That was the question from our now 5 year old daughter yesterday. She had just heard children talking about school. She asked, “will I ever have to go to school? Even when I am eleven?” (it’s always eleven… its her favourite number).
We explained that she never would. She has been asking more questions about how […]

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This one is definitely worth a read. Long but gives a good sense of radical unschooling. It airs the usual criticisms – that it wont work for children who are “not questioners”… which misses the point that if children are given space to follow their interest and develop self motivation that they will. I think […]

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one of the big shifts we made with our move towards radical unschooling is the TV question. We had no TV and since the shift after discussions with our soon to be 5 yr old daughter we bought a portable dvd player. We have been built up a modest library for her already and we […]

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Today our daughter caught her first wave
It was on a body board at Brunswick Head beach. Just a few months ago she was scared of water. A few weeks ago she would not go to any water with waves. Yet today we could not get her out.
At the same time Anne pointed […]

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Just finished the book review of Rue Kream’s Parenting a Free Child: An Unschooled Life.
It is a fantastic book which as you can see from the review I highly recommend to anyone curious about or doing radical unschooling. At times extremely challenging it will surely leave you forming strong opinions either way.
Other books I intend […]

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They said it would happen on the egroups and the books. For the last two months we have not been imposing expectations on our daughter. When she asks for things we help her get them.
On occasion she would call me to her room only to ask me to pass her something a few feet away. […]

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I recently wrote an article entitled An Unschooling Journey – from Control to Connection which you can read by clicking here.
I wrote it for Kindred magazine (formerly Byron Child Magazine) who will hopefully be publishing it in their June edition.
I have been very motivated to write such an article because although anne & I feel that […]

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We can see our daughter gaining balance already. We have been partly unregulating for about 2 months and totally unregulating for just over a week. She is still exploring the novelty of it but we can see the changes already.
From having no TV to her having her own portable DVD player and a relatively constant […]

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Recently our daughter had a melt down when a mother who we met for the first time asked her to not sit on the curb. A number of factors at play:
- she believed that the mum did not trust her (that the mum thought she would run onto the road)
- she did not know what […]

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We have taken the plunge and decided to unregulate everything. After almost two months of steady movement in this direction, this decision came relatively suddenly just a week ago.
Anne and I have managed to connect with a new level of trust with our daughter. We really do believe that she is up for this and […]

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