Exploring Unschooling

Pam Laricchia
  • 4.9 (20)
  • PARENTING
  • UPDATED SEMIMONTHLY

Explore unschooling with Pam Laricchia, Anna Brown, and Erika Ellis. Helping parents figure out how to apply bigger picture unschooling ideas in their everyday lives.

  1. 5D AGO

    EU407: On the Journey with Lucia Silva

    We’re back with another On the Journey episode! We had a rich conversation with Living Joyfully Network member Lucia Silva. Lucia was previously on the podcast in episode 251, Unschooling as a Lifestyle. She is an unschooling mom of two and she came back to share some updates about her unschooling journey. We talked about trusting our children’s learning journeys, Lucia’s inner growth and mindset shifts, as well as her experience in the Living Joyfully Network and how the community has supported her over the years. It was a really beautiful discussion and we hope you find it helpful! THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid discussions about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Come and be part of the conversation! 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! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. EU251: Unschooling as a Lifestyle with Lucia Silva 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 ERIKA: Hello, everyone. I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia, as well as our guest today, Lucia Silva. Hello to you all! PAM, ANNA, AND LUCIA: Hello! ERIKA: Before we begin our conversation with Lucia, I wanted to invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, which has really been life changing for me in so many ways. On the Network, we have such great discussions about so many topics. Our community has such a wide variety of experiences, and everyone’s really interested in learning and growing and being intentional with their families. It’s really unlike any other online community I’ve found. Being part of the Network offers powerful support, especially during those moments when fears pop up or if you’re new to unschooling and just need a place where people understand what you’re going through. If you’d like to learn more about the Network and check it out for yourself, you can visit livingjoyfully.ca and click on Network at the top of the page. And we’ll also leave a link for that in the show notes. We would love to meet you. So I’m very excited that we get to talk to Lucia today. I met Lucia on the Living Joyfully Network and have just loved getting to know her over the years. And she was also on the podcast back in episode 251 and shared her journey to unschooling in that episode. I encourage everyone to check that out as well. And we’re excited to dive in for an update five and a half years later, which is wild. So Lucia, we would love to hear what everyone is interested in right now. LUCIA: Five and a half years later sounds like, in the scope of kid time, it’s so long. It’s so long. And then thinking, how long have you been unschooling? Five and a half years still seems really new.  So, it’s interesting to think about those elastic times. And it was fun to see how some things are just so similar. I’m sure you guys see that with your kids. But, wow, I can connect where they’re into the exact same thing.  So there’s four of us. It’s me and my husband, Micah, and my two kids. They’re older now. To respect their privacy, I’m not going to be using their names. And I’ll just refer to them with neutral pronouns. They said I could talk about them in general.  My oldest child is still really into ballet. And that’s their primary passion. And that has remained strong, grown, changed a little bit. It’s not what they want to do professionally, but it is just a primary part of their lives. They’re also still really into reading and drawing and making. They have a great friend group. And they do lots of fun stuff. I just dropped them off at the botanical gardens to hang out with friends this morning. And let’s see, there was one other thing I wanted to mention. I lost my train of thought.  My younger child, back when I originally did the podcast, they were really into building and constructing items out of stuff. And I had not really forgotten, even though we still have a lot of that preserved in the garage. But they’re really into building tabletop games, mostly card games. They’re constantly inventing new games.  We’ve brought a lot of them to the table, done a lot of design. We’ve taken them to little fairs and sold lots of them. And we have game tournaments. They’re kind of based around the Wings of Fire lore, because that’s what their friends were into when they started it. It’s turned into this thing where they have this whole group of friends that are waiting for the next booster pack to come out. But it’s kind of amazing to see connections, from that fascination with construction, like moving pieces, how they fit together.  And now it’s, Mom, I have a new game. And it’s this whole fully formed game mechanics and point values. Now it’s branching out to some things that aren’t just trading card games. They’re thinking about what would be a good family game? But mostly card games. So they’re really into that. They’ve gotten really into fencing and chess, which I think are both similar sort of mental games. And they love talking with Micah about probability problems and stuff like that. They’re also really into philosophy and philosophical debate, or debating anything. So that’s that. And I think when we last spoke, Micah, my husband, was a professor at UGA, and he’s now moved into tech. And along that whole journey, so much of what we’ve gone through in our unschooling journey, I’m putting that in air quotes, because it just sort of becomes your entire sort of life philosophy, unschooling. But that has really been so meaningful for him on his journey of just learning the way his mind works, what his interests are, stuff like that. So he’s still in the research, data field, has gotten really into improv and musical improv with a little group here, and plays music all the time. And I am, I think, still doing a lot of the same things. I like to sew, and I’m reading, and I love following little rabbit trails and researching anything and dabbling about here and there. ANNA: So fun. All the things, but how they all weave together, right? You can just picture the household and the weaving together of all the things. ERIKA: I love connecting it back to the old conversation and seeing how that tracks, because we always talk about that, looking back and seeing how those threads connect together. And it just also makes me think, oh my gosh, kids are all so different, the things that they love and are interested in. You can’t predict it.  And it’s just so interesting. PAM: Yeah, I loved hearing the piece of looking back and now seeing how that is weaving into the things they’re interested in right now, because they can seem very different. Yet, when you look back, you can see the thread that underlies the various things together over time. And that is so interesting, just as a piece of knowledge, just a little bit more understanding about who they are, right? I think that is super cool. Did you want to say something? LUCIA: Oh, just as you were saying that I realized that along the way, I feel like that’s given me, it’s a really important reflection to have when they get interested in something that maybe I’m unsure about, like video games, for example, and thinking, what is happening with all this time? And it’s so easy to see what’s underneath for them. How does this work? How do the team dynamics work? How do I analyze these moves? It doesn’t mean that if you’re not doing that, it’s not important, but there’s always something going on underneath an interest unless they’re  not being attended to, right? But if it’s intentional, just like we’re intentional. And seeing that there is that through line and that intention under it. Oh, and then sorry, one other thing about my oldest kiddo, who’s really into working with kids these days. They’re interning at a Waldorf school and they’ve been babysitting a lot too, which is a job, and they assist in the little kids’ classes at our co-op. There’s something underneath it that’s more like a passion rather than just like, oh, I go babysitting. Looking at the intention they bring to that and how respectful they are of the children, their privacy, what they’re going through and what reverence they have for that job. I mean, there’s all kinds of ways to have a job, but also to look at that as we are spending a lot of time doing that because I’m seeing that it is something that is really important to them to do rather than, oh, they’re working or they’re working without getting paid. PAM: All the different stories we can tell ourselves, right? But when we take that moment to actually dive a little bit deeper, so often we can see those threads. We can see the intentionality rather than the surface story that just, oh, I’m taking them to their job. They’re doing this thing. I don’t quite know why they’re not getting paid. Whatever lenses that kind of automatically bubble up, if we take a minute to just dig a little bit deeper and see what else comes up alongside it, it is really exciting. And it helps, as I

    1h 3m

  2. APR 9

    EU406: Foundations: Open and Curious

    For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Open and Curious. Open and curious is a helpful mindset shift for navigating relationships and challenges. In this week’s episode, we dive into Pam’s mantra and some of the many ways that it has proven to be so valuable in our lives. Being open and curious takes us back to beginner’s mind and allows us to see possibilities and question limiting beliefs that no longer serve us. We hope today’s episode sparks some fun insights for you! 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! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. 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 QUESTIONS How does it feel to think about being open and curious about the people in your life? What do you discover through that lens? Try being open and curious while navigating a conflict this week, rather than jumping right to the solution you have in mind. What felt different? Think about something in your life that you’re feeling stuck around. What bubbles up when you approach it with openness and curiosity? What other possibilities exist? Next time you’re judging something your partner or child is choosing to do as “bad,” play with the question “Who would I be without this perspective? What would I do instead? How would that feel?” TRANSCRIPT ANNA: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us as we explore relationships, 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 and have really enjoyed how they’ve been building upon one another. And if you’ve already been enjoying the podcast, we’d love it if you could leave a rating and a review. That definitely helps new people find us. In today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about being open and curious. This is something you will hear us say a lot. I first heard about it from Pam and I find myself saying it daily at this point. When you think about the opposite, it’s being closed and disinterested, so it’s pretty easy to see why we both love it. I don’t want to move through the world feeling closed and disinterested, and it definitely doesn’t help us solve problems or to connect with the people around us. Being open and curious serves us in our relationships on a lot of different levels. When we’re open and curious about our partner, we want to understand them, what’s important to them, why they see things the way they do. We want to set aside any judgment and really lean into connecting with the person in front of us. When I find myself not understanding something they did or said, I can remind myself to be open and curious about it, to not jump to conclusions, to not write a story, like we were talking about last week. That gives us the best chance to avoid a misunderstanding. And part of being curious is asking questions and listening. PAM: Yeah. I love this so much. I have found open and curious to be such a helpful lens to bring to my relationships. For me, it’s a quick way to get to beginner’s mind, which is a place where I don’t feel like I have to know the answers, and I’m just curious to learn more. I often feel a sense of wonder and a childlike energy when I can get there. And it’s not childish. Childlike. There’s a big distinction. So, when I’m open and curious, I’m attentive and I’m interested in hearing new ideas and new perspectives. I want to learn how the other person is seeing things. I want to learn what they’re interested in and why it lights them up. And, of course, that doesn’t mean forgetting about who I am. To me, beginner’s mind is about understanding that the world is richer than just my story. My story, the one I tell about myself, is definitely a vibrant thread, but it also weaves alongside the stories of the other important people in my life. And it reminds me that their story is theirs to tell and I want to listen. I want to know them, not my version of them. And to take that metaphor just one step deeper, being open and curious reminds me to explore the tapestry of my life, which includes the people I love and care about, not just the thread of my story, thinking it’s the one right way to move through the world. It’s a tapestry of unique people and stories that weave together to create the bigger picture of my life, which leads us nicely into the next aspect that we wanted to talk about, doesn’t it? ANNA: It does. Because being open and curious also really serves us when there’s a conflict. So often, when we find ourselves in a conflict, we have in our mind the right answer, how this needs to resolve for me to be satisfied. And unfortunately, It just rarely works out the way we plan. If we come into the conflict pushing our agenda as the only way, we put the other person on the defensive and we end up spending a lot of time defending ideas back and forth, really rarely hearing the other person’s perspective at all. And if we come into the disagreement with this open, curious mindset that we’re talking about, we aren’t abandoning our ideas, like you said, we’re just remaining open to hearing the other person’s perspective. That energy is felt by the other person, and then they are so much more likely to join us on the journey to understand and figure out options. We’re going to be committed to finding something that works. We’re going to get there faster by remaining open and not tunneling in on our one perspective or idea or what the fix should be. PAM: I know, for me, when I first heard the advice years ago to listen to my partner, it made so much sense. So, when we were navigating a conflict, I listened. But eventually I realized I was still holding tightly to my right answer, and my listening was mostly focused on picking up the pieces that aligned with my solution, right? Everything else just kind of flew by. I truly wasn’t hearing their perspective. I wasn’t hearing their story. I was only taking in what I thought I could use to support my agenda or my solution, that tunnel vision that you mentioned. And unsurprisingly, we often ended up at an impasse that way. Each person trying their best to defend and convince the other that their interpretation of the situation and their proposed solution is a right one. Our conversations were energetically draining and steeped in a power dynamic that definitely strained our relationship. So, once I came to recognize what was happening, I chose to instead try to bring an open and curious mindset with me into our conversations. How are they seeing the situation? What parts of it feel important to them? What parts feel especially challenging to them? Does that make sense alongside what I know about them as a person, all the things we talked about way back in episode three that make them the unique person they are, their personality, their strengths, their weaknesses, sensitivities, all those pieces? And in these more open conversations, with defensiveness down and curiosity up, there was space for me to share my thoughts and perspectives, not with the energy that this was the solution, but as more information to consider. And without that grasping and no longer feeling like the only choices we have are their initial solution or mine, we could often find a third or a fourth or a fifth path forward right through the situation that took each of our perspectives and needs into consideration. So, it turns out that open and curious mindset not only gave me the space to learn more about what was going on, it also gave me more space to get creative in finding a solution that worked for everyone involved. The process is like a muscle that gets stronger with practice. With each experience, where shifting to being open and curious helped us creatively navigate a challenge or a conflict, it became a bit easier to shift the next time, and then the next. Over time, I found myself shifting more quickly from defending myself to trusting that we could find a way through together. Being open and curious just helps me in so many ways, in so many situations with so many people. ANNA: Oh my gosh, yes. I see it in so many different ways and I feel like it’s one of those tools we can cultivate that gives us something to do instead of taking things personally when we’re in a conflict. And that is so key when we want to navigate those conflicts with more ease and connection. And this idea is also really important if we find ourselves stuck or with some limiting beliefs. Often this involves outside voices or some cultural constructs that maybe aren’t serving us. And if we bring that open and curious mindset to it,

    16 min

  3. MAR 26

    EU405: A Field Guide: Choosing Unschooling

    Welcome to a new series on the podcast that we’re calling A Field Guide, in which we’re working our way through Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. We’re using the chapters of the book as monthly themes in the Living Joyfully Network, which is bringing everything top of mind for us, and got us excited to share our thoughts here on the podcast as well. The book, framed around the hero’s journey, is a weave of myths, contemporary stories, and tales from Pam’s unschooling journey. The monomyth of the hero describes an individual who somehow stumbles upon clues to a truth that lies outside of conventional belief, and begins a quest—physical, spiritual, or both—to understand and eventually embody that truth as their new way of life. Sound familiar? Unschooling unquestionably lies beyond today’s conventional wisdom around learning, parenting, and childhood. And through our journey to understand unschooling, we will learn and grow and change as we come to embrace this new lifestyle. It’s an inner, or spiritual, journey and, by the end, we will see our ordinary world in a new and extraordinary way. And while no two journeys are the same, there are similar stages and characters that you are likely to encounter in some form on your unschooling journey. This is where a field guide shines. In this first episode, we’re talking about the initial phase of the journey: Choosing Unschooling. We talk about the initial call to unschooling, which looks different for different families. We also explore what it looked like to find our guides along this path, describe the threshold guardians we may meet as we cross the threshold into the world of unschooling, and share what it was like to find ourselves in the metaphorical “belly of the whale.” It was a fun conversation and we hope you find it helpful! 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 wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid discussions about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Come and be part of the conversation! 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! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. 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 PAM: Hello everyone, I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and I am joined by my co-hosts Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hello to you both. And today we are starting a new series on the podcast called A Field Guide. So that means we will have these episodes being released alongside our ongoing foundation series and our journey conversations with other unschooling parents and any other ideas that bubble up for us along the way. We definitely like to go with the flow that way. For this series we’re going to be working our way through my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. We’re also working through it in the network, our online community, which is bringing everything top-of-mind for us and got us excited to share our thoughts here on the podcast as well. So the book, it’s framed around the hero’s journey. It’s a weave of myths, contemporary stories, and tales from my unschooling journey. The monomyth of the hero describes an individual who somehow stumbles upon clues to a truth that lies outside of conventional belief and begins a quest, physical, spiritual, or both, to understand and eventually embody that truth as their new way of life. So, I think that probably sounds familiar to most of our listeners. Unschooling unquestionably lies beyond today’s conventional wisdom around learning and parenting and childhood. And through our journey to understand unschooling, we will learn and grow and change as we come to embrace this new lifestyle. It’s an inner or spiritual journey and by the end we will see our ordinary world in a new and extraordinary way. My body is full of goosebumps right now. Anyway, as I explain in the book, we’re calling this series a field guide. That’s in the title because while no two journeys are the same, there are similar stages and characters that you are likely to encounter in some form on your unschooling journey. In this episode, we’re talking about the initial phase of the journey, which I call choosing unschooling, and the first stage is the call to unschooling. So our journey begins in the ordinary world. I think most of us grew up absorbing the conventional messages around learning that kids have to go to school because that’s where the trained teachers are and to learn something they need to be taught. The call to unschooling is the moment when we catch a glimpse of this new and mysterious world, that world of unschooling, and all of a sudden our ordinary world looks a little bit different, maybe a little less tolerable. And what I find interesting is that it doesn’t mean that we’ve never heard of it before. You may have heard the term unschooling or homeschooling in passing, but this time for some reason something has caught our attention and we are curious to learn more. That’s the call, the individual call to unschooling. ANNA: I love the reminder that each journey is so unique and really each calling to unschooling is so unique. I think sometimes it can be this really organic thing that just kind of unfolds and other times a crisis point brings us to a place of looking around and seeing that message that, like you said, maybe had passed by our view before but we thought it didn’t apply, and now it does.  I think for us our call came very early on when we realized school would not work for our oldest. She was a deep diver from the start and we could just see that she really wouldn’t be served by kind of going backwards into this slower linear progression that someone else defined as learning.  We had never planned to homeschool. I was aware of it. It was big in our area, but it just wasn’t our plan. And as I started my own deep dive, I found all these different methods. I can’t even remember all of them. There were so many books that I read at the time and there were bits of each of them that I thought were interesting, right? But they didn’t really seem to line up with the child I had in front of me.  And then I read John Holt’s book, Learning All the Time, and it was this full-body yes. Not only did it validate what I was seeing in our daughter, but it felt deeply true to me on another level related to David and me and how we learned all the time and how we like to engage with learning in the world and how unique that was, even between the three of us, that ultimately became the four of us. Our priority was this child who had been through so much, medically, already in her very, very short life because this was probably around three. So, stepping out of the well-worn path really wasn’t an issue for us. Our focus was just on her, on her survival, her thriving, and ultimately it helped us to create an environment where all four of us could thrive, which was, just it was really beautiful. ERIKA: Yeah, I love thinking back to that beginning when I first heard the word, first heard of the idea. And it’s been fun to hear people on the network also share how they got that first call. I just remember, when Oliver was a toddler and a young kid, when he would see other kids playing, he would avoid them. He wanted to be off to the side looking, to have some distance for safety. And then, if all the kids are going to do this one thing, or everyone’s doing this, he would go the other way. I was just like, okay, that’s going to be really challenging in school where the whole thing is to get everyone excited to be doing the same thing. If everybody was doing the same thing, he didn’t want to be there. That has kind of changed over the years. But that was my first little peek into thinking that I don’t know that this is really going to work. And I had this vision of people judging him as not doing the right thing, when to me, he was amazing and perfect and doing everything he needed to do. And so that was where it began for me. I really was just looking around, in a way that I hadn’t before, for alternatives. And I remember learning about different kinds of homeschooling. We didn’t know quite as much about neurodivergence at that point either. But I understood that I can’t make him do any particular thing, it just wouldn’t work. And so, I was trying to support his interests. And then when I heard about the idea of unschooling, it was like, oh, okay, people are doing something that’s completely different than anything that I had experienced as a kid. But also that just made so much logical sense to me. And I thought, this kind of life is something that could really work for him. And then when Maya joined the family, we were already kind of thinking that this was the way we were going to move ahead. And so, it’s interesting to see a lot of us get to some of the same thoughts, but from different angles. I really like that part. PAM: Yeah, for me thinking back to when my kids were young, I did not even know homeschooling was a thing, that it was legal. So, I was deep in trying to help my eldest work with school. I was actually doing a lot of research around neurodivergent and s

    48 min

  4. MAR 12

    EU404: Foundations: Stories

    For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Stories. Humans are storytellers. We choose the stories we tell about our lives. In every situation, we can come up with a number of ways to tell the story of it, and they’re all a version of the truth. But we get to choose which version resonates the most with us, which one feels better to us, and then that informs our actions moving forward. Getting curious about the stories we tell can be an amazing form of self-care! We hope today’s episode sparks some fun insights for you! 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! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. 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 QUESTIONS What stories are you holding on to about yourself, your partner, and your family? Where are the stories coming from? From your parents during your childhood? The outside voices of society? Somewhere else? Do you see the story in your self-talk? How else might you tell that story? How does it feel to realize that you get to craft your own stories? TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are very 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. And in today’s episode, we are going to talk about stories, both the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we assign to other people, meaning what we think they’re thinking. And yes, it can get very messy. Now, this episode is a bit longer than usual, but we think it’s worth it. Stories are intricately woven into our relationships with the people that we love, and that’s because humans are storytelling animals. It’s how we make sense of our world. In the book The Storytelling Animal, How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall, he wrote, “Story is for a human as water is for a fish – all encompassing and not quite palpable.” I love that so much, because story truly is everywhere. And the language we choose makes a profound difference, because the stories we tell ourselves become our self-talk. That is why we want to be intentional about the language that we’re using. And what’s really fascinating is that for pretty much any situation, we can come up with a number of ways to tell the story of it and they can all make sense and all could truthfully tell the story of that situation. And the thing to realize is, we get to choose which one resonates most and feels better to us, which then informs our actions moving forward, which calls back to our conversation in episode seven about how every moment is a choice. Stories and choice are woven together so well, aren’t they? ANNA: Oh my gosh. So much. For me, truly understanding the role of story has been so pivotal. That awareness allowed me to step back and observe, so, where’s this story coming from? Does it feel real to me and who I am in this moment? Is it serving me? And if I’ve held onto it for a long time, why? Why have I held onto that story? And who would I be without it? That’s one I love to think about. Who would I be? What would it feel like? Because there’s an energetic feeling to that. What do I feel without this story that I’m telling about myself or these people in my life? And those questions really can only come about once you take off the veil and realize that everything is a story. Then I get to dive in and have these questions. And through the questioning, I can hone in on what is really working for me. And then I can start to change my story to be more reflective of me as the person I am now, the person I want to be moving forward. And I could see the role of story more clearly and use it as a tool instead of being held hostage by it, which is kind of how it felt before. And for me, like you said, language is such a big piece of that. I try to be so intentional about my language that I use, whether I’m defining some kind of big event or a very simple task in front of me, because in that language is choice. I’m developing the story that informs my day and tells others who I am. And so, that piece is so critical to me, just seeing it for what it is. And then, how do I want to create my narrative? What language do I want to use to describe it? I like thinking about it.  PAM: Yeah. And once you see the scope of it, it’s incredible, because it’s not only the stories that we’re telling ourselves, but it’s understanding that the stories we’re telling others about ourselves and about our lives is the picture that they’re going to draw from. That’s where they’re going to meet us. So, first, let’s look at our self-talk, at our inner voice. Sometimes we don’t think we have control over our self-talk. It just appears in our head, the words over and over and over when we’re spiraling over something, right? But we truly can change that over time as we make intentional changes to the language that we use and the stories we tell ourselves. It is worth taking the time to listen to our self-talk a bit more objectively, to just ask ourselves, is this a helpful story for me? ANNA: Right, because we have the self-talk, and we don’t think we can change it. I think that’s something I believed when I was younger. It’s hard to change or we’re given this story that it’s hard, but I think we may assign it more importance than perhaps serves us. So, I love the idea of really diving into that, because self-talk is just an aspect of our story. It’s no different. It’s no more powerful. And it’s not this boogeyman that it’s kind of made out to be. And sometimes our self-talk is the stories that have been handed to us, perhaps by our parents or past relationships. And what’s so important there is to realize that the stories they told, even if the story is about us, is their story. It’s not ours and we don’t have to take it in and own it. It’s about them, where they were at the time, the stories that perhaps they were handed. And so, that’s the thing, right? We can just keep continuing to hand down these same stories or we can take control of our own narrative. We can look at who we really are and what’s actually in front of us, and then write a story that lifts us up, because that helps us be the person that we want to be and it will inform our next steps in a given situation. And I think that’s what’s so important about it. That’s how insidious stories are. When we carry these stories from someone else, they change our energy and then they inform our next steps, and it keeps us on this same narrow path. But at any moment, we can take back the reins. We can examine the stories that we’re clinging to and we can make choices because yes, Pam, it’s always about choices with me. We’re going to keep bringing that up. PAM: Yes. Definitely. I love the point about realizing that the stories other people are telling about us, especially the stories we grew up with, are just somebody else’s perspective. It’s their story. So, maybe we’ve absorbed the story that we’re too sensitive, or we’re scared to try new things, or we’re very shy. That isn’t our story. It’s their story about us. And we get to choose our own story. Speaking of, it’s also helpful to realize that goes both ways. So, for example, take a moment to consider the stories we’re telling our partner about our day. Maybe we’re more likely to take it as an opportunity to vent. “I am so tired,” or, “So many things went wrong today.” Is that what I want to convey? What will their view of my day look like from my story? Maybe that I’m so tired because I was busy having fun playing with the kids, or deep in the flow of working on a favorite project or knocking a bunch of those tasks off my to-do list. Maybe more things unusual went wrong today precisely because I was working a to-do list that was filled with those iffy jobs, and I got them done in the end. But how will they see my day through my venting words? Probably not as the ultimately satisfying day that I saw. So, understanding that the stories I tell, big and small, live on in the world reminds me to be more intentional. Now that doesn’t mean not venting, but maybe prefacing it with a quick qualifier. Like, “My day was great. I just want to vent about a couple of things.” It means considering who I’m speaking with and choosing my language to better convey the meaning of my story. Is what I’m saying true? Is it how I want to be seen by others? What do I need or want from the conversation? Because stories are the lifeblood of communication. ANNA: Yes. And I think it’s interesting, too, thinking about that. What do I want to get from this story? Because if we do come at our partner with all the things that have happened in the day an

    30 min

  5. MAR 2

    The Unschooling Summit, 2026

    We are so excited to be participating in The Unschooling Summit again this year! We participated last year and it was such a wonderful event that we want to make sure people know it’s happening again this year. To that end, we asked Summit hosts Esther Jones and Melissa Crockett-Joyoue if they’d be up to join us to talk about it! The Details Join other parents from around the world for three days of inspiration and community at The Unschooling Summit. This free virtual event will feature 90+ unschooling experts and advocates. You’ll have access to interviews with some of the top experts and advocates in the field of unschooling and self-directed learning You can take part in live roundtables with seasoned unschooling parents discussing some of the most important topics that come up for unschooling families (teens, neurodivergent children, self-care, community etc) You can attend live, interactive workshops  You can connect with other parents in community networking sessions You can join a closed Facebook group and connect with other parents from around the world who are exploring a different path with their children Whether you’re curious about how unschooling could work for your family, looking for support on your journey or keen to delve into how unschooling can be a tool for social change and personal growth, there will be plenty there for you! The Unschooling Summit takes place online from March 20th-22nd, 2026. You can get your free ticket here! Note that that’s an affiliate link and you help support Living Joyfully when you use it. Thank you!

    16 min

  6. FEB 26

    EU403: On the Journey with Erin Rosemond

    To finish off our month-long celebration of 10 years of Exploring Unschooling, we’re sharing another On the Journey episode! We had a rich conversation with Living Joyfully Network member and long-time unschooling mom Erin Rosemond. Erin is a mom of four grown children living in Canada. She writes about home education on her blog Ever Learning, co-hosts The Virtual Kitchen Table podcast, and offers mentorship and facilitation for families and individuals. We talked about developing self-awareness on the unschooling journey and how it leads to a beautiful place of authenticity. Erin shared about how her ability to advocate for her children strengthened over the years. We also dove into the path from attachment parenting to unschooling and how focusing on the relationships we have with our children has been the thread that connects it all. It was a really lovely discussion and we hope you find it helpful! THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid discussions about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Come and be part of the conversation! 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! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. Episode 285, Unschooling Stories with Erin Rosemond Find Erin’s work at her website, https://www.everlearning.ca/ 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 PAM: Hello everyone, I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and I’m joined by my co-host Anna Brown and Erika Ellis, as well as our guest today, Erin Rosemond. So this month, we have been reflecting back on 10 years of the podcast, exploring what we’ve learned, what’s changed, and what still matters. And we are thrilled to have Erin join us to continue the conversation. We’re going to dive into these three questions with her and I am very excited to hear her thoughts. And if you don’t yet know Erin, she is a long time unschooling parent known online as EverLearning. She co-hosts the podcast, Virtual Kitchen Table, where they share experiences and ideas about family life and unschooling. And she’s been a long time member of the Living Joyfully Network, which we so, so appreciate. If you would like to hear more about her unschooling journey, I spoke with her back in episode 285 of this podcast, and she shared some wonderful insights. So I do encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. But to get us started today, Erin, we’re just going to dive right in. What’s one of the most impactful things you’ve learned on your unschooling journey?  ERIN: So, I looked at this question, and it’s such a challenging question, but in a good way.  Because there are so many impactful parts, it’s crazy how impactful it is. And I feel like when you talk to other people who are following this path and doing things this way, that’s one of the things that they say is that they couldn’t possibly have imagined how much impact it would have in so many different areas. So yeah, so I was like, oh, where to begin? I had a few different words come to mind. The first word that came to mind was authenticity. And maybe I’ll end up touching on that. And then it got me thinking about the idea of emotional maturity. And that kind of wove me around to where I think I’ve landed at the moment, which is just – self-awareness. And so if I’m understanding the question properly, because I guess I’m thinking about certainly the impact on me, but I also think that’s very impactful on our children, and just generally the people in our lives. And I think that probably isn’t something that I had thought about at the beginning. I think most people probably don’t. Even before school age, coming from more of an attachment parenting, conscious parenting paradigm, that was just about my baby, right? That was about what felt best. You’re operating with what seems to be the kindest, most practical way to parent, and you’re not really thinking a lot about self-awareness. But of course, that’s developing along the way. We do all that early reading, and then it just, I know different people come to this path from different directions, but I think I pipelined in through attachment parenting more than anything. So really, it was just gradual. Continuing to read, continuing to talk to people, hear other people’s experiences, trial and error for myself. And then it gets to a point where you realize, if you’re going to parent in this really respectful way, it’s actually quite hard. It feels like it shouldn’t be hard, but it really kind of rubs up against a lot of what we’ve been taught, what we’ve learned, sometimes what society values and promotes. I just think you end up doing so much self-reflection, because you bump up against these things, and you think, okay, well, what would the conventional response be. It might be taking a privilege away, or it might be controlling this or controlling that. And it’s really hard to be in a respectful relationship with somebody when you’re controlling them. And it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, of course, as parents, we sometimes have to safeguard things. I’m not suggesting otherwise. But I think it’s that word arbitrary, where we’re just deciding that there’s a different standard because they’re children. And so I think that the amount of self-awareness that we have to develop is actually mind blowing. Because it’s not just about how they learn or our interactions, there’s a ripple effect. They bring in friends, or kids are adults now. So they bring in partners or spouses, and you just have this circle of people that if you want to remain in good relationship with your kids, which I do, you need to think about how do I want to respond in this moment? And what do I want this memory to be like for them, you know? I feel like I have so much more I can say about this, but maybe I’ll just leave it there for a minute. Yeah, it’s just that ability now, I think, to stop and pause before responding, and just imagine all the different ways there are to do something and to think about something. And if I’m having a certain feeling about that, what’s that about?  Just getting curious about that. Yeah, like I said, I’ve got a lot, but I’ll stop for now. PAM: Yeah. Okay, I’ll pick up first. Oh, my goodness. I love that that is what you picked. And like you said, there are just so many aspects. One, that bubbled up, is the hard work piece. We’ve talked before on the podcast and network. Do I put in the effort, the work, the engagement beforehand, having the self-awareness to figure something out, right? Or do I choose that it’s going to happen after, if things break down? When we want to put the relationship first, and then we need to repair, because we didn’t put in a lot of the time upfront to look at everybody’s perspective. How do I feel in this moment? What does that mean about me? That’s the whole self-awareness piece. And then being open to other people’s self-awareness, and not even defining it, other people’s choices, other people’s agency, how other people are seeing this moment, right? So we’ve talked about that piece. So, that’s part of the question. But I love even more depth, that’s a choice. And often, we forget about considering, because maybe the relationship breakdown happens a day or two later, right? The next time we try to engage more deeply, and they brush us off, because they’re still upset about what we did two days ago. And that’s when you realize, so it’s hard, it can be hard to connect those two pieces.  But even regardless of that, where you got to the authenticity, where you started, showing up in the moment as the person you want to be, as Anna talks about quite a bit, it’s self-awareness. It’s just interwoven with that so intricately, because how can we know who we want to be when we show up in the moment, unless we understand ourselves. I feel like I learned that from watching my kids when they came home, because they could show up more authentically, because they hadn’t absorbed quite as many of the conventional messages yet. Those messages that say, when this happens, you do this. And when in this situation, you do this. And when somebody else does this to you, you do this, you know, we have absorbed so many of those cultural messages in how we’re supposed to respond. And we’re often with great intentions raised by parents who are telling us, in this situation, you do this, or I want you to do this, remember that. It’s something new for us, I think. And that’s why I find what you’re saying about this self-awareness piece being such a huge and impactful part of the journey and realizing it’s understanding ourselves. And then I think through understanding ourselves, we recognize how different we are, how different other people are, and then realizing, oh, geez, everybody has got a unique perspective. And then like you said, then you have more and more people joining the family community. And then it’s just more and more perspectives. But that we, at least for me so far, find I get to enjoy the moments more when I’ve done that work or understand people, because I can be more present in them

    1h 4m

  7. FEB 19

    EU402: 10 Years: What Still Matters (Part 3)

    The Exploring Unschooling Podcast has now been around for over 10 years and 400 episodes! This month, we’re celebrating these huge milestones by looking back and reflecting on three big questions. In Part 3 of our celebration, Pam, Anna, and Erika explore the question of what still matters over the course of the past 10 years. We talked about focusing on relationships, how there is no one path and no one right way, and how children are whole and capable people right now, not just adults in training. We thank you so much for being a part of our Exploring Unschooling community and hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey and in your relationships! THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid discussions about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Come and be part of the conversation! 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! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. 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 everyone, I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully and I’m joined today by my co-host Erika Ellis and Pam Laricchia. Hello!  I have really been enjoying this series reflecting back on 10 years of the podcast. So much has changed and yet the growth and learning continues. The podcast has been important to so many people and it’s always fun to hear how it’s touched them and many times changed the trajectory of their family. Similarly, the podcast has brought many amazing people to join us at the Living Joyfully Network. It’s such a great place to take the concepts covered in the podcast and dive deeper, to be a part of the conversation. We love that. All three of us are active participants and we’re responding to questions, hosting calls, sharing our journey, learning and growing alongside all of the amazing families there and we would absolutely love for you to join us. You can find out more information in the show notes or visit livingjoyfully.ca to learn more about joining. And we also have a free trial month, so you can check it out that way as well.  This week, the question that we’re going to be reflecting on is what still matters? And so Erika, would you like to get us started?  ERIKA: I would. When thinking about what still matters, I felt like we have to start with relationships. It’s something that I’ve heard you both say from the very beginning. Focus on our relationships with our children because when we start there, everything else falls into place. If we make independence our focus or academic skills our focus, we lose sight of the unique child in front of us and our relationships can be harmed. When I first came to unschooling, I was pretty preoccupied with the idea of passing skills along to my kids. It just seemed like that would be my most important role, especially since we weren’t putting them into school. Like how will they get by as functioning adults without these skills? And so I had this desire to make sure they weren’t “falling behind” or that they would be keeping up with the kids who had gone to school. I think it’s a common fear when we’re choosing an alternative path. But through time and observation, I really have come to believe that we can’t force people to learn anything. And I could see that putting that agenda onto my kids and pushing them to pay attention to this certain thing or pushing them to independently do something that they’re not ready to do. It just caused them to push back against me and that affected our relationship. And so the work that I do now as a parent has so much more to do with our relationship than anything else, which I think would have surprised younger me. That cultural idea that we have to mold our children into who they should be. But it’s just not about that at all for me anymore. It’s more about the things we talk about here, like building trust with them by being trustworthy, leaving space for them to learn in their own way, being accountable and making repairs with them if we have any kind of a rift and really being curious about who they are in the moment as unique individuals. And learning facts and skills can come when it’s time. I’ve seen that happen over and over. I may worry, if someone’s not reading yet or they’re not interested in learning how to tell time. That was a real one for me. Or to tie their shoes. But our children will come across all the things that are the most important to learn because they’re actually important in their lives. And every brain is different. Every person has their own path and those skills come. Sometimes it even feels kind of magical, but it doesn’t happen by force, at least not with my kids. Learning happens when the context is right and their desire is there. And so by focusing instead on our relationships, we create a space for them to process with us when things come up. We let them know that we’re there for them no matter what. There’s not this expectation that their lives look a certain way. We support them as who they are in each moment. And I see that focus on that relationship pay off when my teens now come to me to process their fears or their goals or their relationship struggles or anything else. They know that I don’t have this image in mind of them that they’re not living up to. They know that we are all just humans learning, growing on our own paths, but we’re in relationship together. And I think that the skills they learn doing that are actually so much more valuable than the academic skills. Those relationship skills and the communication skills will serve them for the rest of their lives. So I try to think to myself, as I remember Anna saying so many times, is what I’m about to do going to help my relationship with my child or harm it? And making the relationship-strengthening choices over and over pays off. It’s like a good north star for me to aim towards. And of course, not perfectly, since that’s not possible, as I’ve talked about before. PAM: Oh, I love that so much! And you know what, I love how over these three episodes as we’ve been reflecting back through various questions, how much relationships bubble up as part of the things that we’ve learned. Things that have shifted for us and that’s what really still matters. Because that fundamentally, like you said Erika, the learning happens. The skills and the facts happen. An early realization for me was, well, if they don’t come across it in their life to want to learn it then it wouldn’t have been helpful to have tried to force them to learn it because they wouldn’t have come across a need to know it anyway. So, it was like that little gameplay shift for me. It is okay. And then number two, just looking back on my own journey, what do I remember of what I learned and aced on the test. And now it’s only when I need it, I will learn that little piece. I’ll brush up again, learning it in the moment. It’s fundamentally stronger as in it makes more of a connection because that’s where I’m learning what I need. That web of learning that you mentioned in an earlier episode, Erika. That is how the relationship just became fundamental, because that was so much more supportive of our lives and that interdependence of living together. And if I focus there, everything else kind of like takes care of itself. And in that way, people make choices and we help them. And when I focus on the relationship, it puts my energy in the places that matter the most long-term, even now with all my kids as adults.  ANNA: Yeah. I think what I love about this choice that you made, Erika, about what still matters is the relationship because, I don’t know how to say it because that’s what actually matters years later. Not just when we have kids at home, but when our kids are adults and what kind of relationships we want then.   We have a lot in our culture happening now about people going no contact and not being in touch with their families. And as someone who works with families and adults and their parents, it’s like, oh, that doesn’t happen there, when they are all adults. That doesn’t happen in isolation, over one or two events. That happens over years of not being heard or listened to. And I know these parents, because I’m working with them too. These adult parents that are now in their sixties to eighties, they were doing what they thought was best. They were trying to make sure their kids would be independent adults. They were trying to help them. But it caused harm. They didn’t have these nuanced discussions that we’re able to have in a community of people who are picking apart these ideas. And I think, oh, that’s such a big difference in this lifestyle. Pam and I both have adult children, Erika’s kids are teenagers, but ours are well into their adulthood and we still enjoy each other. We still want to hang out and we still get the calls and we still do the processing and we are still a part of each other’s lives in different ways. It looks different for all the different kids that we have because they all have different personalities, but it’s there, that fou

    37 min

  8. FEB 12

    EU401: 10 Years: What’s Changed (Part 2)

    The Exploring Unschooling Podcast has now been around for over 10 years and 400 episodes! This month, we’re celebrating these huge milestones by looking back and reflecting on three big questions. In Part 2 of our celebration, Pam, Anna, and Erika explore the question of what’s changed in the past 10 years. We talked about how unschooling is more like a branch of the tree rather than the roots, how the realization of the many, many ways that people are different has influenced our work, and how unschooling is really our journey and our work to do as parents. We thank you so much for being a part of our Exploring Unschooling community and hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey and in your relationships! THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid discussions about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Come and be part of the conversation! 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! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. 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 ERIKA: Hello everyone, I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully and I’m joined by my co-hosts Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia. Hello to you both! So, today we’re continuing our series of episodes reflecting on the 10-year anniversary of the Exploring Unschooling podcast. I know the podcast has been so influential to so many people, as it has been for me on my unschooling journey. And recently what has really deepened my understanding and learning and enriched my life in countless ways is the Living Joyfully Network. Our community of parents on Mighty Networks is a wonderful place to explore all of the questions and aha moments that come up on this journey. I love our live conversations and our monthly topics to consider and I’ve made so many amazing friends. Every day I feel both inspired and calmed by the network. The topics we dive into inspire me to look closer and grow as a person. When everyone shares their unique experiences, I just feel grounded in knowing that we’re doing this together. It really is an amazing space and we’d love for you to join us. You can find the link in the show notes or visit livingjoyfully.ca to learn more about joining and our new free trial month offer. So in this episode we’re going to be reflecting on the question, what has changed? And as Pam said last time, 10 years is a good chunk of time and we’ve all definitely grown and changed during that time so I’m excited for this discussion. Would you like to get us started, Pam?  PAM: Absolutely, absolutely. When I started this podcast 10 years ago, my work was pretty much focused on unschooling, around exploring the choice to go to school or not go to school. Back when I realized that was even a choice and quickly found unschooling, it felt like a fundamental or a foundational choice in our life. I mean culturally school was and mostly still is so integrally woven into childhood that it seems that school is the most important aspect of childhood. Everything else is extracurricular activities, right? It’s right there in the language. So what’s changed for me over the last decade is that I now see unschooling as a branch of the tree of childhood and not the roots. For me, what lives in the roots and truly redefines childhood is cultivating connected and supportive relationships with our kids and giving them agency over their lives. Not as in leaving them to their own devices or insisting that they make all their decisions but living consensually as a family as you talked about in the last episode, Anna. How they feel and what they think matters. We all have value regardless of age, right? And they may or may not want school to be part of their lives. It’s just a question. It’s not the fundamental question of childhood or it doesn’t have to be. And that answer may well change over time.  School is a choice alongside the many other choices in their lives. So that said, unschooling can be a great window into this way of being in relationship with our kids. And I think because it’s often the first place that real conflict can arise, like when a kid and the school classroom environment just don’t mix well. And that was definitely my path but it’s certainly not the only path to discovering the far-reaching and lifelong impact of just cultivating those connected relationships with our kids, right? There’s where the rich soil is. ANNA: I know. It’s so interesting because you know I love a tree analogy. But it’s funny because in the early days, for me, I actually saw consensual living as the umbrella and unschooling was one choice under that umbrella. That’s the piece that you’re getting at. It’s like unschooling is one choice when we’re living consensually. We have children making autonomous decisions and having agency about how they want to spend their time, how they want to engage in the world, how we want to do that together as a family. And so I really love that distinction and I do think it evolved really for all of us. I think especially for you, Pam, because you came from school to unschooling. It’s a little bit different for Erika and I. We have always unschooled with our kids. So I think that’s why maybe for me, I had that different view of it earlier on. But I think it’s critical because, you’re right, I think it’s that first touch point that people come to, this flashpoint with school. It can be so intense and you kind of feel like you’re losing your child or their light is dimming and it feels scary. And so unschooling can be this beautiful door to walk through to realize that there are different ways. But yeah, I think once you’re there and realize, oh, it’s actually about the connection, it’s actually about the relationship we have. And then together, we can make the choices that best serve us, whatever that looks like. And, and of course, I love unschooling, we all do here. But but yeah, I really love putting it in that place. It’s the relationships that are so important.  ERIKA: It reminds me of my perfection piece from the last one, because I remember when I first found unschooling, it’s like, well, if you are putting your kids in school, then you’re not unschooling. It was all connected. It’s like you have to make that decision in order to be doing it right, because I was looking for how to do it right. And so it really has been a journey, a mindset journey to get to the place of realizing it’s not about school. It’s not about any one particular choice that may or may not look mainstream. It’s about what the child wants. What is the relationship with the child feeling like? And so I think unschooling kind of answers one problem, which is, the child is hating school. And so unschooling is a way to respect their autonomy in that way. And then a whole bunch of other possibilities open up. But we’ve seen so many amazing families with these amazing connected relationships deciding to go to school. And that doesn’t change that core value and that root of what is amazing about their families, which is listening to each other, making sure that we’re not pushing past someone else’s consent. It’s very eye-opening to get to that place where it really is not about school. It’s not about that decision. It’s about something deeper than that. PAM: Something deeper, so much more. And yes, we have episodes on the podcast where I talked to parents whose kids have gone to school and so much doesn’t need to change. You don’t all of a sudden have to become a different kind of parent or have a different kind of relationship, just because school happens to be in the picture. But yes, it definitely takes that mindset shift, right? To recognize, it’s not like one life I’m unschooling or I’m not unschooling. It’s when you get to the roots of the relationship and start looking at your days and your lives from there. It’s just a fundamentally different way. And unschooling is one of the choices. I think when you take that journey to recognize the importance and value of the relationships, the school choice is just a choice. Whether or not school happens to be part of your lives for a season or for however long it works, the fundamental difference is that it’s still a choice. ANNA: That’s what I was gonna say. It’s choice and agency, right? That’s the fundamental difference.  And that’s why it feels different. That’s why the families on the network that have kids that have gone back to school, it feels so different because it’s choice and agency that’s driving it versus have to and cultural expectation. And so it’s just really interesting to tease apart how different the same thing can feel when you’re coming at it from that deeply rooted place that you’re talking about. I love that. Okay. So for me, one of the big, big ones that has changed, I would say kind of refined and we’ve honed in on it, is this idea that people are different and how that permeates everything. In the early days, we talked a lot about celebrating the uniqueness of our children. We talked about coming up with

    27 min
See All (444)

4.9
out of 5
20 Ratings

About

Explore unschooling with Pam Laricchia, Anna Brown, and Erika Ellis. Helping parents figure out how to apply bigger picture unschooling ideas in their everyday lives.

Information

  • Creator
    Pam Laricchia
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    444
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Copyright © 2026 · Living Joyfully
  • Show Website
    Exploring Unschooling

You Might Also Like