S3E11 | Unschooling - How much time does it take and what does it cost?

Cecilie Conrad: 00:00
So this is episode eleven of season three of The Ladies Fixing the World, The Ladies Being. Myself, I'm Cecilia. And I have with me, as usual, Sandra Doc. Hi, Sandra. Hello. And Suel Mr. Hi. Hi. Today we are going to talk about a very well, we're starting out with a practical double question: how much is it going to cost and how much time will it take to unschool? And I just volunteered to open because we usually throw the ball at Sandra because she's so full of good stories, but actually it doesn't have to be that way. Um, how much is it gonna cost? I think it is probably maybe not the biggest worry, because the biggest is how will the future of my kids be if I unschool them, but it is usually one of the really big obstacles uh to making the choice for at least most of the people I talk to. Can we afford to unschool? And um how much it is going to cost is very much a question of perspective. You are going to not spend a lot of money that other people spend, and you're going to spend some money other people do not spend, and you are most likely not going to make money in the same way as everyone else. So I find the question quite hard to answer. Um, I guess right now, starting to talk about it, I even realized there are other things it's going to cost than money. But maybe we should start with the money question. Um, I see most people starting out the unschooling journey being two parents. That's most families, not all. And uh one of them is going to have to give up working. So it looks like harshing the income, and that is in many cases what it's going to cost, at least for some years. That's a lot of money. There's no way around it. But then what I also see is lots of creativity, lots of ways to make money anyway, lots of ways to save money, lots of ways to find different ways. And I also see solutions that you hadn't seen coming, and a lot of values, value coming from those solutions. Sharing your home for a while, maybe, or letting go of one of the cars, or yeah, all the cutting of expenses can sometimes be it can feel really hard to do when you think about it beforehand, but then when you decide a life where you can afford spending the majority, at least one parent gets to spend the majority of the time with the children, everything that grows from there. I think this is my opening ball. I don't have or might have a lot of stories, but I don't have feel like I need to not be the only person talking.

Sue Elvis: 03:32
Well, I got something that I was thinking about, Cecilia, as you were doing that introduction. I think for our family, the bigger question was

Sue Elvis: 03:45
how can we afford to have the children that we have? And we were told many times that children are expensive, and we had eight children. And when you think about unschooling and the time and the money, for us that wasn't the big question. It was reassuring people that we could have our children, and we made sacrifices to do that. But being mean now here, and I look back and I think we came through everything that I wouldn't have done it any different, that we unschooled, we had our children. And I think what would have happened if we had got scared at the other end and said, Oh, we can't afford to unschool, we can't afford to have these children. Our lives would have been so totally different. Uh so I guess that's um looking back. But you come out the other end, and yes, we didn't have money for overseas holidays, I didn't work. Uh I used to go to a secondhand store to look for clothes for my kids. There were various sacrifices we made, but there's a big ton of things that we had which weren't what we would have had if I'd gone to work. We would have spent our money on different things. But I was thinking about creativity. That there's always a if you think hard enough about something, you can find a creative idea to do whatever you like and to live like you live. Uh one of the big things we had was we didn't have a home of our own for most of the growing up years of our children. And we were told many times you should have both worked, bought a house, not had your children. And it wasn't easy moving all loads of children and packing up with pets and everything uh from house to rental house to rental house. But we did it. And there were advantages, things that we wouldn't have experienced if we hadn't chosen to do that. For example, um, our family got really good at packing up and moving. It was a big adventure. It drew us close together. And having the not having the money. Well, we had enough money, but not having excess money, I think that was part of the adventure, part of the how we're going to do this. Um, and th they've the drawing together of us as a family. So yeah. Maybe pass it on to Sandra to share something.

Sandra Dodd: 06:35
Like a lot of people come to unschooling discussions and then they ask questions in the same vein, in the same mood as they would have if they were coming to buy a car or a really fancy vacuum cleaner, and they say,

Sandra Dodd: 06:49
How much is this going to cost? And they want you to say, Well, let me talk to my manager, uh uh $10,000. And it's not like that at all. Because a family that has money will spend more money than a family that doesn't have money. It's gonna cost you something though. Some people would come to unschooling thinking, wow, this will be free, this won't cost me anything. And so that's not gonna work. If the kids were in pro private schools, taking them out of those schools in unschooling is gonna seem very inexpensive. And especially around, I think, shoes and and uniforms, even beside tuition and exactly the books they tell you to get and the school labeled book bag and all of that sort of thing. Um if your kids were in public school where they could wear what they wanted to wear, it might be more expensive than that, but you also won't have other kids telling them, Oh, why are you wearing those shoes? Why don't you get some cool shoes? Or whatever kids at school pressure other kids about these days, jackets or haircuts or whatever it might be. So you save some money there, and if your kids will wear used clothes or hand-me-downs or shared clothes or whatever, that's easy. Because nobody's gonna say, You've worn that three times this week. Or my son Kirby wore the same nylon pants every day. We'd wash them and you know, uh at night and he'd wear them in the morning. For when he was young teen, he wore those like almost continuously. And he liked them, and that's how we recognized him. They were yellow. And um Have we all seen that? Other kids would have given him grief about that, but he just did what he wanted to do. And we made sure they were clean. That was my job, you know. Let's let's you know, put 'em where we can wash them. So you can keep wearing them if you want to. That was fine. And when parents think that they don't want to spend anything on books or puzzles or games or entertainment, then I say, go to the thrift store. No, go charity shops, whatever they might be called where you are. And find used things. Go to yard sales. Um, ask your friends if they have any things they don't want anymore. It's possible to get things without spending a lot of money. So there's that too. But when the money shows the most, I think, is when kids are preteens, teens, and they start doing things like music lessons, art lessons, sports that require transportation, uniforms, equipment, um, being in the same place, same time every week. Maybe musical instruments. Then it might cost some money, and if they had been in school, they might have been using the school instruments. But they would also there are just so many there's just such a free difference in choosing to learn to play piano because you feel like it, not because your parents made you, not because that's what they teach that when you're 14 at your school, but because you just want to do it. You can do it for a month or two or ten years, and you can quit when you want to, because it's not based on school years, semesters, requirements, or you have to get to book five. If it's not if you're not prescribing what piano lessons would involve and be, then uh not only might it be less expensive, because they could if you come to a month when you don't have much money, you could talk to the teacher and say, we need to put a pause and we'll be back in January. Or the child could keep learning on his own without feeling pressure that this is not the curriculum, this is not the schedule. You don't have to be bound to schoolish, you must go here every week on Wednesday at four, must, or else, or else what, or else you never touch a piano again. That's not how it works. And especially for unschoolers when they see that they could continue to learn or continue to paint or continue to read by other means than subscribing to buying a book every month or what going to the same art classes or whatever. You know, there are there are so many variables and so many options. Once you get good at unschooling, you start to see how it can flow in and away and from and toward money. You know, some of those things do cost money. Marty played hockey for a while. There were ice fees. Not only you know, keeping an ice rink cold in the desert, that's expensive. It's not like Minnesota where they just flood a park and there's the ice rink. So um it was a hundred and some, maybe just a hundred dollars, maybe a hundred and fifty a month. That uh above and beyond his lessons or you know, hockey equipment and skates, just your contribution to keeping that room cold. So that didn't, he didn't, he only did it for about a year, year and a half. But if he had wanted to do it longer, we would have paid for it because it would have been what he had chosen to do. And I know that some in some families they lean hard into how much they sacrificed because the mom didn't go to work. But any kids who are in school, you parents can't both work 40 hours a week and just ignore those kids. There are times for pickups, deliveries. If a kid's sick, you have to go get them. There are meetings with teachers. There are things that school demands time-wise and money-wise, of families that the families don't think about when their kids are in school. It's just the way it is. And when the kids are out, you start to see a little flexibility with your life that you didn't see before. That that things become an option and not a requirement. So it's I can't tell any family how much it will cost, but sometimes it's uh it's not nothing. It's more than nothing, and less than an expensive private school.

Cecilie Conrad: 12:29
But isn't it also always? I mean, what I have in my experience, it's all it's very flexible. Our economy in our family has always been up and down, quite a lot of up and down, quite different. It's not like a stable, my husband is doing this thing, and that's his job, and he brings in this amount of money all the time. Sometimes we have more, sometimes we have less. And I feel we've been a big part of the journey that we've been living through while we've been unschooling, has been sometimes facing okay, right now we have 60% of what we're used to for a while. Uh, and how do we handle that? And that's just life. And life is well, I don't even know how to phrase this, but I mean, unschooling unfolds inside life in families. So our financial situation and the changes in it has influenced the life we've been living, therefore, the unschooling we've been doing, and in some phases, months, years of our life, we've been, we've never been struggling at all, but we have had different, a different frame. And it's just been talking to the kids about it. Okay, now we have about 60% of what you used to, guy. What's gonna change? What where do we cut? And and then we sit down and we talk about that. So, what's important? And how can we make sure that whatever is really important can still stay on the table? Maybe it will be on the table with a different frequency, but it can still be there. What can we live without? How do we make the ship sail? And then it sails, and then there's a change again, and you think less about it when the inflow grows, but it's the same thing. So I think one thing that really for me has been I think it's been easier because we've been unschooling. Sometimes, if the budget is smaller, well, then we just do different things, but we do them together, we decide together, and there's no outside pressure that you have to get a new school uniform. Not that we use that in my country, but then new jeans to live up to standards in school and new backpacks and take the bus and have the right phone and all the things. When the kids were small, and my kids were small and were before what we call school, so younger than six, they would have been in kindergarten. And it's it's mandatory that you have a full set of rain wear, rain gear with

Cecilie Conrad: 15:19
you every day. So either you bring it every day, your bulbs and your full body against the rain armor, because that's how my country is. It's quite expensive stuff. I have half the amount of children that Sue has, which is in that context not a lot, but at least it's enough that the rain gear was quite the expense, and they grow out of it all the time, the kids. They need a new set at least twice a year when they're small. Um, and yeah, we can hand it down, but it also wears. Just the fact that we didn't have to have that. And we did not definitely not have to have two sets for each child, one to stay in the kindergarten, one to have at home because it rains all the time, so you need your rain gear. That was a lot. When winter comes, and they we've used these full body like a jacket, but for the whole body. I don't know what's the English word for that. Do you use that at all?

Sandra Dodd: 16:16
Raincoat.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:17
You live in the desert, so it's like a skiing set, but it's a one piece, like one piece thing. Cover holes? It covers everything, yeah. Cover all, like ski clothes, like ski pants. So Denmark is so cold that every year in around November, the small kids start wearing that outside. So you don't just use a coat, you use a cover all. Those are quite expensive if they are to actually withstand all the rain and actually keep you warm because it's pretty cold out there. So you need to buy four of those every year and new boots and all the things. But actually, if you unschool, you don't have to. You can just stay inside. Or you can go outside, get a little bit wet, get back inside. It's not like you're doomed to wear these wet clothes the rest of the day because you're home. You can just take it off and put dry socks on it. It's okay. So those expenses that came with the institutionalized life, we didn't have that. Or we could choose. Well, we don't care. We're getting it when we can afford it or secondhand or not, as we liked it. So I think some of the expenses that go with institutions, well, they go away. And another point that has to do with institutionalized life is you get so busy. I mean, I've tried it. You get so busy, you're busy all the time, and busy is expensive. When you have time, you you can just take it slow. You can just fix things that are broken, make them yourself. Um, you don't need a lot of fancy stuff. You don't even need to buy a jigsaw puzzle, just tear apart a book and try to glue it back together. An old one, maybe one you have two copies of. Don't tear apart your books, actually. But something else. So I or go charity hunting the things you need. You have time for that if you're not working 40 hours and then you have to pick up all your kits and you have to cook and clean and do all the things. You never have any time. So you have to cheat and buy your way out of it by buying processed food or even just takeouts and all these things. So it how much you save that way, it's very hard to do that math, isn't it?

Sandra Dodd: 18:46
It's it's impossible. One year, what one month, what one day, one year. I think Holly was maybe about 10 or 12 because she I don't know how tall she, I remember how tall she was. Our sewer quit working. So we needed to get a new sewer line from our house to the main line out in the road. It was about, I don't know, I

Sandra Dodd: 19:05
I'm not good with distance, maybe 50 yards, you know, the length of a medium driveway. And so they trenched our yard. They dug a hole so deep that Holly got down in the trench and it was up to her shoulders. That was expensive. We had to pay for it. And also we were in convenience, but you know, that's okay. They got it fixed up. But our kids got to watch because they were there every day. So they could watch what those guys were doing. They could see then how sewers work. And they're like, Where are your clean-outs? You know, holes into the pipes. We don't know. We just bought this house, you know, when it was already 20 years old, and we haven't found any. So they built some new ones, and that's nice, and I still know where they are and they stick up. So if anybody needs to clean the sewer now, they can just open those up. Later, we found the other ones. They had just silted over because our house was on a hill and the sand had, you know, the dirt had just gone over them. They were about that deep in the ground. We found them. But, you know, so that's how we knew there's somewhere in this yard, there are some old cleanups. So it was a it was an archaeological mystery. And so when the kids, when we found them, the kids knew what they were. And it was fun. It wasn't fun for my husband who's paying for it. But for us, it was like, okay, here's an adventure. Our house just quit working. We can't flush the toilet. That's big time. And thousands of dollars. So you can't predict those things. That there's suddenly going to be a big expense. So for a while, we're eating at home. We're not having pizza, we're not going out for burgers because we can't afford it for a while. But they knew that would come back, you know, that things would change again, another different way. So that was just it was just a variable. We weren't when people are living by choices and not by rules, when they're living by principles and not by prescribed schedules, they start to figure that out too. They start to relax about, oh yeah, it may cost us some money once in a while, but it's not like a certain amount each month. It's not like you make your monthly unschooling payment. It's you you flow with life and don't be cheap. There, I should just make a mumper sticker of that and put it on my card.

Sue Elvis: 21:04
Yeah.

Sandra Dodd: 21:04
Flow with life and don't be cheap.

Sue Elvis: 21:09
The other day we were talking about Christmas presents because it's almost the Christmas season while we're recording this. And we were talking about a

Sue Elvis: 21:18
maybe 16, 17 years ago, I made a lot of gifts for my kids, including fabric uh shoulder bags with all these beads on them. And my girls were their eyes lighting up. Do you remember, Mum? And that was the year that my husband was studying. He went back to uni to do his master's of teaching. And he got made redundant from his job, and we had no income. So we didn't not single income, but no income. And he uh first his first thought was I've got to get a job to support my family. But we all said, no, you go back to uni and do what You really want to do instead of getting another job in the same industry, we'll survive somehow. And it was like a family adventure together. I remember walking around the house and we found all our loose change, and we made a big part of the loose change, and that was our treat money. And we'd walk to the village and to the general store, and the kids were they were young enough to have lollies and things, and they would buy something for a dollar, and that was the treat, and come home, big grins on their faces. Yeah, we've had a treat today. And I don't think it is about money. It's about the love, the connection, the working together. And if we had been overflowing with money, I don't think we would have had the same experiences. We wouldn't have learned the same things together. And life, I don't think, would have been as rich. We talk about needing money for life to be rich, but I think it's the other way around that we go looking for ways to do things, as Sandra said. We go to the thrift stores. We and yeah, it's just a season, usually. Yeah, as Sandra was saying, we flow. Um my husband was at uni doing his master's, I think a year and a half. Uh but our thought wasn't, oh, I've he he was his thought first was he had to get another job. And it was the kids and I who said, no, no, do what you really want to do. But I wasn't saying, look, I'll go and get a job or put the kids in school. We just went with it and changed uh changed life for a little, just for a little while. And everybody didn't care about Christmas and handmade gifts. And I is looking back and I think those wonderful memories. My girl said, you know, Mom, I've still got that bag you made me all those years ago. And they don't remember the things I bought, they remember the things I made, and they remember the clothes that we went to Vinny's, you know, the charity store to buy. Do you remember when we found this really beautiful dress that we didn't expect to get? And um, yeah, there was one uh dress that my girls really loved oh years ago. It was called a clock dress. It was a reversible dress. So it had clocks on one side, and you turned inside out, and it was plain color. And we went to a fashion parade, and I just couldn't afford to buy these dresses for my kids when they were younger. A couple of years went by, and we found two of these dresses in the charity shop. It was just like magic. Um, those dresses meant more because we uh you know we just came upon them and got them for a few dollars. And so I remember the delight my kids had, my girls had, in wearing those dresses. Yeah, it just, I don't know, money. It's um there's advantages in not having much.

Cecilie Conrad: 25:10
There are definitely more advantages in being together and having the love and the connection and the stable, loving relationship than in being able to buy whatever you want. Those two are just not comparable. And and there's enough studies made of how money affects our lives to prove that as long as you're beyond above certain, you know, above survival, if you're struggling to actually get enough calories and stay warm and healthy, it that's one story. But once you're above that, it doesn't actually affect happiness to have more. So yeah, we've had the same experience that it's not about whether we've had one budget or the other budget. That's not the happiness. The happiness comes from the memories we created together, and usually it is the adventures, and some of them has been expensive tickets to expensive shows we've seen in expensive cities, but lots of them have been walking at amazing mountainsides or or city walks or just hanging out in our van somewhere at some little random place, and a dog walker walks by and and then there's a tree, and maybe there's snow, and that's it, and it's beautiful. And we remember that it has nothing to do with money, actually.

Sandra Dodd: 26:45
Susan, we have a story about the Oh, sorry.

Sue Elvis: 26:49
No, you go ahead, Sandra.

Sandra Dodd: 26:51
Well, your story about the coins reminded me that we used to collect aluminum cans to to sell, to cash in. For a while, the price was pretty high, like 45 cents a pound or something. And also, there's an alley behind our house.

Sandra Dodd: 27:05
Uh when when Kirby and Marty were about 10 and 8, we were going for a walk, just the two of us, the three of us, me and them, we I had some plastic trash bags with me, little ones, and we were on the way to it just passed through the alley behind our house. They went behind a bowling alley. It wasn't the main road, cars didn't really go there. And so we're picking up trash that had blown there by the side of the road, and we're on the way to a park. And after a while, you know, they're having fun. We're picking up stuff and we're keep keeping the aluminum separate from the paper and plastic. And and Kirby said, Are we getting paid to do this? And I said, No. We're just we're just volunteering. And he said, Oh, and he picked up a few more things and he said, That's nice of us. So I thought that was cute. But but was the aluminum, we would just stack it in the same place. We had a little crusher, you know, a little thing with an arm on the wall that you could crush cans. And when we had enough, or you know, there was the pile was getting big, my husband would take it and cash it in and bring the cash back, or if kids went with him, they would stop and get ice cream on the way back for everybody. So that was ice cream money. We could afford ice cream, but that's where ice cream came from. Like for them, picking up aluminum became a little sort of ice cream party at some point. And it was not timed, nobody ever said, I want ice cream, let's go cash the aluminum. It was very casual. And they saw that, you know, you can get some real $20 or $30 sometimes out of this couple of sacks of aluminum cans. And it was it wasn't a lesson. We didn't get say, okay, children, let us talk to you about how many pounds, blah, blah. Never. It was just like, oh, that's a lot of cans. Let's go get some ice cream. Sometimes we didn't have very much money, and sometimes we were flush. And so, again, I just we just went with the flow. But we considered that because all the things that the kids do are involved learning, if they want Lego and you can afford it, it's worth getting it. You can find used Lego sometimes. You can talk somebody out of their old Lego. Um, puzzles, games can be bought used. And if a couple of pieces are missing, that's not a big deal. Um, greeting cards uh are more expensive than used puzzles and used games. And people buy greeting cards and wrapping paper and stuff. It's like, so try to maybe don't do that. Just, you know, don't but when you're considering the cost. And when people think about a kid's hobby being very expensive, oh, my kid wants to go to an amusement park and it's gonna cost $120 or whatever, you know, and they're getting a big whine. That would have been harder for Sue's family, admittedly, than for a family of three kids. But if if the adults will just consider how much would it cost you to go skiing, let's imagine even a one-day ski trip and now add it up, and now stop whining and take your kid to ride some rides. Because there are adult hobbies that just totally go by the 200s at a time, by you know, 300, 500, before you can even, you know, get all your rental and and lift tickets and all of that stuff. So sometimes, sometimes I would remind parents of that. What's your expensive hobby? Or even when you were young and childless, what did you do that costs a lot of money? And it it shakes them back into reality sometimes to remember, okay, this is our project now. We're helping our kids learn at home and be happy at home and safe and warm and loved at home. So what what is that going to require? And it might require a pair of you know warm, waterproof ski pants occasionally, but not, you know, not all the time. And you can probably get them used, especially in a country where they're required at school. My middle child's family just moved to Alaska, so they're learning about that, about insulated pants to wear over other, you know, other insulants. I shouldn't say pants because in Europe that's underwear, but you know what I mean. Long long insulated leggings. Long johns. Yeah, that they have to wear at school to play, to go out and play at school.

Sue Elvis: 31:10
Yeah. Thinking about how we've all experienced times where money has been short, short, not we haven't been poor, but we've had to watch our money. And I was also thinking about how a lot of

Sue Elvis: 31:24
parents have plenty of money, but they won't spend it because they don't want to spoil their kids, or they don't want to give the kids the impression that uh money is available, uh freely available. They want to teach them the lessons of life, maybe, and how when we don't have a lot of money, we're learning that naturally. And yeah, so but I I'd be interested to hear to discuss when money has not been tight, relatively. Do you like Sandra was saying, we spend money on our kids' interests and things? But what would you say to a parent who's said, I want to teach my kids the value of money, I don't want to spoil them. Uh, I don't want to give them everything they want or everything they need. Well, not need, but want, because they'll grow up thinking they can have anything and they've got to learn about how life is quite difficult sometimes.

Cecilie Conrad: 32:32
Well, if it isn't actually difficult, then it is just a lie. If the family is really wealthy and can afford everything, why pretend you can't? That would be my answer.

Sandra Dodd: 32:43
It's like if I just would remind them, we're not here to teach. That's not how unschooling's gonna work. But very many times, especially with male parents, they're jealous. They see their kids getting something that they didn't get when they were boys, and it riles them a little bit. I think it happens less with women. And so it's more likely for a mom to be refreshing her deschooling uh stores, you know, as as the kids get older, you're deschooling differently because something will remind you when you have a 12-year-old, like, oh, I remember at 12, I remember what happened to me when I was 12. And so the mom might get a little emotional or whatever, but she's getting over it. Be if she's the one who's with the kids the most, especially, because she can do for her child what she wished someone had done for her, and it's healing and it's soothing. Dads might not be with the kids all the time and may be out there making that money, so they're really aware how many hours it takes them to work for 25 dollars, euros, whatever they are living. 25 of those is going to be an hour, give or take. And so if the kid goes, Well, I want to buy something for $50, they might say, Yeah, well, you never worked two hours. And they might, even if, even if all the other bills are covered and the family's flush, the dad might have a hard place in his soul about how many hours that took. Which the kid can't understand. But it may be because when the dad's when the kid's dad was working for five or ten dollars an hour and he wanted something, he didn't get it. Or if he learned a bicycle, they said, go build a bicycle out of parts from the dump. Um, which can be fun for those who are mechanically inclined. But you know, so the so if the dads harbor some childhood memory, resentment, jealousy, frustration, and they think that it did them good. If so they've they've encapsulated that and defined it as strengthening, um, character building, morality building. So they soothe themselves over the years by saying, Well, that was good for me. At least I wasn't spoiled. And I think all sorry. Oh, no, I so I just think that dads might it might help to point out to them that this is about learning, this is about being feeling abundance at home. Not crazy wastefulness. It's not crazy wastefulness to want to have a bicycle if the family can afford one. So so it's maybe the mom, it it in a case where my theory is true, that it's the dad not having thought about it a lot and having been taught to uh the value of money and taught not to be spoiled as a child, it's possible that the mom could say a thing or two gently to help the little boy and that dad be soothed. And and what helped with me and my husband was sometimes just like, wouldn't it have been cool if our parents had done this for us? And just having that little thought, like a balm on the situation where we were maybe not getting along or something, and just like say, I wish I had had this when I was 10. That can be helpful.

Sue Elvis: 35:60
Do you think there is actually advantages in giving kids what we can afford? That for example, people, I've heard a lot of parents say, I want my kids to be generous, so I'm

Sue Elvis: 36:15
not gonna give them a lot because they've got to understand the value of this and realize, uh, especially at Christmas time, um we're going to spend our money on buying some uh a pig for somebody on a farm in some third world country, that sort of thing. And our children aren't going to get a lot because they've have too much already, and we've got to teach them that we're teach them to be generous. And I was thinking about how we only learn to be generous by other people experiencing generosity, that uh we have to know that abundance, that love, that uh yeah, that sparkle in your eyes when somebody uh recognizes that you're you're important enough to to receive whatever you're going to give them. And yeah, that's that feeling of your eyes lighting up. Somebody earned this money, but somebody spent it on me, and I have this whatever it is to further my interests or just to enjoy a real delight or treat, and that I am important enough for that. And learning how to give that experience to other people. You experience it yourself, you want to go out there and you don't keep it all to yourself and get selfish. You think, well, this is what you're brought up with, this is what you've learned. Now, how can I be generous to somebody else, light up their eyes? So I'm just thinking about how there's disadvantages to having um some people think there's disadvantages to spending money on kids, but I think there are actually a lot of advantages. It increases joy, it increases that feeling of love, acceptance, um, as I said, uh importance of of people. If we can afford to do it, then why not? And in our turn, we can pass it on to somebody else.

Cecilie Conrad: 38:28
I think another perspective on that is what Sandra said before about if you live by principles, not rules. Circles back to values. Um and it can seem very illogical if you have a limited budget to maybe let's say buy a new game or computer with all the fancy gear for one of your many children, because you couldn't multiply that by the same number of children that you have and spend the same amount of money, so there's no logic in it. Um, but maybe that's what's needed right now, and then you might eat less fancy food for the rest of the month. But if you circled back to your values, and those are strong, and you know what you're doing, and maybe it's actually important because you know it's important that all the kids can explore their hobbies, and one of them happened to be a gamer, well, then that then you need gear, and then it's not hard to make that choice and go buy that expensive thing. And I think I think that's the way that principles can can guide how we spend our money and make our choices as homeschoolers if we make sure that we've got our values straight. And I think that also teaches, if I was to teach children about generosity and and budgeting and all these things, I don't do that to teach them. I actually do it because I think we need to be aligned on values as family. I need to know what's important to them, and they need to know what's important to me, and we have to all get some space. Um we try to make sure everyone gets what they need to unfold, the things they want to unfold. And sometimes someone has a really expensive copy or interest, and it is what it is, that it costs money, and and then sometimes it's someone else. So I think we have the principle, the idea of principles that you spend your money based on strategies, not based on specific choices of that one choice. It's it's a bigger picture. You have to step back and look at the big picture. Yeah.

Sandra Dodd: 40:57
Our oldest was always kept in uh Nintendo Systems, whatever Nintendo system came out. Since he was a little kid, the Ineus came out when he was little, and he had one. And as the new systems came out, we would get it for him. And he the other kids would play too, but that would belong

Sandra Dodd: 41:11
to him. Like that was his series. He used his own allowance to subscribe to Nintendo Power magazine. He was very involved in that. And so one year the Nintendo was coming out just before Christmas, and we got him a Nintendo and a new desk chair for Christmas. And the other kids knew. I mean, they we said this is gonna be really expensive, so not everybody's gonna get the same value of Christmas stuff. They didn't care, and so they so we talked about that from when we were young. Who needs what? Who needs what this year? Who somebody really wants new skates, new skates, or whatever. And so when Holly was eight years old, her best friend had moved to England. Her mom was had gone to York to study archaeology, and she was a friend of mine, too. The mom was. So we went to visit. So Holly and I went to England. Holly got a passport, nobody else had a passport but me and Holly. And we went there and we were there for weeks, maybe three weeks. Saw cats in London, you know, just really had it had a big deal. And then we came back, but the boys didn't want to go visit that little girl. You know, they they weren't like, why didn't you take me to England? They were having more fun at home doing their stuff. And they were already older than Holly, so they they were 11 and 13. And Kirby was very involved in the gaming store, and they so I didn't say all three of you have to agree on what this big expense is gonna be. It wasn't like that at all. And they weren't going, oh man, how much does a flight to England cost? Because now you owe me that. There was never any of that feeling in that group, which was nice because I know some kids are very mathematical about it and they're adding up how many presents they have. But luckily that didn't happen for us. And so we clearly and openly knew that sometimes we were ahead on spending on one kid or another because of their interests or because things just happened to come up like that, an opportunity to go stay in a house, you know, not have to rent a hotel or anything like that. To be picked up at the airport, have be with a family with a car that we knew. It was nice. And they were in a really little town, and we were there long enough that Holly saw the same old man again. He had talked to her at a at the post office one day, and then another day he saw her at the store. And he talked to her again, like, so how's it going? So see, remember, right? It was great. It was not like being a tourist where you boing, boing, boing, boing, see different things every day, museums. And she went to school a couple of days and was just immersed in learning about English, British English and culture by being in there. I wasn't there to help her. And, you know, like of course, you know, the the classic thing is she went to school and they went to the little cafeteria, they went through the line. And when she got out of the line, one of the girls that she didn't even know said, You've got no pudding. Why didn't you get pudding? And Holly said, I didn't see pudding, different meaning in American English and British English. And so the little girl went back and got her whatever the dessert was. And that was sweet because Ollie didn't know you couldn't go back through the line and that sort of thing. And she took a uh I had brought a bunch of nickels at the time they had put different designs on our five cent piece that were about the Lewis and Clark expedition when they went to explore through the Great Lakes and the rivers to see how how far it was to the Pacific and that sort of thing overland and mapped it and you know Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson days. So Thomas Jefferson's on the front of a nickel. So they used the back of the nickel to document this Lewis and Clark expedition. It was really cool. And the coins were new. So Holly had a collection enough that she could give all of the kids at that school a c a nickel, you know, to keep. It was entertaining. She got to tell a story, an American story. Um, and that's not something you can go to a tourist, uh go to a like a travel agency and say, okay, I'd like to go to England and I'd like for my kid to go to public school while she's there and ride the bus to school and you wear a uniform. You know, there are all these things that only happen because you're with a family. And with the with they had been on schoolers when they were in the United States, and they went there and they wanted her to go to school so she could meet kids, and that makes sense. Um I don't know, there are just so many things like that that because we were willing to spend money for the flight, we hardly had to spend any money when we were there. I paid for the tickets to for all us to see cats. But as far as groceries and, you know, sleeping, that was we were staying with a family we knew. It was great. And a lot of families have, if they can't travel, they've hosted other families who come to visit them and have learned a lot like that and made friends that their kids can later visit in other states and other towns. And I think that is a flow you don't really get with a school year. School kids pretty much only know the kids in their own town, in their own grade, in their own neighborhood, because of the way it's geographically set up. You go to school with the kids from here to the river. And and in many cases that's who they end up, that ends up being their marriage pool. You know, the kids who live between their house and the river, because that's the kids they grew up with and they know. Whereas with unschooling, the world is so much bigger and more fluid. Shaken up, scrambled up. So that's I think another weird thing about spending money. Um, it you get different things for the money than you might have expected if it had been like if you could afford a vacation for a family with eight kids for a week, how much could you see? And it would it's it's just a it's a different kind it's life from a different way. It's like um polarized light. It's like you're looking at the same scene, but you're looking through a slightly different lens.

Sue Elvis: 46:48
I like how you said, Sandra, about um your boy's not worrying about the money adding up how much you'd spent on Holly. And I think that's we don't have that fairness thing. It's not fair. Uh everybody is happy for everybody else. When when somebody gets what they need, everybody else in the family is happy for that person, not saying, Where's mine? Um, but also wrote a note here, and I can't even read it now. Oh, that was what I wanted to say, was when money we there were times as in when my kids were teenagers and their interests sort of outpaced sometimes what we could afford. They looked

Sue Elvis: 47:36
for ways to earn their own money. It was a good motivation to go out there, and they had a million different ideas about how they could earn money. For example, my two boys, I might have told this story before, they decided to set up a home cleaning business, and they called themselves Elvis and Elvis. And they made up some little business cards and they distributed them around the church community and the neighborhood, and they had enough uh work to give themselves just a little bit of money. Uh, not a great deal, like if you were working for um a casual job, but they had jobs. Um, I remember they also got a job uh cleaning a horse paddock. They had a um oh one of those, oh, they just really enjoy this job. Uh one of what they call it, a quad bike. And they used to go around the paddock on the quad bike, scooping up all the m all the all the uh the dung. And that that uh was a way of earning money. And then when they got to about 14, 15, they started thinking about um casual jobs, working in supermarkets and uh cafes, and that earned the money. But I also remember ideas which didn't actually come to fruition, or they didn't produce any money, but that didn't mean they weren't worth pursuing. Uh one of my daughters was into photography a lot, and she wondered whether she could sell her photos and whether she could, and she was also a blogger, whether she could sell blog um headers to people. She'd seen these ideas online that adults were doing. And she was quite young, I'm not sure exactly, maybe around about 12, and she decided that she, you know, what could she do them as well? And so she put them into action, and I think that learning experience was invaluable. It was, yeah, you can do it. Go ahead and try, I'll help you. Now it didn't earn her any money or not much, but that wasn't the point. Uh, one of my daughters made um, or they were they paper dolls. But it was the the experience of having an idea that might might earn some money and being encouraged to think about how they would go about putting it into action and then actually doing it and then seeing whether uh they could actually make some money from it. The best one was uh getting a casual job as a in a cafe. That was the best money earner. But it was so fun as they were growing up, uh helping them try out their ideas and not saying, oh, that's a silly idea, you'll never learn earn any money from that, or you're not good enough to sell your photos or whatever. But to say, hey, give it a go, you never know. And that was that was a wonderful consequence of needing money, and how how are they going to get it? Though there was a story. But oh, so many people love this story when it went around social media and I shared it with my kids and they were horrified. And this family, uh, if a child in the family wanted a computer or a car or anything, they had to build it themselves. They had to source all all the um all the the base, you know, they had to buy a a wreck of a car, they had to uh fix it, learn how to fix it, and then they could have a car. The same as a computer. They could get an old one that somebody had thrown out and refurbish it, and then they would have a computer. But they weren't given anything, this family. The children had to work it out for themselves. Uh which I guess they learnt a lot. But my girl said, Well, what, mum, what if your interest isn't actually cars? Uh what if you just need the car to take you to your music lessons? Uh it's you're learning all about cars, but the thing is, you really wanted the music lessons. It can't make your own musical instrument. Um, but you can look for ways to earn money to buy the instrument. But there that was a sort of a strange story because it was one of those posts that got thousands of likes because these parents had been firm and they weren't going to give their kids anything. If the kids wanted it, they had to earn it. They had to not only earn it, they had to make it. They had to go from Yeah. I just imagine if uh we wanted, I don't know, a toaster. And we were given a broken one and told, well, you can only have a toaster if you can learn how this toaster works and fix it. And we would be complaining, wouldn't we? Um that for kids, that's that was all right. Yeah, as you were saying in the earlier in the conversation, Sandra, it can be helpful, I think, to think of our own interests and not treat kids differently from ourselves. Uh yeah, I certainly wouldn't have wanted my husband to go and get an old wreck of a car and said, Well, Sue, if you want to drive the kids around in in a bigger car, I've got this wreck that I pulled, you know, I got that nobody wanted. Now get together and uh uh fix this fan for yourselves and then you can go places.

Sandra Dodd: 53:12
And I think it's a good example of principles being advantage advantageous over rules. Because if you have a rule, a child can't have a computer or a car unless they can build one out of junk, then what's the purpose of having a computer or what's the purpose of having a car? And one of our big considerations was safety.

Sandra Dodd: 53:31
Because when my husband and I were younger, we had both, my dad fixed cars, so if my car wasn't running well, he could fix it. But you know, we both had driven junkers, things that didn't cost much, things that were we knew were gonna break down. And we didn't want our kids to do that. We didn't want them to be stuck in the dark somewhere and in danger. So we were very careful to make sure that what whatever car they were borrowing from us, you know, that we were letting them drive was safe. And so that for us was the principle was safety. And when phones came along, we wanted Holly to have a phone because she's safer with a phone than without. And so that was the way we sometimes decided how to spend money. They had a friend who was of a of a two mixed families. There were five kids. The parents had had three, so he's the third. Then he's the youngest, his mom moves out, takes him, has two more kids. So he's the youngest of three and the oldest of three, you know, at his dad's house or his mom's house. Both of them kind of think the other parent ought to give him some money. Neither one of them's given him any money. So my kids have little jobs and they have allowance. So if they would go to the movies or out to eat or to go to a Pokemon tournament or things like that around town that costs $2, $5, you know, they would pay for this kid's entry. Because they wanted him to go. And sometimes if they were going, like if like if four or five, six kids are gonna go to the mall or to a movie or something, I would slip one of my kids $20. And I'd say, in case one of the kids doesn't have enough for lunch or something. You know, and if they didn't use it, they'd bring it back to me. It was like a little safety moment, a little safety thing. Um, and years later, that boy who was slightly older than they were, they'd known him since they were all eight and six, you know, like that. And then when they were 16, 8, 17, 18, he got a really good job. And for the next two weeks, a month, I guess, every time there was anything, he paid for everybody. It was like, let's go eat. Okay, he paid for the whole thing. Let's go to the movies, he paid for everybody's. Let's go out. He put gas in the car for whoever was driving. It was he felt so good being able to do that because for so many years he had sort of been a charity chase in that group. Not in a mean way. You know, nobody said, okay, here because you're poor. It just was casually handled that he could go even if he didn't have money. And I knew that was gonna be okay, and now he has the best job of all. He's a fireman and the most in the in the county in New Mexico that has the most money, and where there are national labs that they want to keep safe, so they pay the fireman like extravagantly. And so that's nice for him to have grown up from being unsure and embarrassed and pork to flush. It's great. And he doesn't have to pay for a gym because when they're not fighting fires, they're working out on the fine and finest little gym that anybody in New Mexico has at that fire department building. It's great. And so he's a he's grown like they are with kids and stuff. But he can be generous. So that if we had been stingy with them, if we had said, well, no, if he's going, I don't think you should go because he can't afford his part, near nainer. That would have made them more selfish, more isolated, less friendly, less sweet, less generous, less good. And it got to come back on them. They got to be the recipients of someone else saying, Here, here, let me pay for it. It was great. It was just altogether great, but it took years. The arc of that story is ten years. And there are a lot of stories like that with unschooling that you can't unlike school years where they're they're in school that, you know, whichever form, third form, third grade, what third, whatever it is, it starts, it ends, those stories are done. Next year, different set of kids. But when your reality is lifetime and not school semester, school year, testing period, things are different. The flow of reciprocation, the flow of generosity, the flow of sharing, it's more like adults, it's more like real world. And that's something that people couldn't buy. You couldn't go to an educational consultant and say, okay, I'd like to have my children educated in such a way that they have continuity and money and flow. And you know, this is not. It's not, it's a whole separate set of considerations. This is not an easy answer.

Cecilie Conrad: 57:56
Not an easy answer for new and schools. This is an exact example of what Sue said before that if you want to learn generosity, you have to experience generosity. You're not becoming generous as a human being by your parents withholding something from you just to what not spoil you. It's a very backwards idea, and yet um Sandra just shared the story about how that story of a family was it you sue, I can't really remember. A family who uh says if you want something, you have to build it yourself. Yeah, it was, and then you commented on it. Um how that story becomes so popular and it gets shared and reshared and gets all the likes and whatever. Why why are those stories so popular? Why I've I feel like I've heard them as well. Same kind of parents being really firm and and and borderline and mean, actually. I mean, if you want a new t-shirt, what grow the cotton yourself? Where where does this end?

Sandra Dodd: 59:12
It's antagonism. It's the it's the us and them. Like the the parents are defending against the children. Defending against these selfish, bratty, spoiled, potentially spoiled enemy children. And it's not healthy, it's just not healthy in any way, and it's not it can't be made healthy. So that's why I've but I learned before I was ever unschooling, I learned from La Lucha League that to be your baby, to be your infant's partner, not his adversary. And that that was easy for me to just take into day-to-day as we became unschooling, is like, oh, I'm his partner in learning. I'm his partner in getting a t-shirt or you know, whatever it is that they want. I'm not their servant, I'm not their I'm not their provider, I'm not their banker. Somehow, as their mom, trying to provide things that they think are interesting and that make them feel like someone loves them, like that someone's paying attention to their act their actual personal interests, not looking in a book at what seven-year-olds should want or have, but talking to the seven-year-old that I know really well and saying, what looks interesting to you in the world this this month, this year.

Sue Elvis: 01:00:24
Yeah. I was reading something the other day about how so many people base their lives on money. It's a guiding principle. You bring up uh we bring up our kids, well, we don't, but

Sue Elvis: 01:00:38
many people want their kids to have a secure, um, well-paying job, and that is the guiding light for their um upbringing. And there's much there are many, many more important things than money. But that's the uh message that we're giving at well, not we, but the we um society is giving kids is that the money is the most important thing. And as we've all discovered, money's law, but it isn't the be-all and end all of everything. And I don't really think it should be the guiding light. Uh and it may be by uh the way we handle the money in the f in our families, uh that tells our kids something about money. Are we Yeah, it's um we can use it to be generous, we can use it to further interest, but we can also uh yes. I don't know. I I don't know where I'm going with this one, Cecilia, but yeah. I don't know why I can build on it.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:01:48
I think I think something that's really interesting is there could also be a tendency. I've met the tendency to be kind of against money, or money is evil, or we can't talk about it, and lots of people don't really understand it, they don't really budget. And well, this conversation was partly about how much does it cost to unschool, which, if you're at the starting point, could be the question, do I dare do this? Can I afford it? And and I think for at least for us, it's it's a very important element that we actually talk a lot about money and we talk a lot about values, we talk a lot about is this actually worth it? Um we have just told my husband and I have always been budgeting, so we're we're not smart about money at all, but at least we keep a budget and we know what expenses are coming, and and we think about it. We don't buy subscriptions or kinds of things without taking a pause, wondering is this actually worth it? Do we want that expense in our life? That's that kind of thing. Um, and we just taught one of the children to use a spreadsheet and set up a budget for a project just to see. Um, she's doing a math uh exam right now, so she needed to learn anyway. Um, and she set up a budget for two different options to how we could spend three months in one way or we could spend three months in a different way. We live in this way that's not stable, so we have to make a choice where are we going? And just to see which is more expensive. Um, so we do actually a lot of this talking about money. It's just one of the resources. It's just like, do we have time for this? So we want to go, we like to go on a long walk each week, but actually, in reality, very often it's more like every second week we take a day off for walking and chatting. And we need to stop and talk about do we really have time for this this week? Or do we have to do more planning, or are there friends around who are leaving soon, or do we have too much work or homework or whatever? Um, so money is a resource that we talk about. We talk about how do we want to spend it? What makes sense? And can we make enough money for this next project that we want to do, or we want to do this very expensive thing? Is there something else we could not do so that we can afford it? It's it's just one of the one of the flowing conversations that are there all the time, just like the value one, you know, what is important to who in the family right now. And in our system of principles, it's it's a little bit Marxist, actually. You you give what you can and you take what you need, and that's what's fair. It's not fair that everybody gets a Christmas present that costs the same. Everybody gets a Christmas present they need or that will make them happy.

Sandra Dodd: 01:05:04
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:05:04
Just like if someone needs an expensive computer or a fancy bicycle or roller skate. I have a child who needs to have two dogs, which is a very expensive, not hobby, but passion. Passion is the right word. Who's expensive to buy the dogs, it's expensive to keep them healthy. Uh, it's very different from another one who just likes to read books on his Kindle. And he's had the same Kindle for seven years. It's not very expensive. So, yeah. And and that is we talk about what what what does it mean that something is fair? What does it mean that something has value? What does it mean that someone or something has to give when you make a plan? And how do we make sure it's not the same one every time? So I think when we discuss money and how How to distribute it, it becomes this conversation about value, about what is important. And those conversations are so meaningful to have. Not a conversation, us that would be me and my husband, against them, the children, but we as a family. What different passions do we have and what makes us happy and who needs what? And how do we make our shared ships sail? We're together here. So how do we do it? So that everyone on the ship thrives. Those conversations are so nice to have, actually.

Sandra Dodd: 01:06:41
I have a couple of money stories. When our kids were little, like you know, uh when we moved to the other house, we moved to a bigger house when Holly was five, so Kirby was 10. Um, I think he had just turned 11 and she was about to turn six. And so we were walking distance from a grocery store. And we would, we had a little bowl of money like on my husband's desk. He would just, you know, empty his pockets at night. And so sometimes I would say, Oh, we need milk before dinner, or we need a loaf of bread or something. Could, you know, does anybody feel like walking up to the store? And one of them would probably volunteer, maybe two of them would go, and I would say, and you can get you can get something for yourself too if you want. You know, so I'd give them money, and then we noticed that they weren't buying something, or if they bought something, you would buy like one little candy and then bring all the change back. If my mom had, when I was that age, if my mom had said, and you can buy something for yourself, I would have spent every penny. I would have bought bubblegum or whatever it took to spend all that money because I was kind of desperate for money. You know, it wasn't something that I I had access to very easily. And so these guys wouldn't. They would come back and and give us the exact change. Because my husband's already noticing he brought all of it. He brought all the change back. And I said, Yeah, they do that. So then years passed, and um Kirby had moved to Texas already and worked at Blizzard Entertainment, and I was about to go somewhere, maybe Australia. I was gonna go out of town to Europe or Australia for three weeks, I think, four weeks. And so my husband was gonna be there, but the kids were already big, you know, it wasn't hard to take care of them. He's just going to work and they're doing their stuff. They Kirby had Marty had a daytime job. And so I said, okay, here. Um like when I'm leaving, I'm going, Oh, and don't forget this. Oh, and don't forget that. And and I said, and sometimes when they're going somewhere, I just give them $20 just in case. And he goes, Yeah, I noticed, like kind of critical. I thought, ah, he's not gonna give them $20. So I go and do them, do my stuff and I come back. Here's what Keith gave them. He opened a bank account with each one, with his name and theirs, put $1,200 in it. Talk to them about savings, like got it set up so that you should probably put half of this in savings. And here's how you get to the other half. And later on, I said, Why didn't you get them debit cards? He said, I didn't think about it. So they but they he just instead of nickel and diamond it at a $20 bill once or twice a week, which you know, so what it what is that up to? That's less than $100 I would have given them, even if they had gone out a bunch. And they probably would have brought it back. He so he gives them $1,200 and a long lecture about savings and investment. So I'm like, yeah, okay, that's a bad thing. So he took it as a big old math opportunity for him, but he's he is he's that kind of a banking kind of guy. And both of both Marty and Holly are very math minded more than I am. So it just was really amusing to me because of the way he said when I said I give him $20, he goes, Yeah, I know, or yeah, I noticed, or something kind of snarky, right? Like, oh I thought it was judgment, but I think the judgment was why are you only giving him $20 when you could actually give them enough money to learn something from? I guess. I don't know. That was amusing. Um, another thing that people ask about is how much time is it gonna take? And sometimes they I they come and they go, how much time is this gonna take? Kind of hostile, like, how much time are you going to make me sit with my kids? It's like, whoa, I'm not making

Sandra Dodd: 01:10:06
you unschool. I know, I know. Um, I have something that Skylar Wainforth wrote. Skylar lives in Australia now. She used to live in England, she's American, married to a Brit who grew up in Hong Kong and Tokyo and places. So I don't know where he where all he lived in in uh Asia when they were little. Um she wrote, I have no experience with a child in school or doing school at home. I do know that pushing Simon or Linnea to do something that they don't really want to do is exhausting. I do know that leading them places they don't want to go is exhausting. It's so much better to ride the wave that they want to go on than it is to swim against the surf. It's so much more fulfilling, more of a valuable use of time, more engaging and more entertaining. That was awesome. So she's saying, yeah, there's time, but how are you going to spend that time? If you're spending that time trying to make people do what they don't want to do, that's a horrible use of an hour or a week. But if you're going to live with them gently and supportively as a partner, then that time can just flow in a in a shared joy. I mean, they're just all the positive words you can think of to say. If you're with your family and it's loving and it's entertaining and it's funny and it's fun, and they're learning, and you see it, the time is flying by. And um, my husband said probably the reason that they're afraid of the time spent is that they're they're first envisioning being that they're gonna have to repeat school. That if they have a six-year-old, they're gonna have to go back and do all of the six-year-old school stuff that they did and they didn't like it the first time and they don't want it the second time. And I think he's right. I think when people first come to homeschooling, they think school more than home. And they don't want to relive any of the yuckiness. So the good thing about unschooling is you can avoid the yuckiness. There's all of the I liked school. I didn't think school was yucky, I thought school was awesome. But I know that sometimes my joy was somebody else's frustration because while I'm like happy, happy in school and doing well, somebody else is wanting maybe to get the attention for having done well, or wanting the teacher's attention and not getting it. So I I don't feel good about you know when I think back. I didn't do anything to try to hurt the other kids, but it just because it's sort of a sealed system and a little competitive, or maybe they just didn't want to be there. So then I was just irritating them because I was happy. Because school lunch was pretty good for me. I thought it was great. And some kids are like, I want my mom's cooking, I don't want this food. What is this?

Cecilie Conrad: 01:12:42
Did you have pudding?

Sandra Dodd: 01:12:44
Oh, about twice a year we did. Yeah. Yeah. So I just I different people are different ways. And when a parent is hesitant and balking about how much time, I don't want to spend time on this, they just want their kids to do it. They want their kids to like somehow teach themselves in their rooms. If they throw some science and geography trivia books at them that they'll just read them for fun. And they people get over that, they figure it out, or they don't figure it out, and their kids end up in school. There are all kinds of different outcomes. But as to how much time it takes, it depends how you define it. It can you can see it as taking all the time, even while they're asleep. Or you can see it as taking no time at all if what you're looking at is assignments and lessons and homework and that sort of time. You know, the time that it takes to make kids write on a piece of paper. None. Zero. But there's a lot of people.

Sue Elvis: 01:13:39
What if about if you look at it with a different attitude? Instead of looking at it as kids learning, but looking at it from our point of view, wow, we've got this opportunity now to learn so much ourselves and have adventures

Sue Elvis: 01:13:53
ourselves. And that that was the ch turnover point for me was realizing that it wasn't me against the kids, like you've been talking about, Sandra, that it was their turn to get an education. But it was we were all in this together to all learn, have adventures together. And whenever I hear of anybody that stops by my blog or sends me a message saying we're just about um to start unschooling, or we've unsch we're in the early weeks of unschooling, I'm always so excited for them, sort of saying, enjoy your adventures because unschooling is an adventure. It's your attitude towards learning. It's not a duty, it's not something you've got to make sure your kids do. It's not them and us. It's the way we live uh as a family. And yeah, we spend a lot of time with our kids, but uh it's not like, oh, I've got to spend all day with my child. It's like, what are we gonna do today? What am I going to learn? What adventure am I going to go on? And looking back, I have been absolutely amazed at my individual adventures. Things that I have done, things I have learned, places, and I'm not talking about places in the world, but places that I have gone that I have never expected to go. Um even sitting here talking to YouTube, a via Zoom, who would have imagined that years ago? That I would, even if I'd known about the technology, that I would do such a thing. It's um the time I re I say I regret. I think we're gonna be talking about letting go next time, but you let go of different stages of your life. But I do miss sometimes those hectic, full days of learning with my kids when every day was an adventure with the family. I have my own adventures now, but they're different. Uh, I've moved on to a new stage. But a lot of it is not is it gonna take a lot of time, but what are we going what am I going to be doing? What adventures am I going to be having? Um and that's not how I felt when we set out homeschooling years ago. I always thought, yeah, we gotta do so many hours a day, and this is the goal. And I didn't figure into it at all, only in what if I got to do for my child? And of course, we do loads of things for our children along the way, but we do them joyfully, I think.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:16:40
I think unschooling is more about filling up time. It's way more interesting to think about how do we want to fill our time? What is it going to be full of, what will make it rich? And for me, it's it's not hard to choose that I want to be with my children. And so it's not about how much time it's going to take, it's more about how much value is it going to put into my time. How is that time going to be rich? And unschooling has definitely made my time way richer than any other choice I could have made. On the other hand, you could say that unschooling takes 100% of your time. This is going to take 100% of your time, or at least 90% of your time. It's what you're going to do. And sometimes there's not much choice when the kids are small and you're there and you can't just leave them. You know, you can only go to the bathroom. But that's what it is to be around smaller children. It's just now it's your job to do it, not the teacher's job. And actually, it was your job to begin with, as it's your children. And maybe if you stop to think about it for a little while, it's also the most precious and amazing thing you can do with your time is to spend it with your children. Is it a trap? Do you sometimes feel a little bit trapped? Yes. And are you sometimes very busy? Yes. Do you sometimes really need to pee and you can't get to go to the bathroom because you've got a hundred small children and all of their needs are more urgent than yours? Yes, that happens too. But it's not taking my time. It's more like fundamentals. Like this is what life is when you have small children. And if you choose to take care of them yourself, there will be hectic years in the beginning. We're all three of us beyond that. My youngest is 14. I don't have small children. I can go to the bathroom whenever I want. But but I also get to spend all of my hours with the most precious people in my life. This is the most important job I'm going to do in my life to be a mom. And these are the most important people in my life. No one's going to be more important than my four children, my husband. It is what it is. And I think everyone who has children knows that. So it's not a question of how much time it's taking. It's more a question of how rich is your time going to be if you make this choice.

Sandra Dodd: 01:19:16
Time and money move back onto the same graph. If you think about the things that people will go to counselors for when they're in their 20s and 30s and say, ah, I didn't have this when I was a kid, or my parents were so distracted and they didn't notice that I

Sandra Dodd: 01:19:30
was depressed, or whatever it might be. All those stories about having been separated from parents, being in school, having school trauma, home trauma, whatever, um, puberty trauma, you know, all those things that people have to untangle when they spend a bunch of money on it. If you look back and go, if only you could buy back being with your child better, like when you see what the complaint is, ah, if I could go back, how much would it cost me, in addition to the costs of therapy, to go back, backtrack, make it better, make a better relationship, pay more attention, be there and notice, notice the kids' moods and needs. Well, that's what you're saving. You're saving all of that future therapy. If you can just be there and really pay attention to that growing child in that moment, in that day, in that place. It's so different. It's so direct and so personal. And it's coming from parents to children in a very direct way. It's not a teacher saying you need to pay more attention to your child. It's not a grandparent saying, he says you didn't even notice that, you know, he had this big scar on his arm. Um it's not triangulated off other people, professionals, other relatives. It's very organically growing in the moment. And that's not something that people that how much money does it take? You might would have made some more money if you had used school as a babysitter and had a job. But you can't really put a price on the kind of growth and togetherness and warmth that can come of living directly with your children.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:21:09
No. I think this is a perfect final note. Well, good night to you.

Sandra Dodd: 01:21:15
Good day to you soon.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:21:17
Thank you for a very nice conversation. And next time we're talking about letting go, the art of letting go. It was wonderful.