EU414: When Unschooling Kids Choose School

We invited a panel of three unschooling parents to join us to talk about what happens when unschooling kids choose school. Ari, Terri, and Kinsey are all members of the Living Joyfully Network and they all have children who have chosen to try school. They shared about what led to the decision, how the expectations of school affected them and their families, what they and their kids learned from their experiences, and how their foundation of unschooling helped them along the way. It was really interesting to hear about their unique paths and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. 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! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ERIKA: Hello, everyone. I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia, as well as our special guests today, Ari, Terri, and Kinsey. Hi, everyone. So, I am really excited for this conversation. We invited Ari, Terri, and Kinsey, who are all Living Joyfully Network members, to join us today to talk about what happens when unschooling kids choose to go to school. There are lots of reasons why kids might be interested in trying school. And if they do, it can be a different experience than we might expect, because they’re making that choice themselves. But since people are different, and so are schools, we’ve seen a really wide range of experiences. And so thank you all for joining us to share a bit about your family’s experience. To get us started, can you briefly introduce yourself and share just a bit about your family? And maybe we could start with Ari. ARI: Sure. Hi, I’m Ari. I have three daughters. They are 10, 5, and 7. And we live in Portland, Oregon. We’ve been unschooling for about four years now. And this past year, my 10-year-old decided to go to school. She attended our local public school for fourth grade. ERIKA: Okay. And Terri?  TERRI: We live in Swan River, Manitoba, quite a small town. There are four of us, me and my husband, and our two kids, a boy and a girl, Felix and Stella. And Stella decided to go into school this last year, into grade four as well. We live out in the country. It’s nice and quiet out here. And we have various interests that we have going on.  ERIKA: Thank you. And Kinsey? KINSEY:  Awesome. Hey, yes, I’m Kinsey. I live in Lubbock, Texas. And I have two children, Riley, who’s 15, and Emmy, who’s 12. Emmy chose to try school in 2024, and was there for a little while. So yeah, we had some experience there at our local public school.  PAM: Nice. That’s very awesome. Okay, so now let’s get into a little bit more of the details. We’re very excited to hear everyone’s stories. We would love to know how did your child’s choice to go to school come about? And then how did it play out for your family? Certainly like at the beginning, as you guys were adjusting and getting this kind of settled. And would you like to start, Terri?  TERRI: Sure, sure. I’m guessing like maybe two years ago, it was coming up to when we could have enrolled her for grade three. And Stella had starte