I secretly suspect that Eleanor Sparks is infact about six people.
If you have not come accross her yet – she is one of the most high profile proponents of homeschooling in Australia, she is a homeschool mum of five kids, she publishes Australia’s main homeschool magazine Education Choices and she is the key organiser […]

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My mum always says, “children are like the paparazzi… you can do no wrong for 99% of the time but if you make a mistake just 1% they will snap you with their photographic memory!”
Over the last 8 months or so i have consciously been applying many new parenting approaches marked by […]

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Just added the unschooling blog button to the bottom right of this site. It links to over 100 unschooling blogs… you are not alone. I particularly love scanning some of these blogs to get a sense of the diversity of approaches and styles under the broad banner of “unschooling”.

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I have previously reviewed Rue Kream’s excellent book “Parenting A Free Child: An Unschooled Life” here. I wont go on about how good the book is again… read the review if you are curious.
It is available internationally direct from the States at www.freechild.info. The good news is that it is now also available in Australia […]

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I have found some egroups to be invaluable for advice, ideas, confidence and support. This is a quick description and my impressions of some of the unschooling and alternative parenting egroups out there…

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Thanks to Alan Thomson for allowing permission to reprint his article “What Home Educators can teach the world about Natural Learning” which you can read here…
Alan is an academic and his article describes an interesting journey into unfamiliar realms of education and “learning” over “teaching” for any academic to come to terms with…

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Was it just me… or when you were a child did you plan out three wishes just in case you happened upon a genie in the lamp? Ok it was just me… but who’ll be laughing when a genie appears in front of you and all you can think of to ask for is an […]

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Homeschoolers make up over 1.1 million people in the USA. Obviously this is a very mixed bag, I remember reading one estimate of unschoolers within that being between 20 to 40% but for the life of me I cannot remember where I read that and how they came to that figure!
What ever the case […]

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I have added a new article entitled “Parenting is Making My Brain Hurt”. This is a rewrite of an older entry which reflected my shift from providing answers and “covering up” problems towards other parenting approaches.
The article covers some major influences in this shift from Thomas Gorden (PET), Solter (Aware Parenting), Naomi Aldolt and […]

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Aletha Solter is controversial amongst some attachment parenting circles for her radical (in the AP community) perspectives on crying and the idea that we should hold children and let them express their emotion rather than for example constantly breast feeding them in such situations (assuming needs like hunger, sleep etc are met). Obviously much more […]

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