Exploring Unschooling

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the final Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, From Control to Connection. Power and control are pretty insidious, seeping into so many corners of our lives. We talked about dropping the need to be right, considering the context of the moment, and the value of transparent communication. Reaching for control is often a red flag that shows where we might want to dig deeper, to figure out what’s really at play. Moving towards connection helps strengthen our relationships and makes navigating conflicts so much easier. We hope today’s episode is helpful for you in your own relationships! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. * * * We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE QUESTIONS 1. Next time you’re talking with your partner or friend about what to do next, try adding “for me” to the conversation. Like, “The right thing to do, for me, is X.” How does that feel? How does the conversation flow from there? 2. Do you notice yourself grasping for control more often in moments that have a sense of urgency for you? Can you remind yourself that there’s plenty of time? Does that help? 3. Do you feel resistance when someone else tells you what to do? Why? Does it feel like they’ve taken away your choice? Do you purposefully avoid doing that thing now, even if it seems like it might be helpful? 4. Turning that around, do you feel resistance from your partner and/or children when you tell them what to do? What does their resistance look like from your perspective? Now shift and see the situation through their eyes (see episode 387 for more details). TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are so happy you’re here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world. If you’re new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas in these first 14 episodes and have really enjoyed how they’re building on one another. And if you’ve already been enjoying the podcast, we would love if you could share it with someone in your life that you think would benefit from contemplating these ideas. It is super easy to share. Just send them to pod.link/livingjoyfully. From there, they can pick their favorite podcast player and it will take them right to the show in that app. Thank you so much for helping us spread the word. So, back in episode two, we talked about connection and how connecting with another person creates a feeling of being in alignment with them, where each person feels seen and heard for who they are. Yet the cultural and conventional wisdom that surrounds relationships is steeped in power and control, which is almost the opposite of connection. Now, granted, I think many people would answer that they prioritize connection over control, especially in their closest relationships, like with their partner and children. But what’s interesting is that what that looks like day to day can be a lot more nuanced than we first think. Power and control are pretty insidious, seeping into so many corners of our lives. So, this week we want to talk about what the shift from control to connection might look like in our relationships. For me, one of the most impactful paradigm shifts, as I moved away from using power and control as a relationship tool to focusing on connection, was a shift away from needing to be right, which to be clear is not the same thing as being wrong. That’s one of the societal frameworks that keeps us stuck in control-based relationship dynamics, that one person is right and the other is wrong. That right and wrong, black and white thinking is overly simplistic, particularly when it comes to the complexity of being in relationship with another human being. Not needing to be right means not needing to be universally right. It means recognizing that people are different, which we dove into back in episode three. What I can say is, “This is what feels right for me.” We aren’t in competition with the people we love. It is not us versus them. When I don’t feel the need to judge the other person’s choices or interests as right or wrong, I am so much freer to connect with them as the unique person they are and to show up as the unique person I am. For me, releasing the need for the other person to agree that I’m right weaves together nicely with the idea of being open and curious that we talked about a few weeks ago in episode 11. I can know what’s right for me and I’m curious to discover what’s right for them.  ANNA: Yes! I think our culture sets up competition and black and white thinking pretty much from the get-go, especially in school. And while leaning into that paradigm might serve us in that environment, it does not help with our relationships at all. We want to cultivate an environment where we’re learning about each other, not pushing a particular agenda. And understanding we’re not universally right about all the things is a big step. And if I’m having trouble finding that energy, I’ll use my mantra, “Be kind, not right,” because at this point, I’m usually looking at the choice of being right and harming the relationship or being kind and staying connected. And I just always want to stay connected to the people that I love, because it’s from that place that we move with the most ease through our days and through any issues. And over the years, it’s been interesting to see how, when I can refrain from jumping in with my idea of what’s right, I can learn so much. Because we are all so different. We really can see the very same situation completely differently. And when we leave space to see through another person’s eyes, we find that maybe things really weren’t as black and white as we originally thought they were. PAM: Yes. Choosing to give that space to listen rather than jumping in with my two cents was a pivotal shift for me in cultivating connected and trusting relationships. There was space for me to learn so much more about my partner and kids and about the situations and how they saw them. So often, situations were, and are, so much more nuanced than I first thought. So, another valuable shift that has helped me move away from control and focus on connection in my relationships has been recognizing that so much of life isn’t as urgent as we’re led to believe. We first talked about that in episode eight, “There’s Plenty of Time.” And I really do love how so many of these foundational ideas weave together. That’s why they feel foundational to us. You’ll hear us mentioning, oh, this one and this one. So, when something feels urgent, it makes sense for us to be tempted to fall back on control tactics. Because we feel like we need things to happen quickly. We need to solve this fast. But so often, that urgency isn’t real. It’s ingrained through societal messages like, doing things faster is better. The first person across the line wins. But truly, when it comes to relationships, it’s not a race. And doing things in connection is better. So, sure, it can take longer to have conversations and come up with a plan that works for both parties, rather than just telling them what to do and expecting it to be. Yet the resentment that builds in the relationship as a result will eventually need repair. So, I think it’s more like a tradeoff, right? The time upfront to prioritize the connection or the time later to repair the connection. So, for me, the relationship is just much more enjoyable and fun when I prioritize the connection as much as I can versus the ups and downs of control, repair, control, repair. Enough things, when you think about it, really do come up in a relationship that need repair. I don’t need to create more by stepping in and trying to control other people. Because I sure don’t like when they try to do it to me! ANNA: Right! For me, it’s really an energy thing. Like, where do I wanna spend my energy? Because I can tend towards controlling things in the environment, but it’s like, do I want to spend all that energy trying to control humans that don’t want to be controlled? Or do I want to have that connection? Do I want to do that upfront work with those conversations. And for me, that just felt better in my days. It just felt better with my kids. It feels better with my partner. And I don’t know if we can ever mention the culturally embedded sense of urgency too much, because it really is this state that keeps us from tuning into ourselves and to others. And letting go of it is so liberating. When something’s a true emergency, we’ll know, and we’ll act on it right away. Every other time, we can take that pause and tune into the people around us to really understand where they’re coming from and also tune into ourselves so that we can communicate our needs in a way that isn’t pushing through someone else’s consent or running over top of their needs. That self-awareness piece is so critical, and it takes some time to develop, because many of us did not have our needs acknowledged as children. So, it’s hard to even know what we want or why we want it. Teasing apart the cultural shoulds and have tos from our t

We’re back with the fifth episode in our series in which we’re working our way through Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. Today, we’re continuing our exploration of the deschooling phase of the journey with stage nine: Accepting Our Nature. This stage is all about the temptations from our old life that may lead us to abandon or stray from our unschooling quest. Our lives have likely changed quite a bit since we were living in our ordinary world, but, chances are, there are times when our new reality doesn’t match what we first envisioned our unschooling lives would look like. It is in those moments that we can give ourselves grace and accept ourselves exactly where and as we are. We hope you find this episode helpful on your unschooling journey! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE Learn more about Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello, everyone. I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined today by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hi. ANNA/ERIKA: Hello! PAM: And we are back with another episode in our A Field Guide series. We are working our way through my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide, which is framed around the hero’s journey and is a weave of myths, contemporary stories and tales from my own journey. We are deep in the de-schooling phase. In the last episode of this series, episode 417, we dug into the idea of accepting the value of all experiences. As we continue our journey on the road of trials, in this episode, we are exploring the idea of accepting our nature. If you’re newer to unschooling, and this is your first time exploring these ideas, you’re likely dancing with them more intellectually to understand what they mean, and maybe even discover some of their further reaching implications. If you’ve been unschooling for a while and feel like you are already intellectually embracing these ideas, and have actually been bringing them into your family’s lives, now’s the time to maybe peel back some more layers to build more connections and context around them, strengthening your web of understanding with your own experiences. As we’re chatting, thinking about how this relates to things that you have had going on in your world, and building your own wisdom around it, as you move towards believing these in your bones as your own truth, a version that works for you. And all that’s to say, welcome to stage nine. This stage is all about the temptations from our old life that may lead us to abandon or stray from our unschooling quest. Our lives have likely changed quite a bit since we were living in our ordinary world. But chances are, there are times when our new reality doesn’t match what we first envisioned our unschooling lives to look like. There can be times when the stories we tell ourselves and the movies we play out over and over in our heads are more about what we think our lives should be rather than what they are, or what we envisioned when we first heard about unschooling. Maybe that just sounds amazing. All our lives will be perfect, things won’t go wrong, we’ll just do whatever we want. I found it so interesting just to recognize that around this point in our journey, we are far enough away from our old lives, that we might feel a twinge of almost nostalgia for maybe the seeming relative ease of doing things the same way as pretty much everyone else, with parents in control and kids learning conventionally. And when things got challenging, sometimes I’d experienced the pull of temptation to step off the path. And so maybe the trigger is sibling arguments, or time spent on an activity you’re uncomfortable with, or just worry about your child’s learning, they’re not learning X, Y, or Z and, and other kids their age are learning ABC, etc. At first, we might try to kind of ignore our growing frustration, right? Oh, no, no, this is our choice. This is the way it goes. We’re just going to ignore it, keep ourselves busy with other things, bite our tongue, because I’m not supposed to do that if we’re unschooling. Then maybe we start to feel a bit exposed, sure that others see the same challenge, and we fear being judged a failure on this journey, to oh, man, school didn’t work out. This is feeling hard right now. Am I a failure at this, too? And soon, we’re kind of looking around for someone else to blame. I don’t think that was only me. But do these frustrations and fears really mean that we aren’t cut out for unschooling? And hearkening back to our last field guide journey episode, maybe, maybe not. The point is, we are definitely not alone in these fears. Because there is literally a stage for it in the hero’s journey. This inner work in story language, battling with our inner demons is hard stuff. I feel like one of the important insights in this stage is the realization that even though we may try to blame others for our discomfort, our frustrations are really about us, not them, whatever they are. And they’ll just keep confronting us until we no longer ignore them. So maybe we’re tempted to exert a bit of control, like just cajoling your child to do a worksheet or two to prove that they’re learning. We may fall prey to these temptations. But that doesn’t mean our journey is over. It’s worth the effort to figure out what happened and make our way back to the path. It’s living and learning and growing. And this stage is a great time to remember to look to our guides, our children. When I paid attention, I saw them wrestling with challenges, with fears, with temptations to quit on their learning path. And it didn’t take me long to realize that those moments were all valuable aspects of their journey, not things gone wrong. Does that sound familiar? And eventually, I was able to extend that kindness to myself. I realized yet again, that the point wasn’t for me to get strong enough, so I would never be tempted again. I need to understand, I need to believe in unschooling enough that I’m never tempted or worried about it again. But to understand that these moments are part of life, to compassionately recognize the challenges, the temptations to quit, were messages for me and about me, so I could do the work to move through them, which in turn helped me come to accept all facets of myself. Oh, all these parts of me exist, the confident me. “Yeah, let’s do this thing.” The fearful me. “Oh my gosh, what if X happens?” The tempted me. “If they would just listen to me, things would work out so much better.” And just not judge them as good or bad again, but accept them all as part of my nature. That’s part of me as a rich, real human being. ANNA: What came to mind for me here was kind of the idea of quieting the outside noise and recentering, maybe revisiting our why’s, which are things we talked about a lot. If I found myself wondering what things would look like on a more conventional path, I would just slow down, like we talked about last time as well, walk through what it would look like for the individuals in my family. And it didn’t take long to remember why we were here exploring this less traveled path. The conventional path just didn’t fit. And when I was honest, I’m not even sure it was an actual path, but more of an idea of a path in my mind and the vision that we are sold about this path. And that vision just wasn’t a reality, certainly not for us, and maybe not for anyone. In general, I don’t feel like this was an area where I struggled. I had plenty of struggles. But this wasn’t it for me. And I’m wondering if it’s more intense when you’re leaving a conventional path. So you’ve had that experience and the delta and even the community around that other path so that pull, I think, is probably really strong. We were never a part of that system, because everything kind of happened as a cascade of events after Afton’s birth. Our community was outside of the system. So there wasn’t a temptation to go back because there really wasn’t somewhere we’d been. But I think we all had brief curiosities about this path that we could see, that we were hearing about, because we would hear about it from other people, and see it in the media, of course. But I think we were really lucky to have so many people locally and far away in our life that were making similar choices, that those were just little data points versus something that had been a part of our lives before. And so it’s interesting, because looking back now, I wonder, should I have questioned the path more? Because I really didn’t at the time. But then I remember what it was like, and what we were doing, and how in tune we were with each other. And we were doing what was serving us best in those moments. We were super intentional about our choices.  And we all knew that we could make any choice or change our mind to what felt in alignment at any time. For me, it was never really even about the unschooling, it was always about the relationships and living our best life kind of wherever that took us. But it is interesting. Now, I’ll get more caught up in that than I did in the moment where I was. I think I was maybe just being so much more int

We’re back with another On the Journey episode! Pam, Anna, and Erika talked to Living Joyfully Network member Nora McDonald, who was also on the podcast a few years ago. Nora shared an update about her family and spoke about how her unschooling journey has progressed. She also dove deep into a topic that she’s spoken a lot about on the Network, which is cultural differences. Nora is British and she currently lives in Costa Rica. Many of the expectations we take for granted in our home countries do not exist in other cultures. It’s a fascinating angle to consider as we question paradigms and realize that people are different. It was a really interesting conversation and we hope it resonates with you! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE EU340: On the Journey with Nora McDonald We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ANNA: Hello everyone, I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-host Erika Ellis and Pam Laricchia, as well as our guest today, Nora McDonald. Hello to you all. I’m so excited to welcome Nora to the podcast again. She first joined us in episode 340 in January of 2023. Nora is a longtime member of the Living Joyfully network and she brings the most interesting discussions. She loves nuance and to toss around ideas and process all the pieces. And that is definitely my happy place. So I’m thrilled that we can bring a bit of that to the podcast audience. So, Nora, to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everybody’s into right now? NORA: Yeah, sure. My name is Nora. I’m British, but I have now been in Costa Rica for four and a half years. And I’ve sort of been back and forth for nearly 20 years because my husband is Costa Rican. So we have two kids. Ruben is 12. Liam is about to turn 9 next month.  I’m super into food, cooking, and baking. I have joined a cookbook club here where every month people sort of choose a theme and bring all different food to share on that theme. I also sort of accidentally started something similar, kind of on a smaller scale. So I’m doing a lot of cooking at the moment, which I’m really enjoying. I also like making British food as well, a little link with back home. I also really love history. I’ve been sort of rediscovering history, having really liked it as a child. I spend a lot of my time listening to history podcasts and reading history books. Everything history at the moment, which has been super fun. I also really like board games, which has slightly fallen by the wayside because of all the cooking. But I have discovered that playing online with friends is a really good way to stay in touch with friends and family at home and play some fun board games. So that’s me, I think at the moment, those are my main things.  Luis, my husband, is, I feel like I’m the humanities one and he’s the kind of science and tech one.  I currently refer to him quite a lot as the IT department. He’s very handy. He’s very into computers and engineering and electronics and taking things apart and putting things back together again. He’s also super into water polo. So he goes and plays water polo with people that he has played with since he was at university several times a week. He’s super into that. That keeps him busy.  And then Ruben and Liam are very into the same kind of things. They’re both big gamers.  They love Roblox. Not really any specific trend. They go exploring everything that Roblox has to offer and lots of YouTubers talking about Roblox and different things. And then apart from that, they don’t have the kind of hobbies with a capital H. I was thinking about all the things they like and it’s these sort of little things. So they’re really into the reboot of She-Ra recently, which I do super recommend. But also they really like going to the beach. They like going to the pool.  Ruben’s got certain books that he’s really into. He’s really into the Dogman ones. There’s a series called Hundred Things to Know About Money and Food. He loves those so much. Ruben really likes it when it rains and he can snuggle up on a rainy afternoon, which is good because it’s the rainy season. So, there’s just a lot of different things going on, I guess, with them. And then Liam is really into any kind of transport and so buses and trains and planes and helicopters, which I really like because he used to be really into them. He used to be really obsessed with level crossings. And then he sort of lost that a bit and was like, oh, no, no, I’m much too old for toys. And now he’s come back into it. And he’s constantly wanting to look up what toy he can buy. Like an airport or train tracks. And he does Roblox games as well. So he’s doing a lot of flying planes on Roblox recently. So that’s really a multi-platform interest, which is fun to see. So, I think that’s us. ANNA: I love that. It’s just always fun to get that glimpse of everyone and just what’s happening because it’s so unique and fun. I love it. ERIKA: I love it. It’s reminding me of something we were talking about earlier, which was how parents are also pursuing their own interests and how that can just be so cool to think of the whole family as we all are doing the things we’re interested in and kind of inspiring each other in that way. PAM: And for me, I love the reminder that capital H hobbies doesn’t need to be a thing. So often people are like what’s their passion? What are they super interested in? What’s their big hobby?  And to be just reminded that it doesn’t need to be one thing. You said they don’t really have hobbies. And then you list it off a whole bunch of stuff for each of them. So I thought that was great.  Now, I wanted to ask since it has been almost four years since you’ve been on the podcast and the kids are getting older now, I can’t believe when you said he is about to turn nine. I’m wondering what has surprised you the most or how things have changed since we last spoke. NORA: Yeah, it was really interesting. I was reading the transcript. One of the things is I’d forgotten how hard it was to go anywhere in the car because that has totally changed. They’re still not super big fans of long trips. But it was amazing to read back and be like, oh, my God. That was a huge part of my life. And so it is really nice when you see, OK, that has really got easier. So there are little things like that. The other thing I was thinking about is I’ve done a lot of research into neurodiversity. And so I think I have a different understanding of my family, myself. I think there’s a lot of neurodiversity happening, which has been really helpful just in terms of seeing different advice, the way that brains can work differently, all of that kind of stuff. So that’s been helpful. We haven’t felt the need to get any diagnoses as yet, but it’s still been really, really helpful.  And then the other really big one that I’ve posted about a lot in the network is as I was working through my process was sort of changing where I feel I stand as a parent in terms of unschooling and realizing that I was sort of expecting a certain type of child to materialize as I unschooled. And I know there is not one way to unschool. And I know that everybody’s different. But I had just sort of encountered enough stories of these sort of certain types of unschooling kids where they’re very, they take the initiative. They want to do a deep dive in something. They want all the materials about one topic or they want to do one big capital H hobby and do all of the stuff. And they will ask you these sort of deep questions as they’re going to sleep or as you’re in the car and they approach a lot of interesting learning that way. And my kids just never became those kids. And I really appreciate being in the network because I was sort of seeing everybody else’s stories and stuff. I was OK. This is not my parenting. This is who these people are. I’m not making a mistake and making that happen.  But I do think I needed to work out what I actually want my approach to be. Because I think for a while I really really really stepped back and just sort of thought OK. I was sort of seeing it as me being in charge. And then I started unschooling was like OK well I’ll just put them in charge. Because I tend to pendulum from one side to the other.  But I do think that was actually a really important part of the process for me because it meant that I could release my agenda, release everything I thought we should be doing. I could be focusing on observing them, getting to know them on a whole other level, understanding what worked what didn’t work. But at a certain point I felt a bit like I’m trying to be a butler. I’m bringing you the snacks and doing the things and doing all of this but sort of be nobody in the corner. And then I was like, I don’t think this is the parent I want to be. I didn’t think it was really working for us as a family. Because yes and my kids are not really take the initiative type kids. They will just stay at home and play Roblox and go on YouTube and be there and seem very happy. But then they will get grumpy, and I noticed that actually it wasn’t really working for them either to be doing this. I t

Pam and Anna interviewed three former teachers who are all unschooling parents and members of the Living Joyfully Network. Erika Ellis, Jen Hollis, and Michelle Kren shared their experiences becoming teachers as well as their thought processes as they chose unschooling for their own families. They talked about their changing views of education and how their roles as teachers helped shape their ideas of parenting. It was a fascinating window into a very common phenomenon – teachers becoming unschoolers! We hope the conversation sparks some insights for you. Watch the video on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello everyone, I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and today I’m joined by my co-hosts Erika Ellis and Anna Brown, as well as our guests Michelle Kren and Jen Hollis. Hello to you all. So, today’s episode is a panel style featuring teachers who became unschoolers. And Erika is joining Michelle and Jen as we explore aspects of their journey and reflect on this very interesting perspective. So, I’m very much looking forward to our conversation. Anna, would you like to get us started? ANNA: I would. So, first, thanks for joining us. I’m kind of excited about this one. I think it’ll be an interesting conversation because it is actually really wild how many teachers turned unschoolers I’ve met over the course of these last 25 years. And it makes sense, right? Because teachers deeply know what’s happening in education. They’re passionate about it. It’s something that’s important to them. So, it really makes sense. But I can’t wait to hear about each of your unique journeys. So, this first question will just be, tell us briefly about your journey to becoming a teacher. What drew you to the field? How did it unfold for you? What did that part look like? And I’m going to start, Erika, with you and then we’ll kind of move around to the rest. ERIKA: I’m excited about this too. It’s something that honestly at this point I don’t think about that often, but I also have met a lot of teachers. And so, yeah, it’s just very curious. I was only a teacher in public school for two years before I had children. When I left school, I was planning to be in film production, which I did for several years. But that field out in LA is mostly project by project. And when we were thinking about having children, it seemed a little bit risky for both me and my husband to be finding job by job what we were going to do next. And so, I was looking for things that I could do that would be more steady and just know what I was going to get paid for the year, basically. And so, that was kind of where I started. But many years before that, as a kid, I wanted to be a teacher because I loved school. I loved being a student. I loved curriculum. I loved tests. I just loved everything about it. And so, it wasn’t far from my mind as a possibility of something that I could do. But then, of course, as we grow, we learn and change our minds about things. And so, I hadn’t thought about it until I was really just looking for some more stability. And the way my mind works is like I’m a scanner. I am interested in many, many things. And so, there were always things I could pull from, like I was in film production, but my undergrad was in biopsychology. So, I was like, I can teach science. I could do different options. And so, when I was thinking about a stable job, something I would be able to do in the area where I was, I thought about getting a teaching credential and teaching high school science. And that whole process was actually really easy for me. It seemed like a good fit as far as the pay is pretty good. The union in LA for teachers is really great. And so, I got good benefits. And it just drew me in that this would be good for our family financially. And I just, I love learning. I love science. I love kids. There were lots of things that I was like, this is gonna be great. But I never knew how long I would stick with it because I also envisioned myself being a stay-at-home mom. I really wanted to devote myself to really focusing on connection with my kids. And so, since we knew we were planning on starting our family, I didn’t know what the whole journey would look like. And so, I told my husband, Josh, that from the start, you’ve got to be ready for this to last two years or 50 years. I just don’t know. And I have figured out the math. It’s going to work either way. But is that fine with you? If I put all this effort into it and then I walk away from it, is that gonna freak you out? And he’s like, no, we always figure it out. I definitely went into it not sure how the whole process was going to go. But there were things I loved about it. I loved the topics, I taught integrated science. So that’s a little bit of biology and a little bit of physics and a little bit of chemistry and a little bit of earth science. And so, that was very fun. And the kids, of course, were amazing. And I don’t have to get into all of the details of what happened later. But I just, I definitely learned a lot about, what even, what is this? I started questioning things a lot more than I did when I was a student in school, because I could really see the whole picture of what we’re asking of these kids. And I definitely started to change my mind about how much I loved school at that point. ANNA: Yeah, oh my goodness, I can totally imagine that. So Michelle, let’s go to you next. And then we’ll go to you, Jenna. MICHELLE: Okay, it’s funny that Erika got about two years of teaching in because that’s the same amount of time of teaching that I got in. Like her, I did want to be a teacher for forever since probably about second grade. I loved my teacher. I loved to play school and everything. And I was pretty good at performing in school. I loved to babysit. I loved kids. So it just kind of made sense. So, I worked well in school so that I could get a scholarship so I could go to college so I could be a teacher. Go on the path, do the things. And I really felt like I wanted to help kids at a foundational level, that I wanted to be in on the ground floor because I felt like as students got older and if they weren’t supported in the early years, that the problems just kept compounding. And that whene they got to high school, you have this kid that’s hated school for all these years, it felt like they’re doomed now. So I really wanted to be in on the ground floor. I did my student teaching in second grade and enjoyed that experience. I actually, in one of my phases, got to be in a classroom that was first and second grade. It was kind of nice to have the youngers and the olders just to have that little bit of a different dynamic where it’s not so based on age. There’s a little bit more flexibility in that.  I got married right out of college and moved to where my husband was and I couldn’t quite get a job right away. So I did substitute teaching, which I enjoyed. I enjoyed the flexibility. I enjoyed the variety of it. Like, I don’t know what grade I’m going to be in today and what the kids are going to be like and all of that. I liked coming with a teacher bag of some books I liked if we had a few extra minutes to read to them before recess or whatever. I liked that part.  But then I did end up, once we moved again, working in a small Hebrew academy. That’s where I taught for two years. The only availability was to teach fifth grade my first year. And then it was fifth and sixth grade my second year. And so that’s what I did, which was really interesting because the fourth grade teacher, as I was coming in, I was thinking, oh, she’ll be able to mentor me and help me. She’s got so much experience and she can help me, give wisdom to me.  She told me, oh, this class was the best class. You’re going to love it. These kids, they’re all great students and everything. And they were, they were great. But then we had a couple other students get added to the mix very shortly after. And that just kind of threw everything upside down. And I’m trying to adapt for all the different needs of all the different children and everything like that.  It was quite challenging, I just felt a lot of burden or pressure, just trying to rack my brain on how can I meet the needs of this kid? And this kid and this kid. This kid can read college level and this kid can read like second grade. And how am I supposed to meet the needs of all these kids? So, yeah, that’s kind of my journey to becoming a teacher. ANNA: Okay, thank you. Jenna. JEN: When I think about this question, it’s sort of like, where do I begin? Do I take it all back to my early childhood years? Which, you know, always looking forward, things don’t tend to make sense. So I find it really interesting that we as parents and teachers get so fixated on the child’s future. When you look back at anyone’s life, could anyone really say that? Yes, I knew that I wanted to be this and my path was this clean sequence of events. And so when I think about my path into becoming a teacher, I actually didn’t want to become a teacher. I never really thought about it. I actually wanted to be a chef at one point. And as I was going about my experie

We’re back with another On the Journey episode! Pam, Anna, and Erika had fun connecting with Living Joyfully Network member Julia Triman. Julia was on the podcast with Pam back in 2021, when she talked about her unschooling stories. It was really cool to hear how things have changed and how they’ve stayed the same in her family of four. Julia shared about her family’s latest passions and what has surprised her the most about her unschooling journey. She also talked about her interest in quilting, how she followed the threads of her new interest, how it grew into a business, and how it all ties into the paradigm shifts she’s made through unschooling. It was a really inspiring conversation and we hope it resonates with you! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE EU264: Unschooling Stories with Julia Triman We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I am Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully. And I’m joined by my co hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia, as well as our special guest today, Julia Triman. Hello to you all.  I’m very excited that we get to talk with Julia today. I met her right when I joined the Living Joyfully Network in 2020. And I’ve had so much fun connecting with her over the years. Julia was also on the podcast back in February 2021, when her kids were just three and five. I encourage everyone to check out episode 264 if you would like to hear more about her unschooling journey. And we can’t wait to hear an update five and a half years later. So to get us started, Julia, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everyone’s interested in right now? JULIA: Definitely. And I’m so excited to be back. This is really fun. So, we are similar to what we were five years ago. We still live in Frederick, Maryland in the US. We’re not terribly far from Washington, DC. And we’re still a family of four humans and two cats. Our cats are getting a little older. They’re aging a bit, but they’re still very much part of the family every day. So as far as what we’re interested in, I’m going in the same order I went the last time.  Starting with Dan. Dan and I have been together for many years. And he loves being outside, trail running, open water swimming and biking. He is a triathlete and he also does each of those activities by themselves. He absolutely loves to read in his spare time. One of the things I love is he’ll just go, so I’m a library person. When I go I want this very specific book and I get the hold for that specific book. Dan is a browser. So he’ll go to the library and he will come home with a backpack completely full of books. But for me, it’s a thrill because then I get to see each book and see all the things that he found, all these little treasures that he’s interested in. And the last important thing to note is Dan absolutely loves good food. He likes cooking and also eating and finding delicious tasty foods to eat. Going to our farmer’s market is another personal hobby of his. Cody, which is kind of amazing to even say this out loud. But Cody is 11 now. And he right now I would say is very into animation, both watching different animated shows and also making his own animation. He’s also still very into music. And the biggest game he’s playing right now is called Terraria. And he and a friend have been working through that quite a bit in the last couple weeks and really enjoying that game. And Nora is eight. So she’s eight at the time that we’re recording this, but she is very soon gonna be nine. So by the time it comes out, she will be nine. Her absolute biggest thing she’s into now is connecting and playing with her friends 100%. She also loves and she has for her whole life, like creating and making things. And right now that’s investing a lot of time in beading and also very recently bedazzling. That’s the newest most exciting thing that’s happening on our porch these days.  But she also combines those things. She likes making things to gift to her friends. That is probably her top occupation the last week or two or three is just using these things that she loves to create and gifting them to friends. It’s just a big thing for her right now. And then the last thing I wanted to say about Nora, she also has recently really been enjoying when we travel or go on a day trip, anytime we’re exploring or seeing something new. She’s very into that these days. And when we do travel and stay at a vacation home or a hotel, she just loves every single one from the moment we walk in the door, she just loves exploring a new place to live in a way. And so that’s just been a really fun thing that I would say more recent than maybe the last time we chatted. So the three of us are also deep into the Percy Jackson book series right now and all three of us are loving it. One of them will say we need to read a lot tonight. We need extra time because we’ve got a lot to get through. And I’m excited, we’ve decided we’re going to do book one, season one, book two, season two. There’s a series I think on maybe Disney plus that we haven’t watched yet, but we’re going to do that soon too.  So, I looked back and I was thinking about it. As for me, I don’t think I was a quilter. The last time we recorded a podcast which, just like the kids’ ages, is mind blowing to think about because quilting has just become such a big part of my life now. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But I absolutely love quilting. And what it’s become for me now is a creative outlet, a way of expressing myself artistically and creatively. But I’ve also very recently become a quilting teacher. And so one of my hobbies these days is coming up with new creative quilting workshops, just like how can I come at it from a different angle, and a different topic. I just get a little zing of a thrill just making up new quilting workshops. And I do have at least a few other things I enjoy besides quilting. Hiking and yoga are still really big. And I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about the philosophy of creativity, which kind of stems from my quilting and art interest, but it’s also a separate passion or interest.  The last thing about us is we’re also joining our first ever homeschool co-op this fall, which is something I’ve always kind of been curious about. And I’m excited that the timing and the co-op we’re going to try just hit everyone at just the right moment. I’m excited to just see what that might be like for all of us to have like a regular group that we’re meeting up with every week.  ERIKA: Yeah, that was awesome. I’m so excited hearing all the things and all the things that have changed. And just picturing all that you’ve gotten to do since we talked to you last time. I just feel like that’s really cool. And that you could have such a big part of your life as quilting, in such a short period. We never really know where our journeys will take us. But yeah, that’s super inspiring. ANNA: Yeah, that’s what struck me about the quilting too. I’m thinking, oh my gosh, we may not even know what’s going to be our main passion five years from now. And that’s the same for kids too, right? There may not be a well worn mapped path of how we get there. Things just show up. That really struck me too. It’s amazing. PAM: It is. I had fun. I tried my hand at Terraria as well.  It was just fun to hear and have an idea of how much they’re figuring out as they’re working their way through it. I think that is super cool. That’s why I love hearing snapshots. And then snapshots from the same family over time. Because yes, unschooling kids have a wide range of interests. And also an unschooling child can often have a wide range of interests. And I don’t want to leave out the ones who have a lifelong passion about something, but the window changes over time, and the different ways they approach it, the different ways that they’re diving in because a passion can just be a window to so many different things. JULIA: It’s always so fascinating to hear that. And that’s funny that you mentioned those two things right next to each other, because we were having a conversation recently about Cody’s interest in Terraria and how he and his friend had tried the game. I don’t know if it was a couple of months ago, maybe even a year ago, and it didn’t really click at that time. And so some period of time later, it is that window. It is just the right time for several reasons. And it’s fascinating for both of them right at the same time. So that’s been really cool to talk with him about, sometimes you might try a game and maybe it is really interesting, but it’s just not the fit for that time. PAM: Mm hmm. And sometimes you’ll see games or any interest, but just using games as an example, how something will click and you’ll play for a while and that was really cool. And then you move on. And then you’ll find it’s circling back a few months, a few years later, and there’s a completely different aspect. And that’s what they’re diving into and exploring. So many games are rich in that way that they don’t have just one thing, especially a game like Terraria. It’s very much a sandbox. JULIA: It’s got so many different aspects