Episodes

Roya Dedeaux joins me on the podcast this week to talk about her new book Connect with Courage. Roya is a grown unschooler, a marriage and family therapist, and an unschooling mom of three, so she has lots of experience to draw from as she considers how children learn and thrive. In her book, Roya describes the many benefits of supporting our children’s interests and the strong connections between parent and child that those positive interactions cultivate. She also details nineteen different b...

Erin Rosemond, an unschooling mom of four, joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey. Erin shares her earliest reflections on her own schooling experience and how they prepared her for embracing the idea of home educating her children. We dive deep into the ideas of interdependence, collaboration, and kindness, and how unschooling has created family relationships that really incorporate those values. Erin also shares her thoughts on the accessibility and affordability of unschool...

Lane Clark joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey and to dive into what she’s learned through deschooling. Lane’s journey began when her family was living abroad and felt their best option was homeschooling. When their carefully chosen curriculum didn’t feel like a good fit, she discovered unschooling and has been questioning all of the boxes we’re put in by mainstream society ever since. We talked about how deschooling felt like opening Pandora’s box, how Lane has found that ...

This week, Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Play! We dive into how integral play is for learning both about the world and about ourselves. We can carry a lot of preconceived notions about play, its value, its place in our lives, even the definition of what it actually is. Broadening our definitions and seeing the many ways play contributes to our growth and the growth of our children is profound. It was so much fun to explore and reflect upon this...

This week, I want to dive into another question that I get pretty regularly, and that’s whether I have podcast episodes with unschooling parents that used to be teachers. It’s fun to ponder the why behind the question. Does it seem like a strange leap to make? To me, choosing teaching indicates an interest in children and in learning, so to dive into that even more deeply with their own children through unschooling does seem like a rather natural next step to take. But whatever the reason behi...

Talia Bartoe joins me again on the podcast to update us about her family’s unschooling journey. We didn’t know it going in, but it quickly became obvious that the theme of our conversation was “going deep”! Talia generously shares so much about her inner work and the shifts she’s made as part of deschooling and living an unschooling lifestyle with her family. We talk about the layers of messages around parenting, food, learning, and self-care that we internalized growing up, and how Talia has i...

This week, I am joined by 20-year-old Samantha Donndelinger, who has always been unschooled. Samantha shares some of her childhood stories and reflections on growing up unschooling. We talk about how her family’s lifestyle gave each child the space to make choices and figure out their own path, and how making choices and exploring her interests has given her confidence in moving out into the world. Samantha also reflects on her journey of self-discovery, including diving into her art and choosi...

This week, Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Validation. Diving deep into validation flows beautifully from last month’s theme of Stories because practicing validation with the people in our lives is about hearing, understanding, and accepting their stories as their truth in the moment. Our connections with our children grow stronger when they feel seen and heard and loved for who they are. Full stop. No ifs, ands, or buts. And while validation hel...

This week, I’ve put together a compilation episode to dive into a question that I get pretty regularly: What does unschooling look like in larger families? As we learn more about unschooling, we’re encouraged to spend time with our kids, to say yes more, to connect with them more, to explore ways to meet everyone’s needs. Add in multiple children, and soon we start to wonder how we’re going to build all these strong, connected, and trusting relationships. It can seem daunting! I have three chi...

Sue Patterson joins me again this week for the second part of our conversation, diving into three more listener questions. Check out part one here! Question Summaries I feel like I should be finding more friends for my kids to play with, but I’m introverted and it’s hard for me to reach out. My 12yo daughter is attending middle school and I think it’s so damaging for her, but she wants to continue going. How can I convince her to try unschooling? I have three kids ages 9, 5, and 2. I feel comp...

Sue Patterson joins me this week to dive into listener questions! And I’m sure it’ll surprise nobody that our conversation went long, so I’ve split it into two episodes—three questions each. A quick reminder, these Q&A conversations aren’t about giving anyone a “right” answer. We can’t know that because we don’t intimately know the real people involved. And there probably isn’t just one “right”? answer anyway—we can get where we’d like to go through many different paths. Rather, our conversatio...

Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Stories. Diving into this theme has been fascinating because there are so many ways in which we tell stories as humans, with really far-reaching impacts. We talk about the stories we tell ourselves and our families in our daily lives, the stories we share about our family with others, and the stories we create in our minds about what other people are thinking and feeling. It is so empowering to real...

This week, I’ve put together a solo episode. This episode is geared to parents who are newer to unschooling, navigating the paradigm shifts that come with questioning so much of the conventional wisdom around learning and parenting that we absorbed growing up. Spoiler alert: there are no unschooling “rules.” But I think more experienced unschooling parents may also appreciate the reminder. As I dug into writing this episode, peeling back more layers for myself, I was surprised to discover how ...

The Beck family of five—Angie, Darren, Josh, Rylie, and Ellie—are back to continue our conversation about their unschooling journey. We had so much fun chatting and sharing stories that our conversation flowed for about two hours, so I split it across two episodes. Check out part one here! This week, we talk about each of the children’s unique paths through childhood to their current interests and activities. As Ellie mentions, their interests and personalities are so different, and it’s fun to...

The Beck family of five—Angie, Darren, Josh, Rylie, and Ellie—joins me this week for a wonderful conversation about their unschooling journey. As you can imagine, the six of us had so much fun chatting and sharing stories that our conversation flowed for about two hours, so I’ve split it across two episodes. In part 1 this week, we dive into how Angie discovered unschooling, their experience with an amazing local homeschooling group, and the fun they had connecting with mentors in their communi...

This week Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Supporting Our Partners. We chose the word “partners” to represent any important adults in our family’s lives who have active relationships with our children—spouses, co-parents, significant others, grandparents, and so on. Our partners are an important part of our unschooling lives and taking the time to focus on and nurture those relationships benefits the whole family. It was fun to see that so many of...

This week, we’re diving into a question that comes up pretty regularly, not just from people new to unschooling but also from extended family and friends when they see our parenting choices in action: Won’t unschooling spoil a child? We look at four examples of parenting behaviours or actions, the typical conventional and unschooling motivations behind them, and what the child is likely learning along the way: giving our children material things doing what our children want not punishing “ne...

Karen Matthews joins me this week! Karen and her grown son, Tyler, own a furniture and wood craft business together. We talk about how their unschooling journey began and how following Tyler’s interests has not only been a rewarding path for him, but also for her. Karen shares some of the big a-ha moments she had and paradigm shifts she made through the years. We also talk about questioning our cultural views around productivity and expectations. Karen’s focus on following her son’s joy and cult...

Siblings Laura and Allen Ellis join me this week to talk about growing up unschooling. They share how their childhood interests and experiences connect to the work that they currently do and some of the realizations they made along the way. We talk about the role their mother played in supporting their interests and providing opportunities that fit their goals without controlling or adding weighty expectations. Laura and Allen also describe the benefits they see in retrospect of living an unscho...

Anna Brown joins me again this week! This month in the Living Joyfully Network, our theme is ‘Finding Our Guides.’ As I wrote about in The Unschooling Journey, our children can serve as our most valuable guides, helping us move through our fears towards joy and connection. Anna and I talk about how handing our children the weight of our worries and fears impacts them and erodes trust, how connecting with our children helps us navigate our fears, and how being part of a community of like-minded p...

Pam shares her essay, Unschooling Passions. Unschooling is about learning through living. As unschooling parents, we want to open up the world for our children to explore. But what if your child is passionately interested in just one thing? Doesn’t that close off his access to the world and limit his learning? I have two children who have discovered passionate interests. Instead of spending my time trying to convince them to try new things, I decided to explore their interests with them. I was a...

Julia Triman joins me to share her family’s unschooling journey. As a mom of two young children, Julia reflects on how her understanding of parenting and learning has changed through observation and being present with them. We talk about the incredible depth of her children’s play and how powerful it is that they can choose what they spend their time doing. Julia also shares about her ongoing process of deschooling and what led her to start posting photos of her children’s snack plates on Instag...

Susan Walker, who lives in the Patagonia region of Argentina, joins me this week to talk about her family’s unschooling journey and the major paradigm shifts she made along the way. We talk about her discoveries about being highly sensitive and introverted, how diving into unschooling resulted in so much personal growth, and how her understanding of radical unschooling and radical self-love connected to help create the joyful family life and strong relationships she has now. Susan has thought de...

Anna Brown joins me again this week! This month in the Living Joyfully Network our theme is Nurturing Our Children’s Learning. We are getting back to the basics of unschooling by observing how children learn through following their interests. Exploring learning through the lenses of curiosity and creativity, we talk about what to do when doubts creep in about whether we’re doing enough, when our children want to quit an activity they started, and when it seems like our child is “doing nothing.” ...