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

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

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 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...
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