The following question was posed on one of the e-lists I am on....

How did you and your family come to unschooling?

There is probably a simple, short answer to this question something along the lines of "I'm lazy, I'm unorganized and I have always preferred play to work" but I think that I can probably shed a bit more light on just how we have gotten to where we are!

The first time I heard about homeschooling my children (then just 3 of them) it seemed like the most bizarre idea. I was overwhelmed with 3 in diapers and couldn't possibly imagine wanting to be around my kids 24-7 for the rest of their childhood. School would be my free daycare center and I would be free to sit around and eat bonbons all day! Then as they grew and I heard a bit more about homeschooling, the only families we ever encountered who were homeschooling where doing "school at home" and they had "odd" children, come on, you all know the kind of kids I am talking about, pasty white, unathletic, introverted, submission, the ones who won't look you in the eye and don't open their mouths without looking to their parents for permission. There was no way I was going to turn my kids into those "freaks". Nope, not going to happen. Yet there was that nagging voice that kept saying "come on, keep them home".

I sent Brett off to kindergarten. He missed a good part of the year being in and out of the hospital. In retrospect, I now realize we homeschooled most of that year, but it never occurred to me not to send him back once he was healthy. Hannah and Emily soon followed. That nagging voice got louder. I had met many of family online that were homeschooling, they didn't seem all that odd. Little things kept happening that made me question if school was really where I wanted them to be. It wasn't that I questioned the academics but more the notion that they were being robbed of their childhood. Heck, they were in a private school, yet we had to start driving them to school because we were informed that the 7th and 8th graders were having oral sex on the back on the school bus. I was slowly getting fed up with having 3 projects on 3 different topics due on the same day. I was sick of my family always being divided because they were gone all day and then had their other activities at night. And something about the way so many of the families talked and interacted with their kids just didn't sit right with me.

The moment of truth was upon me. Emily had a HORRID kindergarten experience and there was no way that I was going to send Grant to school, not to the kindergarten teacher that gave poor Emily an ulcer and robbed her of her creative spirit. So I began my crusade. I was going to save my kids from school, but I needed to figure out how. I decided I would spend the year doing research and that I would find support and that by the end of the year I would have my kids home. I went to support group meetings, I read ever book I could get my hands on, and I slowly began to bring my husband around to my line of thinking. Of course he was still certain that all homeschooled kids were freaks, but at least he would listen.

By accident, I stumbled onto an unschooling support group. I went to a meeting and honestly thought that the women there were freaks, completely out of their minds. What did they think, letting their children lead their own learning, not using curriculum, not worried that their 10 year old wasn't reading? I left the meeting mumbling under my breath about those poor neglect kids and offered up prayers for the families. Little did I know what kind of seed had been planted that night.

Things happened that helped Jay see the light. Brett suffered a concussion and was home from school for 6 weeks during which time it was taking less than a hour a day to get schoolwork done. It helped my cause that the week I sent him back to school they didn't heed my request that he not be sent out to recess because of the risk of him being reinjured. We found out that on day 2 that he was flattened on the playground by a classmate as they played football. Emily was bit by a classmate, breaking the skin. Hannah was being harassed daily because of her speech. On March 8th, as we left hospice after saying our final goodbye to his father, Jay said that they didn't need to go back to school next year.

If he wavered at all, it never showed. I bought books to use as a curriculum. My dad helped me put up a wall in the basement to create a school room. I met another mom, also new on her homeschooling journey, to meet at the park, attend park programs with and to just hang out with. I was "ready" to do school at home.

Things went well the first couple of days. Then one morning the phone rang, it was my friend Michelle. She asks if I was watching TV and I remarked rather smugly "of course not, we are doing school right now" to which she responded, "you should go turn it on. A plane just hit a building in NYC and they are showing pictures on the news". Oh, how educational, an air traffic disaster, we can certainly take a break to go see this. I took the kids upstairs and turned on the TV expecting to hear a story of how something had gone wrong with a plane. We had barely settled ourselves on the couch when a second plane hit the building next to the one the first plane hit. Looking back now, I wonder, if before that day, I had even know that there were twin building called the World Trade Center, after that day, I would never forget. I sat glued to the TV. My dad called. I sent the kids back downstairs to work on "school" work. Brett asked if they could take a small TV down with them and turn it on. I said "yes". Minutes later he is walking up the steps.

"Mom, mom, is some "Penta" building important?"

"What?"

"Penta building? P-E-N-T-A..."

"The pentagon?"

"Yeah, that's it"

"Yes, why?" Thinking it had something to do with some paper he was working on.

"A plane just hit it"

I relay Brett's message to my dad and hang up the phone. If I had doubted it for a minute, I was now certain our country was under attack. All I could do was cry, pray and hug my children. Later my friend Michelle called in tears. She had tried to go and get her kids from school and they wouldn't let her take them. I still relish that I was the one calming my children, holding them in my arms and sharing their fears.

Something happened that day as I sat, like so much of my country, glued to my TV set. The reality that there was no promise of tomorrow weighed heavy on me. The realization that living in the present was all that I could do. The importance of family resonated in my head. Of course the one thing I felt I could do was make a proclamation that I hadn't given up and the way I could do it was by having another child, saying "damn you, life goes on". Sophie was born the first week of the 9-11 baby boom.

The books and schoolwork were forgotten. I was pregnant and tired and it was easier to let them play or pick something they wanted to do than it was for me to make them do what some schedule said they were "supposed" to do. We went to the park, attended park programs, went to the museums, played, fought, laughed....We lived life. I reconnected with that unschooling group...And yes, some of them were freaks, but I started to realize that being a freak was OK! At the end of the "school" year, I administered the CAT test. All 3 of the older kids (the only ones I needed to test) did amazingly well, without any "schooling". Of course I am sure some of it was carryover from the previous years in school, but I didn't care.

The younger 5 have never known anything but unschooling. They have never taken a test. Brett, by choice, has taken some classes with some fellow homeschoolers as part of a local co-op. The year he was deciding whether to go to highschool or not, he took the admissions test at a local private highschool. Without studying and having not taken a standardized test in 4 years, he tested EXACTLY at grade level and was offered admission to one of the best highschools in our city. He chose to stay home. And yes, I am sure there are things my kids don't know that other kids their age do. There are things they haven't been exposed to. They are kids full of joy, full of passion who feel secure in their world. They are kids who know they are valued for who they are. They are children whose childhood is being prolonged just a bit longer.

We have been blessed to have come to know other unschooling families during our homeschooling journey. Many of them we call friends. Some we even hold in our hearts, closer than family.

So I don't know, did we come to unschooling or did it come to us? Maybe you liked the short answer better.