Now that my eldest two children are 18 and 16, they are grappling with all the myriad choices available to them as they move out into the world. And, as ideas about courses, journeys and careers are discussed, I’m struck by how endlessly interesting this phase of life is. I love to hear about all the different plans and thoughts—some are fleeting, some seem to have come out of the blue, and others have been mulled over for years now. Some of them seem like a really logical next move and others I have to make an effort to get my head around. None of them come from a need to do what anyone else is doing or what anyone else expects them to do. They come from a deep desire to live interesting, full lives. And, although I know that this phase can sometimes feel heavy to them, it still has a wonderfully expansive feel to it. Yet, if I look back some years, this was probably the moment I had most feared and the moment most people asked about. “But how will they get a job or go to university?”, “What will they do when they’re older?”
Unschooling can feel like a gigantic, blindfolded leap into the unknown, and humans are designed to fear the unknown. After all, who knows what dangers and threats may lurk in places we’re not familiar with. Better the devil you know, says the brain, triggering a whole cascade of uncomfortable reactions from our nervous systems in its quest to keep us safe. Just as soon as we open our minds to the thought of the unknown, we find ourselves ruminating over all the potential problems and reaching for evidence from the past, present and future, to convince ourselves that stepping into uncharted territory could be a terrible idea. Better to stick with the status quo than to risk getting it all wrong and failing.
Even when your children are struggling within the system, to leave all illusion of certainty behind and embrace something you may have never seen in action before, is no small feat. I talk to many parents who took their children out of school after several difficult years, and who now kick themselves for waiting so long. At the time though, the unknown felt like such a terrifying and lonely prospect, that it wasn’t until the fear was outweighed by the distress of their daily lives, that it felt safer to leave than to stay.
There may be no real guarantees with school, but there is a compelling structure to it all that is vastly appealing to our human need for safety and certainty. There is a curriculum, timetables and exams, uniforms, special books, holidays, year groups—everything is so definite. You know, in broad terms at least, what, where and when things will happen for your child for the next 14 years of their life. Follow the path and everything will turn out okay. Exactly the soothing kind of message a survival-driven human brain wants to hear.
Living with the uncertainty of life without a timetable or curriculum can be unsettling at first. We can appreciate that our child is being creative with Lego all morning, but if they would just do one page of a maths workbook or a bit of handwriting, our nervous system would breathe a deep sigh of relief. We find ourselves quietly rejoicing when they do anything remotely schooly, or sneakily steer them toward things that check a learning box for us. We over-explain things and attempt to find an educational angle in everything, from cooking to catching a train or walking the dog. All of this in a desperate quest to pin it all down, reduce the uncertainty and send a message to our brains that we are safe.
But here’s the catch. When we hold on to certainty, we are also holding onto limits. And, when we embrace uncertainty, we are also embracing possibility. There’s nowhere that this is more evident than in learning itself. When you watch a self-directed child engage with a subject they’re interested in, there are no boundaries. Their research, experimenting and explorations can take them in any direction whatsoever. This kind of learning is often wildly expansive, embracing multiple topics, deep diving down rabbit holes, heading off on odd tangents, and sometimes encompassing lots of seemingly unrelated topics. They’re likely to get their knowledge from all sorts of sources, artfully switching things around to keep things interesting, resting when they need to, and returning when they’re ready. Learning in a space of possibility is limitless, creative and fulfilling. Compare that to learning a finite amount of knowledge in a particular order from a curriculum set by someone else. Certainty comes at a high price.
In order to give our children a space in which they can safely navigate possibility, we need to learn to sit comfortably with the unknown. This involves both keeping our nervous systems in check, and making the unknown feel less threatening. We can do this in several ways:
- Reading and hearing other people’s stories can be immensely calming and reassuring. Take a deep dive into the many books, blogs and podcasts out there by parents and professionals who have walked this path before.
- Make sure you have people to talk your wobbles through with. Just a couple of like-minded parents online or in real life can be a huge source of comfort when the tendency to ruminate takes over. They’ll help you keep the fears in check.
- Try to make a conscious mental shift whenever you feel triggered by uncertainty. How does it feel to imagine that you are not sitting with the unknown, but that in fact you are sitting with possibility?
- Observe your child and notice all the things that see are happening. You’ll find that doing this from a place of possibility is completely different from observing from a place of uncertainty. If you do it from the latter, you’re likely to focus on lack and look for the things that are missing. You may well find yourself criticising or attempting to shoehorn some school-like learning in, just to soothe you. When you look from a place of possibility, however, you’ll feel open to seeing new things and to learning more about your child and the choices they’re making.
And finally, perhaps the most important point is that over the years, and as our children grow with the freedom of making their own choices, they become adept at knowing what they need and who they are. You’ll notice that the things they choose to do and learn make sense to them and that as they move through life putting one foot in front of the other, each step makes sense to them. There will inevitably also be regrets and wrong moves, but they’re used to working through those too, without shame or a sense of failure. So being with them now and watching them think about what they might do next, I feel a wonderful mix of certainty and possibility. Certainty, because they know who they are and what feels coherent to them. And possibility, because they have never put limits on their own paths.
A PLACE ON A HILL 
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