Hiya,

Have you ever read about an unschooled teenager doing something amazing, or one who has gone on to do something super impressive as an adult, and then turned around and looked at your own child and thought…ummm…what’s happening here.

(and before I write another word, please know that I definitely have 😂)

Because your child doesn’t seem to have a major ‘thing’ yet, right. And if someone asked what they were working towards, you probably wouldn’t really know what to say. You know how they spend their time, and you know the sorts of things they’re into, but you can’t yet see how that will translate into some amazing, fulfilling, prosperous adulthood.

So, naturally, you start wondering why the same freedom that seems to produce these really amazing stories just doesn’t seem to be doing the same thing in your home.

I want to talk about this a little bit today, because over the past couple of weeks I’ve been sharing stories about people who grew up outside school and went on to do some very cool things. Including someone who went on to achieve a PhD in mathematics after hardly doing anything formal as a child (as you do).

On the one hand, I think those stories are really useful. When you choose a totally different path through life it’s very easy to worry that you’re going to close important doors on your child. Hearing that other families like ours have confidently walked through them - and done very well when they have - is extremely encouraging.

But on the other hand, we can start out feeling our child could do something like that (cool), only to have that slowly but surely morph into believing they should (not so cool).

Because look at all the time they have, right. Look at all the freedom. Surely, once you take away the school timetable, the homework, the constant changing between subjects, the constant demands on their time, incredible things are going to have room to develop.

And if (when?) that doesn’t happen, if (when?) they don’t have super impressive things to show for all that time, surely that means we’re doing this wrong…

That’s a VERY easy jump to make. A very understandable jump to make. A jump I’m quite sure a lot of us do make.

But let’s just stop a second and think about what we’ve just done there. We’ve left the pressures of formal education behind, given our child a lifestyle where they no longer feel they have to keep up with everyone else, and then…started wondering why they aren’t keeping up with the most exceptional of everyone else.

We’ve taken away one set of expectations and replaced them with an arguably even harder, more intense set.

Let me tease this out a little further to show you why this is such a trap.

Imagine a child goes to school, grows up, finds work, and builds a life they’re pretty happy with. They have good friends, they have hobbies they enjoy, they can comfortably pay their bills, and they have things they look forward to.

They’re proud of the work they do in their job, they bring a solid work ethic to it, but it’s not their dream career or anything. It doesn’t intersect with their passions or even general interests in any meaningful way. It’s just a job, and they’re quite happy to do the day and head home to their family at the end of it.

Would you look at that person and say their education has failed them because they haven’t done something extraordinary with their career?

I wouldn’t. I’d say there’s a whole lot to be happy and content about there.

But now imagine exactly the same person, with exactly the same life, but they were unschooled.

There’s a very good chance the perception of them and their life would be different. Shouldn’t they be doing something more impressive by now? Shouldn’t they have started a company or got into some prestigious university and outshone their peers or written a novel or invented something amazing or become an incredible musician or a professional athlete or fluent in several languages?

Shouldn’t they, at the very least, have found a way to turn their passion into an income?

Like, what were you actually doing with all that time you had?

And of course I’m using extreme examples here to make the point, but I’m quite confident you know exactly what the little bubbling feeling I’m talking about here is. It’s very, very easy for us to feel like we need to justify our unconventional life choice by showing everyone that it’s led to some amazing outcome.

But, actually, there is so much good to be had from a…good life. Not an utterly extraordinary one, just a good one. And yeah, the incredible stories are cool to hear and it’s fun to imagine our child going on to become one of those. And maybe they will. I’m certainly not saying we shouldn’t be ambitious in that sense.

But if somewhere deep down inside you believe you’ve sorta semi-failed if that doesn’t happen, then the freedom your child has today is kinda being given in exchange for a pretty serious outcome. They can follow their own path, sure, but ideally it would lead somewhere - or to something - quite impressive.

And voila, we have that massive expectation swap. One for another.

Think about the people you most enjoy having in your own life. What makes you value them? What makes you glad they’re your friend, or your husband or your wife, or the person you get to work with?

How much of that would make some impressive story about their education? Chances are, most of the people you know - and enjoy knowing - wouldn’t make an impressive headline. Which is absolutely fine, because there are so many things about a person that matter more than that.

If you chose this life at least partly so your child could have more time to play, more freedom to explore, more time with people they love, more time working out who they are in this big wide world, then it’s really important to understand (and truly believe) that those things have value in and of themselves. They do not have to result in something amazing to have it all be worth it.

Our children…they’re getting to live the kind of childhood most of us probably would have loved to have lived. That’s awesome.

Just don’t let your brain start believing they owe you some utterly extraordinary adulthood in return for it.

Talk soon,
Issy.