Inside: If you’ve unschooled for any length of time, my guess is you’ve gone looking for unschooling success stories, hoping for reassurance that you’re on the “right” path. Here’s why searching for these stories can be problematic – and how we can stop looking for them in the first place.
A few months ago I had (yet) another “unschooling wobble”.
If you’re not familiar with the term, I *think* it was coined by Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, or possibly Sandra Dodd, and it simply means you’re doubting your decision to unschool.
As my kids get older, those wobbles can quickly send me scrambling to the internet, desperately searching for more unschooling “success stories” to calm me down.
These stories can be hard to find, but when you do find them, most of them go something like this…
- Unschooled child had a specific interest from a young age and
- They eventually pursued that interest at the college level.
But what if your unschooled kid isn’t like that? What if a lot of unschooled kids aren’t?
Granted, I haven’t met very many unschooled kids, sooo…I’m just speculating here.
What if most people aren’t like that, no matter their educational background?
And what if expecting your child to choose a career path this early on isn’t realistic or fair?
Maybe Children Aren’t Supposed to Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up
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I read a statistic the other day that floored me. I wish I could remember where I read it!
It essentially said that most people don’t know what kind of work they want to do until their mid to late 20’s.
Yet we ask kindergarteners what they want to be when they grow up. And of course “to be” equals, “What job do you want to have?” because: capitalism.
Why do we expect kids to have any clue? Why do we think they can choose the “right” major or the “right” career to pursue at 17-years-old?!
Their brains aren’t even fully developed until around age 25!
I came into unschooling with this expectation that my kids would figure out earlier than the average person what kind of work they enjoyed doing and wanted to do long-term.
So as my oldest enters high school and doesn’t know what she wants to do for work (more what she doesn’t want to do), I’m grappling with my own unrealistic expectations of unschooling.
Unschooling isn’t a magic wand you can wave over children and produce an outcome.
It doesn’t guarantee a straight path with no hiccups or “wrong turns” or stopping at an intersection for longer than average because of uncertainty over which path to take.
Really, the beauty of unschooling is stepping off the mainstream path and letting your child define success on their own terms.
Unschooling Success Stories…According to Whose Definition of Success?
Unschooling success stories are great, but sometimes, they unintentionally elevate certain life paths as somehow better or more successful than others.
So when you have a teen at home that loves video games and spends a good amount of time playing Minecraft every day, or watches Youtube videos that interest them and listens to audiobooks and draws all day…you might start to freak out just a little bit (or maybe a lot).
When you have a uniquely wired, neurodivergent child, you might not see a clear path to independent adulthood in the here and now. And you also start to freak out.
How will they ever figure out what they want to do with their lives?
When will it start to look like a somewhat clear career path?
(And even if YOU can see a possible career path, what if your child decides that the thing they’ve spent the most time pursuing over the past several years isn’t what they want to do for work one day? Like if it’s a creative passion that they don’t want to put pressure on to pay the bills?)
Here’s a thought: maybe they don’t need to know right now – at 14, or even at 16 or 17.
Heck, some 30 year olds don’t know what they want to do for work. So maybe it’s ok if your child’s long-term path isn’t clear just yet.
If they only know the next step, the next right thing, maybe that’s enough.
And maybe when we go searching for these stories, we’re starting with the wrong definition of success – ours.
Maybe to our child, success will look like making a lot of money to afford the lifestyle perks they want, so a high-paying job is success.
Maybe to our child, success will look like finding deep fulfillment in their work, so finding the most fulfilling work, no matter how little it pays, is success.
Maybe our child will want to work towards financial independence and they’ll love the support of living with or near family, so their lifestyle choices will look different than others.
At the end of the day, the definition of success that matters most is our child’s definition, not ours.
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The Path to Success Is Rarely Straight
I thought I was going to be a guidance counselor and work in schools for the rest of my life. I even have a master’s degree that theoretically qualifies me to do just that.
Ten years ago me would never have believed I would write blog posts – and market them through graphic design (so.many.Pinterest.pins) – for a living.
And when I started out in this business, I was driven more by the idea that I could homeschool my kids while working from home.
While I liked sharing ideas with others about what solutions I found for everyday life problems (like money and parenting and too much stuff in our houses), my primary goal was to stay home long-term while earning a living with a flexible job.
I found a job that would allow me to do that.
I had to work really hard to learn how to do this job – it was not a natural fit right away. It still isn’t in many ways.
But I was driven by my goal to make money from home on my own terms.
And I started on this path at 30. In the next decade it’s likely that I’ll reinvent myself all over again and find a new career path as my children get older.
My husband studied civil engineering and worked in the field for two years before he took a career detour for six years into Christian ministry. He later reentered civil engineering.
My dad went to college for engineering, dropped out and worked in fast food restaurant management for years, and then went back to school to become a teacher (mostly for the flexible schedule to see his kids more).
I’m sure you have a similar story or know someone who does.
If our own career paths are so winding, why do we put so much pressure on our kids to figure things out by the time they turn 18?
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Unschooling As Your Child Gets Older Doesn’t Need to Change
The other day, my mom asked me, “So…what’s your launch plan?” Because apparently I have to know these kind of things when my oldest is 14-years-old.
This may or may not have been code for, “Are you going to let your children live at home forever or are you going to kick them out if they don’t become productive and fully independent citizens by age 22?”
I thought about it for a while afterwards, and guess what? My plan is to keep doing what we’ve been doing all along.
Support my children in their interests, and give them the tools they need to walk towards independence at a pace that makes sense for their unique selves.
It will look like writing a high school transcript that translates how they choose to spend their time into school speak, and helping them decide how they want to fulfill the graduation requirements of the state of Pennsylvania.
It will look like helping them get their first jobs, and open bank accounts and Roth IRAs, and learn how to drive and eventually buy their first car.
And if after they graduate high school, that looks like living at home well into their 20’s to save money while they figure out what kind of work they truly enjoy? Great!
If that looks like helping them get into college? Great!
If that looks like helping them find an apprentice to learn a trade? Great!
If we really believe that play is learning, and the unschooling life should be free from coercion, where living and learning are fluid and interwoven and cannot be separated, where children are free to follow their curiosity and learn what they’re interested in, then maybe we’ll worry a bit less about unschooling success stories.
Maybe we’ll be able to focus on the uniquely wired child in front of us.
We’ll wait for them to define success for themselves, and once they do, we’ll support them and cheer them on in the pursuit of that success.
We’ll remember our own winding career path despite our traditional education.
And we’ll stay grounded in the present, focusing on meeting the needs of the child in front of us, not the “fives years from now” imaginary child in our mind’s eye.
Because who the heck knows what our kids will even be like in five years!
I don’t know about you, but I am a completely different person than I was five years ago – why would I expect my kids to be any different?
That is how we let go of the endless searching for unschooling success stories, of hoping against hope to find a glimmer of our child in them.
We stay grounded in the present. We stay connected to the child in front of us. We offer and suggest and support.
And we trust that they will find their way. That’s all any unschooling parent can do.
P.S. Just before I published this article, a grown unschooler shared in an unschooling group about how much pressure the search for unschooling success stories puts on grown unschoolers to prove unschooling “worked”. Yet another reason they can be problematic!
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