But they aren’t doing anything?
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But they aren’t doing anything?!
The words came from my kids’ grandma and led to a long conversation about children and learning. She’s a wonderful 80-yo lady, but has a very hard time understanding our way of life. To her, it seems the kids are just “always on vacation” and therefore obviously not learning anything or getting anywhere with their lives
For sure, if you look at our daily rythm from the outside, it’s generally very laid-back. We sleep until we wake up. Eat when we’re hungry (not necessarily at set meal times) spend a lot time on “screens” and often head to the forest, the beach, the playground or the trampoline park when we do go out.
Is it always like this? No. There are periods in our life when we’re way more “busy” than at other times. But our daily life is rarely scheduled and planned like you would find in a school. Is it equal to “doing nothing”? Absolutely not. We might be in front of ‘screens’ but stuff is going on. Building things in Minecraft. Watching tutorials on youtube. Answering work emails. Playing word games. Chatting to friends online. Looking up information. All kinds of things. And via these things learning takes place. But it does not look like the conventional “learning” because we’re not sitting at a desk, with books, divided in subjects and formally “doing school”
The concept of unschooling can be really, really hard to grasp if you’re stuck in the old paradigm of learning as something that necessarily has to be imposed on you. That there is a sort of universal sum of skills and knowledge that everyone should obtain because…well, they just should. Because that’s how we’ve always done, right? (Infact it’s not, but that’s another story)
I don’t impose learning on myself. I don’t impose it on my kids either. I TRUST that they will WANT to learn what they need, when they need it. And I also know, because I’ve been doing this long enough now, that learning happens. Knowledge is gained. Skills are acquired. Over time. And as it becomes relevant.
Even when it looks like you’re doing nothing 🌞
love & light,
Luna Maj