Kristie Cochran

Hi all,

Kristie the newbie here. I'm currently on vacation and just wanted to
pop in and tell you that I'm trying to spread the word about
unschooling. I was so thankful for the posts last week about how to
tell people about unschooling. We're staying at a beach house with 4
of my husbands sisters and their families. One sister has 5 boys and
all are special needs kids (I know, all kids are special and have
their own needs). She and I went out to buy groceries and stopped and
had lunch and we started talking about the kids and how they're having
problems with their oldest, 14yo, and the other problems they were
having with the other boys in school.

I started telling her how I was not sending my boys to school and how
preschool just didn't work for Jared (5 next month) and how I'm going
to unschool and really try to live my life joyfully and just enjoy my
boys. That really struck a chord with her because between her boys
schedules, fighting with the schools and now problems with her 14yo,
she's just not able to really enjoy her boys. All of her boys are
adopted, from the same druggie mom (who is an adopted relative, so
they're not blood related to the boys at all), so they are blood
siblings and struggling from the effects of being born addicted. I
really think if she could bring them home and unschool (she tried
homeschooling, but it just didn't really work out well for her), then
I think they'd all be so much happier.

I was a little aprehensive to bring this up to her because she is so
controlling with her boys with food and bedtimes and such, I didn't
think she'd be open, but I really think she is open, at least
somewhat. I think I'll go ahead and order a couple of copies of The
Teenage Liberation Handbook and Rue's books to get her started
thinking about it. She's not a computer or internet gal, so I don't
know if she'll be interested in joining this group or not, but I'll
give her lots of resources anyway.

Just this morning one of the other sisters was telling my husband,
"When they're at home, they're not this wild, because they know they
have to live under the rules." And I was just thinking to myself,
"Well, if they didn't have so many rules, then they'd be acting
normally." My boys aren't acting much differently at the beach house
than they do at home. I think all of them (the adults) are a bit
astonished that I let Jared stay up till 11pm or whenever he lays down
to sleep, and the same with Chase (18mo). At least they haven't
really tried to tell me I should make them go to be earlier. My SIL
with the 5 boys puts the 3 youngest to bed between 7:30 & 8pm. I
can't believe they even go down, especially since it's not even dark
then, and they're up at the crack of dawn and I can't deal with that!

Well, this is getting a little long, but thanks for all the words of
wisdom last week! I'm putting them to good use.

Kristie, a newbie