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Unschooling

6-week Mindful Parenting Course

Explore a calmer, more connected way to live. Starting April 13th Mindfulness has been an essential part of my personal journey through parenting and unschooling. I began to practise Zen meditation when my youngest child was born, as a way to find my ground in the busyness of life with three children and a small…

deschooling

Here’s to our non-compliant children!

Our society celebrates compliant children. Every parent knows this, particularly if their own child doesn’t rate compliance highly (and I speak from experience). Despite their best efforts, these parents are likely to have felt the critical gaze of people who thought their child was being disrespectful or “naughty”. Even the most generous among us can…

deschooling

How to facilitate a self-directed learner

A parent recently asked me what kind of online resources I would suggest they get for their 11-year old son. Their child has been out of school for only a few weeks and, in the spirit of embracing self-directed learning, they are keen to make sure he has everything he needs to stay engaged. I…

Unschooling

It’s all making sense now

My oldest son, who is 17, is considering his different options in life right now, in terms of studying and work. In a way, it’s tricky—he has so many diverse interests that the idea of studying or working in one specific area feels limiting. What would happen to all the other things that feel so…

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Welcome!

Hi, I’m Esther Jones, writer, editor, speaker, childbirth educator, and lifelong learner. Welcome to A Place on a Hill, where I share my thoughts and observations about life and learning with my three children, D (15), E (13) and C (8).

For many years, I ran a small publishing company that I founded in Barcelona, Spain. When that came to an end in 2018, we spent two years living in an old house in the hills near Barcelona. There, after years of just dipping our toes in, we finally embraced unschooling and consensual living in all its glory. Since then, my life has been a continual unravelling of everything I had ever taken for granted about children, learning, parenting and myself. This process is sometimes challenging, but always thought-provoking and enriching.

We’re now back in the UK, and enjoying the next part of our journey. I teach Hypnobirthing, enjoy sea swimming, Zen meditation, poetry, bright ideas and feeling inspired.

I always come back to the simplicity of unschooling. To allow our children to live and move forward in a way that feels aligned and coherent to them, and (so far as our own conditioning allows us!), to attempt to do the same ourselves. What better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than a sea dip with some lovely mothers? Join me for this fascinating conversation with Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn, professor at Boston College, evolutionary psychologist, and long-time researcher of how children naturally learn and develop. I remember coming across Dr. Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion and realising that, after many years of mindfulness practice, here was the missing piece! I had spent many years as my own worst critic. And although I had become aware of it, I just couldn’t seem to break the patterns. This is my favourite way to start the week. Just me, a cup of coffee and my note book in the local cafe. I spent many years working hard to get motivated and stay motivated. That took a lot of discipline and was ultimately exhausting. School is an extremely challenging environment for many children. Masking, shapeshifting, learning to quash their emotional and physical needs in order to get through the day. What an exhausting way to live. And how devastating to never dare to ‘be yourself’. I just had the absolute delight of interviewing Dr Peter Gray for The Unschool Space podcast. I found his writing and particularly his studies of grown unschoolers so reassuring when we first started out. New episode of The Unschool Space! It’s easy for parenting to become a game of push and pull, of win or lose. But if we can just relinquish the idea that we need to be in control, and reach for connection instead, all sorts of new possibilities are free to arise.
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