Willa Ryan

... since I only just started posting on this list.

I am a 43yo mom to 7 kids, ages almost 20 down to 3.
We took our kids out of school when my oldest was in 2nd grade. My husband
had always wanted to homeschool them and he has always been basically an
unschooler in many ways. That is, his approach to the kids learning is way
more unschooly and life-oriented than mine is.

It wasn't until I found JOhn Holt's books and Growing Without Schooling
newsletters in the library that I could see how it might work. I loved his
writings, but couldn't seem to bring myself to desert the "schooly" things
altogether for several years. We would go back and forth.... less
structure or more, depending on circumstances. I'm not sure exactly why
this has been such a difficult process for me.

I'm making a serious try at it, now.... last year was spent deschooling
(myself, mostly) and this year I'm trying to replace it a bit with "real"
things. It doesn't come that easily. It helps that our parenting
approach was always sort of reciprocal and "attached". I can see that
responsiveness works with parenting, but somehow it's more difficult to
extend that to academics.

I hated school all through and didn't feel I learned anything, so why did I
think it would work for my kids? Maybe I thought it would be different if
it wasn't a building. I am not sure.

Willa