S2E10 | Is It Working? Wrestling with Doubt in Unschooling

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

S2E10 | Ladies Fixing the World

Cecilie Conrad: 0:15

So welcome to the Ladies Fixing the World. This is episode 10 of season 2 and, as those who are watching the video will note, I'm sporting my glasses. I'm 50 now just turned the corner last week. I'm grateful again to be co-hosting this podcast with Sue Elvis joining from Australia. Sue is a long-term blogger from the community of unschoolers and you have contributed immensely to making this take on life available and making it something you can take in and understand for everyone. So thank you, sue, for joining me today.

Sue Elvis: 1:00

Hi Cecilia, hi Sandra. Thank you for those kind words, cecilia, and happy birthday.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:06

Yeah, thank you, that's why I said it really. No, it was the closet. Also, I have Sandra Dodd with me and Sandra, she is joining from the USA and I would say you're a first mover, right? Sandra has been the wisdom spreader for so many years and I'm so happy to have you here. Welcome, sandra.

Sandra Dodd: 1:30

Thank you. We would talk about doubts and fears because some people assume that experienced unschoolers are never afraid of anything. They've never been afraid, that they are confident about every moment. That's not true, but it's not good to dwell on the doubts. It's good to see them and go. I know how to get around this. I know how to get over this and to help other people do that too.

Sandra Dodd: 1:52

Once in a discussion somebody said I want everyone here to share the worst days you've had, or something like that. You know when terrible things happen and I wasn't there. I wasn't there when that happened. It was in a discussion by email and things could have gone quickly, but Pam Sarooshian saw it and she came in and said no, that's not what we're going to do, because that just causes people to be afraid of things that haven't even happened to them. It will cause a lot of, you know, fear and wallowing and fixation on what could go wrong. I was so glad he did that, because it could have been a big pile of dirt and so, yes, it happens, but it's not good to pile it up and put a spotlight on it, which is odd but honest. So I didn't decide to unschool before I had kids, like some people have. I figured my kids would go to school.

Sandra Dodd: 2:39

John Holt wrote about how children learn and how children fail at first, before he was ever thinking about homeschooling at all. But he wrote in Teach your Own in 1981, that was his book about homeschooling he wrote. In World War I we first began to see evidence that prolonged anxiety, stress and fear can have great destructive effects on the human nervous system. Fear can have great destructive effects on the human nervous system. When parents don't know that, they can work themselves up into an unhealthy frenzy or they can become sort of paralyzed from fear. And so that's why I've always been out with the cheerleaders, you know with the other moms going be happy, watch birds, be sweet, be good, because that fear can be crippling.

Cecilie Conrad: 3:28

We have to recognize, though, that it's going to poke its ugly head out now and then the fear and the doubt, the fear and the doubt, and some people around us might feel like they're the one making that hole for that poking head even bigger than it needs to be. I totally, 100% agree that it's not. Fear is not a playmate. Fear is not someone we take to the dance floor. Fear is not a helper. Sometimes, I think it's worth it to stop and think about it for a little while.

Cecilie Conrad: 4:11

Think about is this an alarm that I need to actually pay attention to, or is it just a bad habit? Usually it's the last. I think all unschoolers, maybe even all home educators possibly everyone experience fears based on their. You know, you make a choice and it's your responsibility. You made that choice and then you have the doubt and from there comes the fear. And what do we do about that? We do not pile up all the bad experiences, I, I agree. But can we just so? If we can just turn our heads away, not pay attention to fear and doubt at all, and say no, you're not, I'm not, I'm just going to ignore you, then this podcast episode is actually over before Sue even said anything.

Sandra Dodd: 5:15

There's a contagion with fear.

Cecilie Conrad: 5:17

There's what A contagion with fear.

Sandra Dodd: 5:20

There's what A contagion with fear. Yes, if one person's afraid and they talk about it, then other people go. Oh, I wasn't afraid of that before. Maybe I should have been, maybe I should be. I hadn't thought about it when I was in third grade. This picture is in my mind too much. When I was in third grade, a kid in our class threw up on the floor, puked and all of us rushed up to look and a couple of kids puked on that and the teacher's going get back. Get back, because it just could have turned into 25 kids in the same. It's funny now, many years later, but that day I feel so bad for the teacher and for the kids too. I wasn't one of them, but I could have been. So I think being afraid and sharing fears can be like that too, and it's just a natural human reaction to someone else's fear is to be afraid.

Sue Elvis: 6:18

True, I encounter fear and doubt in two different areas, and one is people who come to my blog or listen to my podcast and then will I say I'm afraid about are coming to me and expressing their fears I have. I say I have to. I want to give them some positive tools, maybe for thinking through those fears, rather than pushing them away, but to think through them and help them with that way. But then later on, I have a fear of my own and I think, oh my goodness, I can't admit that fear, because I've just helped somebody else through a similar fear and now I'm sitting here being afraid.

Sue Elvis: 7:17

We were talking, cecilia, in a previous conversation not a recorded one, but just a conversation we had privately about how sometimes people look at us in the public eye, unschooling, and think we live fairytale lives.

Sue Elvis: 7:33

Maybe we have got it all worked out and we never fear or doubt about anything worked out, and we never fear or doubt about anything. And for me that isn't quite true, though as well. Those fears and doubts, I know, have no control over me, that I'm going to do it anyway, but yes, they niggle at me a few, sometimes before I get my sense back and move on from them. But I just wonder how do you encounter fear and doubt in your own lives? Is it personal, or is it through other people's fears and doubts? I imagine, cecilia, you might have a lot of clients who express fears and doubts to you, and I would be really interested to hear about what type of fears and doubts even though we can make a catalogue of all the things that could go wrong but also how you address them, what positive tools, thoughts, experiences of your own that you share that actually help people.

Cecilie Conrad: 8:43

I think the mechanism that's interesting to go into around the fear and the doubt, or the fear that comes from the doubt is to understand why are we experiencing this? Where does this fear and emotional response to thoughts basically and so we have to question those thoughts understand, where do they come from? And I think a very basic mechanism that I've been working with many, many times is if you send your children off to be raised by others, it feels like you're sending the responsibility for it with them, whereas when you take them home and teach your own, then suddenly you realize, oh, teach your own. Then suddenly you realize, oh, oh, it's my responsibility. Maybe it's my shared responsibility with my husband or partner and my children. We share it. I can't blame it on anyone else if something goes wrong.

Sue Elvis: 9:56

Really, yeah, that that was. That's a good point, cecilia, that if something goes wrong in the school, our children come out of school saying they haven't got a particular skill, it's not our fault, unless you say, well, you shouldn't, I, I shouldn't have sent my child to that school, but it's the. We can say that's the school's fault, that, uh, somebody in school should have done that. But when we have our children at home, and maybe what? Our child doesn't have a skill that they wish they had, um, I'm, I don't think that's a problem anyway. But just say, and who? That burden of responsibility is on, only on us. But that sort of goes into whose responsibility is an education, the child's or the parents, and that's another topic. But yeah, I understand what you're saying there. Is that what you were saying, cecilia? That responsibility.

Cecilie Conrad: 10:58

It is what you were saying, cecilia. That responsibility it's. It's one of my main it's. It's one of the things I, you know, make a poster or t-shirt about it. It's always been your responsibility to your kids. I've written several blog posts about it as well. That you know it's a fake reality, that it's not your responsibility if you, if you, outsource some of the hours and some of the tasks that you think have to be done, it's still your child, it's still your family, it's still your responsibility. It's just for us home educators it becomes very clear. So that's one mechanism I usually look at if people feel fear.

Cecilie Conrad: 11:39

Another one one is the always very good question you can ask is is it true you hold this idea that's sparking some fear? You have this thought. Do you know it's true? I mean, can we question that thought? Is it really true? That thought? Is it really true? If they don't learn math by before they're 15, they can never become a doctor or whatever the whatever the fear is, you know, they might never get a boyfriend because they're not exposed to enough social like, whatever it is. I mean lots of different thoughts that create fear. It's a good idea always, whether the fear is around home educating your children or anything else, to question the thought that lies behind it and just ask yourself how do I know? This is true? I hold this idea, but how do I really know? Do I really know this is true? I hold this idea, but how do I really know? Do I really know it's true? A lot of freedom comes from asking that question.

Sue Elvis: 13:34

That makes me think of how sometimes we think things are true because the majority of people believe them, and people sort of adopt the ideas of the majority without questioning whether it is true or not, and that just because some minority believes something doesn't make it not true, doesn't make it false. Yeah, um, yeah, so we're in a, I guess, as unschooling people, people can write us off and say they're just crazy, they've got, uh, they're weird, uh, they won't maybe listen to the ideas because we're not mainstream yeah but I think there's a mainstream thing in experiencing fear and doubt and feeling unsafe and and just sometimes wonder, you know, should I have done something else?

Cecilie Conrad: 14:39

should I have done something else? It's a, it's a line of thought. It's normal that it emerges and I totally agree with what Sandra said in the beginning. It don't go that way. Not helpful, it's not going to do anything good for you. It's it's just going to pile up a lot of negative ideas and a lot of negative thoughts and emotions and they're not helpful. It's normal to have it.

Sandra Dodd: 15:06

And then you it's like it's normal to get your hands dirty and then you go home and wash them when something is very mainstream and a lot of people are getting paid to say it, then it must seem like truth because there's money involved. That's one aspect. But uh, I was. I used to do real-time text chats where people would come into a room and we'd all just be texting like crazy and occasionally a dad would come in there and very rarely was he in there to say what good ideas you ladies have. So one guy came in there one day and he used quotation marks in this way, to me very antagonistic, antagonistically Are you willing to risk your child's future on your theories? He put on quotes on theories. So I didn't even really have theories and I said, yes, aren't you? Because everyone who thinks it's better to send their kids to school is risking their channel's future on their theory.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:07

Yeah, yeah, we all base our choices on what we believe to be true.

Sandra Dodd: 16:13

Right.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:17

We don't necessarily agree on what that truth is. But the question is Am I willing to risk my child's future? The thing is, it's fake To think that truth, that the child's future is safe and held If we live the mainstream life. That is a lie. It's not true and it's not hard to see People fail, lots of people fail and lots of people have lots of different problems and then hopefully they overcome them at some point. But the school is not a guarantee that nothing will ever fail. So why are we being targeted to be pushed into a more fearful state and how do we protect ourselves from that fear and from that's?

Cecilie Conrad: 17:28

Another point I wanted to and then I forgot about it before is that it's a more lonely spot sometimes. Just it's just to be in, to be the, the unschooling mom in the context of maybe more mainstream people. Why are you doing this? How does it make you have to kind of defend your fort all the time and and you maybe you don't have anyone to team up with.

Cecilie Conrad: 17:55

Maybe your truth and reality is is not being shared by anyone in the room or anyone in the village, and it can become a very lonely thing, and loneliness also is a place where we can easily feel insecure and from there comes the doubt and from the doubt comes the fear and from the fear comes the misery. So we need to ravel that back and say I can stay with my truth, I don't need to defend it. Defending it sends out the meta message that it needs to be defended, that it's being attacked, that I'm being attacked and no one needs to be in that position. I've said many times in my personal life, not in my professional life said many times in my personal life I don't want to defend my lifestyle in this conversation. I don't see why I have to do that.

Sandra Dodd: 18:56

What I used to say as a defense. It wasn't so much a defense as a shutdown of the discussion, but it was, and it was also very true. They would say what if this doesn't work? I'd say if it stops working, we're trying this for now. I would say, we're trying this for now. If it stops working, we'll do something else and it it it stopped the argument. I'm not going to argue, I'm not going to defend it, but it also gave them hope. If the person was hoping that, they would tell me you shouldn't be doing this. There are other things you could do. I just admitted that. I just said we're trying it for now and if it stops working then. So I put an if-then switch on it. That made them feel so good and they're hoping for me to fail anyway. So they can keep hoping because I didn't.

Sandra Dodd: 19:35

But I think when someone comes and says I'm so afraid, I'm so panicky, I can't, I don't know what to do, I can't breathe, I mean I just say, what are you afraid of? And very often, if they've only been unschooling a year or two, it's school. They're afraid of some vision of school. They're holding their kids up to the idea of where would they place? Would they be behind or ahead? What are they not learning? All the school structure. And I say, okay, you need to do d school more. You're still living in school world. You need to dismantle all the school and not be looking at school and not be thinking about school.

Sandra Dodd: 20:11

I still remember because I I loved school as a kid. I wanted to become a teacher and I did become a teacher. I went to university straight from high school. You know, I was like school school. I lived with that schedule for years. For what? 12, 16, 20 years or more like, without fail.

Sandra Dodd: 20:32

Sometimes I went to summer school, but I always knew how many weeks till school started. I always knew when the next break was. That was just part of like natural life for me. It seemed as natural to me as spring and summer and fall. It wasn't, but I didn't know that. I had no reason to know that. So when I started unschooling, I consciously, very consciously, was trying to not know or care. When you go to a museum and it's empty, that's nice. When you go to a museum and a school group shows up, oh yeah, school day, but you know. So sometimes it's useful for unschoolers to know when the park's going to be empty or maybe full.

Sandra Dodd: 21:05

But I had a friend who was teaching and Holly and I went a couple of times to play a dictionary game that I used to play when I was a teacher and I still had a batch of dictionaries and the game was I would pass the dictionaries out to these kids. They wouldn't be my students at that point. It'd pass the dictionaries out to these kids. They wouldn't be my students at that point. It'd be friends of mine who were teaching and I'd come in as a guest to talk about the history of English and I would say find the all of this. It was the American Heritage Dictionary that had really good etymologies. So when you go to a word it tells you what it came from Came from Middle English, from Old English, from, you know, german, something like that.

Sandra Dodd: 21:38

So I would say I would teach them a little bit how to read those and I said pick a word and I bet I can guess 85% or whatever. And they go no, you can't. I go, okay, 90%, no, you can't. I could probably do 98%, but they didn't know that. So I would set some goal. That seemed like hard but not impossible, and they would.

Sandra Dodd: 21:56

They first would start giving me long words, and all the long words are Latin. Anything that's got four syllables came from Latin. That's easy. And so I would tell them after two or three of those, I go, don't do any more long words, because, especially if it has T-I-O-N at the end, that's from Latin, because this is how it works. So, as it goes, I'm telling them what Norse words look like in English, what French words look like in English, what Spanish words look like in English. It was fun. So I'm going to go do this for a friend of mine who's a teacher.

Sandra Dodd: 22:26

She's my next door neighbor. Now I've just moved back to our old house and she's still here. She was here when we were here. I love her, mo Palmer, and she's a historian, so she was teaching a history class. I came, I was, and I said, ah, it's going to be hard for me to come next week, Can I come, like the second week of June? And she said school's out. Then At that point Holly was 10. So I was almost 50. I was in my forties and I went for the first time in my life. I didn't know I. I, I acted and, and you know, assumed that I could go do her class in June, school's out in June. It was wonderful.

Sandra Dodd: 23:04

There was another wonderful day like that when Kirby was a baby we weren't unschooling yet but I used to get so frustrated and mad and I would react angry. I would get angry if something didn't go well and I was taking Kirby to a doctor's appointment. He was one or 10 months or some baby that you have to. He could walk a little bit, but I he was one or 10 months or some you know baby that you have to. He could walk a little bit. But I'm washing him in a baby bathtub, had him clean, had him dressed, had him in the other room. It's time to go.

Sandra Dodd: 23:35

I picked up the baby bathtub and it's plastic and it bent and poured water all over the kitchen floor. And I didn't get mad. I went oh, I should have left it there till we got back To myself. I just thought, oh, that I didn't need, why was I doing that. And I threw towels on it and got them and went, and that was the first time that I saw that I had moved from where I always whippered and cried, you know, made a deal like I'm a martyr.

Sandra Dodd: 23:55

Why do these things happen to me? Until I just went oh, that was my, that was my mistake. It's not a big one and ever after that I was much more able to calmly accept a little temporary setback or disaster, error whatever, without feeling stupid, without feeling like I need to be ashamed, I need to blame somebody. This isn't okay. So that was a turning point for me.

Sandra Dodd: 24:23

That was another turning point when I didn't know what school time it was, so I knew it could happen for people, even though it might take a decade, more than you thought, and so I would always just encourage people if you're thinking any school thoughts, try not to Try to step away from grades, comparisons, grade levels, reading levels, anything that is a school term is not as natural as spring, summer and fall. They're not, semesters and school years are not natural, and so I could say that calmly and peacefully to them. And they may not, not, may not, they could not. No one can dismantle it all at once. You can't just gather it all up, sweep it, put it in the bin and it's done. You have to gradually, gradually remind yourself that's not what we're doing, doesn't matter as Sandra you were saying, I noted down here.

Sue Elvis: 25:13

Uh, parents wonder if their kids are ahead or behind, do you think? Sometimes, uh, parents keep the thought of school at the back of their minds because they have this fear that unschooling isn't going to work and they want their child to slot back into the school system where they would have been if they hadn't taken them out of school. So that's a fear that it's going to not work and the kids are not going to fit back into school. So there's a double fear there. And so parents find it hard to act as if school doesn't exist, because at the back of their mind it does, because it might not work. How do you get around that?

Sandra Dodd: 26:05

Well, the term for that is self fulfilling prophecy If you don't think it's going to work, if you're not planning to live as though it can work, it's not going to work Because if the parents are just kind of trying unschooling, the kids will never relax into that flow of doing whatever comes by in the moment and learning they will. I think, if children think the parents are just temporarily trying something whether it's letting them have all the cookies they want, letting them watch TV, letting them play in the yard until it's dark, whatever it might be that the parents used to say no about, now the parents are saying yes about. If the child thinks this will be the way my whole life will calmly be, you know for many years maybe not my whole life, but you know my childhood that my parents are committed to this, they're calm about it, they're not worried about it then they'll be able to relax and do the things that we tell unschoolers will happen. If the parents are jittery and nervous and talking schoolishly and going, I don't know if this is going to work.

Sandra Dodd: 27:09

I don't know if this is going to work. Why aren't you doing what you're supposed to do, like they're kind of blaming the kids for not becoming unschoolers, so that the parents can relax. That's the recipe for school, going back to school. So I just have, as those discussions and complaints and questions came along, I've tried to point out to the people that they have one foot in the school. I don't swim, but it seems true that if you have one foot on the shore you can't swim.

Sue Elvis: 27:40

So you have to make a have to make a commitment to it. There's something else you said there about, um, kids. They pick up on your what your, your feelings, your your worries, your that you're not comfortable with it and they know it's not going to last. And that I was wondering one day about worry and how parents do get concerned and worried and that the effect that has on our children. And one day I was thinking well, perhaps if a parent worries about their child, the child might think my mother cares about me, she's worried because she wants the best for me. And then one day I thought, well, perhaps it's not that. Perhaps the child thinks I'm a problem, I'm a problem to my parents, my parents are always worrying about me, I'm a problem, and that sort of gave me a different sort of feel about it all that not.

Sue Elvis: 29:12

How do kids interpret our concerns, our worries and our feelings? And we have the what say? Parents in general are worried because they want the best for their kids, they love their kids, but it's very negative and it affects relationships, worries and concerns. It's not always interpreted as something oh, I'm glad you're worried about me. Yeah, it doesn't do any good, does it?

Sandra Dodd: 29:45

Let me read something that a mom wrote a while back, almost 20 years ago, but it's very good. She just used to write by the name of Jay Bantaw and I don't know her real name. For the first time in what seems like my entire life, I am not terrified. She was talking about being in a discussion group. I think it was always learning, I'm not sure anymore. Up until now, I've been wielding my alarm and anxiety like a sword and shield, battling against the world. I thought that's what I was supposed to do. Isn't that what a good parent does? I thought that fear was a parenting tool that told you how to keep your children safe. I felt that letting go of that fear meant I was a bad parent. My paranoia had spilled into every part of our lives, and so I want to go back to what she the beginning of the paragraph was. For the first time in what seems like my entire life, I'm not terrified.

Sue Elvis: 30:40

Yeah, and we find a lot of things online where parents are labeled as good parents because they're as you just said. They have their fears, their concerns, they have their rules and regulations because they're afraid, and sometimes maybe unschoolers are labelled as irresponsible because we try to let go of those fears and, yeah, live without them I also think we need to question the fear.

Cecilie Conrad: 31:17

I feel like we're also taught what to be afraid of. In a way, there's a mainstream into thinking oh, I'm afraid that they are behind I, I can come up with better things to be afraid of.

Cecilie Conrad: 31:35

Really, I mean, there are other dangers in this life than how much you know and how well you can perform at the specific age cut off. If I am to be afraid of something, I think it should be more severe than that. It should be something aligned with my value system, something that I would consider a catastrophe, and I think some of these fears are just, it's just things that we keep repeating. So it sounds like it's true that this is a bad thing. It's a little bit down the lines.

Cecilie Conrad: 32:10

I've been thinking about this whole what if it doesn't work? Question, and I want to question that as well. What is it that's supposed to work about it? Right, the thing that say, even saying, does unschooling work? Well, that assumes we're, we're aiming for a specific outcome. So are we doing like a secret manipulative pretend let go situation where we want them to, at the end of that, become something specific that they would have also be in a per been, have become in a perfect version of a school system, or what is it? What is it about it? Of course it works, I mean, but it's not a machine, it's a life strategy, it's. It's about living a fulfilling life with with respect and decent, openness and enough options to choose from to always be able to do something that makes sense. And if you do that, even in the first steps, when the whole de-schooling is still happening and it's all kind of weird, it'll work. If that's what you're aiming for and you're doing it well, then it works. You're getting it. So how can it not work?

Sandra Dodd: 33:44

sometimes it helps to, in discussions about unschooling like this one one, I suppose, to remind people that schools don't work the way schools even claim they're going to work, because if a teacher gives all of her students an A, the administration will come back and say wrong, wrong, wrong. You can't do this Because they are grading people like grading meat, like grading eggs, like you know grading lumber the best is on this pile and it's expensive. The other stuff is here, the other stuff is going to be firewood because it's not good. So in schools, for an A to be worth anything, however your grading system works, you have 4.0 or top of the class, or you know top 30% or whatever you're calling it. For that to be something a big deal worth getting a certificate about, worth putting on your resume, on your curriculum vitae, then there have to be some failures have to be, otherwise the A is worthless. So schools know and it's sad and horrible and it's not talked about schools know before the school year starts that 20% of those kids are going to fail, that 40% are going to be behind. That's how it works, but that doesn't happen with unschooling. So reminding unschoolers that in a family of three or five kids, of one child. Certainly there's not a grading system.

Sandra Dodd: 35:02

Each child can be a success even if one of them doesn't do anything but run around in the backyard and play with sticks and rocks and you know, look at birds and trees. They might be learning a whole lot of biology. They might not. They might be getting big muscles. They might not Something's happening.

Sandra Dodd: 35:18

If they're doing what they're interested in, we don't know what they're learning. We don't know what they'll end up doing later on. It might be forestry or landscaping or farming. Who knows Poetry? Yeah, poetry. So if, because it's such a different model than school, they shouldn't be compared and I know what Sue asked about people wondering if they want to get their kid back in school, but if they're going to drive alongside the school and keep looking over there, looking over there, looking over there, their kid's not being unschooled. Their kid is not living a rich life of exploration and exposure to things or just relaxing at home on a on some day where all of the other kids are taking a standardized test, the. The advantages of unschooling can't be met if the parent has fears that are built out of school parts.

Sue Elvis: 36:16

One thing you were saying, cecilia, about what if unschooling doesn't work and then having a secret agenda. What do we really want our kids to get out of being an unschooler? What are we hoping for? And then I was thinking about well, what about bringing up kids who don't have the same fears as our generation? Wouldn't that be wonderful that they had totally different ideas and they weren't held back by the same fears and doubts that maybe we've had to struggle through? Certainly, a lot of other people are still struggling through On the whole society struggles through it, but to have kids who see things differently and realize that all the fears and doubts that a lot of people struggle with are not worth struggling about, as you were saying, is it true?

Sue Elvis: 37:46

Yeah, I was just thinking about that while she was talking that. What is freedom? I've addressed that question so many times. What is freedom? When we talk about unschooling and it's meant different things to me on different days, and one of them is that freedom from conventional thinking that produces these fears and doubts. Yeah, but you're saying can't compare to school, sandra, how would you address that if somebody came to you and said that they had one foot in school or kept looking over their shoulder at school. Foot in school were kept looking over their shoulder at school. Would you have any advice for them or suggestions, or would you think that really, if they can't commit to unschooling, it's not going to be a success?

Sandra Dodd: 38:43

I can't change the facts. If they can't commit, it won't be a success. So I would probably say if you want to do, can't commit, it won't be a success. So I would probably say if you want to do it, let's do it. Come on, come over here. People have already figured out how to do it well and happily and calmly. We can help you. But we can't help you if you're more attached to school than you are, relaxing into learning, and when that happens I talk about learning Because when their fears of school are very rarely about learning, they're about grades and credits and things like that.

Sandra Dodd: 39:14

They're very often the mechanics of credits. We all know that there are kids at school who are not learning. We've all been to school and we've seen kids who were there and there and there and they were thinking about other things, doing other things, resisting learning. If they felt like they had learned something, they'd be frustrated with themselves, they'd be irritated. So school is not all about learning. School is all about being there, because the the law says you have to be there. That's how prison works. You have to be there.

Sandra Dodd: 39:46

People aren't always waking up in the morning, going, oh goody, another day same with school, if they can think of anything else. And if the fears that the parents have are school-based, sometimes it helps to point out to them that they're still afraid of school, they're still afraid of the principal, they're still afraid what if their kids could grow up without those fears? If the the school-based fears and the school-based doubts that people have maybe I'm not good enough, maybe I'm below average what if your children don't have those? And aside from the other things that people worry about school, about maybe abuse, maybe bullying, that sort of thing what if? What if the child is an ideal student and still comes out with those feelings? Because school puts them in you?

Sandra Dodd: 40:33

School sets these little trigger things in you, they condition you so that they can quickly turn you. They can quickly make you embarrassed, they can quickly make you feel bad, and the principal wants to see you is like a magic one of those. If the principal wants to see you to do something good, it doesn't come like that with a message from another kid. You have to go to the principal's office, and so we know those things. But our kids unschooled kids who didn't go to school don't know those kinds of things, and parents who just came out of school, don't know that. There are some people who don't, who have never experienced that. They're in that country where their kids are going to school. They're in that country where the parents went to school, but as children they're not being conditioned to get excited if someone writes an A down on a piece of paper.

Sandra Dodd: 41:18

Ooh, she wrote an A down Like what she just wrote it on a piece of paper. Or the principal wants to see you. Oh no, You'll probably call my mom. I'm in some trouble. You know it seems silly at a distance, but when you're in it, when you're young and you're in school, they're big. They're big on the horizon. You can't see past them. And what if your children could live where that wasn't on their radar, that wasn't on their map at all? It's something so different. That wasn't on their map at all. It's something so different. You have to keep moving toward it until you can't see the school anymore. You just have to turn your back on the school and don't look at it for a while.

Sue Elvis: 41:57

For years, Sandra, you said that you enjoyed school, but a lot of my motivation and commitment to unschooling is based on my own experiences at school and looking back at my my school life and what I came out of with it, um, what I came out out of it with, I don't want that. I didn't want that for my children, and there's so many things about school that you can think about and think well, I didn't learn I. I gave that example in a previous episode about how, when I finished uni, I threw all my books in the bin and that was as much as I valued my education. I was glad it was over and I can look back and think that didn't work. That wasn't an enjoyable experience. That didn't help me become the person that I really should have been.

Sue Elvis: 43:06

But when some people look back and you might share your own experiences and ask them about theirs and they might say, oh yeah, school was horrible, I hated it, I got bullied, I didn't do what I wanted to do. But some people say but I made me tough and everybody has to go to school and my children are going to school because I survived and they will survive and they'll just have to deal with it and they'll become tough. And that really makes me feel sad that we repeat mistakes or that we impose a system which didn't work for us on our children and take a positive spin on it and pretend that it's good for those kids when it's not. I have no answer to that one. Have either of you come across that?

Cecilie Conrad: 44:04

I think I've come across a lot of it. A lot of it was good enough for me me, so it's good enough for my kids and a lot of.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:15

It's really hard to talk to people who has put their kids in through the system and maybe they're halfway through or more, and because they keep repeating doing it every morning, they have to keep repeating to themselves that it makes sense, because otherwise you made a mistake every morning for maybe eight years and it was a mistake that happened to your child. It's not a nice truth to come about. So I think this holding on to things is it's natural, the psychology of it is natural and understandable. It's very hard to let go of a truth that you have been holding on to for a long time and also been conditioned into yourself Kind of wanted to touch upon the A on the piece of paper you said before. So if you're the straight A student, you know you could be not that. And you also know that your value is your A's, not your personality, not your presence, not the hugs you can give or the joy you bring to the table, but the fact that someone thinks you're smart.

Cecilie Conrad: 45:29

I've worked with a lot of people who who have to heal almost like a trauma from that. Who has to find out who they, who they are and that they are actually valuable just for being. We were a miracle when we came here. We were loved unconditionally. The second, someone put their eyes on us and we still are. But that feeling of being welcome and being awesome is it gets lost in this whole matching up against performance in the school system. And even if you are on top of it, you're inside the same logic where you could be not on top of it and where who you are and your value stems from. Is it an A, a B or a C?

Sandra Dodd: 46:29

Somewhat. When you were telling that, though, when you started saying your love from the moment you're born and people see you and you're loved unconditionally, I was thinking about me, so I threw myself into what you were saying. There I was and the whole thing was changing and shifting. Without school, even in my own house and my own family. My mom was getting kind of restless and my sister was born and she liked my sister better. Clearly, my sister and I talked about this lately, and she started being meaner and meaner to me. That was before I went to school.

Sandra Dodd: 47:02

When I went to school, I was so happy, I liked my teacher so much because she saw me, she looked at me, she listened to me. Even if I hadn't gotten good grades, I think she would have liked me. And I thought when I was in school that the teachers who liked me liked me because I got good grades. And then I became a teacher and my favorite kid was one who could hardly read. He was 12. He was sweet, he was thoughtful, he was clever, he was kind and he wasn't a good student at all. And I thought, oh my gosh. And I started rethinking and I started thinking wait, some of these teachers are still friends of mine, like they kept up with me outside of school. That wasn't because I made good grades. And then I started thinking about other friends of mine who also made good grades that the teachers never much paid attention to. They didn't like them that much, they weren't that nice. So I had to rethink my whole life when I saw myself who believed that, who believed that getting good grades makes you a better person in the eyes of other humans, that they'll pick you because of your grades. When I saw it wasn't happening, even for someone who believed in it, I started reviewing everything I knew and it all changed. So there are things that I know. There are people who still feel really terrible because they got bad grades. They can't fix that. I feel bad because I helped without meaning to as a teacher and as a student, both be the agent of that. There are some kids who would be happy to this day if one time they had gotten the highest grade in the class too. Bad kid, I'm getting the highest grade in the class, scoot. You know it didn't, it wasn't going to happen. But one time I got a B on purpose because the other kids were bugging me. They said you, we never get. We never get to have the high grades because you're always getting an A and you know you should stop. And I said okay. So the next time we had an end of the week science test, I got myself an 85 or a 90, you know which would have been a B. I just missed a couple or three so that I would get a B.

Sandra Dodd: 48:58

My parents were called in to the, to the counselor and the principal, and there's this big meeting. Why did you do that? Because these other kids wanted me to get a B, because they were tired of me getting A's. And they said you can't do that. I said I can, I did, but they said you don't do that anymore. Don't do that anymore. That's terrible. You need to get the best grade you can. And I said why? It was like eighth grade science. And I said but you know, I knew it right. You knew, I knew the right answers. That's why my parents are here.

Sandra Dodd: 49:25

So it was really interesting, because I was always analytical about what they were doing and how schools work, because I wanted to be a teacher since I was six. So that was my lab. I was watching which teachers liked kids. And yet, through all of those years I missed that. Maybe there was something about me besides the A's that made people talk to me and pay attention to me, because my first grade teacher didn't know, or maybe she did, I don't know.

Sandra Dodd: 49:52

So it's damage from school is inevitable, even if you made really good grades. There'll be regrets, there'll be frustrations, there'll be things that you wish had gone differently. You wish they had taught you this, that they didn't. I've never known anybody who didn't have any trauma, who went to school, who didn't have some school trauma. I may not know any unschoolers who were unschooled who don't have some unschooling trauma a little bit, but just like regret that they didn't play football. You know some little thing, some little social thing. I knew some kids who wish they'd had lockers. I have a teenage granddaughter now and she did. They don't have lockers at school so she can't keep like medical supplies for herself, um, because she doesn't have a place. She only has her backpack. So things change. But there are people. See. It's like the grass is always greener. You see what somebody else has or did or talks about and you have a little pang of of regret that can't be helped either but if we're trying to avoid fears and doubts, then regret is another red flag.

Cecilie Conrad: 50:56

It's another route to not walk down really fear is usually fear of regret, isn't it?

Sandra Dodd: 51:02

fear of regret like, I'm afraid, I'm afraid if I keep going I'm going to be sorry I didn't stop. Life is so can go so many directions. Some people are really glad that they still live in the same house they grew up in their whole lives. They're glad to have the familiar same. I'm glad to have my neighbor back, the same neighbor that I had when the kids were little. I'm in the house where my kids were born. Now it's nice. There are memories of, of my little kids in this whole house.

Sandra Dodd: 51:29

But I think, maybe pointing that out to people who are afraid or who are doubtful, just say everybody has regrets. So what are we going to do tomorrow? What are we going to do this afternoon? If you live in the moment and you do the best you can in that moment, not even thinking of days, because sometimes people go, oh, this is a terrible day. At 10 in the morning it's like oh, what are we going to do for the rest of this terrible day? Let's don't do that. Let's say you had a bad moment, move on. There are lots of moments to come. Make those good.

Sandra Dodd: 51:57

And if, if the parent and the child are not getting unschooling and they keep trying and they keep trying and it's not working. Maybe it's not going to work. So then the next piece of advice I have for people is let your kid go to school if they want to. Let them go to school, but you don't need to become a deputy of the school. You don't need to become an agent of the school to enforce their rules and enforce homework and all of that sort of thing. They're not paying you enough to be an assistant teacher at your house. So if you have something more fun to do and the kid had homework, send them a note and say you know, we went to Disneyland, that's why there's no homework. And then be brave, be confident that they'll have more good memories and more experiences and probably more learning from a day at an amusement park than they would have by doing an English assignment.

Sandra Dodd: 52:50

And if your kid brings in grades that aren't perfect, say, okay, let's go back to Disneyland or whatever you can afford to do. You know, let's go for pizza. Yay, you got to see here, have ice cream. It doesn't matter, they don't have to help the school harm their child. It's another tradition, isn't it, that if you put your kids in school. You'll do what the school says. So the school feels like they have control of the parents and the children. Oh, but they do.

Cecilie Conrad: 53:18

Seems like huh, it's not like it, feels like it. And even the rebellion you're talking about there, it's hard to do in real life. Talking about there, it's hard to do in real life. I always recommend that if you feel your child has to be in school for some reason, I say the exact same thing. You know, you don't have to be the policeman of the school, you don't have to obey the rules. The school has the child until the school is out. You go home when it's your private time. You can do what you want with that time. You don't have to show up for things. You don't have to sign papers, you don't have to.

Cecilie Conrad: 53:57

I mean, you can do that, but it's actually hard to do in real life and what I've seen is also that the children kind of suffer if the parents don't cooperate with the school, because then it becomes even harder to be there. So it has to be done in a very delicate way and I think it should be done to make it very clear to children who are in school that the reality of the school is not the only reality out there, that their value as human beings has nothing to do with their school performance. I've heard one guy who said my parents made sure that I knew to take care that school wouldn't get in the way of my life, that it wouldn't stop me from doing the really important things I needed to do in life. And they told him that when he was 10. Don't let this get in the way you have to go. It was mandatory in his country. Don't let it get in the way of your life. It's a good message to send to a school child, I think.

Sandra Dodd: 55:11

Especially in a case where the the child has a choice, when the parents would be willing to or able to homeschool if the child wants to come home, that's a valuable position to be in. My sister had three children and she let them all come home at some point because of little problems this and there and her. One of them never went back to school, stayed home, did art, was having a great time. Two of them went back to school for two different reasons and two different schools. So in both cases my sister told the teachers and the principal. She said I would rather he'd stay home, so you need to woo him, you need to make him happy if you want him to stay here. Yeah, so it was her position of power and it it worked. It helped. One of them just went to school to play basketball and she said he just wants to play basketball. I don't care if he gets a's. If all he has to get is a c, that's fine.

Sandra Dodd: 55:58

One of them had been the other one had been a gifted gifted and that's part of why he wanted out of school, because he was the hinge on which gifted activities happened for his whole class, because there was a gifted child in that class, a gifted teacher would come and do things with the whole group so that he could get this experience. And so when he was absent, that wouldn't happen and the kids would be mad at him. When it did happen, they would tease him. They would make fun of him. So when he went to the other school he wanted to make sure he wasn't gifted. He didn't want to be in a position of everybody looking at him and having expectations or resentments.

Sandra Dodd: 56:35

So he got low B's, I think he said, or C's. He decided what grades he was going to get and he would just do that. He would figure out how much homework he had to ignore, how many things he had to miss on a test. They're grading him on in-class participation, so he wouldn't. So he, it was fun. He didn't just throw the whole thing off. He did that much work 70% or whatever he was aiming for. So it became like a game for him to do that much and no more. So he made himself an average student with great effort wow, amazing.

Cecilie Conrad: 57:13

I kind of want to roll back to the whole. Uh, we had, we were exploring this unschooling work, and what if it doesn't work? And what does it even mean that it works? And what do they learn? And and we? You said this thing about running around with a stick in the garden. Maybe they become a gardener, or maybe they become an architect, or maybe that's biology, and I know your position, sandra. But I just wanted to touch upon the fact the childhood is not an arrow pointing at a career. It's not a fast track to how you're going to make your money later on. It's not. And what they do when they are small, younger, even older, but still under our wings. It's not all going to be lifelong passions.

Cecilie Conrad: 58:05

It's it's not, you can't, you don't know, they don't know. And it's not the point of the running around with the stick to figure out what's my line, lifelong passion. And it's not the point of the childhood to to acquire an academic level of some sort and a filter as to where will I go with my career. I don't think I want to define what the point of childhood is, because that's maybe ethically kind of wrong, but I think we need to stop and think about hey, what are we here for? What is the what, what, what is going on in these years and what do we as parents believe is truly important to experience over these years? There's no way we can stop them from learning. I feel like we've been dancing around that tree quite a few times, you know just like they will all walk, they will all read and they will all acquire some, some I'm looking for a word con conglomerate, maybe some A model of the universe.

Cecilie Conrad: 59:29

No, I'm just thinking they will pile on some knowledge and some skills and some experiences. That's hard to avoid. Childhood is a 20-year process maybe. So of course they come out of it with something that happens. We don't have to force it and we don't need to know what that something is, what pieces are in that puzzle, what tools are in that toolbox, whatever metaphor. But maybe we can think about what kind of presence, what kind of sense of self, of sense of self? What philosophy Did we remember to talk about? Ethics? Do we have an experience with coping with different situations in life? Do we have trust? Do we know how to work with it? If we don't, there's so many other things to unfold in the choir over these years and I'm sorry to say, because I like to be the smart one and the one who wanted to unschool In my marriage, my husband was very much against it for a long time.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:00:41

Well, once he surrendered, he surrendered completely, and I would have what I call black days back in the day, where I would have experienced a lot of fear and doubt about the whole thing in the beginning and he would be like you know what? I don't care. I don't even care if they can read, I don't care. I care if they can love. I care if they feel confident in their bodies. I care if they can form meaningful friendships. I care if they take responsibility for everything, not everything something around them.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:01:23

He was shifting the whole idea about what is this all about? What are we supporting being their parents? Math if you need it, you can learn it. Self-esteem if that's hurt, that's a hard one. If you don't find love in your life, that's a bitter pill to swallow. It's a bitter pill to swallow. So he said what I want from my children's childhood, what I want their takeaway to be and what I what, what I want them to be dressed up for once they fly off. It's not about that. It's not about a career they can change career five times or more during their life where they have to somehow feed themselves and house themselves or contribute in some sort of way. It's not about that. To grow up under my wings. It's about who you become and how you handle being in this life. For us, unschooling is very much about that. That is the centerpiece. The academics is hobby.

Sandra Dodd: 1:02:43

But you're Danish and I saw your episode about the Danish way of parenting. So those are things they teach in school in Denmark, apparently, that they don't teach in the United States about self-esteem and kindness and love. And I'm just I'm partly joking, but I'm not totally joking. Some people don't see that. Some people don't even feel any responsibility to help their kids with that. If their kids are in school or not, they forget they. They they expect church to do it or something. You know it's. It's weird. People are people are weird. But I think when I made the example about the kid in the backyard, it wasn't for to encourage a kid to go to the backyard, it was.

Sandra Dodd: 1:03:26

When you look back in 20 years. Sometimes you look back and you see elements of interests that now the child is using for a job. My kids are all in their 30s, so I do look at jobs. So Marty has always liked maps. He's always been interested in maps and the last three jobs he's done have had to do with maps. One of them, super directly he was. He was working for a contractor and he was working with Apple maps. So if you ask Siri where you are, you know, help me, get there. Siri can help you. So there are a lot of things about that I hadn't known. Like they know where there's construction, where there's going to be, when there's going to be a light, if there's a traffic light built, when are they going to activate it. So he knew all of that about the whole state of New Mexico. He did New Mexico so well that they gave him another couple of states. So he was, he used to be afraid of the phone and he was calling people like the city planner of some county. New Mexico has 33 counties so he had to know who in each county knows about the roads. And so for him it was just it was he was the only one working in New Mexico. He didn't have a supervisor who knew more about New Mexico than he did. They just said here's what we do, do it, do it and that. So for him that was a blast. It was really fun.

Sandra Dodd: 1:04:43

And before that he had been mapping water, underground water for the water authority. And there was a fuel spill years ago on the airbase and they're trying to figure out how long it will take that it might. It's passing through sand very, very slowly. Will it ever get to the river? It may or may not. I think it's about four miles from the river now, four or five miles. So he was mapping underground.

Sandra Dodd: 1:05:06

That was fun for him and so I we didn't say Marty, get a job with maps. He just sort of bumbled along and friends of his said there's this and somebody got him that job with the water authority a friend of my husband's. It was an internship but he worked there a long time and it was real money. They wanted a biology major but they didn't find one. So he was taking geography or geography, rather geography and they said, well, that's close because we're doing mapping. So we didn't know.

Sandra Dodd: 1:05:32

We didn't know what of the things he played with and read on the internet or what games he played would affect his life and he might change jobs totally. But three in a row had to do with maps and I think that's so. I look back and I go, oh, remember this time he was really interested in this map of this game. Or remember that time he wanted a map of New Mexico territory when it was part of Arizona, new Mexico where I'll win territory. So I'm thinking about retrospect how the parents shouldn't condemn what a child is doing, because years later you might look back and see what that was good for. You may not know what he's learning now. You may not know what he's learning for five years or ten years, but when you look back you start to see trails and tendrils and patterns. That doesn't stop anybody's doubts or fears in the moment, usually to say, oh, it'll be different in 20 years, because they can't imagine 20 years. They're afraid now, they're afraid today.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:06:31

But it's a better truth to hold. It's a better thing to keep reminding yourself that nothing we learn will ever be in vain and all the skills we have will at some point be really important, whatever they are, sometimes in surprising ways. And everything we do will have the side effect of layering on more knowledge, more experience, more skills or better skills, more nuanced skills it cannot be. I mean, even sitting and watching paint dry will give us the skill of keeping our minds calm. So, whatever we do, we will grow. We will grow the strategized. We're doing this so that we're making sure that the child is ready for that, and the other that's the curriculum-based school style could be school at home, but still school style way of thinking about things, whereas from an unschooling point of view, we would say we need to trust this. We need to trust that it will all fall into place and that it has already fallen into place because we're doing these things, because they make sense here now.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:08:05

Later on they will make sense in different contexts for different reasons, and some of those reasons would be to make money. Some reasons might be to keep our homes safe. Some reasons might be to maintain our relationships in life. Some reasons might be to stay healthy if we need to work on that. So there could be many important things where skills that we acquired through non-strategized activities come in handy, and, as parents in an unschooling context, we need to learn to trust that. So that could be what we're piling on, instead of saying, oh, tell me about your worst day, then tell me about how many times you've seen you have good reason to trust what's going on that's what we were trying to do to pile up up good stories.

Sandra Dodd: 1:09:06

I have such a collection on my website. I want to say my website is set up so that you could just go to the search and put in any question. Just throw something in there and it'll take you to some pages. Every page has at least three links, maybe six or eight, and you can just follow your own trail. It's a true rabbit hole. Have to read two quotes and you're good, and sometimes you could read the whole page or come back to it the next day and just immerse yourself in that topic or that question or that fear. I think there we have the answers to a lot of these fears gathered up there from years, from 30 years of online discussions, where I saved the best parts and I've put them in a flow so that one can lead to another. A lot of those originals are not available anymore. I was editing a page yesterday and it said I put this here for backup in case this other site disappears, and I lined through and said it's gone. So it happens.

Sandra Dodd: 1:10:01

So the only place it exists now is on my site, but I knew it was a good one and I duplicated it. So I think, even if people feel isolated and there aren't any good discussions that they can get in that are daily and busy, if they're really worried they could take a dive into my site or Joyce's or listen to more of your podcasts or go to Sue's site and just read a little bit, follow some links. Remember that other people have had those fears and had those concerns and those doubts. Sometimes the doubt is I doubt I can do this, the parent, and sometimes it's I doubt my kid's very smart or I doubt my kid will do anything. But those can from one minute to the next.

Sandra Dodd: 1:10:44

If the mom is like trying to do better, trying to be more patient, trying to be more creative, trying to be more attentive, she will feel better about the kind of mom she's being. The child will respond to that attention and stimulation and peace and together they move gradually toward a better, safer place of better relationships and learning. I think that's valuable. Neither one can do it alone. The kid can't unschool alone if the parents don't know what it is and don't believe in it and if the child is really, really interested in it and is trying to get the parents to do it.

Sandra Dodd: 1:11:25

If the parents never get it, then it's still not going to work. The parents are still going to be going yeah, but yeah, but you should do this instead. So it can't be all of a sudden. It's gradual and the feedback should come from the children. The feedback within the family is way more valuable than feedback from outside, because I could tell somebody oh, you're such a great unschooling mom, but that doesn't make it true. Only her kids will believe she is or isn't a great unschooling mom, because they're the ones who are affected by it.

Sue Elvis: 1:11:52

they're the ones who need to live in that nest, live in that environment I have so many notes that I've been jotting down while you've both been talking, because what you've been saying is so interesting, but so I don't know, jumping all over the place here, my thoughts is what I like. Uh, cecilia, we were talking right at the beginning, I think, even before you press record how the discussions might help our listeners. But isn't it enjoyable and fruitful for us as well to bounce ideas around and to think more deeply about these things ourselves and examine our own ideas and experiences? But I was something you were saying. I was ages ago, sandra, because I've been jutting down all these little thoughts that I want to ponder later but you were saying something about a terrible day. You get up at 10 in the morning and you've declared it's a terrible day, and it just reminded me of a day like that. But it wasn't 10 o'clock, it was something like 8 o'clock in the morning and the whole morning just fell apart. I was overtired. I dropped a jar of jam all over the floor. It was sticky and it was bits of glass and some. I don't know, maybe a couple of kids were arguing.

Sue Elvis: 1:13:13

I cannot remember all the details. All I remember was thinking, having doubts about what we were doing and thinking to myself and thinking to myself what right do I have to write about unschooling? I'm having a terrible day. If anybody could look into my life at this very minute, they would think I was incompetent, didn't know what I was talking about and, yes, I wouldn't be a help to anyone. And I went to.

Sue Elvis: 1:13:52

Maybe I've told this story before on this podcast, I can't remember. I've told it a number of times. But I went to delete my blog because I said to my daughter, imogen I said it's all false, it's not true. Unschooling, all those stories I've written hundreds of them they're not true. Today I can see that I this is the real day. All that is false. I've just been trying to convince everybody that unschooling is the right thing to do or it's a good thing to do. And my daughter said to me but mom, that was yesterday. All those things happened on other days and they were all true on those days. Just because today you're having a bad day, doesn't say that everything that happened up to this point wasn't true and wasn't good. And she said you're having a bad day, mom. And she says don't delete it.

Sue Elvis: 1:14:58

And it made me think that we all have bad days that we all make mistakes. We all drop the jam jar, we all try not to. And I think Sandra is right as we unschool more and we tune into our kids and we uh realize what's really important. And as we change as people, we stop yelling when the bath water spills on the floor or the jam jar hits the kitchen tiles. But we have days when we're overtired and things aren't going well, and that is okay. It's okay to make mistakes, it's okay to have bad days. It doesn't mean that we should throw it all in the bin and start again and look around and say, well, that didn't work, how about Charlotte Mason? Or how about school? That one bad day or a bad few days or whatever shouldn't define who we are and what we're doing, because life isn't perfect and I think maybe that's something that we all aim for is perfection.

Sue Elvis: 1:16:07

And I felt that as a blogger, and a blogger who shares personal stories, that pressure to appear perfect all the time, and I have written a number of blog posts about imperfection. But I'm going back to something you said, cecilia, about love. That is the prime thing in my motivation to unschool my kids was love, the unconditional love listening to them, respecting them, trusting them, having time for them. And I came to the conclusion, like you, that it wasn't academics. And I came to the conclusion, like you, that it wasn't academics, it was. There's nothing more important than love. And so when you get to or what shall, I doubt, I don't know what to do.

Sue Elvis: 1:16:59

I always say choose the option that follows the path of love, don't choose the one that will end. Some people say and I believe this at one point I have to yell at my kids because otherwise they won't do what I want them to do. And I thought well, yelling isn't love, is it? And getting them to do what I want to do isn't love, so that option's out. You isn't love, so that option's out.

Sue Elvis: 1:17:33

And the funny thing is that by putting all that as number one the love and the listening and the respecting I don't think our kids can fail to learn, because we've talked about how learning doesn't happen very well in fearful conditions. But when our kids feel accepted and trusted and respected, and that's just, they just thrive, they. That's nurturing, isn't it? They're going to do well or whatever, whatever they're meant to do well at. Maybe not get those A's in science, but that might not be their pathway, but they're going to do well. And anyway, that was just a few of my inputs as I was jutting things down as you were talking and I thought, wow, I want to say something about that. You've made a great point there.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:18:28

I think it's a great point and I wanted to add that I think children who grow up in this context will do well at what they're doing. Part of that is also that they will be able to define what they want to do and what. Doing well means they are not accustomed to waiting for someone else to tell them this is the path and this is the way you do it right. I think it's a very important skill that comes from unschooling to be able to define where am I going, why am I going there? How do I know I arrived. One of the things I really don't like about schools and education style for younger children we have something called learning goals in the Danish school system. I think it's an international problem, but the whole I love learning and I actually enjoy immensely to take courses and to listen to. I mean to take guided tours or go to talks of things. It's amazing, but I don't like to be manipulated and I don't like to be told what I am supposed to learn from what I'm doing. If I'm going and I'm listening to.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:20:07

I just listened to a conference on what about? How do we handle the question of truth in the context of AI? No one's going to tell me what the takeaways are. They can tell me what they think and what the research says and what the philosophers come up with. And then I do my thinking and I pick the things I need to take from there.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:20:31

And I think a lot of this learning goal uh, strategized teaching, where you, you present things in a certain order in order to the child to have some specific knowledge arranged and understand things in a specific way, so you can ask them a question in the end and they will come up with the right answer. What if something completely different about the, the whole thing, sparks their passion and interest? What if they take away the tone of voice you had or yet is something different? And as our children are not learning in this context, they learn to define, they learn to be exploring and creative and they learn to define their own success. They can give something an A if they need to. We could go buy them a little sticker book with gold stars and they could put them everywhere they want, because they define what a gold star means and where it's supposed to go, and I think that's a very powerful skill to have in life am I right?

Sue Elvis: 1:21:59

you said you were saying you don't like to be told what to think? But what if our kids and we give them the opportunity to explore their own thoughts and ideas? What if a child expresses an idea that we don't agree with? I feel that's a fear that a lot of people have about fundamental things that are important to the parent and the child has different ideas about that. And I see so many parents wanting to tell kids what they have to think and haven't got the what's the word. They don't want to give the child space to explore that idea and come to their own conclusions.

Sue Elvis: 1:22:51

But what if a child does come to a different conclusion than the parent on some fundamental level, than the parent on some fundamental level, without sort of breaking? You know, telling personal stories? It's hard to find examples, but there are things that are dear to our hearts and then, when we give our kids the freedom to explore ideas and everything, they might come to a different conclusion to us. But then, as I've been thinking this through, as I'm talking now, I'm thinking, even if parents tell their kids what they should think and kids get used to saying I agree, it doesn't mean they do agree and as soon as they have the chance, they're going to go away and disagree. So it doesn't mean anything anyway. Isn't it better to give our kids space to explore ideas and come to their own conclusions? But the point I think I'm trying to make is that I've had so many people come up to me and well, not come up to me because I'm on the other side of the world, but contact me.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:23:58

There are other me over there, I think uh, you're not the only one.

Sandra Dodd: 1:24:02

There are people, there are people over here, but there are no unschoolers in my vicinity?

Sue Elvis: 1:24:08

I haven't come across any. But um, the point is, I think that they say to me well, if we unschool and give our kids the freedom, what happens if they decide that they're going to be an atheist or going to be a Muslim or going to run off and live a different lifestyle to the one that we live? Are they going to pick up different ideas that aren't compatible with the parents ideas? So we have to hold on to our kids tight. We can't give them that freedom because parents don't want to risk their children being exposed or having the freedom to explore those ideas. But maybe that comes down to also the people that our kids will listen to.

Sue Elvis: 1:25:19

I say listen to. We listen to each other or the influence maybe are the ones that are closest to them and how we make connections with our children so that they trust us and we trust them and they're more open to listening to our ideas, especially if they're not forced upon them, if there's that freedom to have that give and take between you and it just explore ideas. So why should a child go out and listen to somebody that they're not connected with for their I pick up those ideas. I think I'm going around and around and not being very um articulate about what I wanted to say.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:26:06

A little bit tired at this point, which is fine I think you're tired but I've just started my day.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:26:13

We've all been talking for a while. It's not about what time of day it is. I think I think you're touching upon a very important thing and I'm smiling to myself because we were. We had, for some reason that we'd all forgotten, because it's been a while between recording episode 9 and episode 10. Um, so we had fears, doubts and relationships in the same in the headline for this, and we're like let's take the relationships out. It seems like a weird mix, but actually I'm thinking now, when you said, what if we give our children this freedom? What if they start thinking something we don't agree with? I was thinking, hey, wait a minute, they have that freedom. They were born with that.

Sandra Dodd: 1:27:01

Yes, I think if someone came to me and expressed what Sue's saying, what if we unschool and then my child does whatever he wants to, makes other decisions, doesn't behave as I believe he should? Isn't that more likely if a kid's in school, because they'll be exposed to all kinds of other kinds of people and ideas in the absence of their parents? They may not come home and talk about it. They may come home and be secretive about it. They may be proselytized into some cult or something. I mean that's where people get into cults, or okay, people my age get into cults. Or okay, people my age got into cults in the seventies at college. They would go off to university and people would be telling them all kinds of stuff that wasn't like their parents told them, and the parents are far, far away maybe. So I don't think that's a danger of unschooling so much as it's just a reality of the world, but probably more dangerous if the children and parents are not physically or emotionally close, and maybe the next discussion should be about relationships.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:28:02

Yeah, I'm not taking up another discussion right now.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:28:07

What I was trying to express was just this freedom to become who you become and to think your own thoughts and make your own choices is a freedom we're born with and it is going to happen.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:28:18

Thoughts and make your own choices is a freedom we're born with and it is going to happen.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:28:20

And I think if we take that freedom away, or we, we try to take that freedom away from our children and and and think that we, by being, I don't know, some sort of authority, can, can control who they become, well, we, we will ruin the relationship with them and we will not know it when they make a different choice or when they question my or our um core ideas and core values, because they know, oh, they just need to please us, to pretend that they think what we want them to think so that they can get the love that we have conditioned into. You need to think what I think, otherwise you're not getting the love, which means you're in real danger of suffering from real problems like starvation and cold I mean that is the power we have over our children and cold. I mean that is the power we have over our children. We're providing them basic safety and the core of that is because we love them. So if there is a threat to that love, it's actually quite uncomfortable and unfair.

Sandra Dodd: 1:29:32

That's not fair. It's not fair when people talk about freedom. I have a couple of brief things about freedom and a lot on my site. Parents can only give as much freedom as the parents have to give. So sometimes when people talk about freedom, it's irritating to me because you can't an unschooler can't have more freedom than another resident or citizen or you know person has in that area, in that world, wherever they are, there's only you know freedom. Freedom is limited by social realities and the government and the parents can't give total freedom to anybody because they don't have any. The other thing is there's freedom from things like safety, departure, being isolated from bad influences, maybe to be freedom from school, freedom from homework, freedom from school schedules, and then there's freedom to, the freedom to do things. So freedom is complicated to think about, but sometimes people just say you have freedoms like freedom from or freedom to. It's just a thought to throw in the pile.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:30:35

Yeah, I just noted. Maybe we should say episode 11, relationships, episode 12, freedom, and just for the record for the listeners, we might change that five times. There's no guarantee here, but it's a big topic, um, but I do think that in the context of this, with the whole fear thing, it's a real fear that some people have. If, if I allow this home educating, unschooling lifestyle and I let my children explore what they want, how can I control then what they think? And the point I'm trying to get at is you can't control who they become point I'm trying to get at is you can't control who they become.

Sandra Dodd: 1:31:22

You can't. And when you said you're this way when you're born? Looking at my life and my husband's life my husband's been retired for over five years Was his whole life building up to what kind of retired grandpa he would be? Is my whole life when I was born? Was I building up to being a 71-year-old Sandra?

Sandra Dodd: 1:31:39

I don't know, because it's the whole range of my life is like one element, one me and there were dark days and there were bright days and there were frustrations and there were joys, and that's how lives are children's lives. They're building up to things the parents can't really envision. We can have a vision of even what they'll look like, whether they'll have beards or not, whether they'll be married or not, but we could be wrong. It's just sort of a wish list of the parents or a fantasy of the moment. So they're becoming, they are themselves. They're already themselves when they're born and they're growing into an adult version of themselves and then they may, if we're all lucky, grow up into an old version of themselves. So it's not that we built them and can tinker with them and create them in a way that we've imagined, and so that may be a good way to help some parents get over their doubts and fears.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:32:42

It probably would just make them more doubtful and fearful at first, but it's true, it's true. So maybe they just need to sit with that truth for a while.

Sandra Dodd: 1:32:58

It is what it is. I like talking. I like talking to you guys.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:33:00

It's fun it's so right, but I also think my dogs are barking because it's midnight and the kids are coming, okay, back up the stairs. I'm actually not tired, but I'm happy to know that we're talking in a few days again, so me too, for the, for the listeners.

Sandra Dodd: 1:33:16

We're in such different places that Sue probably hasn't had breakfast yet. I'm about to go to dinner with my husband, and it's midnight.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:33:23

It's midnight in Budapest, yeah.

Sue Elvis: 1:33:28

I think we sit here and we have a million stories and a million ideas and I don't think we can do any topic justice in two hours. But, as you said, cecilia, we get tired and our brains stop functioning as efficiently as they did at the beginning. But isn't it fascinating that we could come back at the end of the week and just continue the discussion, and I'm really looking forward to that. It's just, I don't know who we're doing these for, cecilia. Are we doing these podcasts for listeners, or are you doing them for me? Maybe for me? For me, because I enjoy them and I'm enjoying your friendship and finding out more about you. As we're uh, as we're talking, it's um, it's good I enjoy these conversations immensely.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:34:25

I really do, and I'm very happy to have my. We're switching it around for the listeners, so you're going to see maybe completely new versions of us.

Sandra Dodd: 1:34:33

I'm going to do an early morning instead of a late night I think the last episode episode. What was it six? Oh, that wasn think the last episode episode. What was it six? Oh, that wasn't the last episode. There's an episode that just been released as we're talking and it's wonderful and it's. I loved it. What is it? What's the topic of it?

Cecilie Conrad: 1:34:49

repetition, repetition yeah, yeah, repetition that's a good one.

Sandra Dodd: 1:34:53

If you haven't seen that one, listen to it. It's just great.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:34:58

So was this, I hope I think I feel it. I feel like it was a good one. Thank you for this one.

Sue Elvis: 1:35:05

I think that it's like when you write books and people say an author would say I really love this book that I've written, and then somebody might say, well, that sounds a bit, you shouldn't judge your own books, that you're saying you love your own books, that's not very humble. And I always think, well, if you don't love your own books, then other people won't love them. And I think it's the same with a conversation If we don't enjoy ourselves, other people aren't going to enjoy it. And I've enjoyed this one immensely.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:35:44

I agree. Thank you for joining today.

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS EPISODE