Involved parenting

Unschooling can be seen as involved parenting.

Honestly.

Although it may look like our children playl day or our teens spend time with the books, the movies,, the video gamesthat they want...while mum chats or works...this is the surface look. For underlying every day is the principle of involved parenting.

We give our children the gift of unstructured time not because we are lazy or busy ourselves but because we see value in self directed learning, in learning through play and discovery, in learning to make choices and decisions, in finding interests, in time alone or time together or time alone.

The parenting is not hands off but hands on...visibly or subtly, almost invisible.

Unschooling is anything but passive and direction-less.
It’s about lighting a fire. Unschooling is not hands off.

Do unschoolers set goals?

Do unschoolers set goals? I think sometimes we do and sometimes we just fly without goals.

And sometimes our dreams become our goals.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals in fact.

"Enter the B-HAG into our family. Suddenly I'm on a radical learning curve led by my kids. It dawned on me that instead of micro-managing their experiences, I could throw myself into their big dreams by offering the kind of support that an adult can give to a young person - I can drive, I can look stuff up in the phone book, on the Internet and in the community papers, I can fix hair to look like Lizzie Bennett."

And sometimes, too, are goals are by products of the time and discussions and life we live along the way. For unschooling is both quality and quantity time.

We lean on a truck and learn alongside.

"Women talk face to face, they say, but men lean side by side on a truck. Another version of leaning on a truck is fishing: facing the same way, doing the same thing. Traditionally these days parents and children move in different spheres and do different things, but unschooling families mix ages and activities."