tsmaddox2001

Hi everyone,

I've been lurking and learning on this board for several months. Thank you for being here.

I have been slowly moving away from the "mainstream" for years, not meaning to, because it can be lonely out here. I'll just list the issues and maybe some of you can relate and write back to me.

My husband and I decided together to do all these things starting in 1998:

Work less and downsize
Adopt kids from China
Unplug the TV
Become vegetarian
Homeschool our kids
Become vegan
Unschool our kids

Last summer my husband of 16 years died quite suddenly from cancer. While trolling for and signing up for grief support groups, I somehow found your group. Always Learning has changed the way I parent, and now I am even further from the larger pool of potential friends as a Radical Parent.

I feel lucky to have many friends who would do anything for me and my kids. All these friends have been accepting and supportive of the paths we've chosen but they don't "get" me. Sometimes, I can hardly stand to be around their families as they demand chores, obedience, and homeschool work from their kids.

I sold our little vegan natural grocery store when my husband died so now I am a SAHM. I am learning to love life again, albeit with a broken heart. I feel that radical parenting and unschooling are the most loving and natural things I've ever experienced. I am committed to this path.

Without my husband as a partner in all things, I want to move to a place where I will be in a community of like-minded people. But honestly, I don't think moving will help me.

If you experienced loneliness on your unschooling and parenting journey, please tell me how you coped. Thanks for listening.

--Sherie

BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

Sherie are there no unschoolers where you live?
 or maybe some relaxed homeschoolers that you can get together with?
I know the feeling of being lonely. What i did is to expand my group of friends and be more accepting of where they are.
 It takes time to make friends. It took me many years in MN to get a group of friends going.
I have people I would love to hang out  more with but they are scattered all over the globe.


 
Alex Polikowsky
http://polykow.blogspot.com/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unschoolingmn/
 







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Pam Sorooshian

On 6/8/2009 9:34 AM, tsmaddox2001 wrote:
> Always Learning has changed the way I parent, and now I am even further from the larger pool of potential friends as a Radical Parent.

Does your financial situation allow you to make it to any of the
unschooling conferences? This isn't a list for making local contacts as
it is so international, but if you do just let us know where you live,
I'm sure people here will contact you offlist to help you find more
unschooling contacts as near you as possible.

I wonder how others cope with being around people who aren't bad
parents, who are generally loving and kind and good to their children,
but are definitely more conventional. It upsets and frustrates me, too,
to see a parent be harsh with a child when I could see another way so
very clearly. Unschooling put ME so much more in touch with my own
sensitive inner child heart that I feel real pangs of pain when I
witness an adult being unkind to a child. But, still, there are reasons
why we still hang out with people who don't share our parenting
approach. Lots of times my kids liked their kids so we were thrown
together, for example. Other times, I really liked the parents, in
general, even though they were overly-controlling or punitive with their
kids.

For me, the best relationships of that type have been those where our
differences were out in the open, spoken about relatively infrequently,
but freely, and it was completely accepted by both of us that we were
different and that we'd made the choice to accept those differences. It
has worked out mostly all right - someone I'm very close to is a very
different kind of parent than I am, but still has warm and loving
relationships with her children in spite of the strict bedtimes and
emphasis on consistent rules, etc. They joke, laugh, play, talk, and
have fun together, too, and that seems to be working well for them.

The real practical difficulty, though, of hanging out with conventional
parents is that they have all these rules and restrictions that we don't
have. We annoy them and make their lives with their kids more difficult
when we won't tell our kids to wear their shoes or not eat sugar, etc.
So, I don't know, but it might help to consider that the freedom and
positive support you give your kids might be something they are having
to overlook, just as you are having to overlook the way they treat their
kids. Maybe it'll feel more mutual if you think of it that way.

I couldn't hang out with someone who was super harsh with their kids,
but it really is not impossible to have good friends who do things very
differently, as long as they are basically happy and enjoy each other, etc.

-pam

casa_divina

Thank you Pam for your response. It really resonated with my personal situation. When I read the original post, I felt familiar pangs of being far away from like-minded people (I live in the cloud forest in Ecuador where there a NO homeschoolers, let alone unschoolers) and wanting a community where my family and I "fit in", or at least aren't so strange compared to the rest of the families here in this small town. I found myself wanting to go down that path of self-pity where I (and in this case our family) am so unique that there's nobody to relate to..... But then I remember that that path of self-pity gets me nowhere I want to be.

I have chosen to live in this place because it is beautiful, we are surrounded by a mega-diverse forest, the tourism here makes it so that we can run our lodge and stay at home with our kids and do REALLY fun things like ziplining, horse back riding, swimming in the river that is just a few minutes away, we live car-free, we are surrounded by family (my husband's) that loves us... I could go on and on.... you get the point... I choose to focus on the things that are right in my life instead of the things that are wrong.
These acts of continual gratitude have has helped me embrace this unschooling life fully and have made me a happy person, thus making my children happy people.

I don't have close friends here in the small town I live in. I can't get past talking about the weather or the upcoming elections or local gossip with most people, even my in-laws. I try to find interesting things to do with my girls during the week before 3pm until their friends are free to play. There are two families in Quito, about 3 hours away that we love to hang out with and get to see once every 6 weeks or so. We camp out at their house, or they come to ours. They are by no means unschoolers, but we enjoy each other's company, the kids get along great and I love getting to spend extended time (1 or 2 days) with them. The visits feel very fulfilling.

I have let go of thinking that I need people that are just like me in order to be happy with my life here in Ecuador. Obviously that is not something I can have- I am a 6 foot tall white lady living among small, mostly indigenous Ecuadorians. I find pleasure in connecting with people in the community on their level (not that I'm above them or anything, I just feel like I'm on a different plane at times). The grocery store owner and I have a running joke about his obsession with plastic bags and my dedication to my baskets and canvas bags. I wave and chat with folks on the street and play tag with their kids in the main plaza. I seek to fulfill my social needs by visiting my friends in Quito, chatting online with family and friends in the states, phone calls every once in a while and of course, these beloved unschooling lists.

I know that my case is rare in its isolation, but my point is that we can seek out connections with people no matter how different they are from us. (okay, so I wouldn't want to spend considerable time with some of the parents of my kids' friends - but I do hang out because I know it's important to my children). I would love to live in a strong unschooling community, but until that happens I'll keep shooting the shit with man at the grocery store and trying not to roll my eyes when a friend of my daughters' can't come over because she hasn't taken a bath.

Molly in Ecuador



--- In [email protected], Pam Sorooshian <pamsoroosh@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 6/8/2009 9:34 AM, tsmaddox2001 wrote:
> > Always Learning has changed the way I parent, and now I am even further from the larger pool of potential friends as a Radical Parent.
>
> Does your financial situation allow you to make it to any of the
> unschooling conferences? This isn't a list for making local contacts as
> it is so international, but if you do just let us know where you live,
> I'm sure people here will contact you offlist to help you find more
> unschooling contacts as near you as possible.
>
> I wonder how others cope with being around people who aren't bad
> parents, who are generally loving and kind and good to their children,
> but are definitely more conventional. It upsets and frustrates me, too,
> to see a parent be harsh with a child when I could see another way so
> very clearly. Unschooling put ME so much more in touch with my own
> sensitive inner child heart that I feel real pangs of pain when I
> witness an adult being unkind to a child. But, still, there are reasons
> why we still hang out with people who don't share our parenting
> approach. Lots of times my kids liked their kids so we were thrown
> together, for example. Other times, I really liked the parents, in
> general, even though they were overly-controlling or punitive with their
> kids.
>
> For me, the best relationships of that type have been those where our
> differences were out in the open, spoken about relatively infrequently,
> but freely, and it was completely accepted by both of us that we were
> different and that we'd made the choice to accept those differences. It
> has worked out mostly all right - someone I'm very close to is a very
> different kind of parent than I am, but still has warm and loving
> relationships with her children in spite of the strict bedtimes and
> emphasis on consistent rules, etc. They joke, laugh, play, talk, and
> have fun together, too, and that seems to be working well for them.
>
> The real practical difficulty, though, of hanging out with conventional
> parents is that they have all these rules and restrictions that we don't
> have. We annoy them and make their lives with their kids more difficult
> when we won't tell our kids to wear their shoes or not eat sugar, etc.
> So, I don't know, but it might help to consider that the freedom and
> positive support you give your kids might be something they are having
> to overlook, just as you are having to overlook the way they treat their
> kids. Maybe it'll feel more mutual if you think of it that way.
>
> I couldn't hang out with someone who was super harsh with their kids,
> but it really is not impossible to have good friends who do things very
> differently, as long as they are basically happy and enjoy each other, etc.
>
> -pam
>

Julie Anderson

Hello Molly... I'm generally a lurker on the list, but your situation struck a chord with me and I had to laugh a bit, as I've always felt 'isolated' too and we live smack dab in the middle of the USA! We've been hm'schooling for about 18 yrs and unschooling for most of those. As far as I know we are the only unschoolers around here.

When my oldest dd was young (she's 24 now) we were very active in the local hm'schooling group as that's what she wanted. I pretty much kept my mouth shut about how we do or don't do things. We never fit in very well, because the group here is very 'christian' too.

Now its down to just my youngest dd.. who's almost 14. We've found its best to not dwell on finding others that hm'school let alone unschool.. we pursue what dd is interested in (right now that's english riding, the whole hunter/jumper horse thing) She's not made any real 'buddies' but she does hang out at the stable a lot and loves talking horse stuff with all the other girls there.

We live on a small hobby farm, I raise dairy goats and we have a couple of horses too. My daughter Laura rides a lot with 2 older ladies(my age..ha).. and enjoys their company. It's funny how age doesn't matter when you're hanging out with people because of a shared interest.

I have one close friend who also hm'schools in the traditional manor, and who overlooks my 'weird' ways.. and she has 2 kids that my dd likes to hang out with too.

If you have time for another email pal.. you life sounds very interesting and exotic to me!!

Julie in MO

<<(I live in the cloud forest in Ecuador where there a NO homeschoolers, let alone unschoolers) and wanting a community where my family and I "fit in", or at least aren't so strange compared to the rest of the families here in this small town. I found myself wanting to go down that path of self-pity where I (and in this case our family) am so unique that there's nobody to relate to..... But then I remember that path of self-pity gets me nowhere I want to be.<<
>>I seek to fulfill my social needs by visiting my friends in Quito, chatting online with family and friends in the states, phone calls every once in a while and of course, these beloved unschooling lists.
Molly in Ecuador<<



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