S3E3: How Unschoolers Can Deal with Questions and Sceptics

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

S3E3 | Ladies Fixing the World

Cecilie Conrad: 00:00
Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, and good day to everyone from everywhere. We are again the ladies together to fix the world. I am Sid Conrad, and I am here with Sandra Dodd and Sue Elvis to record and produce the next episode of The Ladies Fixing the World. I think might be episode three of my season three. It's very early morning in Denmark, so I need a bit more coffee before my voice is totally clear. But I want to say welcome to you ladies. I've been looking forward to having my morning coffee with you today.

Sue Elvis: 00:40
Thank you. I can start with the coffee. Sorry, go ahead, Sue. No, I just saying thank you, Cecilia. It's lovely to be with you and Sandra again. That's a good way.

Sandra Dodd: 00:52
So today we're talking about dealing with questions and skeptics. It's uh a big topic. Uh I have stories. I'm sure everyone has stories. But I think one of the things to consider is that when people ask you questions, they might be really concerned about your children. They might be grandparents, I know, because now I am one and I know the feelings of wondering how the kids are doing. They might just be casual strangers in the grocery store, you know, little old people who don't know have another conversation to have with kids or young parents, other than to say, where do you go to school? Do you like your teacher? You know, that sort of thing. So then there's a sort of a dialogue that can come if you say we're homeschooling. Then there are some standard questions that they might ask. And I think it's kind and more educational in a way for us to help them understand what we're doing to assume that that they're not being hostile. For the person who's answering the question to be kind and thoughtful and let it be an exercise in you understanding what you're doing too, and in as in such a way that you can explain it briefly or just deflect the question in a polite, polite way. There are a lot of ways to respond, and some are not very good, and some are sweet. So I thought maybe we could come up with some examples of nice ways to respond to people.

Cecilie Conrad: 02:18
When I was noting the title of this podcast this morning, again, because I couldn't find my notes from last time, being not the most organized person on the planet, I thought we would use the word critique. And it's funny, we and we would, that's not what we're talking about, actually. We're talking about how do we deal with questions and skepticism, and that's not the same as critique. And I think very often, especially maybe on the beginning of the journey, when you haven't done the de-schooling, as if you could ever be done with that. But I mean, when it's still very vulnerable and new, all questions can feel like critique. It pushes some buttons, it taps into the insecurity, and it would be very healthy for us to use it all as learning opportunities to think about why I am reacting this way? Why does it feel like critique and skepticism just because people ask us a simple question? It can be eyebrows and behind, what do you call this? The hairline, the eyebrows going behind the hairline. We say that in Danish very often, you know. But but honestly, what we do, especially in the context I'm where I'm from, this is so rare and strange. And back when I started, it was even more rare and strange. It's not weird that people ask questions. They might be actually a little bit shocked, never heard about it before, never thought about it before, um, can't wrap their head around it. And so questions fall out of their mouth. It's not to insult us, it's not to critique us, it's not to in any way create any form of discomfort. It's just so if it feels heavy to be bombarded with these questions, which it sometimes does, I think it's a good idea to look inwards and think about why do I feel this? Can I work a little more on feeling more secure with my choice, more stable in my life, more happy with what I'm doing, more not giving a um, I want to say the F-word, what people think.

Sandra Dodd: 04:41
That that has been a big part of my journey to feel like those if the people if the people who are asking the question seem defensive, it's probably because they went to school and and they don't know why you're doing something so different. You know, here we are all all on a cruise ship. Why are you swimming? Why are you off in those little boats? Why aren't you up here with the rest of us? And it's a reasonable question because we're the ones who are departing from the culture. So the culture has developed, and gradually, and we probably all have great-grandparents who didn't go to school or couldn't, or you know, didn't go for very long, and then parent grandparents who did more, and parents who had more opportunity, and then people my age, your age, could go to school ease pretty easily for a long time. It just became different. The culture changed and became more school-providing, more school-rich. And so people who get frustrated with school or or see flaws in it or want to try something different, not for being avant-garde, but for being about learning and not being about teaching, you know, there some people move to it very gradually and solidly, and they understand where they are and why, and it's easier for them to answer questions. But some people just jump into it because it's exciting and different and new. And they're departing from the culture wildly and loudly. And sometimes it's hard for them to explain what they're doing because they don't really clearly know what they're doing. They just know that, gosh, it's cool. And so it's I have a quote from Joyce Fetterall, one of my favorite unschooling writers. She only had one child, so she had a lot of time to think. No, she's very she's a very good writer. She, in a, in the middle of a big discussion one day, so it's sort of roiling, it's not something she wrote to stand alone. She said, Well, people shouldn't explain radical unschooling to people who aren't researching the philosophy. So she's pretty much saying, don't answer questions if people don't really care. She said, Really, truly, radical unschooling sounds goofy. It sounds neglectful. If someone is asking questions because they're worried about the kids and about the mom's safety, she put a smiley face, radical unschoolers should express what they do in terms that non-schoolers find comforting. Freedom is definitely not a word that should pass their lips. We were talking about problems with too much freedom in that discussion. It was 2011. It's been a while. But I liked that she said that we should express what we do in terms that non-schoolers find comforting. And I remember sometimes when I knew the conversation would be short, but the person was really sweet. I remember one old guy at the grocery store in particular. He he really was nice. And I think he had been a teacher. You know, he was not being aggressive or critical. And he said, Well, it must be a lot of hard work for you, to me, he said in front of the kids. And I said, It would be if I tried to teach, but we really pretty much play. We explore things together and we try to do what's fun. And he understood that. He just he was flowing right with me on that. It was nice. I didn't have him lost, I didn't have him defensive, and I didn't have to say too much. But to let him know that there were easier, more peaceful ways to do it, you know, now it's time to go home. It wasn't a long conversation. I didn't know his name, he would never see us again. And so it was easy for me to be nice to him, and it was good practice for me trying to figure out how to really give somebody a peek, you know, an honest peek into how it could work, without making a lecture, without giving a speech, without he didn't care. I mean, he he cared in a in a casual, friendly way. Why my kids were at the grocery store instead of at school.

Cecilie Conrad: 08:23
Yeah, that's one of the questions that come very often. Why are you not at school? Are you taking the day off as a vacation? Are your children sick? And I think I've had my years of being annoyed with these questions and being frustrated with them. I felt invaded, I felt judged. And I think really what helped for me was to kind of flip it and say, okay, I have to use this as learning opportunities, I have to smile, I have to be an agent for the movement, I have to be calm around this, and and in most cases, casual cases, I don't talk about unschooling. I just say we home educate. And I usually add because we want to, because there's this assumption that my children are broken in some way or sick in some way, and that's the reason I do it. So I I usually would I I have to talk about this in the past tense because it doesn't happen any longer, they're too big for it now. But I would just say that we home educate because that's what we want to do. And then I would let people have all of their assumptions in all the way they want. I I didn't explain unschooling on the bus or in the grocery store, or I I as you said, Sandra, with the quote, don't explain it to people who don't have three hours, is what we usually say to each other. And if they ask the question and and they say, But how does it work? Why do you do it? Don't you have to educate them, make sure they learn what they have to learn, all these things. I usually would say, Well, do you have three hours and do you want the full explanation? Because otherwise, I'd like to know where you're going on your summer break and just change the subject.

Sue Elvis: 10:22
Because it's I'm not surprised that there are a lot of unschooling skeptics, because it is from the outside something that's very difficult to understand quickly. Uh, you hear people say, my kids have no rules, my kids do what they like, my kids are free to do this, that, and the other. And it does sound like a recipe for a disaster from the outside. And I also think that even from the inside, some people who are calling themselves unschoolers don't understand it well enough to explain the principles clearly enough, or even to put them in action themselves, so that the actions that they're the behavior of their kids, what they're actually doing, isn't a very good reflection of unschooling, which doesn't help. Uh, I was watching this video the other day on YouTube. It just sort of came up in my feed, and it was, I think, a BBC one, uh, British one, about families who don't make rules. Now, the word unschooling wasn't mentioned, but I think there's a lot of unschooling families that would work in this way, and all the comments were negative. Uh there was one quote that the one of the women said, and it got re-quoted a lot in the comments. It doesn't matter if my child can read or write as long as they're happy. And the the critics, well, the people watching the video who critiqued it, uh, didn't reckon the children would be happy. If they were happy at this age, they wouldn't be happy in the future. And there were a lot of people commenting who had had that kind of childhood and who said that they got into trouble later on. Uh, it didn't matter when they were little, whether they could read or write. It did matter when they wanted to go off and have a career, go to uni, whatever. And so I don't think it was explained well enough, or maybe those people in the video weren't actually unschooling as we know it. But it does make our way of life seem a little bit irresponsible, a little bit out there, a bit crazy. Yes, I don't I I listened carefully for the word unschooling and it they didn't say it, but I've heard lots of unschoolers say the same thing in other videos. So, yes, I'm not surprised that we do have a lot of of what we'd call criticism or skepticism, a lot of questions. And I don't mind questions, and I think as you were saying, Sandra, uh, we have to be sensitive, especially to people like grandparents, and how do we talk to them? And there was one technique I learnt when I was a breastfeeding counselor many years ago, because in those days not all mothers wanted a breastfeed, or not all workplaces would allow for breastfeeding. And it was a bit of a battle to convert society to the way of thinking that a mother needs to breastfeed her baby out in public and to get the facilities in hospitals where you would think that they would have breastfeeding facilities, shopping centers, wherever. And one technique we were taught was always find a bridge to start your conversation. Start your reply to your the questions or their concern with something you can both agree about before you dive into the other reasons why and what why we unschool what it's all about. For example, off the top of my head, yes, um, yes, it's important that we are concerned about our kids. We only want the best for them. You're right. We should think about these things and then go on and bring in some more things that maybe we're not going to agree with, but to show that we've listened to the person's concerns or questions or negative questions. Sometimes I think people are their questions aren't very positive. They already think they know what the answers are going to be. So uh the question is phrased in such a way to say, like, oh, that freedom can't be good for children, can it? Uh and so they've already made up their minds. And is it worth trying to change people's minds? I guess it depends on who they are. And as Cecilia said, if we have three hours to do it properly, I guess we could throw out a positive comment here and there, especially with people that we don't see very often, like at the shopping center, the checkout person. Um, you can have a continuing conversation, can't you? You share a little bit of information at a time every time uh you see somebody. You don't have to give it to them all in one great big burst of information. But yeah, I just was wondering whether you find that in your dealings with people, whether that's a big problem. I think we've mentioned it before, Sandra, about how awkward it is when people join unschooling groups and give the wrong information. They don't have a clear understanding of how it works and they influence the, they might influence the beliefs of the group when they're not really very well informed themselves.

Sandra Dodd: 16:28
We can't help that though. We can't, I would never want to set up a situation where people were certified speakers or not, you know, where some people had the authority to represent the group or not. Because really, we're just talking about our own families and our own kids. But there's another thing. If I if if I'm if I'm in Europe and they say where do you live, I say the US. Or if they say you're American, then go, yeah. That's all I'm gonna say. They they if they want to know more, they can ask more. If I said, Oh, I live east of Winrock between Manol and Indian School, it doesn't mean anything. And even if I say I live in New Mexico, that might not mean anything. Some places it might, to some people it might. If they watch a lot of Westerns, I don't know if they've been watching Breaking Bad, you know, but it's it's like that with with uh casual questions about unschooling. If the doctor says, where your kids go to school, and I say they don't go to school, he's gonna say, so you homeschool, and I can say, Yeah. I don't need to say no, we're radical unschoolers. That would be saying, like, you know, in the in the snow homes that were built in the 50s, you know, over there by Wyoming and Indian School. It no, no, that's too that's too particular. There's no bridge. Like you said, there's no there's nothing that they can relate to. There's there's nothing that they touch. Sometimes if I got questions, because I was involved in education and because uh New Mexico, northern New Mexico really was an alternative ad hub of life, there were a lot of people who knew about John Holt. So if somebody's sort of got me cornered there being like, you know, pokey about at me, like, well, why do you think you better but it's like that? They're having a bad attitude. I would say, you know who John Holt is, or have you read any John Holt? And if they said yes, it's like ding, there's the connection. I can say it's like that, but it's not, it's not open classroom at school, but it's all those ideas, and then I'm enthusiastic, and then they're enthusiastic. But if they say no, then I would go, um, like, well, then I don't know how I can explain it to you. No, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say, well, then you're not gonna get it. I would say, well, uh, there was a lot of research in the 60s, and they talked about alternative ed, just kind of some of that stuff. And I'd kind of trail off. But a few times people said, Yeah, I know John Holt. And it was awesome because that's what they wanted to know. How are you applying those ideas outside of school? You don't always get lucky that somebody knows and cares, but you don't know. Some people in discussions in their lives and their souls are living a very reactionary life. They want to be different, they want to do the opposite. They're mad at something or somebody or everything, and everybody, and they want to, if somebody says, I think you ought to get a red car, they're gonna say, Screw you, I'm getting a black car. You know, whatever it is, they're gonna say no. And so they're the worst, I think, when somebody asks them what they're doing because they're just gonna wait and see what that person thinks they ought to be doing until then they're not. So there can be a very defensive and reactionary response to a normal, everyday, peaceful question. So there's the range of questions, too. There are some people who ask because it's part of their job to ask, and that would be doctors, social workers, policemen, you know, nurses, librarians, they have reason to want to know more about this child who has come into their jurisdiction or their attention because they're, I don't know what if they have those terms where you are, but here they call it a mandatory reporter. We have that. And if they think the child is being neglected or abused, they they have an obligation to pay attention and maybe report it. See if you need services, see if the kid's okay, is the kid afraid? Is the kid safe? And so some homeschooling parents have said, Well, it's none of their damn business. It's like, excuse me. Yeah, I think it is. Then when we talked about freedom, I don't know if we talked about that, but it's that idea that I have, I have, I have left the culture, I'm departing tradition, and so nothing you can say or do has any jurisdiction over me anymore. It's like, no, you didn't leave the planet. You didn't leave your your home your own world, your own state, town, county. So sometimes people are so enamored of their freedom and so excited by their reactionary radical life that they forget that they really do live in and they still are in the culture. They've just scooted over toward the edge, which is fine and fun. And we also can't make rules about everybody has to be civil. I there was a an unschooling mom one time who came to a discussion and she said, I don't want to be a representative of unschooling. I don't want my kids to need to be representatives of unschooling. And I said, uh sorry. It's kind of like a club with uniforms, or you know, somebody, if somebody doesn't like Marines because a Marine sexually abused a sister, that's a reality. If somebody doesn't like unschoolers because some unschoolers are really rude and hateful, then that affects all of us. So including you. So I don't know. It's it's hard, it's hard to advise people, but it's it's worth saying, take a breath and be kind if you can, because that person who seems hostile may be really interested in, may either unschool their own kids or pass that on to some friends of theirs. So being a good representative and being kind and making it look attractive, showing them the most attractive thing you can think of in that moment can be valuable in all kinds of ways.

Sue Elvis: 22:00
I have sorry, Cecilia, you go ahead.

Cecilie Conrad: 22:04
I'm just thinking about my own journey and the people I met. And I think for many people it really is a radical choice when we choose it. Some people are fortunate enough to have decided on unschooling even before they have children, but for for a lot of people it's something that happens later on and it becomes this big step to not send the kids to school or to take them out, to not do school at home, to let go of that idea as well. And it's it I I remember those first years, it was a big deal inside of me. I had to do a lot of inner work, I had to talk a lot about it, I had to consult other people who did it, and that was a rare occurrence to find someone who did it. I was fortunate enough to have really good friends who were on schoolers, but it was I mean, thank you very much, you know who you are. I had to talk a lot with them because it was a big deal. And I think it's quite normal to become a little overly radical, a little too stubborn on these ideas, and maybe say things like, I don't care if they read and write, I just want them to be happy or whatever. It's it's this now in hindsight, I think it's a stupid statement. And I don't think I've said exactly that myself, but I understand where it comes from. This pulling that plug out just really takes all of my body weight and a and a few tries before it's actually out. It takes time. And I just wish that with this conversation we're having today, maybe we can inspire uh those who are in that phase, which I really understand. It's it's wild. It's sleepless nights, it's a lot of conversations, a lot of doubt, a lot of insecurity, a lot of days where you might feel that you ruined your children's life and future, and it's and you're just crazy and and it's never going to be healed. Of course, we say these overly radical things sometimes, but maybe just say them at home. And of course, these questions they hurt because they they poke this vulnerable place inside where things are not settled yet. The waters are not calm. It's it's a crazy times. And and in those years, the questions are hard to cope with, and and and we can become overly defensive of our choice and of our freedom to do that choice. And I don't think people really don't care if the kids learn to read and write. It's just a a way of brute forcing yourself through the emotions of not forcing them to learn to read and write. And when it all calms down, we all most, I suppose, all of us arrive at the point where it does matter whether they learn to read and write. The point is just they all learn to read and write. What matters is how they learn to read and write and why they learn to read and write. And and we can start having more leveled and also more interesting conversations than this radical. If you say jump, I'll sit down. I have that in me. Don't tell me what to do. That annoys me very much. So I understand where it comes from, and but I think that we are agents of the lifestyle, and it is a problem if we annoy people too much, if the Marine officer is abusing someone's sister, he's hurting the reputation of the whole Marine. And if we say something too aggressive or too radical, it is hurting the whole movement. And we are being understood as something that we are not.

Sandra Dodd: 26:22
We have no means. We have no means and maybe no reason, though, to call people back in and go, wait, wait, wait, that was too harsh. The committee would like to ask you not to respond next time. Um, that just doesn't happen. And I and I remember those days of being very jittery and having that heightened awareness where you wake up in the morning and go, Oh my god, I can't believe I didn't send my kids to school. You know, the first few months, the first year, where you're looking over your shoulder a lot and like, what's everybody gonna say? What are they gonna think? And it's hard in that emotional state to be really calm and soft and gentle. So maybe I'll someone some of the factors are age and personality and verbal ability. Some people get flustered if they get asked the question, they're not going to come up with a suave, quotable answer. And and as you get older and as you get more confident and experienced, it's easier to give better answers to. If someone, if someone is is really interested in this, or if you have relatives who keep on bugging you and the answers today are not helping you, I have a section on my site. If you go to sanderdot.com slash response, R-E-S-P-O-N-S-E. There are links to several things, and some of them are examples of letters that people wrote to their parents. And you could go in there and read and live vicariously, or you could steal them, you know, re-edit those and send something if you need if if it's a very serious thing and someone's being critical and skeptical and relentless with you. There are some ideas. But I I think the one little magical one is it's working for now. If it stops working, we'll do something different.

Sue Elvis: 27:56
I can remember years ago picking and choosing who who I would explain properly what we were doing to. And quite often I would just say, Oh, we're homeschooling, or we're doing our own thing. And then when somebody would say, Well, what does that look like? I'd say, Oh, we read lots of books, we go on lots of outings together, we've got lots of interests that we follow, and leave it at that. But I think a lot, it's I said that because I thought that the people I was talking to weren't genuinely interested in unschooling. But I did make a mistake once. I was at a homeschooling group, and oh, this was quite a while ago, but we've been unschooling for years, and I could have been a little bit more sensitive. And there was one mother there that was really struggling, and there were no unschoolers, and she was struggling, and I could have reached out and given her some um information about unschooling. She probably would have been very open to hearing what I had to say, but I kept brushing it off, like saying, Oh, we do nothing, you know, because everybody says unschoolers don't do a lot. And so it was like a joke. We don't do much. And I just used, I made a joke of what unschooling was, which kept her at arm's length. Now she never asked me uh about unschooling, but I've always wondered if I had been a little bit more sensitive, I could have shared something with her, and maybe she would have found something that she really needed at that time. I guess I was more concerned about myself. Not that I was worried about criticism, but I just couldn't be bothered. We were there for my kids to make friends, and to be quite honest, I wasn't there to come for. People to our way of thinking. And yes, I wasn't quite nice about the whole thing. I mean, I seemed to be nice on the surface. I was very friendly. But I wasn't very sensitive to the other people around me. I I guess also people would say at the meetings, this was a general, general conversation. Oh, my son won't do his mess. What am I gonna do? I'm fed up of it. I'm tearing my hair out. And then another mother would say, Oh, I know just what you mean. My son won't do his mess either, but I just keep on pushing. And I thought that's where the conversation ended. And there were no, there was no positive suggestions. Just we have to do it. Just make him do it. We he has to learn it. There's no question. And they all encouraged each other. That was their support. It's hard, yes, but we all know what it feels like. And you just have to do it. You just have to keep pushing. And I didn't say a word. I just sat there and thought, well, I wouldn't do that. And I didn't speak up. And I missed opportunity, maybe.

Cecilie Conrad: 31:13
Well, maybe someone else told her at some point that it's not necessarily your obligation to educate everyone all the time.

Sue Elvis: 31:25
I guess, Cecilia, that blogging and podcasting and sharing everything online, for me as well, it was a time where I just wanted to drink coffee and go. I didn't feel like I wanted it to be an extension of what I do on my blog. I just wanted to go have coffee with these women, let my kids play with their kids, and step down from that role of sharing all the time. And just yeah, because that's hard sometimes, that uh always being aware that what we say, how we say it, always trying to help others. And yeah, I suppose I just didn't want to do that that particular time. Or for the whenever we went to those meetings. Not that they didn't find out that I was a blogger, because after we'd been going to the meetings quite some time, I don't know, maybe one of my kids had mentioned it, because I didn't mention it, and somebody asked me, and I said, yes, I blog and I podcast and I gave them an address. So maybe they found me there. So, and of course, there's plenty of information about what unschooling is on my blog. If anybody wants to go find out, my blog, um, what I'm saying is not I'm not saying that for this audience, but there is. But I know that a lot of my friends, even though I didn't say a lot about unschooling, when they found out I was a blogger, they went to my blog to find out what we were really doing. Uh which I found was uh, I don't know, it was like very exposed that you're in a group of people, friends, and maybe you're all homeschoolers, but you're the only one unschooling, and you're the only one who has a blog. So everybody can find out most things about you, but you only know what they're willing to share in person. And that was that's been hard sometimes because people will come back and say, Oh, I was reading your blog, and and I think, well, I can't go back and say, I was reading something you read. It's all one way. Sometimes, yeah.

Sandra Dodd: 33:46
When you first told the story, I thought you were saying this happened before you had a blog, and I was gonna say, but then you started blogging and you and that and you made up for it. You don't have to regret anything anymore. But it was during, so that's even easier. So you were easier, e you were easy enough for her to find if she wanted to know more.

Sue Elvis: 34:03
True. But I I had a really uh long deep think before I started blogging about unschooling. I was a blogger to begin with. I started started blogging about grief because of last time we were talking about my son dying as a baby. And I'd written a book about it, and I wanted to promote the book. So I thought, oh, become a blogger. And sort of jumped over the cliff and discovered that there's a lot more to blogging about blogging than there is about promoting one book. And someone in an unschooling group, Yahoo group years ago, said, Um, Sue, why don't you write about unschooling? And I thought, oh, once I start writing about unschooling, it's like people know what you really like and what you really think. Whereas in real life, you can share what you want to share and keep the rest secret. But then it's out there in public, and anybody can read it, and anybody can share your family and your family's stories. And I don't regret it, but yeah, it just was a big deal at the time when I started blogging. Do you ever find that, Cecilia or Sandra, that being a public publicly telling your stories and sharing things has been difficult in some regard? I mean, I I have lots of positives. I'm not saying it's not, but there was also a bit of uh downside.

Cecilie Conrad: 35:42
I think sometimes it's a little funny, like you say, that some of my friends or someone I meet know me way better than well, my friends obviously know me already, but sometimes it's funny. If I tell a story and my friend said, Oh, I know that. You said that on the podcast. I'm like, why are you listening to my podcast? But whatever. I actually started blogging to avoid these conversations that you just talked about, to avoid the situation where I'm having coffee and someone's asking me a question, and now I have to start the whole conversation once more. And I just talked about it three days ago at the playground for two hours, and I I really don't want to explain my lifestyle all the time. I wasn't an unschooler when I started blogging. It was um it was when I had my fourth child, and we have these groups that the state sets up for mothers when on the maternity leave, then you can meet up with other mothers in your neighborhood and just chat and you know, meet someone who also just had a baby, but nearby. Like you can just walk down the street. So they put together five or six families, whatever, ten families, and and recommend that you meet like maybe once a week or whatever. That's very nice. Except I hate it. And I didn't do it with my first children. I find it very mainstream, I find it very oppressive in a way everyone it's the whole lining up the batch of children that were born in the same week, and you know, when does your child lift the head? And and and you we meet, you you meet in each other's homes, so there's this whole contest of who has the widest sofa and who remembered to fold the laundry and make homemade bread. I can't be part of that, and it it really annoys me and freaked me out. I I I couldn't do it. But with my fourth child, I was in the situation that I was home educating or not home educating yet, but I was having the two others at home, and and we were in this neighborhood of big villas, and and and um we didn't have a lot of friends nearby. So I thought if I show up in this group where everybody has had a child, it's a group for people who it's not the first child, so they have other children, which means I might get to know some of my neighbors, and that could lead to friends for my children. Um, so I showed up in this group, and and there were other women, and and they were yeah, mothers. And I realize but not my echo chamber, not not my friends, not my my people, because they were just my neighbor. They were not bad people, they were just not someone I chose. And I realized everything I did was radical. Everything I did did the eyebrows behind the hairline thing. Every time we talked about anything, it was what? How? And and I I thought, is it really true that these things that are just my everyday life, just how we roll, it's not a big deal. This is before I started unschooling, remember? I didn't even home educate at the time. I my I had one child in school age and she was in school. We were pretty normal to me, in my humble opinion. Yet a lot of things I thought and said and did seemed so odd to the other people that that in and of itself was weird to me. And then when I thought about it, oh, so we have a culture here where these things that I find completely simple, I know that it might not be what everybody's doing, but on the other hand, it's not extreme. The mainstream don't know about this, and I have to explain all the thoughts that go behind, I have to talk for 40 minutes, maybe, just about the fact that I'm not putting my baby on a scale to weigh him every week, that I don't know his birth weight, and I don't care. And that's fine. Two of the people in that group were medical doctors, family doctors, two of the women, and both of them said, is that even legal? Their job to know it's legal, and they didn't know it. And and that put me in a place where I was like, wow, I I have to put in a different voice here in this whole cacophony of how we talk about family life and children and things. So I've used the blog more so in the beginning than now, as a deflator for questions. So if people ask questions and I don't want to spend my time answering them, I don't feel like it because I want coffee. I just want to chat. I can say, if you're really very interested, I have a blog about these things. And you could maybe start with these three things. I'll send you a few links and then I can feel that I've explained myself, I've put some thought into how to phrase these things, how to talk about them in a respectful way where people can understand me and the movement, but I don't have to be an agent right now. I can just have my coffee.

Sue Elvis: 41:19
A very positive, very positive uh an advantage of blogging, having a website. I agree. Sorry, Sandra.

Sandra Dodd: 41:28
I was gonna say that they have they have some sort of government approved government-assigned mothers' groups in England too, in the in the UK. And um I I knew of two families where that stayed. Like the the parents were still in contact when the kids were like eight or ten, which is nice. I mean, they just because the group worked out, and not because the government was checking and taking role or anything, you know, nobody was taking attendance. But one of the in one of the groups in Scotland, I I was at one of their meetups, just so happened that I was staying there when they met, and it was nice. I thought it was great. The parents were very different, and the mom was a doctor. So when you said that, Cecilia, I thought about that. So one of the moms was a physician and the one I was staying with, and she was an unschooler too. But I think sometimes unschoolers can disturb the peace of a homeschooling group because they all want to talk about the curriculum and how hard it is to teach the kids and to get them dressed. And you know, they're they're doing just something very different. I started a group because I knew how to how to manage Yahoo groups when they were f when they were new. And I started a group for New Mexico because we had had a newspaper, a newsletter, state newsletter, and that failed. So I made a Yahoo group. And all even though I started the group, I had been unschooling already for a while. I had been, I had spoken at conferences, I knew a lot of homeschoolers in New Mexico. I kind of got thrown out of the group because they didn't want unschoolers. They wanted to talk about homeschooling. And I was happy to go because I thought it was bullshit. You know, but so I was emotional too. But they so I was the skeptic. I I felt like saying, Do you really think what you're doing is any better than school? There's schools all around you, put your kids in school. You know, I didn't do that, but I had the thought. So sometimes we're the skeptics if the government has assigned you to a group and you go in there and it seems kind of mainstream and they haven't really thought about what they're doing and stuff. So then we become the critics and the skeptics. And I know that can happen too, and that can be frustrating. I quit going to a local homeschool meetup. It wasn't the one I had organized, but another one similar where they met every week. And Holly was 11 or 12 at the time, and she's criticized me a couple of times or asked me why didn't you go with me? Because I used to send her with other families. But I would get there and sometimes some people would just want to corner me and argue with me about math or whatever. It's like they were, it's like pugilism, like they see me and they want to fight me, you know, in a social way, kind of. And that was old. That was getting irritating. I didn't want, I didn't want to be a person that somebody practiced their beliefs on when they just started homeschooling a year ago and I'd been doing it for 10 years. So I I was impatient. But they weren't asking questions, how can I do it better? They were just trying to find ways to discredit me or cut me down for entertainment while the kids were playing.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:26
I think it's a good strategy always when we have these questions and and and the skepticism to face to think about why are we really having this conversation? Why are you asking me these questions and why do I feel like coming up with these kinds of answers, or not don't feel like answering at all. Are we having this conversation and what what do we what where do we want to go with it? And sometimes the cornering unschoolers is about defending your choice to home educate or your choice to send your kids in school. And I'm actually not showing up at the playground or the homeschool meetup or in any other context to win people over or to criticize their choices, or that's not my agenda. So I can sometimes say bow out of the conversation, and and now, but it's also been many years, I can even say, I don't want to have this conversation. I don't want to discuss this with you. You're free to do whatever you want to do, and I claim my freedom to do what I find right in my life. And pass me the salt, please. Can we talk about something else?

Sue Elvis: 45:38
Yeah, I think. Sorry, I'm just uh I was just thinking then about how you both seem to have or had a good support group of other people who were like-minded, other unschoolers. You've got world schoolers that you always see, Cecilia. But we were the lone unschoolers in surround, well, not even surrounded by homeschoolers, because we live in an area where when my kids were growing up, homeschooling was only a small part of the population. And so there's not always an opportunity to socialize or you know, go have coffee with another unschooling family, that you're with a lot of a few homeschoolers. And I was maybe another reason I stayed quiet is because I didn't want to feel like I was criticizing anybody and getting everybody offside. Because if I had responded to that maths problem, uh I would have had to be very careful how I worded it. Like, have you thought about? Um, and then made maybe a simple suggestion. But when you are face, you're the only person. Yeah, I I have some good friends who are homeschoolers, not unschoolers. And I never wanted to get offside with them because we had other things in common, not unschooling, but other things, and I like them as people, and I didn't want to lose my friends. So in some ways it was easier just to keep quiet and yeah, do the best I could to be friends with them without sharing that. But obviously, uh, you don't have that problem, Cecilia. You and Sandra, you have talked in the past, uh maybe it was not maybe the last no, the not the last episode we recorded together, but the one before, and we were talking about forming groups for our children, like being prepared to run a park day or whatever, so we meet people who have similar um similar points of view to ours, and make our own support group. But it's hard when you don't have a support group.

Cecilie Conrad: 47:60
I've felt lonely over the years in some phases, or I mean I've had more support and more friends to talk to in some years of my life than others. And I've also had really good friends who home educate, and I do also respect their freedom to choose to do it their way, and I've seen families where homeschooling, schooling at home, has worked really beautifully, and and they've had a lot of fun and community and love and exploring and respect for each other while doing the curriculum parallel to our state schools. I don't necessarily believe that unschooling is the way for everyone. I don't have to believe it. I don't have to go down that path of thinking that this everyone should do what I do. There's no point either, because they're not going to, anyways. Um I I really truly believe in the freedom and the freedom to choose what what is right for you and your family. I I try to only be judgmental of those where I feel that there is no conscious choice. It's a little mindless following the crowd. I I don't really I find it hard to respect that as much. But but doing Yeah, people really do have the freedom to do what is right for them. And what do I know? I don't I don't want to judge it, I don't have to judge it, I'm not the one to judge it. Why would I be the highest power of wisdom here? I'm I'm not. I'm doing what what feels right and is right for my family, and I'm happy to share how that works if there's a genuine interest. I'm also happy to defend the movement because I think it's important that people can gravitate towards it if if that's right for them. And I think it's important that there is good, solid, and a lot of information out there so that we can maybe make the path easier for those who are walking in the first steps. I I felt a little bit lonely to the extent that we were only a few families home educating in my country, and even a smaller segment was unschooling. So, yes, I had good friends, but I didn't have a lot of them. I didn't have mirrors, I didn't take the time to read the books, I didn't find that I had time to read any books in the first years. I just had a lot of children and had to take care of that. I'm doing the blogging and the podcasting as a service to the community, and I feel that that frees me off being perfect and and perfectly agitating for what we're doing in all of what I do. But I mean this has been many years. How do you deal with skepticism and critique in the beginning? I think that's the that's the hard part. And I think really it is about thinking about why am I having this conversation and why does it evoke these emotions in me, and then go home and think about that and maybe talk to someone you trust really well, or someone who has more years behind them of home educating and even unschooling, to find out where does that all that reaction come from that happens inside of me when I get these questions, and why do people ask these questions and who who do I want to win over? I might have to win over the children's grandparents, but I don't have to win over the bus driver. And when I get so frustrated and angry with the questions, why do I get so frustrated and angry? People just asking questions. There are the classic questions that annoy a little bit. Yeah, but let me finish the other one. I think thinking about why are we having these conversations, why are people asking these questions, why do they evoke these emotions? Why do I feel like saying we're doing nothing? Because that's clearly a lie. Just mocking the general picture of our lifestyle. Um, but sometimes you just feel like saying it. You feel like saying, I don't care about math, or whatever. You know, it's not even true, but it's just you get so tired of listening to these conversations about pushing your children to do math. And I really sometimes hear those kind of conversations in the home educating groups, and I just want to say, oh my God, why don't you just stop? And I I've learned to shut up mostly.

Sandra Dodd: 52:50
I was always providing information somehow. I was writing articles for local newsletters and uh eventually for Home Ed magazine, home education magazine. So people could find those. But in the local group, there were some families who weren't really unschoolers, not the way we were. And one family, because of grandparents, was using a Catholic curriculum called Seton. And that was fine. I was curious about it. I was interested because there were Christian fundamentalist curriculums at the time, a couple of them, a Becca and Sunlight. And so I went to a science group that was advertised as a as a science meetup, and we went, and it turns out, like as soon as I got there, they said, Do you use a becca or or sunlight? Those were the only right answers. And I was neither one. So it was awkward, and we stayed about 45 minutes. I just had Kirby and Marty with me, and then uh we left. But when they said science, I figured out later they meant creationist science. They were a little anti-science. Like I don't think they would have appreciated any dinosaur talk, but I didn't try it. So I was skeptical of them, but I didn't ask them. I knew we already understood what their deal was. And um, so my friend who was doing SETA was doing it to satisfy in-laws, and that's fine. And I used to jokingly but seriously tell people look, don't lose an inheritance about this. It's not worth that. You know, if you've got millionaire grandparents who say your kids should go to school, maybe they should go to school. Because I you should be practical about some things. You know, if you're gonna be so reactionary that you get your whole family, what's the word, they throw you out, disowned, that's not that's too expensive. That's more expensive than than private school. So I I think people should live a little lightly around it. But if you can do this radical thing, and if you can sweet talk or persuade the grandparents to let you keep trying without complaining all the time, it can turn into the grandparents get it too, if you go gradually. But if you just pull some ultimatum like this is what we're gonna do, it's none of your business, leave us alone, that's it's not useful.

Cecilie Conrad: 54:56
It's not true either, because it is their business. Yeah, yeah. We are part of a community, and and some people have more of a right to ask questions than others, and some people have some stock in our children, and that's fair enough. I think, yes, as parents, we are the primary caregivers, and it's our responsibility to take care of our kids. It really is, but at the same time, I I respect that the children are part of a family and a and of a larger community, and I think it's great that we look after each other and that we have opinions on behalf of other people's children. I'm not a grandmother yet. I have some nieces that are kind of uh rehearse grandmother situation. My sister's quite a lot younger than me, and yeah. So I get some of the parallel feelings. And and also even children of my friends, children of my community, I think it's a good thing we look after each other. And it is a way of looking after each other. So the questions are welcome, and in some cases, we we have to maybe not win over, we have to maybe also respect their opinions. And I've got a last thing on my list today of things I thought were worth talking about in this context of questions and critique, and and that is all the things I learned from questions. Some of the people I talk to who are asking questions and don't really understand it, and or understand most of it, but then again, they have this, but what about this thing? Really? And I have good solid conversations with them about it. And sometimes I even go home and modify what I'm doing, or I go home and have a conversation with my children about a phenomena and tell them, you know, I've had this conversation with this friend or family member about this part of our life and how you not going to school and us unschooling would affect you and how what what the difference is between how you're living your life and how you're growing up, and where that puts you parallel to those who do the mainstream. What do you think about it? And then I talk with my kids and and we have we evolve, we grow, and and and we might make some better choices because of a critical question that I had. If if it's really someone asks me with an open and curious mind, but really don't understand how this would ever work without pushing for, let's say, math is one of them. I've had a very long and very good conversation several times with the same person about math, and he happens to have a PhD in some math things. And and we we talked about, I think we've done several math episodes, so we don't have to go deep into this, but we talked about how math specifically is a key you don't know you have until you have it. So it can be hard to understand why you would dive into this area of science before you've done it. Because once you've done it, it opens some doors. It's a bit like speaking languages. You don't see the point because you've got translators and books are translated, and loads of people speak English and whatever, and and you don't really see the point of putting in all that effort to learn a different language. Maybe some people don't see the point of it, uh, until you've done it, and then you see, oh, and and what you get from it is very hard to explain before you've done it. So why would children naturally gravitate towards doing calculus in a freestyle life, in an unschooled life? And how how would the not doing that, where would that put them? And how can we as unscrew? So that whole thing, I don't think we have to go into it as deeply, but how that whole conversation was a critical conversation because the guy I was talking to was saying to me, there's no way they're doing it without you pushing for it. So if you don't push, they are left with less options and a smaller life, things they don't know would open doors. And then I went home and talked to my kids about it, well, talked with my kids about it, and my husband, and and that has sparked off interesting and good conversations. And what I wanted to maybe became too elaborate is but what I wanted to say was sometimes these critical questions can spiral off some very interesting thoughts and some very interesting conversations inside an unschooling. Setting, they're not always the enemy. Sometimes they are some fuel on the motor to find the nuances of what we really think and what we really want to do.

Sandra Dodd: 01:00:14
Sometimes the best thing to do is to tell them a story, not to generalize it and say, oh, we play games or we go to museums, but to say, well, like for example, we were doing this, and this is what the kids got interested in and followed up on later. Sometimes just one story that's fun and interesting is less emotional, less, less dramatic, uh, less philosophical. I mean, it's like one, it's like showing somebody a rock instead of describing all of geology. Show them one cool rock. And then if they're interested, they can ask to see another one. Or they can go home and think, uh, that's not the only thing they do. They must do something like that every week. And then you think, yeah, maybe every couple of days. And sometimes I like to give that example. I'd say, so in school, kids go on maybe one field trip a year, and we can go every week. We can get a membership at the children's museum and go whenever we want to. And they can stay at one exhibit as long as they want to, whereas a school group has to move along. And sometimes just that story would be enough to satisfy them that they understood more and I hadn't made my kids look bad or you know, awkward. And I found with the grandparents too that if we went, if we went to their house, they lived about 200 miles away, so it wasn't it was usually an overnight trip, or we'd drive four hours early in the morning and then come back later. It was too far. But if we were at their house, the grandparents would be critical or like assuming that they will tell the kids what to eat and how to eat and stuff. One day she told Marty that he couldn't have his dessert until he finished his green beans or something, right? And it wasn't a great dessert, it was some sort of stewed raisin. It's called raisin compotes gross. And um, it's a little bowl, small bowl of hot raisins, and maybe it has butter and brown sugar, I don't remember. So she said, Marty, Marty reached for his and she said, You can't have that until you clean your plate. And he looked at her and she looked at him, and nobody looked at me. And I just slid mine over and I said, Here, Marty, you can have mine. And that's how it would go. Like, that's what's she gonna do? You know, she can be mad, but we never had we didn't even do dessert. We went to a restaurant one time in California, we had gone to meet them, we hadn't seen these friends for a long time, and nobody had kids except us. So it's like eight adults and two kids at a long table, and it was a regular, you know, American food. And so we ordered chicken nuggets for the kids. We knew that was gonna take a while. So I said, Can we get apple pie and bring that first? And she said, sure. So we give our kids apple pie, and a couple of the adults who don't have kids are just kind of muttering, like, well, if they eat that, they won't eat anything else. I said, That's fine. We could take the chicken nuggets with us to the hotel. And then the kids ate apple pie, and then they ate chicken nuggets. So we didn't go see, told you, because we didn't know, right? But it didn't surprise me and Keith. And it kind of made a point for the rest of them. We weren't there to tell them anything about parenting, we were just there to visit with them and hang out with them. But it was interesting that they were seemed pretty sure, like as a gang against us, that we were doing the wrong thing to let them eat apple pie. So we had already seen that you could eat apple pie, or you could eat uh theoretically raising compote and then eat some green beans, but we weren't that worried about what order food was eaten in. Oh, we're gonna talk about food next time, huh? I'll hush it up. I wanted to say something about grandparents, grandparents, and India. This is interesting. There are quite a few unschoolers in India. And when at some point, I don't know how many years ago, 10 years ago, maybe, maybe a little more. I don't know. Let's say 10, more or less 10 years. Um, India made a law that said every state had to provide schools. So the young schoolers got all flipped out because before that point there had been no laws that said anybody had to go to school. Schools were generally private schools, and and people sent their kids to the school because they could afford to, or because they had gone to school, or because the grandparents said to and paid for it, or whatever. So it was a very grandparent-driven school system, what system there was, but there was no compulsory attendance law at all. And there weren't even public schools, not like in the United States where you can throw a rock and hit a school. So when this law was being discussed, a couple of unschoolers like contacted me really panicking. What are we gonna do now? What if they don't make unschooling legal? I said, wait, wait, wait, what's the law say? They told me, I said, that just says that states have to provide schools. It doesn't say anybody has to go or you know that they have to make anybody go. And they said, Oh, okay. And I said, wait, and don't worry. Anyway, first they have to build the schools. That the the the idea that they would spend that much money and actually construct buildings and hire teachers and get books and stuff, you know, that was a little beyond what they were used to doing and expecting. So I said, I don't I don't think you should worry until you see schools built. And even then, you know, you've already been unschooling since before this system came around. But before that happened, I would say, well, they would say you're lucky because you live in a place where the law can say it's legal for you to homeschool. We don't have that. We can't go to the grandparents and say, look, it's legal in in you know in in the state to homeschool because it it wasn't required anyway, it was required by the grandparents. So that was an interesting twist. And and some of them didn't get to homeschool much. And when I was when I visited, there were a couple of families that said, could you come talk to my parents? You know, let's go meet my parents, okay? You know, wink wink. Okay. And that's what it was, is is the grandparents of the of an Indian family with a young kid, usually little kids, six or eight, wanted to grill me about what the hell are you telling these my our kids? So it was interesting. I I got to go home at the end, and it was fun, it was fun for me to answer their questions in a way that helped keep peace in the family, sort of set an example for how the adult, you know, the parents in the in the family, the middle generation, could maybe respond or what they needed to live up to, and uh that that it might not be that scary, and that if it didn't work, they could still send them to school. So I'm I it was interesting to be a sort of a uh triangulation point for those thoughts. And that was it was fun for me, but a little a little stressful, some pressure.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:07:05
So then you got to be really an agent for the movement and for other people.

Sandra Dodd: 01:07:12
Yeah. And for me, it's still always about learning. It's like, can can learning happen without schools? Let's try it. Okay, now that we've tried it, let's prove it. Let's, you know, can we can we calmly explain it? So it kind of comes in that order. A lot of times people can't explain it in the first couple of years. So sometimes the answers just need to be short. It's very hard.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:07:34
It's hard. I just we gave a talk yesterday, my husband and I, on the lifestyle, and and there was a woman who asked beforehand, can I film this? Because I need to convince someone. And I thought, yes, you can. I'm not saying anything that's a secret, so if you want to film it, you can film it. But really, are you sure that the good thing about people asking questions is they're somewhat open to listening to your answer. And is this answer going to be a crusade? You know, it's sometimes the right thing to be in a position to try to convince people and give them good answers. And this woman, she was home educating, unschooling, and and she needed this. And I'm not sure, did we in this conversation come up with helpful ways of answering the questions? You have a site on your a page on your blog, Sandra, how to answer the questions, short answer, as you said, and we'll link to it. I actually remembered that I wrote a very long thing I never published about it that we called Good Answers to Stupid Questions. And it's provocative to use the word stupid, and that's where I got stuck because I did find the questions a little bit stupid, but it's not a good title. I'll have to work a little more with it. But it really is a problem in the beginning. Maybe it still sometimes is a problem to come up with a good answer, a good answer for the actual context where the question is asked, a good answer to talk into where the receiver of the answer is, to explain, to condense all of the thoughts that we have behind what we're doing into some simple way of expressing why the why and how this makes sense. And it can come out as I don't care if they learn to read and write. It's usually not true, but sometimes you feel like you need to say that part.

Sandra Dodd: 01:09:44
I've started two two stories that I didn't finish. I'm really sorry. I need to go back and add details, or I will have a bad dream. They they bought it and they had it and they used it. But what they did was they'd go through the exercises together, like the mom and the kids would discuss it, which I think is great. Learning, right? Conversations. They weren't doing it school style, where the kids had to sit and do the work by themselves. And then the rest of their lives they were totally unschooling. Uh, because it was mostly catechism kind of religious education stuff, saints stories and stuff. And that was fine, that was painless, they were having a good time. And it didn't bother all all our kids were playing together. That's what we had the group for anyway. And I my daughter, who's in her 30s now, still sometimes is in contact with the youngest of that family. So the friendships did last a while. And then I started to talk about my husband's parents, and when we were at their house, it was a little friction-y. And when they were at our house, saying the house where I'm living now, the flat house, is a house that they had lived in. And so there's a very much awkwardness if you live in a house where your mother-in-law used to live, because it's it was newer when she had it, it's not as clean as she kept it, your furniture's shabby, blah, blah, blah. Clothes are everywhere, toys are everywhere. So the best thing we ever did was start to meet with them at other places, or we go to their house, like, let's don't stay here, let's go, let's go up to Rio Doso and play miniature golf. Or when they were in Albuquerque, let's go to the children's museum. And seeing the kids in a neutral place, doing something interesting, being excited, you know, they they're at that they'd seen the children's museum, so they're showing the grandparents, oh, come look at this, grandpa, look at this. And that was that made the the grandparents impressed and calm because it was seeing the kids and stuff, not seeing the house and the and the family living in the house. Because neither our family living in their old house or us going to the place where Keith grew up and seeing his parents be kind of harsh, neither one of those was peace and love. But getting the kids into a more neutral place was. And then they were seeing learning and they were seeing happy kids, and they were seeing uh an example of what we what we did without just sitting around the house waiting for time to make dinner and then wash the dishes. That that didn't that did not portray anything about what we were doing. So I I think sometimes talking talking it isn't might not be as good as showing it. So if if a family with critical relatives can get their kids and maybe the cousins or the grandparents out to some an interesting place activity, it it will take a lot of the pressure off. I think it's possible.

Sue Elvis: 01:12:34
Show and tell you Yeah, I think that's a great idea, Sanjay, but can I go back to something you were saying earlier about being telling stories about instead of saying oh, we go to some museum, we go outings, we go, we read books, whatever, but a specific story about what you have done. And just reminded me that I heard that a neighbor up the road, this was several years ago, uh wanted to homeschool and wanted to know some tips about how to get started. And uh we got together via a mutual friend, and I went over one evening and I decided to take all my books off the shelf that weren't unschooling. So I had accumulated various books over the years, none and I didn't give take any John Holt or anything like that, just Charlotte Mason, classical education, things that I didn't really need, but I had bought and had a look at uh just to see what they're what what they said really, just uh books that I could join in with conversations. And I packed them all in a bag and I thought, well, I'll pass these books on to this family. And I won't talk about unschooling because they're probably not interested in unschooling. And I don't know how we got around it, but we talked about everything else but unschooling. And all of a sudden, I found myself talking about unschooling, and I thought I'm not going to push unschooling. I was so wanting them to tell them about unschooling, but I thought, no, I'm just going to play by ear and not force myself or my opinions on them, see where they, where the conversation goes. But anyway, once the word unschooling was mentioned, oh, they just got excited. Oh, we know all about that. We've been reading about it. You unschool, oh wow, you have a blog, oh wow, and they got so excited. And then I started telling stories, like you just said, Sandra. And I remember telling this story that had happened only a few days previous to illustrate unschooling. And it was about how I'd noticed that there were all these white butterflies everywhere, in the bush, down on the freeway, everywhere. And I thought, I've never seen so many of these white butterflies. So I was talking about this to my husband in the car, and we did some research and we found out possible reasons, and then we started talking about what do you call a flock of butterflies? And we started making up our own a flit a flitter of butterflies, and we made up our own words to describe a lot of butterflies, and then we went and found out the real one. And anyway, there was more to it than that, but I was ill illustrating how we learn by observing, being curious, having conversations, doing some research, having some fun by ourselves. We had such great fun with those words. And I said it wasn't really that I had to write records. Andy and I are adults. We were, I wasn't doing it because we had to prove to an education department that we were learning. This was just part of life and all of the learning. But I did say, if we had, if I had had this conversation with my children when they were younger, this is what I would have written down as some points for homeschool record keeping. And it gave them something really tangible to illustrate what unschooling was about. But what I think was the most effective way of sharing was my excitement. I mean, I really wanted to share unschooling, and I sat on my hands for a long time before I opened up. But my excitement made them excited, and we had a really interesting conversation. And I learned a couple of things from that is that don't always assume other people won't want to hear about unschooling. Don't be uh defensive about it, don't be apologetic, or don't even say things like, well, you probably don't want to unschool, but uh just assume that that's a valid option as well. Not as we were saying earlier, Cecilia. You were saying it's every family's choice what they do. And I agree. And I had taken all these books thinking they'll have some other choice they want, and I'm going to support it. And I ended up taking all those books home without even getting them out. I thought, I don't want to uh uh just distract them with all these books now that we're talking about unschooling. I took the wrong books, the wrong books. So I told them I had a blog instead. And and if you've got any questions, I'm down the road and here's my blog address, and uh and so I think that yeah, never assume that other people don't want to hear about it or are going to be negative about it, and excitement and curiosity is contagious. That telling stories about all the wonderful discoveries we've made, yeah, they're good stories. Tell some. A story is a good answer.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:18:01
That's sweet. Like a question is a good answer. I think we should maybe call it a day soon. Okay. I am enjoying our conversations, but I know it's late over there in the big America. And um we've been around the question of questions, haven't we?

Sandra Dodd: 01:18:21
Well, thank you. I I know we can't cover everything, and I hope that at least maybe uh people need more ideas, they could go to my blog because I have several pages of collections over the years of people's ideas. But yeah, I I love Sue's point that enthusiasm is more valuable than silence or defensiveness, and telling stories is a valuable way to communicate.

Sue Elvis: 01:18:46
And I like your I like your suggestions about taking the grandparents with you somewhere and I guess involving them in your lives as well, so they can see your children learning and thriving and enjoying life.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:19:04
It's been interesting and it's been a very unschooly way of talking about these things. It's not strategies, it's not plans, it's life. That's how we cope with critique and skepticism and questions. And it's also looking inwards and seeing how we can all grow from it.

Sue Elvis: 01:19:24
And maybe we don't always make the right responses, but we learn from, like we have talked about today, we come home and we ponder what we said and think, well, I could have said this a bit better, or I could have been a bit more sensitive, or I learned something from that interaction myself. So it's a two-way thing, isn't it? Yep.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:19:46
Right, right answer or wrong answer, but now time is up. We have to move on. Some need to sleep and some need more coffee. That would be me.

Sue Elvis: 01:19:55
And are we gonna give people uh a taste of uh next episode by meant what Sandra mentioned it earlier? We're going to talk about food, which is always a very um sensitive lots of questions about associated with that one, isn't there? Yeah, we might need two conversations on food. Let's see how it goes. I'm looking forward to it. I will gather some stories, and I'm sure Sandra will have a lot and we'll have a great conversation.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:20:25
We will. Thank you for this, my ladies.

Sue Elvis: 01:20:28
Thank you.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:20:29
Bye.

Sue Elvis: 01:20:30
Bye.

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE