trust in their individual development is the same. We also continue to live by the same principles of connection and respect that have shaped our family from the beginning. The specifics have grown and shifted with the kids’ maturity and interests, but the underlying principles are no different.
DoLifeRight: Did you plan to homeschool your children before you actually had children? What is your own educational background?
Liz: We decided to homeschool–actually, to unschool–while I was pregnant with our older child. Our decision was not a reaction to our own school experiences, though it was informed by them.
I have always been a passionate learner, and in general I enjoyed school and did as well as I chose to do. However, I was aware early on of the arbitrary nature of a curriculum and of the many rules that governed classes, projects, grades, and all the rest. I was usually willing to jump through the hoops, but I knew even in elementary school that it was a game. Beginning in middle school, I was unhappy with the social aspects of school more often than not, and uninspired by the occasional teacher who either didn’t like me or wasn’t enthusiastic about his or her subject. In high school, I had health problems that were exacerbated by the stress of the social scene and various frustrations at school. I remember that my family briefly discussed moving me to a Montessori school, but in the end I stayed at the public school. I went on to study Linguistics and Anthropology at a private college and then at graduate school.
Nate also went through public schools, and has a 5-year Architecture degree as well as a great deal of college coursework in other fields.
DoLifeRight: Why did you decide to not send your children to school? What research did you do to make this decision? Were there any books, magazines, or websites you would recommend new parents (or parents who are new to homeschooling) read?
Liz: I am a research nut, so when I was pregnant the first time I read everything I could get my hands on about pregnancy, birth, and life with a baby. When I had exhausted those topics, I started on education options. Nate and I took the position that there was no default choice, that we should weigh our options based on their merits rather than doing what this or that group of people did.
We determined that our goals were family closeness, flexibility to pursue passions, and intellectual strength and confidence versus the amassing of an arbitrary set of facts. With those goals in mind, we considered traditional, magnet, Montessori, and Waldorf schools as well as a number of homeschooling approaches. Our goals, we decided, would be best met by unschooling.
Some of the parenting books that inspired me are “Our Babies, Ourselves”, by Meredith Small, “Unconditional Parenting”, by Alfie Kohn, and “Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves”, by Naomi Aldort. I also read articles on a number of websites, including www.naturalchild.org and www.lifelearningmagazine.com. Specific to unschooling, most of my reading was on discussion lists, but I also appreciated the collections of essays in Sandra Dodd’s “Moving a Puddle” and Rue Kream’s “Parenting a Free Child”.
DoLifeRight: What specific benefits to your children (or family as a whole) have you actually seen since you became unschoolers/homeschoolers? What have been the benefits (unexpected and expected) to homeschooling?
Liz: As my kids have reached school age (and I include my 4 year old, because so many of his agemates are in preschool), I have been grateful that we made the decision to homeschool before they were even born. I can see that school would not suit either of them well, though both are very bright and eager learners.
My daughter pursues her interests intensely and for long periods of time, a learning style that would be hard for any school to accommodate. In our unschooling life, she is fully supported in her interests and free to immerse herself in them as deeply and for as long as she desires. The immensity of her learning is truly inspiring! At the same time, I am able to use the natural connectedness of all things and ideas to provide her with varied and rich experiences.
My son has a physical intensity that would be disruptive in a school setting. I have no doubt that if he were in preschool we would be having regular conversations with them about his all but constant noise and motion, and most likely about possible medications to “help him focus”. With unschooling, we are able to provide for his enormous need for movement and noise, and also to recognize the depth of focus he actually has and the learning that is taking place within his apparent chaos. I like to say that he is the eye of his own tornado 
Time is a huge benefit of homeschooling. My kids are anything but overscheduled. They have plenty of time to sit or bounce on the trampoline and contemplate. They have plenty of time to sleep, to eat, to move, to be still. Our days are very full, but it is rare that we find ourselves dashing between one activity or errand and the next. We almost never have to cut an activity short because we are due someplace else.
Besides the benefits for my kids, we have reaped enormous benefits as a family from our choice to homeschool. Flexibility, family closeness, connections with other wonderful families–these are just a few.
DoLifeRight: How important have support groups been for you? Do you have online ones, in person ones, or a mixture? Please list any you want to share.
Liz: For several years, I was an avid reader of a number of online discussion groups, especially UnschoolingDiscussion (on Google Groups), AlwaysUnschooled (on Yahoo! Groups), and the message boards on Unschooling.info. My family also went to the Live & Learn Unschooling Conference twice–an amazing experience both times. For perhaps the first five years of our unschooling journey, these networks were an important part of my exploration of the unschooling philosophy. They helped me see the difference between “not doing school” and “living life to the fullest” and gave me many examples of the kind of creative problem-solving and resource-hunting that are now essential to my role as an unschooling parent.
In more recent years, I have focused on the local unschooling group that I helped form, called SOARingUnschoolers. This group has been an amazing resource for me and my family, a source of friendship, support, ideas, inspiration, and more. I can not imagine this chapter of our lives without that group.
DoLifeRight: What resources do you use for your children’s “educations”? Feel free to comment on the word “education”.
Liz: I view education as an unending process of learning, growth, and discovery. My own education is ongoing, though it looks different now than it did 30, 20, or even 10 years ago.
We facilitate our kids’ education with anything and everything that they are or might be interested in. Or at least the things we (or they) think of or stumble across! Their education is their life, and their life is their education. We make no distinction between ‘educational’ materials and everything else. We also don’t avoid or limit resources out of fear that they will ‘stunt creativity’ or ‘inhibit learning’ or ‘turn their brains to mush’.
I find that the popular homeschooling expression “the world is my classroom” is never more true than in unschooling. Everything in our home, our community, and (through travel, the internet, books, videos, etc.) the world is a potential resource. Everything has potential for learning. Everything is connected.
DoLifeRight: How does your family make money? Do you have a job? Full-time or part-time or something in between? Can you tell us about your choices and how you made these decisions?
Liz: Until recently, Nate worked full-time as an architect. He has been laid off for economic reasons and is pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities. I earn a small income teaching periodic test prep courses at the local university. For many years, I worked full-time as a policy analyst at a large corporation and Nate did occasional freelance projects.
Our current cultural norm disconnects professionals from their families far more than is healthy. I would love to see more options available in the working world, such as the opportunity to work part-time in a professional context. It’s hard to find a good-paying professional position that requires only 40 hours per week anymore, much less one that allows 20-30 hours. I would also love to see self-employment become a more viable option through the easier availability of reasonable health insurance and other supports.
DoLifeRight: How have *you* personally grown since you started unschooling/homeschooling your children? How has your relationship with your spouse/partner grown?
Liz: Parenting and unschooling–the two are inseparable for me–have been a tremendous journey of self-discovery and self-improvement. In my life before kids, I was always content with my emotional and relationship skills. I dabbled in some philosophical and spiritual traditions, but I had no real impetus to challenge myself or to make personal growth a specific goal.
Until Meredith, my first child, was about a year old, I was focused on pragmatics–what to do and not do to be a good parent: hold the baby, breastfeed, don’t let her cry alone, and so on. As my relationship with her grew more complex and my understanding of unschooling deepened, I began to find that I did not always have the skills to do what I wanted to do for her. I could not always react as calmly or patiently as I wanted to. I could not always trust her natural rhythms of sleep and eating, as much as I wanted to. I could not always ignore the voices in my head telling me that I needed to be “in charge”.
I began at that point to dust off and sort out all the personal baggage that was getting in my way and replace it with tools and resources that could help me be the very best parent, the very best me, that I could. I am still on that journey.
My marriage has been simultaneously challenged by our parenting and unschooling path and strengthened by it. Although we have always agreed in principle to be attachment/unschooling parents, Nate and I have not always agreed about the day-to-day particulars. Because both of us feel our responsibility to our children so deeply, it is hard for either of us to “give in”. However, facing that challenge together and revisiting again and again what it means for us to be a team, working together, has in the long run made our marriage stronger.
DoLifeRight: Are you able to find time to have your own hobbies, interests, and friends? Beyond your children (of course), what are your interests?
Liz: One of my greatest interests at this point is personal development and growth, and my life as an unschooling parent is an ideal setting for that! My commitment to be the best parent I can be has led me to work and contemplation that make me the best ME I can be.
I am lucky in that many of the things I do for my kids are, in fact, my interests. I am a researcher by nature, and I genuinely enjoy answering questions, tracking down the best resources for a topic or project, travel planning, and so on. My daughter and I share many interests, so I find much of the learning I do alongside her to be fascinating. Similarly, I am lucky that my friends are, for the most part, the parents of my kids’ friends. Our get-togethers provide “friend time” for all of us!
I find that I am easily frustrated by having hands-on projects interrupted, and since my kids are quite young, I choose to be careful about what projects I take on and when I work on them. Having said that, I do some sewing, knitting, and home improvement projects. I read every day. I exercise. What I *don’t* do is spend time thinking about how I would spend my time if I weren’t busy with my kids–I am too busy and happy to worry about that!
DoLifeRight: If you have more than one child, how do you handle their different interests and desires? If you have one child, how do you handle his/her desires to be with other children? How do you reconcile these interests with your own?
Liz: This is an issue that I have been paying a lot of attention to recently, because my kids have very different interests, desires, temperaments, and rhythms right now. There is no single answer to how I handle this, except that it is a part of my planning for every day and every activity.
As with everything else, I start from the principle of respect. I respect that each of their interests (and the areas in which they are not interested) are valid. I respect their individual levels of maturity and flexibility. I do my best to be honest with them and with myself about what the options are. I neither withhold solutions to ‘teach them to share’ or ‘make them accept life’s difficulties’, nor try to change the world or exceed my realistic limits so that they never have to accommodate one another. We talk a lot about supporting one another as a family principle, and discuss the need for each of them to sometimes go along with something that is important to the other.
I try to remember, in those times when both of my kids want my full attention RIGHT NOW for mutually-incompatible activities that it doesn’t help for me to give part of myself over to anger and frustration. If I do that, there is even LESS of me to go around! Instead, I breathe deep and take a moment to let the spaciousness of the breath suffuse my whole being. Then I apply myself–my whole, spacious self–to doing the best I can to take care of everyone’s needs, including my own.
DoLifeRight: Any regrets? We want to hear the good and the bad! This is the best way to make informed decisions.
Liz: I’m not a person who regrets. Even if that weren’t the case, though, I can’t think of a single choice regarding my family life that I would change. My life has its frustrations and uncertainties, but I am happy without reservation and can not imagine that any other path would have served me better. I have the satisfaction of living in alignment with my goals and principles.
DoLifeRight: Thanks, Liz!
By: Lisa
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