What's wrong with a little curriculum?

This week, I want to save you some money - and really the savings is a lot more than that! If you can hold off on buying curriculum - even just a little - you can help your kids learn to trust themselves. You can help them see that curiosity is a GOOD thing. They can learn that learning IS fun - especially when it has nothing to do with checking other people’s boxes. The list goes on and on of all the benefits of unschooling! 

But if you’re not totally convinced, I want to share a few things that I think are whats wrong with “just a little” curriculum....

➡️ Why is one subject needing more focus than another? Are you afraid it’s not going to “come up” in real life? And... if it doesn’t come up in real life, do you really need it?

➡️ When we separate subjects, are we saying this one is “harder”? So we are putting our own bias into our kids - when they may have no math phobia at all... until you give them yours! (Applies to any subject we aren’t fond of)

➡️ Is it a trust issue? Are you giving your kids the idea that you trust them to learn some stuff but not ALL stuff? For these, you must “Make them do it.”

➡️ And what do we know from research happens when we coerce children (even sugar coated coercion)?

Coercion feels bad - and when we feel bad, we learn less. We get conditioned for external rewards instead of intrinsic ones. We spend more time looking for loop hole - like how little work can we do to get a B or something like that - instead of focusing on the learning itself. It pushes them to resist and resent you, the subject, and sometimes even learning in general. 

➡️ Unschooling is about staying focused on The Learner. This would shift the focus back to the Teaching and away from the Learner... so ignoring all the principles of unschooling

➡️ When we keep separating subjects out, we have a lot more deschooling to do. And I want to tell you - I skipped over a lot of Deschooling and it prolonged my anxiety, caused me to panic and throw money at curriculum, and filled my path with obstacles that didn’t need to be there. If I had just passed for a minute and thought more about these deschooling concepts. Lots more has been written about deschooling - I have a ton for you at the website, at YouTube, and even more within the Membership group. I’ll put the link in the show notes. So many of our problems come from trying to hurry through deschooling.

This Friday, I’m hosting a webinar that will show you some concrete examples of how unschooling can cover those subjects you’re worried about. You don’t need to go out and buy curriculum to artificially create an environment where that subject would be used. You may hear Unschoolers say,
”if it doesn’t show up in your Life, you don’t need it!” And that may freak you out a little!

They don’t mean that you’re skipping entire subjects - because some ASPECTS of EVERY subject weaves through your life. And based on your interests and your own experiences, some more than others.
And that’s ok. None of us are identical to each Other - so out Learning isn’t going to be a cookie cutter all 9 year olds need to learn this approach either. 

I’ll go into it in more depth on Friday,I have a lot of examples to show you.  But  remember this: Unschooling makes room for TRULY Individualizing the learning for your child. We aren’t talking lip service  here - we mean it! A kid who loves building contraptions and taping cardboard together should be allowed to keep

doing that - with you offering more cardboard or different kinds of tape, or what about wheels or metal or old sheets? They don’t need to be interrupted to go read from The Classics or show me that they can do a worksheet on fractions. Those will come later - probably when they start measuring for the projects they want to create. 

And… they have their whole life to explore other things. But interrupting projects to cover something you’re worrying about is like putting speed bumps all over a road that just doesn’t need it. Your choice for what they need to know isn’t inherently more important than their choice.
Yours is driven by your own past school experiences - something I really recommend you deschool.
And it’s driven by fear.

Whereas their choices are driven by curiosity and their brain’s desire to seek out more information in that particular direction.

I’m not saying to sit on your hands and wait to be invited into the learning experience.
I’m saying...

Watch more than direct.
Listen more than instruct.
Observe instead of orchestrate.
And then proceed accordingly.

What do you know from your own longer life and experience that might be interesting to your child?
What could help them expand a little in a particular direction?
All the while paying attention to whether they WANT to expand.
They may be happy where they are - that’s ok too.
Learning can happen in waves... not all at one time on a continuous pace. Ebbing and flowing, peaks and valleys.

When we take the school approach... pre-planned curriculum, all kids of a certain age learn certain topics or skills, we are throwing all this information at them - not because they want it. Because it’s all laid out in a systematic way that we as the educator/the teacher has bought into.. But most of it slides off unless that kid had some relevant life experience as a reason to hold onto it.  But the teachers check the box and call it A Good Day for Learning.

No. Maybe a good day for TEACHING, but the learning? That's an inside job that really belongs to the learner.
Let's think about our own history. We memorized it for the test on Friday and didn’t retain it after that… I don’t think we can legitimately call that Learning.

But the difference is what happens when you START with the interests of the learner and you move in THAT direction. Maybe the 7 year old is curious about something that isn’t taught to kids typically until high school biology - are you supposed to tell them to hold that thought for 5-6 more years?
The interest is there and that’s the direction you go. When there’s interest, there’s relevance. Where there’s relevance, the information stays with you. It isticks. And that’s how unschooling works. It’s not some goofy hippie dippy approach. It totally makes sense.  It’s logical. It’s how we learn as adults - once we were released from the school system. Which is quite honestly, becoming more and more outdated as technology and The World, moves on without it.

So, this week, let’s think about how learning weaves through life. Let’s embrace a little more of that unschooling approach. Come to my free webinar on Friday where we will talk about it. Get on my email list so you find out about all the resources I’m creating that could actually help you do this! 

If you listen to this after April 5th, the recording for the webinar will be up at the Unschooling Mom2Mom YouTube channel. I have an entire playlist of past webinars - like what’s a typical day like, or is unschooling too… weird? This is our 4th one for this year! The first Friday of each month!

So that’s enough from me - reach out to get the unschooling support you need.
And I’ll be back to chat with you again soon!