To School Or Not To School: Homeschooling, Deschooling, Unschooling and Other Educational Choices

My two sons are 12 year apart. Which means that for the past 19 years I have had to engage with the education system and will for another 6 more. 25 years of it. 19 years so far of trying to navigate schools, programs, expectations and assumptions about what my children- what all children- should learn and how they should learn it. 19 years of battles with my kids, each of who is some flavor of neurodiverse, about getting up for school, going to school, staying at school, paying attention at school, doing homework after school. 19 years of tears and yelling and overwhelm and anxiety and low self esteem caused by bullying or alienation or comparison. And while some parents might feel that these has benefited more than cost both them and their children I can say without a doubt that for me and for us it has done far more harm than good.

School for me as a child was fine. I was compliant enough, motivated enough by good grades or praise or proving my intelligence to do well in it despite my undiagnosed ADD. I didn't question whether I should be there, what I was learning. I had friends that I looked forward to seeing each day, at least most of the time. I was one of the ones for whom school more or less works. I was in the minority. Not the minority of kids who go to school of course, that's most. One of the ones that the cultural norm was manageable if not ideal for. After finishing high school I went to college, got a pretty good subject adjacent job once I'd finished, went to grad school when I was ready and emerged with a degree that let me do the kind of work I'd decided I wanted to do. Not one that came with benefits or health care or great pay mind you, but one that I liked and was good at and could scrape together a life on with 75K of student loan debt that realistically would probably never be paid off. I guess if that's some sort of reasonable goal as an adult in the US, I had met it.

My son's paths have been different. The eldest hit his final year of high school when the pandemic arrived. There was to be no in person final year. No dances, no graduation ceremony or recognition of an accomplishment except the attempt we made in our backyard to make a speech. Just an ambiguous end and the realization that he had entered a version of adulthood that was not at all what he had expected it to be. He's 23 now and working his way through community college, having recently gotten some clarity on what he might want to do next. Should the world comply with some sense of sanity which right now isn't looking too good.

Although the years of school for my elder were incredibly hard, somehow we got through them. My younger is a different story. For him his experience in school started with the pandemic rather than ending with it. Kindergarten was cut short not even half way through when the schools closed. The next few years were a strange hybrid of pods and part time in person and part time online public school and all of it sucked. I'm still not sure to what degree that spotty and always changing make-it-up-as- you-go version of education combined with the pervasive fear, confusion and stress of an unprecedented health emergency resulted in the absolute disaster that full time in person school ended up being for him once things were back to relative normal but it was bad. Really bad. As in the kind of meltdowns and resistance and heartbreaking dysregulation I was totally unequipped to handle. I tried everything from compassionately firm to unconditionally understanding, from ultimatums to incentives. Nothing worked and every morning the amount of distress he experienced about going to school and the total collapse that happened at pick up when I could get him there were so clearly out of the range of "normal" it was clear that something had to change. I moved him from public to private school but little changed. The environment was better, creative and quirky and much more affirming. It was the kind of place I wish I had gone as a child. But was an open floor school meaning very, very noisy and there was so much cross pollination among grades that one of the things that triggered my son most; young children, could not be avoided. It didn't make enough of a difference for him to be able to tolerate the long and wildly overstimulating days. I developed some mild version of PTSD every time my phone rang as calls from the school while I was at work were a regular occurrence. How the hell did parents do this? I sure couldn't.

When 6th grade started off particularly poorly both the school and I had come to the conclusion that it wasn't the right place for him. The problem was, nowhere was. Even in the very liberal and outside the box city we lived in, options were limited. Schools that catered to kids with ADD and/or ASD were few, extremely expensive and had enormous wait lists. And frankly there was nothing that even vaguely smelled like a traditional school was going to work for him. This was the time that terms such as "school avoidance" or PDA; what used to be called "pathological demand avoidance" and has been updated to "persistent drive for autonomy", a far less pathologizing name, were more commonly recognized, I had no idea what I was dealing with and felt entirely alone. Finally, having run out of ideas and at the brink of my own collapse around this, I decided to withdraw him from school and register him for homeschooling. I didn't know how I was going to do that, didn't want to, and didn't understand what it could or should look like. I researched exhaustively. Online recorded programs, online live group programs, tutors, groups, classes both in person and not. I tried to piece together what something resembling an education for him could look like. I was scared. Scared because everything I had tried had failed. I felt completely responsible both for things being the way they were and solely responsible for doing something about it. The opinions and suggestions of well meaning family members and friends only made things worse. My hope was fragile and getting more and more thin by the day.

As yet still uncertain and undecided about what to do, we left for Australia. At the time we didn't know if we would be staying past the two months we had booked. I knew that life in the US was leaving both my son and myself burnt out and depressed. The political situation had reached the point of being untenable to me. I was defeated, desperate and lost. As I've written about previously, my nervous system started to recover here in Australia and we decided to stay. Once the decision had been made and the conflict and grief around it started to subside, so did my child's. With a newfound optimism I restarted my research and I was thrilled to discover that where we live there are some great independent schools and a massive homeschooling community with an incredible amount of options, activities and support. I wanted it all for him! The bush survival programs. The yoga and animal care and arts and surfing clubs. The only problem was, he didn't want any of it. Still. I gave it time thinking that we had just moved to a new country and there was so much he was adapting to. As a kid who doesn't like change, it was to be expected that it would take a while. But month after month he continued to face near panic at every attempt I made to engage him in something. I tried to let him lead and show me what he was interested in learning or doing. We tried a cooking class, a 3D printing class, a coding class, a paper design class, a martial arts class, a mental health focused small group program with a lot of cool ideas and great people. He left every single one early and distraught. I went to bed every night near tears.

I was so tired of fighting over it. So tired of the wedge it was putting between me and my child. So tired of the blame and shame and guilt. So tired of fearing for his future. So tired of not knowing how to have one of my own if I couldn't ever leave the house to work. So tired of trying to figure it all out myself. So incredibly tired of seeing the children of my peers get celebrated and the moms get praised as their kids successfully marked their mounting accomplishments while I was working harder than I ever had in my life to keep my kid interested in life and open to the idea that maybe, just maybe there was something out there that he might find joy or interest in. Reassuring him that it was possible and that we just had to keep looking, keep trying. That I would be there with him every step of the way as we searched.

We haven't found it yet. What I have found though, is unschooling. For those of you that haven't heard the term before it means that we are, at least for now, throwing traditional ideas and methods of education out the window. In fairness, that's where they were anyway but at least I have a name for it now. There are workshops for parents and even entire summits about it. Deschooling is taking a break from the educational system, on average one month for every year the child had been in it and unschooling can be a lifelong removal from it. It is recognizing that some kids simply cannot survive let alone thrive in it. It is accepting that there is nothing wrong with them or with us as parents when that is the case. It is letting go of something that doesn't work in order to be open to something that does. I'm so so lucky that here it's fairly common. I'm not sure if it's that this particular area draws more unconventional people or that in Australia they just view purpose, contribution, balance, quality of life and meaning in a different way than we do in the US. Probably both. At any rate, it didn't take long for me to meet a lot of other moms that are also unschooling though the majority still do send their kiddos off to standard schools. I love how easily and comfortably they share their unschooling journey without pretending to make it more than it really is. They don't even try to say they are homseschooling or if they do they clarify what that means for them. It may be that they travel with their kids around the country in a caravan or work on their farm or have their own projects or little businesses. It is learning by living.

I'm still trying to figure out what I think about all this but I know how I feel now is better than how I felt before, even if it is a daily practice to fight the voices in my own head that tell me I'm not doing enough. It is a huge exercise in trust. I have to trust that he will be okay. That we will find it. The thing that clicks. The path that makes sense. I have to trust that right now the best thing I can do is provide options and invitations and truly be okay with him turning them down. I have to trust that if I am patient enough and he has recovered enough from years and years of school related trauma, he will be ready to find his curiosity, to follow his own interests and dreams and ideas. More than anything else I have ever lived through, this is my opportunity to really allow for intuition to take the lead. To flatly reject the formula we were given and told to follow and to create our own. It feels a bit like freefall but it also feels right.

In a perfect world the choices wouldn't be so limited. Alternative schools do their best to provide another option and some of them definitely do teach things that are more worth learning and more relevant to the world we live in today but they are still structured for the most part in a way that will never work well for a lot of kids. I feel so sad for those kids, including my sons. So sorry they have had to try so much harder and feel so much worse about themselves as they have tried to make themselves fit in something that is not right for them. So sorry that I tried for so long to force it work. I wish our education system had a massive overhaul and not the kind that is happening right now with the dismantling and defunding of it by a small group of privileged idiots. An actual observation and critical thinking based improvement to the way we teach and what we are teaching and how different kids learn. I'm not hopeful but I can dream.

I am hope that one day I can write something about how awesome my kid is doing in ways that other people can register. In the meantime I will rejoice in every small thing he does that shows love or attention. I will grab my keys and race to the door every time he expresses interest in leaving the house. I will praise him to the moon and back when he communicates his feelings or is a good friend to someone or is so gentle with an animal. When he brings his own dishes downstairs or brushes his teeth without my reminders. When he teaches me something, which he does every day, no matter what the subject is. When he tries a new food or a new activity even if he ends up hating it.

I see your kids, too. And I see you. The parents that hide because of their own challenges with their different kids. You are doing amazing even though I'm pretty positive you are sure you are not. Your kids are beautiful and I have so much respect for them. So much more than for kids who haven't had to cope with the same obstacles. I am so so thankful you both are here. We are not alone. And we are not unwanted or unimportant. Please, please keep going. I will too. If you want to chat or vent or share something no one else will get the significance of, reach out. We are in this together.