Episodes

This week, we’re back with another On the Journey episode. Pam, Anna, and Erika are joined by Living Joyfully Network member Nora McDonald. Nora is an unschooling mom of two living in Costa Rica. She shares her journey to unschooling as well as two major a-ha moments she has had in the last year. We talk about getting to know our children better by dropping expectations and really listening to them as well as how valuable it is to drop our sense of urgency when it comes to getting through diffi...

In this week’s Exploring Unschooling podcast episode, we’re diving deep into a listener question submitted by Jessie in Colorado. She wants to explore a quote from Free to Learn that took her off guard, which is: One proviso, though. Unschooling won’t work well if you actively avoid having your family interact with the world, with life. Shutting out the world rather than embracing it will limit your children’s opportunities to learn, maybe to the point where school is more connected to the worl...

This week, we’re sharing a conversation Anna Brown and I had recently with Lore Blancke on her podcast, Intimate Breath. Lore came across unschooling and the Exploring Unschooling podcast and was intrigued by the similarities she found with her work as she listened. And while she’s not a parent herself, her enthusiasm was apparent when she reached out to ask about having a conversation with her on her podcast. It was such a delightful conversation that I asked if I could share it here as well! ...

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing our first Bringing It Home episode. In this series, we’re going to dive even deeper into the topics that we explore in the Unschooling “Rules” series, with an eye to showing how these concepts come up in our real lives and the many possibilities for how to approach them. Today, we are sharing more thoughts about the idea that unschoolers should “always say yes” to our children, and looking at the value of having “yes energy” instead. We hope you find our...

This week, we are excited to share our first episode in our new On the Journey series! Anna, Erika, and I are excited to bring guests on the podcast to share their experiences. We’ll be talking about paradigm shifts, a-ha moments, challenges they’ve faced, and realizations they’ve made on their unschooling journey. In this episode, Erika’s husband Josh Ellis is joining us to talk about his path to unschooling, which he realized started when he was in school himself. He also shares how he’s bee...

This week, I’m excited to share our first episode in the Unschooling “Rules” series! We use the word “rules,” in quotes, to draw attention to the fact that there is no such thing as an unschooling rule! It can feel easier to reach for a set of rules to follow, especially when we’re learning something new, but we want to offer you space to look within, to find what makes sense to you and what makes sense to the individual members of your family. There are no unschooling police. Nobody is going t...

In the intro, I share my new vision for the podcast: helping people figure out how to apply bigger picture unschooling ideas in their everyday lives. I want to help listeners explore how these big unschooling ideas work on a more practical level. In real life, with the real people that make up our family. Here’s how the Exploring Unschooling podcast is changing in support of this shift in focus: Anna Brown and Erika Ellis will be joining me on most episodes to bring more perspectives, experien...

This week, I’m sharing a popular episode from early 2020 with unschooling mom Marcella O’Brien. Marcella’s grown sons, Jack and Sean, have also joined me in Growing Up Unschooling episode 181. Marcella’s experience as a public school teacher and math tutor gives her a unique perspective, which led to an interesting conversation about math in school versus unschooling. Because she’s participated in both worlds, Marcella was able to share some amazing insights about math, a common sticking point ...

This week, I’m sharing a fun conversation I had with unschooling dad Roop Bhadury. I connected with Roop through his wife Susan, who is a member of the Living Joyfully Network. She has also joined me on the podcast in episode 220. Roop and Susan live with their now three young children in Australia. It was so much fun to get to hear about their family from Roop’s perspective. He shared his thoughts about the philosophies of unschooling and entrepreneurship, about life, curiosity, learning, and r...

I get so many questions about “screen time” and video games and how they fit into an unschooling life, so I thought it might be helpful and fun to reshare a conversation I had with Xander MacSwan in 2018. Xander left school in the 5th grade when his parents—both professors in the University of Maryland’s College of Education—decided the best thing they could do was to start unschooling. We dove deep into Xander’s passion for video games, including the difference between gaming as part of descho...

This week, I’m sharing a conversation I had with Jan Fortune back in 2018. Jan home educated her four children in the UK and wrote many articles and five books on unschooling and parenting. Her book Winning Parent, Winning Child, focuses on living with children in ways that respect their autonomy. In our conversation, Jan shares some of her thoughts about autonomous learning and the important role of trust in unschooling. She describes how consent-based parenting is not about martyrdom, but pro...

It’s compilation episode time again! This week, I’m sharing one of our listener favorites from 2019, a collection of conversations with grown unschoolers in which they offer their thoughts for newer unschooling parents. I’ve woven together answers from eleven episodes featuring twelve grown unschoolers. I think you’ll find their answers helpful and enlightening wherever you are on your unschooling journey! Audio snippets taken from these episodes … EU012: Growing up Unschooling with Idzie Desm...

This week, we’re revisiting a popular compilation episode from last year. Many people have asked me whether any former or current teachers have been interviewed on the podcast. And the answer to that question is a big YES! We have had more than 20 podcast episodes featuring guests who were or are teachers or university professors, who study education, or even who teach education courses. Does it seem like a strange leap to make from being a teacher to being an unschooler? To me, choosing teachi...

Anna Brown and Erika Ellis join me again this week to dive into listener questions! We talk about the fears and doubts that come up at the start of the unschooling journey, the idea of wanting to measure success, and what to do when a child is interested in a topic that seems too grown up for them (in this case, an interest in war). As always, our Q&A conversations aren’t focused on giving anyone the “right” answer, because there isn’t a universal “right” answer for any given situation that wil...

This week, I’m sharing the second part of my recent conversation with Jae Williams (you can listen to the first half here). Jae is a former teacher and new unschooling dad of two young children. We first spoke about a year ago, right at the start of his deschooling journey. It was great to catch up with him and to hear his reflections about what he’s discovered in the last year. Jae talks about the moments when he wonders if he’s doing enough as an unschooling dad to support his children’s lear...

Jae Williams is a former teacher and new unschooling dad of two young children. I first spoke to Jae when he was about two months into his unschooling journey, in episode 290. It’s been a year now and we had so much to catch up on! Jae and I talked about the inner work of deschooling, the joy of an unschooling, routines versus structure, and the way unschooling expands into all areas of life. Our conversation was so rich that we ended up talking for almost two hours! And so as not to overwhelm...

I’ve mentioned the Living Joyfully Network online community here and there on the podcast over the last couple of years, sometimes sharing the theme we’re exploring that month or testimonials from members. But I feel like that doesn’t actually say much about what we get up to in this rich and vibrant community. So, for those who are even just a bit curious, I want to share a peek inside the Network! Anna Brown, Network co-host and community advocate, and Erika Ellis, community moderator and re...

Anne Ohman is a long-time unschooling mom of two grown children. Back in 2016, Anne and I had a lovely conversation about reading that I have referenced countless times over the years. When we spoke, she was working as a library director, giving her powerful insights and amazing stories to share about children learning to read. Anne shares her perspective on why children at school are expected to learn to read early, why unschooling children who aren’t yet reading aren’t lacking anything, how t...

This week, I’m sharing a conversation I had a few years ago with unschooling dad and filmmaker Jeremy Stuart. Jeremy directed and co-produced the documentary film, Class Dismissed, which was released in 2015. Since then, it has been screened in more than 60 countries and translated into five languages. His second documentary, Self-Taught, which explores the lives of grown unschoolers, came out in 2019. Jeremy’s curiosity about life and learning have led him to make some profound observations. We...

This week, I want to share one of my conference talks, Time to Think. So many of the questions and concerns we hear from unschooling parents boil down to the fears that bubble up when we project our current situation into the future. So, it’s not surprising that the value of bringing ourselves back into the present moment comes up pretty regularly on the podcast! In this talk, I dig into the ideas of being present in the moment, of being patient with our children, and of giving them time to pr...

This week on the podcast, I’m sharing a conversation I had with grown unschooler Phoebe Wahl a few years ago. Phoebe is an artist whose beautiful work focuses on the themes of comfort, nostalgia, and intimacy. After first grade, Phoebe left school and dove into unschooling. She graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2013 with a BFA in Illustration and is currently working as an artist in Washington State. We talked about her passion for drawing, the idea of “knowledge gaps,” what she fo...

Jennifer McGrail, long-time unschooling mom of four, joins me on the podcast this week. I last spoke with Jennifer on the podcast in episode 18 and her kids have grown a lot since then! Jennifer shares a family update and we dive deep into how parenting and unschooling change as teenagers transition into young adults. Our roles and interactions change, but the connection is still strong thanks to the relationships that we focused on developing during our unschooling journeys. It’s always amazin...

This week, we’re going alllll the way back to episode 7 to revisit a wonderful conversation I had with Anna Brown about parenting. I had been inspired by one of Anna’s conference talks and was so excited to dive deeper into these concepts with her. We talked about uncovering underlying needs during conflict, validation and empathy, assuming positive intent, letting go of set outcomes, noticing our triggers, the 90-second rule, and finding trust in our children and in unschooling. These are powe...

This week on the podcast, we’re revisiting a conversation I had with Teresa Graham Brett back in 2016. Teresa is currently the associate dean of diversity and inclusion at the University of Arizona’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She’s an unschooling mom of two and author of the book Parenting for Social Change. Teresa’s background as a social justice educator gives her a unique perspective on parenting and unschooling. We talked about adultism, the conventional controlling parenting paradigm...