‘parenting’ Archives
The Roots of Unschooling Denial
I once had a remarkable conversation with someone at a social event. A lawyer and I were happily chatting about many things, including what we each do for a living, when I, in response to a question, casually mentioned my advocacy for life learning (but certainly didn’t try to “sell” it.). All of a sudden, this man became highly defensive [...]
Kids Are Capable of Much More Than We Give Them Credit For
The recent sailing misadventure of sixteen-year-old Abby Sunderland and the successful climbing of Mount Everest by thirteen-year old Jordan Romero have me thinking about skill and ability as related to age. Whenever a kid accomplishes something major, it hits the media because children aren't expected to achieve much in our society. But the [...]
What Really Matters is Now Available
Our latest book is hot off the press! What Really Matters by David Albert and Joyce Reed is subtitled "Two veteran homeschooling advocates discuss what learning is really all about." The official publication date is September 1, but copies are now available for sale (with no shipping!) to friends and subscribers. We are thrilled with all [...]
Unschooling: Doughnuts and Peanut Sauce
The ABC News show Nightline has recently featured “unschooling.” I guess budgets are low and the network is repurposing content – or at least ideas. Last month, one of the Nightline segment “reporters” did a similar piece, with a different family, on the ABC show Good Morning America. It was equally as ignorant, unbalanced, and [...]
More Than the Absence of School
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 [...]
On Homeschooling and Child Abuse
I’ve been putting off writing about the difficult topic of child abuse. My time is at a premium right now. Abuse is a difficult topic. And it isn’t a life learning topic. But some people keep trying to make it one. So I have posted my thoughts and some background on my personal blog. What finally pushed me to write about this is [...]
The Dark Side of Influence
A recent blog post by a dad with kids enrolled in a Sudbury Valley type school (SVS) has prompted me to think once again about how life learning parents relate to their children in a unique way. The blogger was comparing unschooling to the SVS model because someone had once used the oxymoron “unschooling school” to describe a SVS. He came up [...]
Five Requirements for Effective Parenting
In an interview this morning, I was asked to name the five things that I think are crucial for effective parenting. Respect and trust were the first to come to mind; I’ve been talking about them forever as prerequisites for creating an environment in which kids can develop and learn. It took me a little while longer to distill everything else [...]
March/April 2010 Issue Now Published
Subscribers to Life Learning Magazine have just been notified that the password-protected March/April 2010 issue is now available for them to download. You can view the table of contents here and you can subscribe here. We've also posted a short sample article from the issue on the Life Learning Magazine website. Drop by the website and [...]
Why is it scary to honor and trust our children?
Thanks to Kyla Matton for her insightful review of our recently published book For the Sake of Our Children by Quebec author Leandre Bergeron. I know the book is challenging (otherwise, why publish it!?), but I'm wondering why the ideas of honoring one's children (rather than treating them as possessions), allowing them the freedom to [...]