Cecilie Conrad: 0:14

So today we're finally back. For us it's finally because I've been sick for a while. For the listeners it could be just five minutes ago you turned off the previous episode. We feel we're finally back to record episode 12 of season two. I'm really happy to be around my friends Sarah and Sue. Again Welcome to both of you.

Sue Elvis: 0:37

Hi Cecilia, hi Sandra, hello, hello, hello.

Cecilie Conrad: 0:42

I'm looking forward to talking, chatting again. It's going to be nice. We promised to talk about freedom. Freedom and choices, making choices. Freedom is this word people throw around. We're free to do whatever we want. It has this connotation of I don't know positivity and also some sort of bravery.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:09

I recently, I want to say I read the book, but actually I didn't finish it yet. There's this book out and it's only in Danish at this point because it's quite new. It's a Danish I wouldn't say philosopher, but I think he's well, his education is anthropology. The book is called the Price of Unfreedom. It's quite interesting about how we somehow allow for a lot of our freedom to be taken away. Our freedom to be taken away. Usually the arguments are something about safety or convenience or comfort or social choices, but maybe it has become a little too much and we forget to talk about what is the price of letting go of freedom and we talk a lot about the price of freedom and not too much about the price of unfreedom. I'm reading that book and I have the guy on the other podcast, self-directed. I'll put in the show note which episode I can't remember. His name is Dennis Nermag.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:13

So, as we're talking about freedom today. I think we could just start by the core definition, the negative definition, not negative as in not good, but the basic notion, philosophically, of freedom, which is the freedom to do whatever you want to do, no one to stop you, there's no one to tell you what to not do. That's the basic freedom and in the core of that, once you start thinking about it, that could go wrong in so many ways. So most people who talk about basic freedom talk about you're free to do, you have the right. You're born with this right to freedom or actually right. You're just born with this freedom. You're here and you can make your own choices and do whatever you want to do, as long as it's not taking away freedom from anyone else. That's the moral code, the basic moral code, and I find that notion quite interesting. It's not freedom from a lot of things, freedom from paying tax or freedom from school, or freedom from curriculum or freedom from in-laws, it's just freedom to make your own choices, but make them within the frame of thinking about. Are you receiving any more than that basic right to make up your own mind? And I know that Sandra very soon will get the torch and have some critique of the word freedom, and I'm sure I will agree with Sandra, because I usually do.

Cecilie Conrad: 3:52

But at the same time, I think for me, actually, it is in the core of why I unschool, why we became an unschooling family. It is because we believe in making our own choices and we want our children to learn to make their own choices and while doing it, thinking about other people and the planet. You know everything in their context. I'm making this choice and what's the impact? And is that okay and am I okay with that? Is this the way to go forth?

Cecilie Conrad: 4:25

And I think living in a more structured life, world where you might I mean school, is the thing we took out of that equation.

Cecilie Conrad: 4:35

The big thing Someone else is telling you what to do, how to do it and whether you did it right or not all the time, and that stops the flow of making your own choices. And it means that, growing up those 10 years my kids are not in school. They get to make a lot of choices and have a lot of experience with making choices, their own choices, and also taking whatever consequence or ripple effect is off that choice they made. And this is, I think, very for us, a core element of the basic education we want them to have to stand on their own legs when they are young adults and know what it means to make a choice, know what it means to stop and think about what you're doing, know what it means to evaluate a choice Was this a good choice or not? And would I do differently next time? So, even though I'm ready to listen to the critique of this whole oh, we're so free lifestyle, I still do think that it's a centerpiece for me and for our family and for our choice of becoming unschoolers.

Sandra Dodd: 5:52

I think that it's much easier and healthier in discussions about unschooling and learning and families to talk about choices that now you have more choices than you had before. And look how many choices we have and how much room and time we have to make more choices, because that's hard to argue with. But when people say, oh, we're going to be free, my children are so free, we're so free, I've seen that abused and misunderstood to the point that families aren't getting along well and we might get to worst case scenarios depends how the conversation goes. But English, as usual, has too many words and it makes it more confusing because we have no ideas of freedom and freeing. So if a child is in school and feeling really trapped and unhappy, very miserable in school, the parents can free him from that.

Sandra Dodd: 6:41

The other word we have is liberation. Liberation is done by somebody else for sure. So if you're liberated, somebody came and saved you and freed you. So I understand that when people are first unschooling they can have those feelings like I used to be stuck here. I used to have to have to do these things without choices and now my parents came and rescued me and now I have choices. But if they say I am rescued from. I'm free of this or free from this, not just plain ordinary vanilla free. So that's where I, that's where I would like to go. First is how much better it is to think of the choices that you can make once you're not involved in so much compulsion and structure.

Cecilie Conrad: 7:27

So that is also my centerpiece. You know, making choices of your own and the two layers you can make all kinds of, and the two layers you can make all kinds of decisions and actually during just a regular day you make a lot of decisions and I like I personally like my free life that it's not pre-planned too much. When I get up in the morning I don't have a structure, but I also like the broader perspective to stop and think about. Is this the organization of my days, in plural, that I want? Am I, on a general base, doing the things that make me healthy and happy and am I contributing in the way I want to on a larger scale? And I do like seeing my children do the same thing. Is it freedom? I don't know.

Cecilie Conrad: 8:30

I think if we are saying that. So there's a different conversation. I've had a few times recently that also evolves around the word freedom, because I'm in this traveling community and the thing with the travelers is that it's very hard for them to commit. Most of the nomadic people I know they're not committing, they like and they call it freedom. They like the freedom. I don't know where I'll be in October freedom, they like the freedom. I don't know where I'll be in October and I like that. I can just be spontaneous and do whatever.

Cecilie Conrad: 9:05

I understand that a lot of nomadic people also paid high price to become nomadic. They let go of a lot of comfort and security and maybe a lot of nostalgic things like their house and to get this life of moving around, and so the freedom is the prize somehow. And the thing is just, we've discussed a few times in the community how, if that door is just open and there is no commitment, there are lots of options that we lose if we don't commit. But we have to make some choices, we have to make some structure. If I'm telling people where I am in November and I can say that now where it's June, well my friends can align and maybe I can read a book about the place where I'm going and maybe I can beforehand make sure that I know what festivals are in that area at that time, and maybe I realize, oh, it's going to be cold, maybe I should buy a woolen base layer instead of getting sick. So sometimes there's also layers of freedom, a freedom inside a restriction. Am I making any sense If you commit?

Sandra Dodd: 10:26

right now to where you're going to be in November. You've just taken away some of your own choices. Yes, Because you have to. You've built yourself a have to because other people are expecting you to do something. So it's just people trade off. People will be on a sports team or in a play where they voluntarily commit to something that's going to curtail their freedom. It's going to give them a schedule that they have to adhere to until that season or that play is over. That's normal. And if the government's not forcing you to be in that play or on that sports team, it's still about choices.

Cecilie Conrad: 10:58

But I'm also giving myself choices. If I choose to be on the sports team, I have the choice of working with my ability with this sport. I have the option. Can we? Where is our? Where's the concept of options here? So there are choices and options. If I commit to something, it gives me a different set of options. So what I'm usually saying when we talk about commitment in the traveling community is commitment gives me a different kind of freedom because it gives me a different set of options.

Sandra Dodd: 12:21

I don't think commitment provides freedom, because you're committing your whole family. If you have to be somewhere, they have to be there too. Yes, Not for life, it's not for once. You join this, once you enter this government school, you're going to be here for the next 10 years, or however many years it is.

Sandra Dodd: 12:39

I think compared to school, unschooling can seem like total freedom. Compared to school at home, it can seem like total freedom. Compared to school at home, it can seem like total freedom. And so there's that first celebratory feeling of I am liberated. But I've seen in some families the parents needed that more than the kids did. The kids would kind of like some closeness and hugging and structure. And the parents are like closeness and hugging and structure and the parents are like my whole life I've been waiting for this. And the parents themselves kind of go crazy and make it about their own freedom and the kids are like mom, hello, what about dinner? And so I've seen some families where the parents kind of go a little far to celebrate their wild freedom. And because it's an international discussion and you're talking about meeting up with people in different countries in Europe who have come from all over the world, all over the place.

Sandra Dodd: 13:35

I think it's worth pointing out that everybody lives somewhere. Everybody lives in a town. In whatever layer of bureaucracy you have. I'm in a town, in a county, in a state, in a nation. I have all kinds of people expecting and requiring all kinds of things of me and there are very few people who they might think that they don't want the government requiring anything of them. But if their neighbor's being hateful or neglectful, they're going to want the government to make that stop.

Sandra Dodd: 14:07

So there's a balance there too. How much freedom do you want for every parent to do whatever they want to do? And I still think, if you go back to choices, you're better off. I chose to do this. They're choosing to do something else. Now I need to decide, would choose whether to call social services on my neighbors or not, and sometimes unschoolers become the people who live in glass houses. They need to be careful, yes, Because whatever the neighbors are doing, it's probably not as weird as what we're doing. So it's good to be cautious and be courteous and be responsible with the choices and the options you have, and be courteous and be responsible with the choices and the options you have.

Sue Elvis: 14:47

Sue, tell us more. This is sort of where we started with freedom, when. I don't want to go over the back story of how we got to unschooling again, but we unschooled, we went off track and we came back. But in that time, in between unschooling and unschooling again, I got to the point where I was so stressed out when I knew we had to make some changes and I thought about unschooling and I thought we won't have to do anything if we unschool, that I'll have the freedom to do nothing, and that sounded very attractive to me that all of my commitments would be gone, because I had the wrong idea about what unschooling was. But I thought isn't that a fantastic way to live, that you don't have to do anything. But I've since discovered that that's not what freedom's all about. And then I think we all have our own.

Sue Elvis: 15:52

Freedom might be at the center of all our lives and, cecilia, you've shared about what freedom means to you. But over the years, what freedom means to us is that what you said everybody is free, and I agree with that. But everybody also has a responsibility to use their freedom wisely, and what I think for our family, what I've come to believe, is that we all have the freedom to make right choices, but what is right? Right for other people, but also right for us? And I think at the end of the last episode we were talking, cecilia, about choices, and are mistakes bad choices, or are they just different choices? And so I guess it depends on what we think is right and wrong. But that's at the center of our unschooling life is that everybody, hopefully, with these good relationships that we've been talking about, we can teach our kids what is right and what is wrong. We can pass it on or we can share by example, by our discussions, whatever, and we hope that our children will make the right choices with their freedom. And that's to me what freedom is all about. It's choice, like Sandra said, but it's.

Sue Elvis: 17:21

I got this idea of right choices right for other people around, we all live in society, we all live within families, but also right for ourselves, because there's certain things we could do, but they're not right for us. We won't be happy, they're destructive or whatever, and thinking that if we unschool, I wouldn't have to do anything ever again was obviously the wrong choice, the wrong idea, and if we had put that one into action, it would have been chaos and not the right choice at all. But I think a lot of people do have this idea that if they are in schooling you see them on social media oh, we're on the beach, we're free, we're living this wonderful life. But what does that look like? Just getting up every day and doing whatever you like? Let's go down to the beach. I had nothing wrong with going to the beach, we did it lots of times but is that the central part of unschooling? And to people who unschool in that way let's do whatever we like. Does it last very long?

Sandra Dodd: 18:42

I've seen chaos. I've seen families jump too far too fast and not know how to recover and it's sad. And very many people have come back and said I wish I hadn't done that. They'll just the day that they decide to read about unschooling. The next time they get a chance they tell their kids okay, guess what, you can eat anything you want to. You never have to go to bed, there's no more bedtimes, you can do whatever you want to. And the kids are like why? You know what? And so the kids haven't done all the reading the mom's done. They don't know what she's talking about and it can just cause a lot of confusion and lack of faith in mom's stability and intellect. What is she talking about? So that's a problem.

Sandra Dodd: 19:28

Also, I've seen some parents when they didn't understand how unschooling could work, how, if you make a rich life, there's learning all the time If you have like. We had one of the best discussions we've had as a group here. I think it was conversations about the value of conversations and how learning happens just from discussing things, answering questions. But parents who don't know that, who think that unschooling is just a wild freedom, doing nothing, you know being crazy every day. Some of them have told their kids. Well, I told him he was free to choose to do whatever he wants to. He's free to choose to learn whatever he wants to, but he needs to decide because he's responsible for his own learning. And then the parents want to sit back and do whatever they do, separate from the kids, and the kids will be free to choose what they learn, which is not how unschooling works.

Sue Elvis: 20:17

That's a false idea that I had at that time, and so we didn't choose unschooling. We got to it gradually, naturally, and we didn't even realize we were unschooling in the end, but as a choice. That's the idea I had and I decided that, although it sounded pretty good, it wasn't right. But to you, sandra, saying that, I've had a lot of people say to me also we started unschooling and my kids can do whatever they like, so they're choosing not to do anything. I find it hard to believe that a child won't do anything but maybe not do what the parents feel is valuable. Maybe they're watching a lot of TV, on YouTube, whatever, and that's not what the parent has in mind, so that's a problem. And then the parents take away that choice and tighten up, take away the freedom and go back to where they were.

Sandra Dodd: 21:19

So the parents. In almost every case I've ever seen like that, the parents didn't understand unschooling. They hadn't de-schooled very well. They didn't know what math could be outside of a page of calculations. They didn't know. They're not wise to the value of going to a movie and telling someone what you saw at the movie, what happened. You saw at the movie, what happened. That that's. That's a valuable part of language arts, of learning to analyze literature, to communicate all that.

Sandra Dodd: 21:51

You can look. You can see all the value in those things if you can look at it with eyes that are that have stepped away from the school long enough to see those things in a non-schooly way, to see the essence of what language study or language learning can involve. That isn't writing a book report, because we know what looks like school, because that's easy for the teachers to grade I shouldn't say easy, but it's doable that the teachers can take this pile of papers, go through, sort, tell the kids who has the best grade and the middle grade and the worst grade. So unschoolers are free from all that. We have freedom from homework. Maybe you know that sort of thing, the things that the children didn't like or the parents didn't like about school schedules, getting up early, uniforms, whatever it is, fees, having to wait until everyone eats lunch, and then it's only half an hour and it wasn't very good food. You know all those things that people are sad about when they're in school or when they leave and they think back. So you're liberated from that, you're free from that, now that you've stepped away, now that you've been rescued from this situation. Now, what so it that from that point that new unschoolers or unschoolers who are trying to get good at it, they're getting trying to get better at it. Their kids are getting older and they want to learn some new tricks, some new solidifying practices and ideas.

Sandra Dodd: 23:16

I think it helps very much to step away from the idea of freedom and toward rich, enriching life and having choices, helping kids practice making choices, because people my age who went to school like I did sometimes didn't have a lot of choices. They were told when and where for everything, even when they're almost 18. And then they hop off to university. Some of them go as far away as they can and then they do all the things that their parents didn't let them do. So there's some wild freedom that has hurt a lot of people. It's like well, now I don't have to go to bed, now I can drink, now I can smoke pot, now I can run around and be wild and stupid and loud. It's not helpful.

Sandra Dodd: 23:59

It's better to let little kids practice with some loud you know, and then say, okay, listen, what happens now that you're 10 and you're being really loud, did's like? Practice with harmless things and let them get the idea of when I'm making a decision about whether to drink, where to drink, how much to drink, what are the factors, what are the options, like Cecilia said. So what am I considering and why and how? And if they've been in those kinds of conversations since they were young, they'll already be really good at knowing.

Sandra Dodd: 25:19

I've seen my kids when they were teens talk other kids down from stupid ideas. You know, just calmly, not, you know that's a stupid idea, but it's like, yeah, but you know I don't think that's a good idea, we might not get invited back or that's not legal, and what if the police come or whatever. It is just minor reminders that there are other people and other factors and laws and realities in the world. I've seen it. I've seen it in other families too, because the parents practiced with them saying yes, but wait, maybe we can do this.

Cecilie Conrad: 25:56

Let's think it through. I think an important thing you're pointing at, sandra, oh, louder, louder. I think an important thing you're pointing at, sandra, when you put a little alarm next to the word freedom, is if you choose to unschool and you have this word freedom as kind of your guiding star, you risk letting go too much, too fast, basically before you are ready, before you stop to think about it, and you also risk having this ideal but no real solid ground to stand on. And I understand how that can happen and I understand how it looks when you're at the beginning and you look at those who are a few steps further down the road. I think it is very important again we've talked about it before to talk about parental responsibility. I do think we're all born with our innate freedom that taking away the right to make your own choices and do what feels right from other people, including our children, is something we have to stop and think about. Why am I telling my child to do or not do this thing? And you said before, sue, something about making the right choices, and I also have a little bit of hesitation with using that language, because who am I to say that something is the right choice and not the wrong choice.

Cecilie Conrad: 27:36

I think a very important thing to think about when we unschool and when we have this guiding star of freedom or we have this ideal of freedom and this freedom word is flowing around is leveled parenting, that we are not authoritarian, that if we have a deep respect for our children and the deep respect for their existence, basically they are here and they are very dependent on us when they come. They are 100% dependent in the beginning, and then this ability to handle yourself, it grows over the years. With our modern society you get maybe well, quite far into your 20s before you really you know you can sustain your own life. For some people it's like that If you do university, it's a lot of years of being dependent and we shouldn't take advantage like that. If you do university, it's a lot of years of being dependent and we shouldn't take advantage of that. We should take our responsibility around that. It's my responsibility to take care of them. I chose more or less to put them into this world and now it's my responsibility to hold that space for quite a lot of years.

Cecilie Conrad: 28:53

So I find it personally very important to have a leveled relationship with them, that I do respect them and I do listen to their opinions and I do try to see them as they are and how they grow, with all their nuances and their personalities and needs and passions, so that they can unfold. If I have an idea and I do have a lot of ideas about what is the right choice, I do. I have strong values and strong opinions, but I'm also willing to listen if it's not right for them, also willing to listen if it's not right for them. And I have noticed by talking to people from all over the world and by traveling and I'm not trying to frame myself as any kind of perfect at all I made my big load of mistakes, but I think I do come from a culture with a very leveled relationship between adults and children.

Cecilie Conrad: 29:53

I noticed when we were discussing the Danish way of parenting and with a few other conversations about people who have researched parenting in different cultures. So I think this is, I mean, if there is a takeaway, if you're on the beginning stage of unschooling and you have this freedom idea, maybe freedom for the children comes from not just letting go completely, telling them they can eat and sleep whenever and whatever, and just sit back on the sofa and try to shut up and not interfere the sofa and try to shut up and not interfere, and I think that's what Sandra is talking about. Too much problem, but learn to have this leveled relation and these leveled conversations where you get to have opinions, but they are not more important than the opinions the kids have. They are not more important than the opinions the kids have. You know things, they know things.

Cecilie Conrad: 30:53

We're having this conversation about the situation and there is this misunderstanding in mainstream parenting that I'm the parent. You know, because I said so. It's a good argument for a lot of parents and it's actually a shit argument argument for a lot of parents and it's actually a shit argument. So if you, if that's your, your art, you know your punchline, then maybe you're getting it wrong. But if you're not saying so, if you're sitting back in the sofa sipping it, choosing oh, I'm an unschooler, so there's no, I said so. I have nothing to say in there. I said so. That's the other end of the pendulum and that's too much or too little, and I hope I made my point because now I there are better choices.

Sandra Dodd: 31:50

So, given a choice, there's a whole range of possibilities and it's probably not right or perfect, but there can be better. And so some people have said well, you're the one who's going to say what's better. It's like, no, you and your kids are going to say what's better. Maybe your neighbors or the police are going to say what's better. Try to keep your noise in your own house. That would be better. Sometimes you can tell better and it's just better in the moment. It's better under those circumstances. There are some times when you can go out in the woods and yell as loud as you want to, and there are other times it might not be a good idea for one reason or another. There are some baby birds trying to learn to fly. You don't want to scare them onto the ground. There are so many considerations and gradually, from the time kids are young, if parents can learn to see those things and share them with their kids, that makes it better.

Sandra Dodd: 32:38

There's some criticism that is made of homeschoolers. Sometimes it's criticism of families that are doing school at home, who are teaching and having their own schoolish lives and having their own schoolish lives, and outsiders will say then the children might only or can only learn a subset of what the parents know. That might be true if the parents are keeping the kids away from books and the Internet and other people, but it's a criticism that makes sense in a case when the parents are trying to isolate their children, trying to teach them a certain small set of information they don't want them to know about, evolution, they don't want them to know about whatever it might be, different politics than the parents agree with, or a different religion than the parents agree with. And so that may be true. With freedom, though it is very true that the parents can only give their children a subset of the freedom the parents have, you can't really share it equally with them because you have duties and obligations legally, morally, ethically that the children don't have Part of accepting, that you have rights within that assuming you do assuming. Then it's good for the parents to remember that they need to keep their children somewhat contained and informed, and I don't want to say controlled, but you know, they need to be aware of where their children are. If it's winter, they need to be wearing warm clothes. If it's summer, they shouldn't be wearing too warm clothes. They need to have shoes that work. The government expects that of you, your neighbors expect that of you, your parents, the kids' grandparents expect that of you, and not unreasonably. People expect that parents will be taking care of their kids and so that curtails freedom. Reality laws, social and legal expectations. Reality laws, social and legal expectations.

Sandra Dodd: 34:41

There used to be some groups in the United States. I was having fun with this, I was going to conferences too but there would be some families that sort of lived on the conference circuit and that's where their friends were. That's fine. They loved the other unskilled parents as adult friends. That's fine, it's all fine.

Sandra Dodd: 35:00

But sometimes people would go a little overboard and they would act like and talk like that there was an unschooling world. Well, in the unschooling world, in the unschooling community, among unschoolers. Holly was probably 12 when she said what are they talking about, mom? There's no unschooling world, they're all living in the real world. But some of the adults had gone freedom crazy and forgotten about that. They thought that maybe if the other unschoolers agreed with what they were doing, that was as peachy, keen, as though there was some overriding unschooling government that could save them, that they could appeal to. And there's not. So all unschoolers are living in the regular real world.

Sandra Dodd: 35:39

Not only that, but you're going to take a little more criticism than you would have if your kids were in school, if you were doing everything more traditionally. People will be hyper aware of how your kids act, of how you're taking care of your children. It sends them with clothes that aren't very clean a few times, or they haven't had a haircut for a long time, or whatever it might be that other people notice. It's going to be 10 times worse if they're in school. It's going to show, because people are looking at you to see if it's cool, if it's nice, if they might want to consider that. So that can't be helped. Anytime anybody's in a minority group, that's getting attention for whatever reason. They become representatives of that group and if they're doing a really bad job, it reflects on the others.

Cecilie Conrad: 36:28

So that's been also reflects on themselves. I mean, we are just more vulnerable in many ways If we know we all know that we are being looked at and judged. Well, everyone are being looked at and judged. That's how we assess social life all of us. There's nothing actually intrinsic wrong with it. It's just a question of how aware you are of your own judgment.

Cecilie Conrad: 36:54

So, whether it becomes an unfair situation, a ridiculous situation situation or just a basic assessment, unschooled families are being looked at with scrutinizing eyes in a different way, and we've been around this topic before how there can just be no ketchup on your T-shirt and you cannot have that hole in your jeans and you need to brush your hair and do things, because your public appearance is reflecting back on our lifestyle choice not just the community of unschoolers, but our family and we are being judged in a more harsh way. It is what it is, but I think it is so for everyone that we have to be aware of how we present and carry ourselves in the social life and in society, that there will be a context. There's no unschooling world where everyone understand what you're doing or why you're doing and there's no judgment and actually, to be fair to the extent there is an unschooling world, the resonance box of all the other unschoolers there's a lot of judgment going on there as well.

Cecilie Conrad: 38:16

So we have to somehow always carry ourselves in a way where we are aware of what's going on. And I've seen it too, Sandra, how you can see unschooling families let go completely and you see teenagers in their pajamas in the street with the dreadlocks at three o'clock in the afternoon. And well, whatever, that in and of itself might be fine, but it just brings upon the family a lot of social judgment that is not necessary. It's not necessary.

Sandra Dodd: 38:54

But they are. When people used to say, well, I have the right to wear what I want, I can do what I want. I'd say, well, are you going to act the same way at a wedding as you will at a funeral?

Cecilie Conrad: 39:04

Well, you have the right, but do you really want to? That's the thing I mean yes, I have the right to be, naked right now, if I wanted to, but do I want to?

Sandra Dodd: 39:13

There are laws against it.

Sue Elvis: 39:16

Well if I publish this on social media.

Cecilie Conrad: 39:18

there's laws against it, but for the time of the recording I could maybe.

Sandra Dodd: 39:22

You live in crazy wild Europe where people can run around naked all the time. Yes, I think there's just a couple of beaches in France, aren't there?

Cecilie Conrad: 39:30

No, I think I can be actually legally in my country. I can be naked everywhere all the time, as long as I'm not offending anyone.

Sandra Dodd: 39:37

At a funeral or a wedding.

Cecilie Conrad: 39:38

If someone says I feel offended, I have to put on clothes For the record. I don't do that. I don't like being naked. One of my childhood trauma things from my crazy Scandinavian hippie years I was born in the mid-'70s was that we had to be naked when they took out the pool in the summer in my kindergarten and I brought my swimwear because they said they were taking out the pool and I was not allowed to wear the swimwear because kids had to be all natural and cool about being naked and I told the kindergarten teachers well, I'm not doing that, I don't want to be naked around other people. I can be naked at home. I'm not naked in the kindergarten. I must have been something like five years old and they kept pushing and I kept pushing back and I was actually what's the word? There was this penalty that if I was not taking off my clothes to be naked that day in the kindergarten, in the playground with the pool, insisting on wearing my swimwear, I couldn't go outside. I had to stay inside all alone, all day.

Sandra Dodd: 40:45

You failed nudity. What you failed nudity.

Cecilie Conrad: 40:49

I've failed nudity in kindergarten at five and I've actually been very. I'm very, very Scandinavian and I'm not afraid of you know the naked human body at all. But I've been very aware of this problem, that there was this ideal that it had to feel in a specific way, to carry my body in a specific way. When I was five, there was an ideal in society about how that had to feel and if I didn't feel it that way, I was failing. How that had to feel and if I didn't feel it that way, I was failing. And I'm from a country where there's a lot of nakedness. People take their clothes off and run into the ocean, for example, naked. That's quite normal and well, if you don't feel like doing that, why don't you just bring your swimwear? You know it's fine.

Sandra Dodd: 41:42

Is Denmark one of the places where people will jump into freezing water and then roll in?

Cecilie Conrad: 41:44

the snow. Well, we don't have a lot of snow, but we have a lot of winter bathing and actually I'm cold dipping and it's not the reason for my pneumonia. I am cold dipping with the group at the moment and I will say so it's not that cold. The Baltic Sea at the moment I don't know, maybe it's 14 degrees. It's actually not that cold. But people do wind abate here and the problem when you do that, when you get out of the cold water into the cold weather it's quite cold in Denmark is the wet clothes. If you're not wearing clothes, you get dry and warm quickly. But if you have to get out of something wet and there's the wind and I understand why, people do it naked. So, anyway, I think I'm losing my point here about freedom. How did we?

Sandra Dodd: 42:31

arrive at nakedness. You said you had the freedom to be naked and I objected, so you're proving your point in an embarrassing way.

Cecilie Conrad: 42:39

No. So yeah, okay, we got distracted from my childhood freedom to be naked, but not freedom to not be naked trauma and I carry with me, 45 years later, what I'm saying is basically, we do have a lot of freedom to do whatever, but the thing is, do we want to execute that freedom and do we want to teach our children to mindlessly do whatever? And I think it's become almost. In some unschooled communities and unschooled talks, it's become this like in my kindergarten, there's this, you know there's a gold star for staying up until four in the morning. There's a gold star for going to bed before you're a two year old and fall asleep because you've let go completely of bedtime. There's a gold star for letting them have candy for breakfast and or not have breakfast, because they don't wake up until three in the afternoon and at that point they're having a pizza, whatever.

Cecilie Conrad: 43:44

And I can be judgmental around food choices, but what I'm trying to say about food choices here is just why am I a better unschooler if I'm not telling my children you know, if you go to bed at the same time as everyone else, we all get more sleep. And I do know that you're working on a running challenge and the running happens in the morning. So if you can't get up, how will you complete that goal that you set? You know, why am I, why am I not a real unschooler if I'm telling them I think it's a good idea to speak five languages, not just one?

Sandra Dodd: 44:30

but you're conversate. You're conversationally reminding them of the factors involved in their choices. So that's different. Also, you guys are living in a camper sometimes, so you all have to sleep or wake up at the same time. But people in big houses do have more leeway about that. But that's another factor how much room do we have? Is there a way that the people who are awake can go in the kitchen, make a lot of noise making breakfast and not wake up everybody in the house? So that's kind of dependent on the size of the house and everyone. Every unschooling family has those factors to consider. I have had many, many over the years.

Sandra Dodd: 45:12

Many unschoolers will come and say well, I have the right to unschool. It's like, not if you're in Germany, I have the right to unschool any way I want to, not. If you're in Pennsylvania, so let the right to go to school any way, I want to, not if you're in Pennsylvania, so let's say if you're talking about, I have the right to. It's like according to which government? I don't believe that people are born with any rights. People are born in different places. They're born out of different parents. A very poor baby, born to alcoholic parents who are fighting with each other and probably won't stay together for a year, does not have the same rights as a healthy child born to wealthy, intelligent, happy, kind people. And if another government comes and takes over, they all lose all their rights. I know that part of the whole American mythology is that all men are created equal and born of the inalienable rights and all that stuff, but it's, it's poetry, it's inspiring language, it's not fact.

Sue Elvis: 46:08

I recited maybe everybody should. Maybe everybody should have the right, but circumstances prevent people having those rights.

Sandra Dodd: 46:18

I've been thinking. I don't think everyone should have the right. People who are drug abusers lose their rights.

Sue Elvis: 46:25

No, no, born with rights. I'm saying Because, if you're a drug abuser I mean.

Cecilie Conrad: 46:31

I know that's very complicated.

Sue Elvis: 46:34

You do things that you end up having your rights taken away. But that's a choice, isn't it? No, it's lots of points of choices.

Cecilie Conrad: 46:45

Actually, if you're in Germany and you say I have the right to unschool, you do, but then you have to leave Germany. Yeah, I mean, if you make the choice of staying in Germany, you can't homeschool oh, it's very complicated to homeschool it's done. I know a lot of German families't homeschool. Oh, it's very complicated to homeschool it's done. I know a lot of German families who homeschool. If you stay in Sweden, it's impossible. But I mean you have the right to leave as well. You don't have the right to live in Germany as a legal resident and unschool, but you do have whatever we can also. I mean, right?

Sue Elvis: 47:18

and born with you can make the choice to leave because the unschooling bit, or the homeschooling, is so important to you that you would rather live somewhere else than your own country so that you can do it, and I've known people who do that.

Sue Elvis: 47:36

But it's not an option that everybody will choose.

Sue Elvis: 47:41

But what I find really interesting, sandra, is we've spoken about this a few times, or I've heard you speak about this a few times about how we don't all have, we're not all in a position to unschool, and so many times I've had emails or messages from people who say I live in Germany or I were a double income family and I can't give up work or whatever there's a reason, but they still want to run school.

Sue Elvis: 48:54

And I've always felt that pressure to help and almost like I'm in a privileged position here because we're doing we have the freedom to do, live the way we want to live, within those constraints of law and other people around us, and I've always sort of sat there and tried to come up with some ideas how these people can have a similar lifestyle to me when they don't have the same living circumstances. And I found it really refreshing, sandra, and freeing that you say well, some people can't, and it's almost like I want to please everybody, I want to solve everybody's problems, whereas you're more realistic and you will say some people don't have the freedom to do that. Yeah, I found that something to think about for me that just wants to help everybody and I can't.

Cecilie Conrad: 50:04

But sometimes it is. I mean, we all live in a context, and that's one of your points, sandra. You know, there's laws around us and there's a social field around us, there's culture around us, we have physical bodies, we have abilities and inabilities, we have forces and you know, and things we can't do. We have stories, we have different levels of income and there are so many factors to our specific context, giving us a specific set of options. And I do think you're right that this freedom word, which is free, free, free, I mean what does it really mean? And what kind of freedom are we looking for? From what and to what? What are we doing with that freedom? That's the first thing you have to think about. If you feel you have some freedom, then okay, that has no content, there's no point to that, that's sustainable.

Sandra Dodd: 51:00

You can't just be excited about freedom when the kid leaves school, but you can't be excited about that same freedom for 10 more years. No, no, it's freedom for one.

Cecilie Conrad: 51:09

And also, I mean you have this freedom, but the really interesting question is what are you going to do with it? And then we arrive at the choices right away. So I mean, I honor your point very much. I also think you are saying something really important and maybe we have a navigation here to not, I don't know, be too judgmental or send the wrong message. You're very good at navigating that, sandra, but really, if you start unschooling, you start reading about unschooling and you want to have this freedom.

Cecilie Conrad: 51:42

Maybe you want to be a radical unschooler and you've seen these posts about bedtime and food and going to the beach and you know there's no curriculum, no demands, no, anything from the parents. It creates a lot of uncertainty for the children. If you have no opinion and you have no structure and you have no, you offer no guidance. And I think one of the really big problems with that is you do have these opinions. If you haven't de-schooled enough, you still have these opinions. If you haven't de-schooled enough, you still have these opinions. You're just not sharing them. So you're actually being false or secretive around your children.

Sandra Dodd: 52:32

You talked about the competitive nature of groups of unschooling families together where they're sort of trying to one-up each other. It's not healthy. It's not healthy. They shouldn't be concerned with what other unschooling parents think of them and they might be false as you say about it. They should be looking at the peace within their families. Are the parents getting along well? Are the children sleeping well? Are people feeling safe safe in their own homes? Those things are what's important, not whose kids stayed up.

Sandra Dodd: 53:02

The latest I know that's just silly asks like oh, I'm in Missouri, what do I need to do to unschool? The answer is always find some other unschoolers where you live and ask them. You know, look at the laws, but then ask some people who are actually doing it how they're managing to get around. You know the weird looking requirements. Do they find unschooling, supervising teachers and stuff like that? You know there are ways. People have found ways in every state. I can't speak for Canada, but in Canada some of the provinces have stricter rules than others do. But it's not the right answer. It's not a good answer for anybody to come into the discussion and go. You can do what you want to do because unschooling is legal in every state. I don't think there's any state law that mentions unschooling in a positive way. I know there's one that mentions it as something not to do, so that's kind of made unschooling illegal there. But what it really means is the people who wrote that don't understand unschooling, and the person who wants to unschool needs to understand it extra much in that area. So wherever there's a prejudice against it or the rules are sort of trying to fence unschoolers out and away, the unschoolers really need to understand it.

Sandra Dodd: 54:24

Two very sad things have happened to me Same thing, but two different people, two different states. I would get a phone call at my house and somebody. I would say well, I'm in one of your discussions, unschooling discussions are always learning. I'm in one of your discussions Unschooling discussions are always learning and I was wondering if I pay your way, could you come to X town and X state, where I didn't live and because I'm in a custody hearing or a divorce proceeding, so both of them needed to go to court wanted me to come the next day and tell the judge that unschooling works. Oh, and tell the judge that unschooling works. Okay, at that point all I could have told them is unschooling doesn't work in your family. You're getting divorced, you can't agree about custody. No judge who went to school for 16, 20 years is going to say, well, yeah, that seems like a good idea not to send the kids to school. I mean, the dad wants them to go to school, the mom doesn't want them to, so let's go with the mom. Okay, that's not going to happen. It's never going to happen. So they can't say I have the right to unschool or unschooling is legal. That doesn't. That's not the point at all. And unschooling is not legal.

Sandra Dodd: 55:33

Unschooling is doable, but you have to really know what you're talking about. So if somebody doesn't know what she's talking about enough to persuade her husband, how's she going to persuade social workers and judges? And I've never been trying to be mean about that. I've been trying to help people, I've been trying to remind them. If you want to do this, it's a family activity, so the parents have to both understand it. Usually one understands it better first. Parents have to both understand it. Usually one understands it better first. I used to count. It's up to 18 or 20 now, but I used to know the exact number of families. I knew where the husband found it first and tried to persuade the wife Not always successful, but you know hundreds thousands of moms find it and then try to persuade the husband. Some of them succeed, some of them fail. So if the mom decides, or gets the rhetoric from people around her, that she has the right to do it, that it's legal, that she was born with this right, that no one can take her rights away from her, that she has freedom, it's a good way to get divorced. And once you're divorced, unschooling is very likely to end.

Sandra Dodd: 56:35

And people used to say you can't say that, but the examples they were giving where unschooling survived a divorce were the husband allowed it or the wife or whichever parent was leaving for whatever reason, said okay, yeah, keep unschooling. Sometimes that lasted a year or two. I knew one family very well and they got divorced and the husband said no, no, this is great, keep doing it. But he got a girlfriend. The girlfriend was a teacher with apologies to young viewers if we have any. She was his sole sexual provider. He was going to let her have her way. So she said this is wrong, this is stupid. I can't believe. You agreed to it. What are you people thinking? And he insisted then that the kids go to school and there's nothing to be done at that point. You can't control.

Sandra Dodd: 57:26

So people think well when they sometimes especially women, especially younger women think that if they get divorced that means like their husband disappears from the earth as though he never existed and the in-laws on that side also are canceled out. She'll never see or hear from them again. It'll be over. Oh no, the in-laws that used to be nice to you because you were married to their son. All of a sudden they don't like you much anymore and then they don't remember that potentially both of those ex-spouses are going to get new partners. And now it used to be that two people needed to agree on what was going to happen with the kids. Now it's four. People don't think about that when they're being tabalier and reckless with their relationships.

Sandra Dodd: 58:11

So I've taken a lot of criticism over the years by saying they're saying well, sandra says single parents can't unschool. I never said that. I said if you're in a marriage, in an intact family that has agreed on unschooling and you're unschooling because both those parents agree, once that agreement is broken, probably somebody's going to be mad, probably two people are going to be mad. And then you start on the spite and the arguing and the tussling and the tug of war. That's not good for kids. So that's, you know, beyond the scope of unschooling. It's just that it can fail, people can lose their rights, and so that's, even without committing a crime, it's not a crime to get divorced, but you can still lose your right to maybe even have custody of your children.

Sandra Dodd: 58:56

I've seen unschooling parents lose custody because they argued too hard, too long, too fast, too unreasonably, and the judge gave the kids to the other parent wholly and required that they go to school. Because that can happen even without a custody hearing separate. You know, in the divorce proceeding it can be yes, yes, this, this, this, and the kids will go to school. And once the state says it, both parents have lost their rights. The legality to unschool for that family is gone, and that's real. And so there are freedoms that people do not have. They can't just run around, naked or not. They can't run around and go look how free I am. I'm so free Because there are a whole lot of people around them that go. You're not that free. So I'm concerned with people overreaching and overestimating and over bragging their freedom because they can lose it.

Sue Elvis: 59:51

And how about if we go straight back to not even starting and the mother, which is usually the case? Unschooling becomes so important to the mother that she's willing to put her relationship with her partner, her spouse, secondary to the unschooling of her children and will end up in that situation that it's unschool or nothing. And then really, if it's going to, the relationship is much more important. As you said, unschooling won't be of any benefit to their children. In that situation, as a lot of people say to me, tell me about your husband. He's a school teacher. How did you persuade him to unschool? Why would he unschool? What can I do for my husband? He doesn't, he's not in favor of unschooling. And again it's that case of all right, how do I help? But maybe there isn't a choice there in the first place that that relationship is more important than making the decision to unschool, and without that trust between the parents it's never going to work anyway.

Sue Elvis: 1:01:08

But another thing that made me think about how, sometimes, when we're talking about unschooling or not so much us maybe, but unschoolers that it's so much better than anything else that people can feel they're going to fail if they don't unschool, that there isn't another choice. Really that is as good. There's no better choice for their children, and so it's always second best to put the kids in school or to do some other form of homeschooling in school or to do some other form of homeschooling. And that maybe is a problem as well, because you feel, if we all are putting, say, putting down people who don't unschool, that's not healthy for anybody. Is it that the second choice, the choice of not unschooling, is seeing it's not easy to accept for some people that they don't have that freedom to do it? I don't know, I don't know where I'm going with that one, but I think it's that we're back to the.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:02:15

Everything is contextual. What is wrong with my mic here, is it not? Can you hear me?

Sandra Dodd: 1:02:23

I think you're leaning over on. I think you just covered it up.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:02:25

Okay, trying again I think it puts us back to the point that everything is contextual. Uh, also the. You make a choice and that is basically like walking through a door into a new hallway with a new set of options, a new set of choices that can be made. And this holds true on all the levels of this. And if you insist so much on unschooling that it sacrifices basic other values in your life, Maybe you have to stop and think of the format. You know how important is this. I also would stop. I mean, I understand your feelings, Sue, that you want to help when people ask you for help. That's a basic human nature thing and it's a very agreeable first response. But if someone tells me how do I persuade my husband, I'm actually right, they're stopping. Do you want to persuade your husband Really? I mean, what happened to his? And now we're back to that lingo and might be actually we have to work with that. What about his rights? What about? He's the father? He's the other parent. You're two parents here. You're the mom.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:03:50

You think you're right in the idea that you want to unschool your children and you have to unschool them and that's the best idea. But the other parent disagrees. He's the other parent. He has the right to have opinions on how to raise his own children. You don't want to persuade. You want to stay within your relationship, stay within the respect and the love.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:04:17

There's a reason you married this guy and there's a cooperation going on. You have these children together and the challenge is to agree upon how do we navigate that? Just like, how do we navigate the house that we have together? How clean does it have to be? How much money do we put into maintaining it? It's, living as a couple is a lot of navigating cooperation. I'm not persuading, I hope, my husband to anything. We have conversations about how we want to live our life and how we can cooperate doing that. So if you want your husband to agree on unschooling, you have to make a good case about it, but maybe also listen to his worries and his ideas about how his children are supposed to grow up and what he feels is right.

Sandra Dodd: 1:05:11

I don't think persuasion is a bad word. I think pressure force, manipulation, those are the bad words. Persuasion is okay, it's not immoral. But if you're just going to turn away from the kids and work on persuading your husband, that's missing the point. Also, one thing that people have asked sometimes is what can I say to my in-laws? Because they don't understand it, they can't see it, they're not willing to read a book.

Sandra Dodd: 1:05:34

I used to say you could say we're going to try this for now and if it doesn't work we'll put the kids in school, because that gives them hope that you'll fail and the kids will go to school. It also gives you the opportunity to make it work. Make it work well. But some people say oh, it doesn't matter what my husband thinks, it doesn't matter what my in-laws think, I have the right, it's legal. You know that same sort of clinging to freedom, looking at the world through falsely freedom colored glasses, and they're not also reminding themselves or wagering with themselves that they need to make it work right or they need to put their kids back in school. If they can't do better than school, then the kids should be in a better situation. If school is better than what you're providing. So it could be the same with a husband.

Sandra Dodd: 1:06:22

If the husband's going, I don't know what you guys are talking about. I have to go to work now, so he's not there all the time. Like the mom is with the kids, he doesn't see them learning really cool stuff. He comes home they're tired or whatever. You know he's not there. It's like missing a child's first steps, their first words. So he might miss the first time they read or did math or, you know, understood something scientific that they could explain to the mom. The mom went. I didn't know. That that's cool, which happens all the time in good unschooling situations. So if the parent, if the, if the mom can even say to the husband the first few months, the first year, let me try it, let's see how it works. If it doesn't work, we'll do something different, then the kids in the situation will be persuasive. Not the mom's noise, not the mom's words trying to persuade him, but he might be persuaded, he might have his mind changed by seeing it work. So the mom needs to understand it well enough to make it work.

Sue Elvis: 1:07:22

Just say that a family doesn't have the choice of unschooling, for whatever reason. Do you think that there are certain principles, maybe, that can be adopted by anyone, regardless of whether we say somebody's unschooling or not, so that even if you send your kids to school or you're a little bit more formal in the homeschooling, you can still build up an atmosphere of learning at home and encourage curiosity and respect the members of the family and love unconditionally all those other things, regardless of the method of learning, that we can partner our kids even if they go to school? So it's not ideal, maybe not what we as mothers would like, if our spouses aren't in agreement, but are there things that we can bring into the family that will benefit everybody, regardless of the choice that we have to make, regardless regarding education?

Sandra Dodd: 1:08:42

yes, lots, and I and I just tell people steal the good parts, take the parts you like. There's a saying from 12-step groups that's take what you like and you take what you need and leave the rest. But then the problem for me, for me and for unschooling, which I I have defended for so long, is sometimes a family that can't unschool, fail to unschool or can't for some other reason, wasn't really able to give it a good try, will say well, if unschooling is giving your kids choices, then my kids chose school and so we're still unschoolers. It's like, I don't know, take what you need, leave the rest, but you don't get to be unschoolers. And they're like, well, you don't know unschooling, like, yeah, but there isn't such a thing as unschooling. If there's not, how will anybody aim for that? If just anything in the world who says it's unschooling is, then no one can learn to do it better. If there's no gone, what would it be, I don't know, like the dictionary illustration, like Plato's ideal unschooler. Plato didn't have one because there was no unschooling, because there was no school. But there needs to be a direction, and so the problem is then it comes down to people being competitive about what they think are the rules of unschooling and that's not a healthy way to be. But to say anything is unschooling if I say I'm unschooling. And that's not a healthy way to be. But to say anything is unschooling if I say I'm unschooling.

Sandra Dodd: 1:10:08

Seems to be that people think unschooling is so cool that they'll cheat and lie to claim to be an unschooler in a way. I mean from the point of view if they're going to still want to hang around the unschooling discussions and give advice to other unschoolers even though their kids are in school. And they failed to get it. Maybe, maybe, maybe they, you know, some failed, some did fail to get it, some failed to understand it, even though there were a lot of people offering them information and ideas, they just said, nope, I don't have to do that, I have the freedom to do what I want to do. It's confusing because it's very philosophical and maybe a little bit spiritual. It's in those areas that you don't give a checklist, you don't test. It's like wiggle until you are comfortable with it, Wiggle toward it until your kids are calm and at peace and learning all the time. Now that's it. That's unschooling. Your kids are calm and at peace and learning all the time. How did you get there? People got there different ways, but they were still aiming toward that, toward learning in natural, painless, sweet, family ways. It's hard, it's not easy.

Sandra Dodd: 1:11:13

People who want to understand unschooling come around in early discussions. I think it takes at least a year. Very few people get it in less than a year and that's not what people are used to. So if somebody went to you, sue, and said my husband's not as cool as yours is, so help me give me the 25-word speech that I can say to my husband, that will change his world. You can't.

Sandra Dodd: 1:11:35

People are more used to joining a church and getting baptized than now. You're in, you're as in that church, as the people who have been there for five generations. Because you came, you said I want to follow Jesus and you got baptized or whatever kind of religion it is, but you can join. Somebody says, ding, you're in and you're in. They think unschooling is like that, that if enough unschoolers said, ding, you're in, you're in, you're doing it. That's not how it works. Or they think that you're a vacuum cleaner salesman and they come and say, sue, you have a vacuum cleaner, I want one just like yours, and that you will provide that vacuum cleaner. It's not like that. It's something they need to build. That's harder, probably, to build than a vacuum cleaner because it takes years. It takes years and a lot of tiny, tiny little adjustments to the parents' knowledge and expectation and response time, response rate, response style. So those kind of decisions, what am I going to say? Kid just asked me an embarrassing question. What do I say? Those kind of decisions the parents make dozens or hundreds a day, and to become a better unschooler, those decisions need to get incrementally better over the years until the parent is wise and patient. If they don't want to become wise and patient, then how far will they get toward the ideal in schooling?

Sandra Dodd: 1:12:55

I've been volunteering to help people do this since 1990. And 1991. I'm thinking about kids' ages and 91,. I'm thinking about kids' ages. And I was never wanting to help people do a half-assed job or to live a life of chaos or unhappiness or confusion. Why would I spend volunteer time doing that? That would be mean, that would be hateful. If I were to spend a lot of time telling people yeah, whatever, whatever you do is as good as what anybody ever did, just be free, don't be free. That would be destructive. And so, although people have been frustrated with me and criticized me, what I thing to do with the kids one day, sometimes there's agitation and unrest and so I go with something familiar and comforting, something they've done before. Let's just stay home and have comfort food. But sometimes, if all other things are equal and it's not a repair moment, then I go with what provides learning. What's new, what's different, what's something they haven't seen? What provides learning? What's new, what's different, what? What's something they haven't seen.

Sandra Dodd: 1:14:07

And somebody who had been unschooling for quite a while said what I've never heard, that I've never heard anybody say that, that you should choose things that provide learning. And I and I've thought what, what have you been hearing? But it was. It was a dad. They're not always in on all of the depth of the philosophy, but he had just mostly been hearing. It can be a party, be free. If you're living, you're learning. If they're playing, they're learning, and not that the parents could choose a learning experience. So that surprised me that somebody had been doing it for some years and wasn't considering learning as a legitimate option, goal, not a not be. It is the goal, it's the purpose, but as as a factor in decision making, like it's also the risk of the word freedom.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:14:57

That's the reason you're hesitant and you should be and we all should be. With freedom is the is star. And there enters this competitive how free does your family look on these actually a bit random parameters of bedtime and food and maybe gaming time and whatever, and maybe gaming time and whatever? It can actually go quite wrong and become this weird thing unschooling and if there's not enough, de-schooling going on. At the same time, you have this very uncomfortable situation of parents who say that their children are free to do whatever they want, but they actually, deep down, want the kids to make some very specific choices. They're just not sharing what that choice is.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:15:56

And then we're back to that thing I've said before. We have this running joke my now almost 20-year-old son and I, my first unschooled child that you're free to do whatever you want, as long as what you want is what I want you to want. We say that as a joke Because he can sometimes stop and if I ask him a question, what do you want? And he's like hmm, and I know that that hesitation is in his mind. The question what do you want me to want? And well, we're joking about it now because I made my mistakes in the early years and he knows that one, you know. But way back when, when I was asking that question, I still had an attachment to what kind of choice he was making.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:16:41

And I think it's just so much better, as an unschooling family, to be clear about what you want them to want. I mean just say I think the best choice right now would be to do A, but you have actually option of B and C as well. So what do you really feel? And then actually listen. So if they do choose B and C, you can't give them the option of B and C and not then allow it and be cool with it, just because I think it's the better choice to go and do A. But if all the kids are like, no, today B is actually what we find right, then I have to also work with that. And that would be my de-schooling journey, or maybe even a de-schooling journey teaching me oh, I shouldn't have given those three options because two of them suck. So I should have said today we do this and I get to decide that, and I don't think that is not unschooling.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:17:38

Actually, sometimes I'm just taking the lead and that's fair. I'm the adult Now my kids are old, but when they were smaller, the lead, and that's fair. I'm the adult Now my kids are old, but when they were smaller, that was fair enough. So I was just thinking we should wrap it up a little bit, but maybe with the focus on. Actually, I have two things, the most important being what are we aiming for? We've talked a lot about what we're not aiming for and what the risks are and how not to think. The other note I have is why is it so cool and how do we avoid this? You know, aiming for the coolness is not what we're aiming for if we're trying to unschool. So what are we aiming for? So what are we aiming for? How do we aim when we start and I'm passing the torch.

Sandra Dodd: 1:18:31

Well, when people first come, sometimes they say what do we need to do what? And then they say how do we do that? And we can give them some ideas. But the real question that will help them more than going out and asking people what and how is why, why do you want to do this? And so if it's because I want to be cool, it might not work. Well, if it's because I think that I could give my children a very peaceful life of learning, that's great. That's great. I bet you could too.

Sandra Dodd: 1:19:09

If the focus is on having a peaceful family, having good relationships with your children, kindness, attention, all those positive things that will lead to a good relationship which will lead to easy learning.

Sandra Dodd: 1:19:19

But the parents, the mom, one of the parents at least whichever parent is discovering this and taking the lead, taking the responsibility to make it work well, needs to be mindful and aware that the choice that they make can make this succeed or fail, and to always move more toward what seems good, about why you know, the move toward the reasons that you wanted to do this, and I think it should be about learning, about creating a better environment than the child would have had in your real or imagined school vision, school image, but not to vilify school so much that the kid is afraid, you know, scared to death if something happens and he has to go to school sometimes.

Sandra Dodd: 1:20:03

Don't do that. Some parents have done that to you where they say even to the children like this is so cool, there's no other thing in the world that I would even consider, I will keep you home, no matter what that's. That's about the parents wishes and imagination. It's not about the child's peace and learning. So I think if the focus is on peace and learning, then there can be more calm and more acceptance and parents can get along better with each other, better with the kids, better with their other relatives. The other relatives will be seeing peace and learning if it's really there.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:20:39

I think there is a point to be made about letting go as well. Be made about letting go as well, but also letting go of the idea about how unschooling looks. So if we're aiming in the beginning, also be thinking about peace and learning for the parents, so lead a peaceful life, be in peace with this. There's a lot in the beginning, a lot of worry and a lot of this feels radical and a lot of mindset change and a lot of awareness around the little child. Is he or she learning to read and is he or she learning the second language? And is this math or not? And how do I know that they're leveled and all these things and it's all good, it's all.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:21:37

I mean, it takes some time for this schooled mindset to evaporate and try to be peaceful with ourselves. It's okay, it's okay. It doesn't look like cool, it just looks like an everyday life without school, and I'm not. Maybe an interesting question would be is there a way to do it wrong in the beginning? Maybe we are saying in this podcast that it's wrong to have that leading star of freedom and pretend to have no opinions on our children's choices and let go completely, whatever that means. That's the wrong approach in the beginning. Maybe it's the wrong approach period. Is there any other wrong way to start?

Sue Elvis: 1:22:36

I have a note here that I made the other day when I was thinking about freedom and I thought that we could look at freedom as the freedom to do whatever we liked. But we could also look at it from a different angle. Wouldn't it be good if we were free from the ideas that hold us back, from unschooling, all those ideas that we pick up in our own childhood, our own education, the ones that we have to de-school through so that we need to be free of those, to be peaceful about what we're doing, and also free of the need to please people I have trouble with that one and to listen so that people's opinions don't affect what we're doing. And you said, sandra, that we should be have like in-laws and husbands and other people like that. We should be very conscious of their opinions and we shouldn't say, hey, I don't care what you think, we're free to do what we like. But there are a lot of unimportant people in our lives who make us feel that we're doing the wrong thing, maybe, and it dents our confidence.

Sue Elvis: 1:24:05

But the other thing I was thinking about also was and this is something that has gradually happened over the years, and I think we've also talked about this before how we change as people from unschooling so we become free or freer of things like impatience and anger, yelling, all those things that aren't peaceful. But we learn within our unschooling families to let go of those sort of things and maybe we are more likely to listen and to accept and to respect instead. But I just sort of turned that around from a different angle. I just thought about you were talking about peace, and a lot of those things do lead to peace within our families that when we're not worrying too much about what we're back to competitiveness again, are we keeping up with the other people, whether they're unschoolers or whether they're not, but to do what's right for our own families and what we feel our children need.

Sandra Dodd: 1:25:22

For a long time in the United States there were some, there was a couple of series of like annual conferences that were very solid, very responsible and sometimes when people said how can I persuade my husband? We would say various people would say get him to a conference where there are teens and parents and let him see how the dads are interacting with their there are teens and parents. Let him see how the dads are interacting with their older kids and sometimes that did help a lot. So Cecilia is coming up with a series of meetups and that will probably help some parents who are undecided.

Sandra Dodd: 1:25:56

I know that's not all for unschoolers, it's more for traveling families, but among the unschoolers who are wondering if they see some other unschooling families getting along, if they see peace and learning, that will help them have more confidence to at least try it or not to think it's so weird. And I think I've seen people bring their mother-in-law or their mom to a conference and sometimes that person starts off very critical like okay, I'll listen to the speakers, but I don't think they're very smart. You know, they're just moms, they're not experts or whatever. And some of them just really softened, not so much from what they heard speakers say but from what they saw in the interactions with kids and what they were seeing was peace and learning.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:26:42

I think also, the best argument ever that is true, you know is to see the young adults and meet the teenagers. It's very often that we get the feedback now the kids get it themselves that, you know, is it really true? You've never been to school, you know? Is it really true? You've never been to school? I've just had this very intellectual conversation with you for the past two hours in not your first language. How did you get that smart? How did you learn all those things? How did you, you know, learn to hold a conversation like that? It really is, and this is a conflicted point, and I mean I'm doing this podcast, not my children, but really they would be the best advocates, just being who they are. And you're right.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:27:39

We came up with this World School Village idea to bring the world schoolers, the traveling families with teenagers, together regularly, because we've noticed that our teenagers really enjoy being in a larger group of like-minded teenagers for a while, not just for the occasional weekend here and there. So we bring people together on a month-long basis to explore what life can be when you know who you're going to be around for a while, and over my years of traveling, this has happened, coincidentally, a few times and, yes, we have not convinced, but maybe inspired quite a few families to let go a little bit of the idea of curriculum. Lots of traveling families obviously have children who are not in school, but they could be in an umbrella school, an online school. There can be a lot of structure and well, when they meet someone who just lives a life without those structures and see how the children are, I want to say perfectly normal. But then we have to discuss what that means. So maybe I don't want to say that, but it can be very convincing to just meet someone who lived like that and who is leveled and smart and well, smart, what does that mean? Also? But you know, just a regular teenager with regular passions and ideas and jokes, and they carry themselves through life in a good way. So, yeah, that works. It's a.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:29:27

Where do you start? What are you aiming for? Maybe try to meet someone. Maybe try to meet someone with older children who are unschooled and see where does this lead. That's a good way to get started. And maybe I mean one of the other I don't know affirmation lines that unschoolers keep repeating to each other is question everything. And I think questioning everything could also be questioning. You know, why do I find this cool? Why do I feel judged by the other unschoolers if I tell my kids to go to bed, or why do I think I have to let go here? Just keep that. Why happening in your own mind? Think about why you make the choices you make, instead of mindlessly following some leading star that might not even be your own. Unschooling can look in many different ways. I will agree with Sandra. It doesn't look like a child going to school. That wouldn't be unschooling. Are we at a point now where I have to really get up and Sandra has to really go to bed? And what time is it? Even in Australia, I don't know, sue.

Sue Elvis: 1:30:41

Five o'clock in the early evening All right Time for dinner preparations and things.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:30:49

Yeah, here it's nine o'clock and the sun is shining and we have a large group of teenagers in the community we're living in right now where we beautifully go to the beach in the morning to go for a run and a cold dip and to talk and a walk. So we're leaving in half an hour. That's my day starting.

Sandra Dodd: 1:31:10

Well, thank you, this was interesting, as usual. I feel like I was very negative, but I'm not trying to be negative. I'm trying to show people where the cliffs are.

Sue Elvis: 1:31:19

I think you're very realistic and sometimes it can be good to do to look at reality. And, yeah, I found your, your stories, your thoughts very interesting, sandra, and they have helped me enormously. I'm sure that you help a lot of people, but also you've given me some ideas about how to help other people as well, so thank you for that.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:31:49

Yeah, I think it's been great. I hope I recover even more before the next episode from this annoying infection I have.

Sandra Dodd: 1:31:57

Thank you, for joining me. I hope you feel much better soon.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:32:00

Yeah, I'm fighting for it.

Sandra Dodd: 1:32:03

By the time people hear this, you'll be all better, oh yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:32:06

I'll be bouncing All right. Thank you for today, ladies, thank you.