<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"></figure>

In this episode of Exploring Unschooling, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about navigating all the needs in our unschooling families. Navigating all the needs can be one of the biggest puzzles of parenthood. In many cases, we’re going from only being responsible for ourselves, to then being in partnership with someone else, to then adding children one by one. And as the children are growing, they each have their own ideas and their own personalities and their own needs. And so, the number of needs that exist in our family at any given time is just increasing as we have more children.

In our conversation, we talk about some common challenges that come up, how to approach problem solving with curiosity, and ways to have conversations with our family that move us from trying to control and direct to collaboration.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey and in your relationships!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello! I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully and I’m joined by my co-hosts Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis.

PAM AND ERIKA: Hello! Hi!

ANNA: Happy to have you both here. Before we get started, I wanted to encourage you to check out the Living Joyfully Shop where you can find Pam’s books, coaching options, and information about the Living Joyfully Network. Also, check out our Substack, When School Isn’t Working, at whenschoolisntworking.substack.com.

It’s a great resource to share with friends who are feeling stuck and when you’re hearing those stories about kids being upset or crying or things not working and people just feeling at their wit’s end. It’s just a good place for that and we would love to have you join us there.

Today on the podcast, we’re talking about navigating all the needs. This is a big topic and I’m excited to have the chance to dig into it today. Erika, would you like to get us started?

ERIKA: I would! I love this topic, too, and it’s been a monthly theme on the Living Joyfully Network which was really fun. So basically, I see navigating all the needs as one of the biggest puzzles of parenthood. In many cases, we’re going from only being responsible for ourselves, to then being in partnership with someone else, to then adding children one by one. And as the children are growing, they each have their own ideas and their own personalities and their own needs. And so, the number of needs that exist in our family at any given time is just increasing as we have more children.

I only have two children, but it can still present so many interesting challenges, because as we’re always saying, people are different, and that includes our kids who we may have even assumed would be like us, but then they turn out to have quite different needs than we do. So I wanted to give a couple of common examples of just where the idea of navigating all the needs might come up and then I’m excited to see what nuances we dive into in our conversation. 

One that seems to come up a lot is when some of us may like to go out of the house to do activities and others don’t as much or as often and so what can we do then?

And another is with sleep. People have different needs for how long they sleep, what time they sleep, the conditions for sleep, and this can be a real puzzle in families. 

And finally another example that comes to mind was during that time of early childhood when we have babies and toddlers and how to fit in the care needs of the adults when the children just have so many seemingly constant care needs. Just the basics like eating, showering, rest, and movement. Sometimes it can just feel overwhelming to try to figure out these kind of challenging moments. 

And what I like about the kind of deep processing and thinking that we do here on the podcast and in the Network and really just on my unschooling journey overall is that kind of processing invites me to slow down, get curious, and really assume that there are ways to figure it all out. Everything can’t always happen at the same time, but there will be solutions that we can find that will address all the needs the best that we can.

And so, I think coming in with that kind of mindset really helps when it starts to feel like there’s just too many competing needs. So, those are my initial thoughts.

PAM: Good ones. I love your examples. Those are pretty common ones that we hear about and see in the Network all the time.

And, for me, and when I’m thinking back to the transition to unschooling, the idea of meeting all the needs, at first it could just feel overwhelming. It’s like, how on earth? Someone needs to kind of judge which needs we’re going to meet and which ones we can’t meet and here’s the most effective slash efficient way to meet those needs. 

And we really feel like we’re doing our best for the people that we love. And it can feel very disappointing, disconcerting when people don’t appreciate all the work we did to think all that through and figure this out. That was a lot of work right there. That’s really when my mantra for myself of being open and curious came in. And it was encouraging to hear from other unschoolers who were further on the journey than I. It is possible it can be done. And so, I’ll try it and see. It was making that shift to being open and curious.

Open to it doesn’t mean me not thinking it through at all. I can have ideas that consider everyone who’s involved and also the bigger picture context that I see that others might not see, etc. But as we were talking about in the last episode people can’t read our minds. If I just show up with a plan that’s the most effective and efficient, then how are you going to get buy in? When people don’t know what’s going on. And when the kids are younger, then maybe that’s your partner. Anybody else who’s involved. 

The communication holds the clues, even if they’re not verbal from our kids. The resistance, the crying, all those pieces are communication to tell us when something that we’re trying to do is or isn’t working and helping. So being open and curious was so helpful just to be open to seeing and hearing other people’s perspectives and what their needs are. 

And sometimes it’s helping them sort out what the actual need is. “I want to do this.” Why? What’s going to be really fun about that? And we can join them in that excitement rather than trying to shut things down right away. If we want to navigate all the needs we need to be open to hearing about them and to actually find or try to find the root of it.

Because maybe I want to go here, I want to go to the park. And if you can get more into the details of it, then it can be a lot easier to find that common ground where we can meet that need. 

Like you were saying, Erika, maybe it’s not right now, maybe it’s okay if we do it in the evening when someone else is home to stay with someone who doesn’t want to go. Just being so curious about, what does that really mean to you? What would feel good about doing that thing? So that we can meet that need. 

Getting to the need rather than the action that someone’s proposing that would meet the need. There’s a distinction, a level, a depth to it.