Sorry it’s been so long folks, I never seem to have prolonged use of my phone these days. Go figure… anyway.

So the 1st part of my unschooling blog was about how we let our children decide what they want to learn. Part 2 is about how we let our children decide how they wish to live their lives.

Again, please understand I am not saying the way anyone else is doing things is wrong, I’m not saying school is wrong. The Lord knows I do things wrong all the time. I royally mess up with raising my children and lose my temper more frequently than I would care to admit, but then you pick yourself of the asphalt and carry on.

So, firstly to say no rules doesn’t mean no boundaries. The boundaries in our house are basically if you are infringing on another person’s human rights or belongings then it’s not ok. Anything else is up for discussion.

Below I am going to mention a couple of things we do or do not do with a short explanation. Any questions or quibbles are welcome by the way.

No bedtime

So we don’t say our children have to have a bed time they tell us when they are tired and we put them to sleep when they are ready which takes a maximum of 15 minutes per child. We do help set the bed time scene and have taught them to recognise their bodily cues and how in our own experience some things don’t help to get your self well rested. They are always all down before 8 pm and up before sun rise 🙄.

No meal times

We completely gave up the idea of having a “nice family meal” long ago. We realised it was far too much effort before we even started. Truthfully we’ve fed them on demand since they were born, but we all end up eating at the same time anyway.

We don’t limit any food or say that they can’t eat a particular food for a certain meal. Cake for breakfast is totally okay in our house and so is cereal for dinner. I buy the shopping once a week with a mixture of healthy foods and some treats. When they are gone they gone I can’t afford to feed them what they would desire the most all the time, which before we left for Bali was cheese strings and smoked salmon! Joshua doesn’t get the whole when it’s gone it’s gone concept, he will eat a whole packet of cheese strings for breakfast the minuet our asda delivery arrives and then cry for 6 days that there aren’t any left.

No chores

We don’t give our children chores as in they have to do a certain job. We encourage helpfulness to each other as a family. When they are asked to help and they don’t want to I say it’s fine. But through lots of different conversations and interactions over the years they understand that if they aren’t willing to help it takes me longer to get the job done till I can play with them.

No rewards or punishments

We don’t give rewards or punishments. We give them an allowance which they can have to spend on whatever they want and it is given regardless of behaviour. We don’t punish our children, we try to explain why the behaviour is unwanted and how to make things better. Of course I have to physically intervene sometimes to stop the throat punching of other people and the breaking of objects. Sometimes we have to just leave where we are at and try again some other time. Too often, regretfully, I lose my temper with them and have to apologise. Parenting is hard.

No limits

We don’t limit any thing the children are wishing to do that brings their enjoyment/learning; time money, environmental factors, resources and other people’s feelings/needs play a factor in some things which has to be taken into consideration.

We don’t limit the use of technology we let them use it for however long they wish. You’d think they use them all the time but they don’t! They use them for a few hours in the morning then the crazies set in. They start doing things like wearing all their underwear on their heads and nothing on their bottoms. Then. We go out. Mostly because they are driving me insane!

We try to balance everyone’s needs while having no limits. So it’s not ok for one person to do what they like with no limits while another person wants to do something else. An example of this is Ethan (if he didn’t go crazy with needing to run of his endless energy) would happily play on computers all day long. I, on the other hand find this incredibly boring so we talk and make a deal to make every one happy. Tablet time until lunch then we go out.

One more thing

Along side letting our children choose their education, their meals, their bedtime, their life, we try our best to allow them and respect their emotions. I see emotion as their way of communicating and sometimes their communication is, well… shitty. Sometimes it comes in the form of a chair being thrown at my face and it’s because they are tired and their cereal didn’t pour the way it was meant to and their sibling violated them somehow and mummy said they can’t dig up someone else’s garden. I think about all these reasons (after I’ve removed object of wrath) and it fills me with compassion. Then after the tears have fallen and calm has been restored (more or less) we talk about it and my aim is to gradually teach emotional intellengence. One day we will get there… Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I don’t get to compassion at all. Sometimes before I get to compassion I have to go shut myself up in my room PRAY and scream or cry or punch my pillow until I am ready to communicate like an adult.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this capsule of our lives.