Why unschooling?

As I mentioned previously,coming from teaching public education, someone may ask "Why in the stinkin' dirty socks would you ever be unschooling?" And I would politely answer... "It is what my son needed to learn, and kindly leave my laundry out of it."

After I stopped teaching I didn't have any CLUE as how to homeschool except to teach the same way I had before. And let me tell you out there... having a degree does not make one any less trepidatious when it is time to take on the weight of your child's entire educational career!

We survived through a good while of this type of schooling, both of us growing more and more frustrated, crabby, annoyed, grumpy etc. Finally I started trying to examine what was going on here!! This shouldn't be the way homeschooling is. Shouldn't we all be hugging and planting daisy's and making highly detailed monuments out of macaroni? I didn't even have macaroni in the house! And there was no dried pasta time in my schedule.

Why doesn't my son like to learn? Why do I have to constantly say get to work, get to WORK, GET TO WORK!?!? Why does my child need incentives to do his school? Why are we so frustrated? Why is my relationship with my sweet, precious son suffering?

In my examinings I pondered... is there another way to do homeschool? Is this the reason we are having so many issues? I started looking online and I can't tell you what I saw that led me to want to know more about unschooling... totally can't remember to save my buckskin. But glory hallelujah, I am here to wave my hankie and thank the Good Lord above that somehow I did.

The following weeks we fully embraced this new style of learning. I unschooled myself about unschooling and swam around lavishly in all I was learning. Each new book I read was a warm ray of sunshine. Like a heat wave in the cold month of January. Like a warm cup of cocoa. Like the warm socks I got for Christmas....Ok, I am just cold right now but you get the idea. It was GREAT!

What a difference in my son--his desire to do, to try something new, to have an opinion, to use his imagination, his want to READ (by and to himself!!!!), his ability to examine the world, his trust in me that he is heard and understood.

Why in my dirty socks do I unschool?


Simple.


His new desire to learn.