We often stumble across blog posts and articles that kind of hand us a list of the things we need to do as unschooling parents. Basically, we refer to them as the myths of the role of an unschooling parent, and they look a bit like us having to:
- Expose our kids to experiences, knowledge and people.
- Create a safe space for our kids.
- Curate the space so learning can happen.
- Facilitate play and learning.
The focus, again, is on what we need to do and maybe what we need to fix, rather than what we can be and how we show up for our kids.
For us, the important thing in unschooling is really the understanding that our kids, more than anything, need us to do some serious work on ourselves. Because the cue for all growth, learning, development and evolution is the relationship we foster and co-create with our kids.
In order for us to be the best unschooling parents we can be, we believe we need to:
- Deschool our fears, limiting beliefs, oxidized convictions and mindsets so we won’t limit our kids growth and learning.
- Heal from past trauma so we don’t pass them on to our kids.
- Model what it’s like being a responsible and accountable human with agency, so our kids can become that for themselves in their lives.
- Unschool and self-direct our own lives so that we don’t just talk the talk but actually walk the walk.
- Keep on shedding, shedding and shedding anything that comes in the way for freedom, authenticity and trusting and equitable relationships.
When we center the relationship with our kids, we learn how to show up as trustworthy, transparent, honest, vulnerable and authentic humans. It also means we work on dismantling unhealthy and oppressive power structures and replacing them with consent.
This, if anything, is what we need to be doing as unschooling parents. It’s called deschooling, and it’s hard core inner work. It’s about breaking patterns of oppression that exist within us so they don’t show up so much in our relationships with our kids, accepting that we will fuck up basically every day. And that’s okay because we aren’t perfect.
This is why, for us, our role as unschooling parents isn’t about “doing things right”, but rather focusing on the kind of relationships we’re building with our kids. Why? Because relationships are the context in which learning happens.