Everything You Need to Know About Deschooling Before Unschooling

What is the purpose of deschooling?

For kids

If your children attended school, deschooling is a detox period. They need time to get out of the school mindset. School has had a huge effect already on how they see themselves and how they understand learning.

For parents

Deschooling for parents is a time to unwind all the beliefs about learning you picked up from school. This unlearning is going to be hard for you.

For one thing, you’ve probably had 12+ years of schooling. Your indoctrination about school runs deep.

Even after you left school, you continued to live in a school-based world. School has influenced your whole life.

As you continue your unschooling life, school-based thoughts will pop up now and again. This will continue even after you think you are “done” deschooling.

There are some common times when you may find yourself struggling:

• When your child first reaches “school-age”.
• The entire time before your child learns to read.
• Every year at “back to school” time.
• The first many times a friend or relative questions your decision.
• When your child would have been entering middle school.
• When your child would have been entering high school.
• When your child nears graduation age.

Your child’s deschooling period can focus on relaxing and having fun.

But you need to be more active in your deschooling.

• You can explore your own childhood and experience with school. What assumptions and conflicts are lurking there?
• You can challenge school-related beliefs that arise in your mind.
• You can pay attention to what makes you uncomfortable about your child relaxing or playing.

Perhaps most importantly, you can spend a lot of time online reading about unschooling. However, you have to choose good sources! Unschooling has become a bit popular. That means there are people calling themselves unschoolers without being any such thing.

Pro tip: Listen for when a so-called unschooling parent calls someone else “holier than thou” or “rigid” or “takes it too far”. Then go follow THOSE people! You may not agree with everything they say. But you will learn more from people who are closely following unschooling principles.