A homeschool isn’t a school.  When a homeschool isn’t a school, it’s better for you and your children. I’m noticing a trend in Facebook homeschooling groups lately with mothers feeling overwhelmed and considering sending their children to public school. Having children, even without homeschooling, can be overwhelming in and of itself. When you add in the homeschooling component, overwhelm increases almost exponentially. Does this mean that families shouldn’t homeschool their children? By no means!

One of the biggest misconceptions about homeschooling is that you have a school in your home. When you view homeschooling in this way it creates stress and pressure to hit artificial milestones (reading at age 5 or writing paragraphs in 1st grade) and to complete an amount of work in a year that isn’t necessarily realistic. You worry about grade levels, standardized testing, and meeting societal expectations. This is the result of trying to do school at home. It’s stressful for parents and children and can quickly lead to burnout.

So, what’s a parent to do who wants to give their children a good education? After homeschooling my first five children from 1993 to 2012 using the Charlotte Mason method and a mix of living books and curriculum, I now think that unschooling could be the answer to all of these problems.

I arrived at this conclusion when my sixth child completed sixth grade and things began to shift. We were doing the Charlotte Mason method using Ambleside Online which offers an excellent, rigorous curriculum using well-written books. Seventh grade was quite challenging, so for eighth grade I looked for a different Charlotte Mason method curriculum. I discovered one called Wildwood, which uses modern living books that I thought would appeal to my son more. For a while this version of the Charlotte Mason method was more palatable to my son, but by week nine, he wasn’t connecting to the readings, had stopped giving his narrations, and was frustrated with his math lessons. I was frustrated too.

I texted my friend, Jennifer, who unschooled her eight children, for advice. She suggested that I ask my son what he wanted to learn. So, I asked him! His answer surprised me; he wanted to learn Russian history, philosophy, and real life math that people use in their everyday lives. And he was already unschooling on his own teaching himself to edit and create videos using various apps.

So I set aside our curriculum and combed the Internet for interesting Russian History and philosophy resources to share with my son, and pulled out my trusty Real Life 101 materials that I used previously to teach real life math in our co-op.

This change to unschooling has been life-changing for my son and me. He’s more engaged and talkative about what he’s learning. I’m way less stressed over trying to get him to do his school work and I have more time to devote to my paid work and my own interests. Unschooling has helped us to rebuild our relationship and it’s already helping my son to be more responsible for his learning.

When a homeschool isn’t a school, we’re free to live a learning lifestyle where the home is a place parents and kids learn with and from each other. We’re free to just enjoy life, reading books with our children, teaching math as it’s needed, learning from the world around us, and cultivating a sense of wonder. If homeschooling is hard and you’re eyeing the school bus when it goes down your street, you might want to give unschooling a test drive. I’m wishing you all the best! Happy HOMEschooling!