10 May 2010

unschool monday :: support




I am fortunate to share my life with a very supportive partner. My soulmate. Huz was the one who yelled "yeah!!" from the other couch on the day when I said "you know, why don't we just unschool?" He's been into it from the beginning. While I spend 70% of our weekdays with the owlets, he often takes over when he comes home. He'll answer questions, spend the time on google earth, tackle the hard stuff or the silly stuff when I'm needing to get on with other things. He has the science, geography and music background where I'm more art and humanities, with a smattering of music too. We make a good team. This is perhaps why unschooling works so well for us. We share it because unschooling happens all the time. I can take the girls to a movie on a monday morning because we've been busily learning about other cool stuff at 8am on a sunday and will probably work on something else major later on. Really, unschooling is just parenting and around here, that's shared equally too.

I suppose it also works for me because I don't have the feeling that I'm doing it alone. I think parenting and unschooling completely alone is just too difficult for anyone to achieve. You need support around you. Whether that be in the form of a partner, family or friends. Like the African proveb says; "It takes a village to raise a child". It does. We're just not meant to do it alone. I'm often surprised when I speak to people who are home schooling their kids and have no support from parents, friends or family. I suppose it can seem like an odd choice to many, but it must be truly daunting to be the only one who believes in what you are doing. Then at the same time, I know single parents who are home/unschooling and have oodles of supportive friends and family around them. It can take a while to build that support and community around you. We're still building ours. We spend time with a bunch of different people and among those, we are striving to build a strong group who we can share this gig with. I'm looking forward to days where skills are shared and kids learn and play happily together. A village. We're getting there. But for now I'm thankful for the support I have here and hoping that you out there get the support you need too. x

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Related article:


Can a Single Parent Unschool? By Jan Hunt

3 comments:

  1. Wow, you're so lucky!! I have awesome support (mind not academic) when my husband is home, so this is where i really notice he is gone - now i have 4 children with home work. It was easier when i just had 4 children to keep alive with a husband away for months & months, i'm finding doing absolutely everything from mowing to cooking to cleaning to sport without a break the most taxing part. Let's just say tomorrow night i have to tweek 3 speeches for my girls, two are keen, one is not, i can assure you the reluctant one is making it 10 times harder. You are so lucky to have back up & support, just me 24/7 for 10 months this year is a test for all of us. I absolutely love it but i'd also love someone else to swoop in every now & then & do the spelling lists!! Love Posie

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  2. What a beautiful post and a photo to go with it.

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