A number of people have recently asked me questions about our family life back in the 1970s and 80s. And I realized that, in all of my books and articles over the years, I haven’t written much about that. So here goes!

When Rolf and I got married in 1970, we had already decided that our future children wouldn’t go to school. So when Heidi turned five in 1977 and Melanie turned five 18 months later, we didn’t send them off to school. (In fact, we didn’t send them off to babysitters of any sort.)

In those days, that was called “homeschooling.” I was never comfortable with that word, because we weren’t schooling and we were seldom home! Today, lots of other terms have been invented to describe the way we lived, such as “unschooling,” “radical unschooling,” “whole life unschooling,” and (one Rolf coined many years ago) “life learning.” However, they all still seem inadequate because they all focus on learning, which most people think of as related to academic education. But there was so much more about our lives that was different from the norm than just the absence of school. In the same way that our daughters learned autonomously, they decided for themselves what to eat, what to wear, when to go to bed and other life issues. They were self-regulating…with whatever guidance they sought from us, of course.

Our lives weren’t full of struggles to get our daughters to follow the rules – because there were no rules or restrictions, and no coercion (although there were some guiding principles, which I list below, and some basic safety considerations). As babies, they were breastfed when they indicated they were hungry and slept when they were tired; they weren’t “sleep trained” or put on feeding schedules. They self-weaned and self-toilet-trained (learning the latter, I think, by example). We didn’t worry about the age at which they began to talk or walk, in the same way we didn’t create a schedule for their learning to read or do math.

Similarly, as they got older, we didn’t dictate their bedtimes; they went to bed when they were tired, rather than when we wanted to get rid of them. They got up in the morning at whatever time they wanted. They kept a somewhat regular schedule and they understood (from experience) that if there was a need to get up early the next morning it worked out best if they went to bed earlier the night before.

They ate what and when they wanted. When they were young, we mostly ate together as a family, at times that worked for all four of us. What they ate was, of course, dictated to some degree by what was in the house – fresh, vegetarian, often home-grown, whole foods – but they had complete autonomy as to what of those foods to eat, when, and how much. They valued the food at home because they had helped grow, bake or cook it. But we weren’t dietary purists; we ate out often at friends’ homes and restaurants, and they experienced their share of candy and other food that I would have considered “junk.” Like most kids, they would go on “food jags,” where certain foods were scorned and certain others favored. But, through experience, they learned balance and to make good choices.

They also chose, from a very young age, what to wear each day. Like everything else in their lives, this was a learning situation and they often changed clothes several times a day, experimenting with various color and other combinations. The results were often eccentric and sometimes entertaining but, when it mattered, they were mostly sensible – coats, hats, and mittens in the winter, cooler attire in the summer.

They didn’t have assigned chores or rewards for completing them. The tasks that support daily life – cleaning, food preparation, gardening, clothes making, laundry, car maintenance, yard word, and so on – had to be done. But their “help” was never required. Consequently, as they grew to an age at which they became aware of the need for such work, they naturally, and without complaining, participated. Or, I should say, they didn’t complain any more than the adults! Most of the time, they were eager participants in whatever was going on at the moment: personal or business work,  fun, conversation…. As they got older and able (and wanting) to contribute meaningfully to our home-based publishing business, they were paid.

Our family was always welcomed into the homes of friends – including the childless ones – because the kids were generally well behaved (meaning they participated in the visits without demanding to be the center of attention or trashing their surroundings.) Inappropriate behavior tended not to be an issue because we tried not to put them in situations they couldn’t handle or that weren’t suited to their needs. When that inevitably wasn’t possible, we found that they would look to us for guidance to deal with new situations. Perhaps because their needs were being met and they were being respected, they were patient with and even enjoyed the times when they were the only children around, and happy to be part of the conversation, or at least listening, watching and learning.

This way of life seemed to evolve naturally and wasn’t modeled on any “experts” or books. In fact, it took awhile before I was able to distill all of it into a “parenting style” or even figure out the common threads. But, like Heidi’s and Melanie’s education, our lives were guided by a few basic principles, which I’ve written about in my book Challenging Assumptions in Education, the other books to which I’ve contributed, and my articles in Natural Life and Life Learning magazines. In summary, these are:

-         trusting that children know what they need and that they will create a structure that works for themselves

-         respecting children and adults alike enough to consult and not wield power over each other

-         modeling appropriate behavior

-         communicating (which includes listening)

-         understanding that each one in a family has a different perspective, which results in a lack of judgment and expectations

Melanie recently told an interviewer that she doesn’t remember a hierarchy, coercion, or control as she grew up. She said that although, in retrospect, she feels like she had a really wonderful childhood, at the time, “it wasn’t my childhood, it was my life, our family’s life. I never felt like I was living under my parents’ roof; it was our family’s house. We didn’t have rules or restrictions and I wouldn’t have done anything differently if I had lived on my own.”

For  the record, she and her sister are now fully functioning adults (Heidi is a financially secure self-employed graphic artist and Melanie is a conservation horticulturalist who runs a native plant botanical garden). And, yes, they are well socialized, dress well, eat well, get enough sleep, and keep their homes clean!