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Deschooling: A personal experience

bishoprosebethany

Hey,


So you read my post about deschooling and what it is all about...now I am going to let you in on how it worked for our family, what we learnt and what is next for us.


So, we spent several months following a deschooling routine wherein we followed no structured activities or learning but allowed Levi time to decompress and not have to follow anyone else's rules and 'work'. Basically, we didn't have any specific routine and didn't go out of our way to do anything purposefully 'educational'.


We have now finished this period of deschooling and we all learnt a lot, not least that having no routine is both liberating and hard in equal measure. Levi, for the most part, found the whole experience a lot easier than either me or my husband, Jack. Like many people mentioned when I researched deschooling, he did

sleep a lot as well as enjoying just staying at home. He read a lot of books, played a lot of Lego and watched for movies than usual.



To begin with he wasn't wholly interested with playing with others, whether that be meeting new friends, old friends or even his brother. He was quite self contained. He was happy by himself for a good month, not that he didn't play but just not how I would expect. After that initial month or so, Levi and Sonny really reconnected and have been rather inseparable ever since. They enjoy time apart but they choose to spend most of their days together and even when we do go to a meet up with others, they still choose to play together even within a bigger group. This strengthened bond is one of the things I am most grateful for, in our choice to home educate.


Both Jack and I also feel as though our relationship with Levi has repaired in ways we didn't realise it was fractured. Our interactions are a lot easier and nicer. Levi is exhausted when we are talking with him, he is lively and animated. It is beautiful to see the spark back in his eye.


As I said, Levi was perfectly content during our deschooling period. I, on the other hand, found it hard. I was so happy that we made the decision to home educate but surely I should be schooling Levi is some way. Everything I had read and watched kept telling me to leave him to rest and recuperate, be mindful and observe how he interacts with his toys and books and what he learns from them. It was lovely to see him connect with his things again, now that he had the time but I struggled not to try to make things into a learning experience in which I as teaching him. I have come to the conclusion that with both of my children, there is often a good time to actively in part knowledge and teach my boys something. They have to be engaged in the conversation and see use in knowing what I am saying or find it interesting.


It is hard, I find myself still trying to push what I want my kids to do or be interested in onto them...it doesn't work. Shocker! I do, however, know that me forcing information on them does not make any of us happy or in fact particularly teach them anything. I constantly remind myself that they are learning which I know to be true, having Levi, just this morning, talking to me about alliteration. He is having a lot of fun with tongue twisters, that's for sure.


So what now? As you have probably guessed from what I have been saying, I haven't gone and recreating school at home but are we following any sort of homeschool ethos, I would say we are what some would call 'eclectic'. I would say, we are still find our feet. I have researched many different types of home education styles and how children learn and believe that learning should be child-led (unschooling) but whether I could fully commit myself to that, I have not yet found out.


Deschooling is hard, I am not going to lie, but my son needed a breather, to reconnect with us and the world around him. Find his feet and his voice again. He is definitely happier for it. I am so glad that we gave ourselves that time.












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