Kerrin Butterworth: Why Home Education? Why Unschooling?

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This is a podcast about unschooling from a Christian perspective. The host, Cathy Couttsie, and her daughter, Karen, discuss their experiences with unschooling and why they chose to homeschool their children. They emphasize the importance of giving children a childhood without pressure and allowing them to pursue their interests. They also talk about the challenges and rewards of homeschooling, including the opportunity for parents to learn and grow alongside their children. They share stories of how their family's interests and hobbies have shaped their homeschooling journey. They hope to inspire and support others who are interested in unschooling. I am so excited to welcome you to the Christian Unschooling podcast, where we explore the fascinating world of unschooling from a Christian perspective. Hosted by veteran unschooler Cathy Couttsie, that's me, in association with the Christian Unschooling website www.christianunschooling.com. They will have interviews, discussion around the works of John Holtz and Charles Mason, stories, insights and practical tips, and consideration of diverse topics like trust, freedom and its limits of connection, purpose, interest driven learning, nature study, character and identity, friendship with God, anything really. So please send in your suggestions for future podcasts and we will do our best to accommodate them. Whether you are a seasoned unschooler or just curious about this unconventional approach to education, this podcast will serve to inspire and encourage you on your journey. Happy listening! My daughter Karen was home educated and is now home educating her own children. Recently she and I had an interesting conversation about detachment parenting, building resilience in children and taking care of ourselves so that we can care for our children from a place of strength. This conversation is shared here. The young children are playing nearby but I felt it was worth sharing in spite of the occasional background noise. First of all I think one of the really exciting things that we thought of is setting up a podcast which is really exploring home education and what we are bringing to the table that is a little different is that we are actually more than one generation because I home educated my children and Karen is one of them and Karen is now home educating her children. So we are building quite a lot of experience and testing that experience against application across two generations which is really exciting and we are hoping to be able to share some of those stories with you in ways that are encouraging and helpful and then also to include ideas and resources along the way. I think one thing Karen and I have been talking about is that we really don't want people to feel less about things that we share. We want to equip people to feel possible and so if something that we say makes you feel inferior, makes you feel like you are doing a bad job, makes you feel like it is not possible, please don't receive that because that is not what we want to give you. We want to give you encouragement and support and ideas to help you to do a really tough job well which is your heart as well. So the first thing that I think we will do is I will just ask Karen to tell us a little bit about herself, who she is, why she chose to home educate and what her experience has been so far. Over to you Karen. So my name is Karen and I am the second eldest in the family of Kathy's children and for me being home educated suited me so well. Having the freedom and time and space to pursue my interests to the extent I wanted to and also having my family's support in that and I think it suited me so well one cannot help but ask well if you benefited so well and you want to give your own children the very best, how could you not offer them something that you knew helped you flourish so much. Why do I home educate? Why do you home educate? What made you decide to home educate your own children? Well like you said the fact that you are the only one of the five children who is home educating is illustrative of the fact that one's strong opinions are respected. Oh dear. Yeah so I really loved my home education experience growing up and for me it was a no brainer actually that that's what I would offer to my children. One of the key reasons being that I actually wanted to give them a childhood without pressure, without huge expectation, a childhood centred around play and adventures and for my husband and I to actually share in those adventures with them as well knowing that really forms very strong bonds, very secure sense of self in the children and also I mean we've gone to all the effort of having these children, we want to enjoy them. So that's certainly a big reason why we're home educating and for Chester people, I mean he's such an out of the box thinker, people have sometimes asked him about his home education experience and then he says no actually I'm a product of the school system, I was never home educated myself but to him the ethos makes total sense. I remember having a chat with Chester like early days I think maybe you were married or engaged or something and he said when he has children he wants to raise them the way you were raised because he likes what came out of it. Yeah. Even long before you had children. So much that he married the girl. Yeah. But long before he had children he had already decided that that's what he wanted for his children. So for us it was really clear, you know, this is how we want to raise our kids and people would ask me before I had kids, before I was even married, it's a question that comes up often, oh you're home educated, would you home educate yourself? And I always said well in terms of ethos absolutely it makes total sense to me. In terms of observing the price my parents paid, the price you guys paid and the practicalities I'd say to people I don't know. I don't know quite how it would work. Yeah. Because I do see the price and now feel the price and how do you work out those logistics was definitely a question. I think statistically a high percentage of home educated children choose not to home educate their own children. Really? Which is sad to me. But this is one of the reasons why. They see what it costs their parents and it's not that they're not willing to pay that price, it's that they can't figure out how to. Yeah. And I think harder and harder actually to look at your generation where it was more common to have one breadwinner and supporting that. Economic reasons are huge because it's very hard in today's society for one of the parents to be home based. Whereas in my generation it was probably half and half. More women were going to work and of course the generation before that women were largely the home makers. And I think the other thing that I grappled with growing up, I remember having this conversation like what's the point in being encouraged to pursue my interests, my dreams and these grand things that are on my heart to do if there's been some facilitation to not be able to pursue them once I've got kids. Like surely we should all just be having cooking classes. I remember saying that to you, like what's the point? And I think sometimes it's grappling with that as well. But actually I found since having children they've become so much one of my, like I'm doing this for my kids but I'm also doing it for myself because of my own passion for motherhood and my own desire to grow and learn alongside my children to share life. And actually in that, like although it's intense, especially in the little children years, in that you actually find there's space for you as well. You know you're learning with your kids, teaching your kids something and then you go hang on this is so interesting and you end up staying up late that night on a wild goose chase yourself because you didn't know that information and you want to know more and you think oh my goodness I'm getting my own education alongside my children because there's so much to learn and discover and there's lifestyle shared together. But it becomes a lifestyle. I can totally concur with that. For me increasingly as I actually learned how to educate my children at home it became that thing of being with each other, doing stuff together, sharing space together, learning with each other and from each other. There were so many things that you guys taught me that I didn't know. And I love the fact that I didn't have to be the expert. I had more life experience. That's what I brought to the table. I had more understanding of how to keep people safe. That's a really important part of the story. But in terms of discovering the world it was something that was shared and people had different interests and then because I was with them I got to participate in it. John had such a great interest in flight as a boy. He loved birds and airplanes and anything to do with flight and it wasn't a subject that I had really thought about before. I became so fascinated with just the miracle of how does an airplane actually get in the air? And that was because of the focus that he brought. And things that I would not have actually taken interest in also because children were interested in that subject opened up my eyes and my space. Just things that we shared. I think that the horses are such a good example of how we got horses and then we learned how to be the kind of people we needed to be to get the best relationship with our horses. And we learned that together. It wasn't me teaching you. As a group of people we were exploring, we were observing, we were comparing notes. It's so much so that that subject ended up being banned from the dinner table because you see a picture next to the family. There are so many horses now. So that's togetherness. I find it fascinating because the non-horsey ones actually can have quite an in-depth discussion about horses. The non-horsey ones know a heck of a lot about horses. No, exactly that. And actually when it becomes a lifestyle, I now look at my friends with kids in school and I see the limitations. You know, pre-kids I would look at it and think, well, you know, how on earth do you try to juggle the various demands and things you want to do and also, you know, just basic things so that you're still making a living, these sorts of things. If raising your kids requires so much of yourself and so much time and, you know, you could have the option of dropping your kids off at school and after school club and all of this and then you would have that time and then you could be totally present when they are around. You know, you weigh that up. But actually I now see the limitations of the friends that send their kids to school because I think when you shift towards sharing a lifestyle, as we're saying, with your kids where it's less about, right, 9 o'clock we do this, 10 o'clock we do this, and I've got to be a step ahead always to teach you. And it's more a lifestyle of learning all together and things happen throughout the day. There's no fixed, like, learning has to happen before breakfast because some people learn better after dinner. You know, and it becomes this very fluid thing as a family. I know I've served my friends with kids at school and I think I would find it so limiting having to do the school run every day. And how on earth do you have that fixture every day, 3 o'clock, going to pick up? I mean, even if you had a 9 to 5 job, how do you work that with having to pick up your kids? How do you work out having a predictable routine and now you've got 6 weeks of holiday that you have to try and find childcare for and you're still trying to manage the demand of the job and all of this. So it's funny because I see those limitations now compared to the possibilities of, well, actually I'm with my children all day so I know there will be little windows where I actually do have time to pursue the things I'm doing. Because my kids are so settled when they're around me, we spend all day together. It's not limited to, right, here's our little window of time and I need to be 100% there. I think for me that was a very big factor in choosing a home education lifestyle because I looked at the thing of an external schedule and the impact an external schedule would have on us. Sure, there's external scheduling everywhere, like if you have a job, you have to go to work at a certain time, you come home at a certain time. Nature has scheduling, you know. It gets dark, you go to bed. So it's not to say that there's no place for a schedule but we had a schedule of our own choosing and we did have a few fixtures. I mean 10 o'clock was breakfast time followed by diversions, followed by chores. 5 o'clock was tidy up time. These were fixtures that were pretty set in stone. I wasn't very flexible about them. I was flexible about a lot of other things but those fixtures stayed in place. And also like homemade groups and things. Yeah, I mean obviously you had commitments. Yeah, you've got to be there for the things that you've done. But what I loved was that I chose that schedule. I decided on it and I could observe the impact of the schedule on the family. How is it working? Is the schedule flexible enough? And if not, I can adjust it. Whereas when you have an external schedule, which actually a school imposes that external schedule on you. The school decides what time you have to get up to get your child to school on time. What time you will be available to fetch your child. What time you will send them to bed even because they have to get up for school the next day. When you may have holidays. When you can take a day off to pursue something that is of interest to your child. The school determines that and correctly they determine it because you can't have individual schedules for 30 children. But in a family, you can individualize the schedule to meet the needs of each person while still... So it's not that you completely throw a schedule out because I think a schedule brings predictability. It brings order to a group. And routine, yeah. But it's the fact that you can actually step back and go, hang on, this works for this. You can take all the different needs into account. So for this person, this would work for that. That would not work. F, she's a family. This would draw us together. And then we order things accordingly. Yeah, anyway, so I think that answers the question of why I'm home educated. So how many children are you home educating at the moment? Does the baby count? Yeah, of course. Well, to me, a child is home educated from birth. She's learned one heck of a lot. I mean, she's got her neck strength now. Engaging more with her eyes. Observing. Lots of bodily functions happening. Very glad that I've practiced it with her every day. She's learned that if she cries, she will probably get fed. Probably. I'm very good at predicting for weeks. Okay, so yes, the baby counts. So I'm home educating my six-year-old daughter and my three-year-old son. And then I've just had a little baby as well. On that subject, I always find it interesting that people say, oh, well, I started home educating at whatever the compulsory school age. So in the U.K., four. In South Africa, it was seven. Now I've started home educating. So what did you do for the years before that? And actually, I want to turn that on its head because it's such an encouraging realization to realize that from the day that your child breathed its first breath, you, as a parent, have been home educating. You are the one who has taught your child everything it knows by the time that it is of compulsory school age. So, you know, most children, by the time they are four years old, they know how to talk, they know how to ask for food, they know how to meet a lot of their own personal needs, they know how to go to the toilet, they know how to put their shoes on, they know how to get dressed. They even might know how to do some chores like sitting at the table. They know how to interact in their family. And a lot of them have already... They've probably got all the things that they could actively show you. And so many of them have already started learning things that they would learn in school anyway. And it's very funny, isn't it, that mentality, you really have to shift the mentality of, well, when does learning start and actually what is learning? And the amount of friends exactly that the child gets to compulsory school age. And then you get a desperate phone call. What am I meant to be doing with my child now that we're officially doing school? And I'm like, well, you've done a fantastic job. Your child learns to sit, crawl, walk, run very well under your roof. How did you do that? Did you shave your limbs? Today we're going to practice walking again. How did you do that with your child? And now let's apply it to whatever the next thing is, right? We're going to start exploring the alphabet. Apply the same principles. That takes us deeper into our philosophy of home education because home education is a word that covers a huge spectrum of educator ideologies and methodologies. And I think for me the whole thing of natural learning, observing how do children learn naturally, how do they learn in those first four years of life? Can we take that method of learning into the more structured school years where there are external expectations and requirements of what a child should be able to do? How can we continue to keep that relaxation that we have? Yeah, sure. I think parents can get stressed about the fact that their child is a late talker or a late walker or whatever. But on the whole, we tend to support what a child is doing at a young age and not make it too rigid and structured. So can we do that as they reach the compulsory school years? Or do you think that we have to make a change? Is that a question? It can be. It certainly would be a question in the minds of many people even if we have answered it to ourselves already. That's it, yeah. Well, I think that's the beauty of it is that actually in those early years, an observant parent gets to experience that character of the child, how they learn, what works for them and what doesn't. I mean, you can ask a parent even of a 12-month-old and they'll tell you already, oh, no, that window of time would not work for my child or let's feed them a snack first and then they'll engage with this. So actually in those early years, you get to gather a lot of information as a parent and observe and help channel and guide those early years' development and things like how much they learn through play. And then as they get older and maybe you want to formalize things a bit, you actually already have that information that you can then use and apply and help guide your child. So it's not that you necessarily just go, well, great, you learned all this already, let's just continue to give you that space, there's a time and place for that depending on the child. But you might go, well, actually you've expressed an interest, you would like to learn to read or I feel this skill would be really useful for you so I would like to start bringing some direction to it and it's going to be a consistent fixture in our lives. You can still use the things, the information you've gathered through the early years. So for instance, this child does really well outdoors I go, amazing, what I'm going to do is I'm going to start drawing in a little bit of math while we're outdoors. So we're going to start counting the stones and we're going to start breaking up leaves and learning about these principles and then we'll come home and just quickly go, hey, why don't we write down what we did. This is your special math book. So as a parent you actually have this wonderful step ahead of I've gathered information, I know my child well and that doesn't necessarily have to change. You can just continue on because your child has learned so much already under your roof, without the pressure. I think when you know your child's interests, it's really helpful. Like with you, you're always passionate about horses. I kind of have asked myself, did I pass that on to you? But part of me thinks you had it yourself. It was your own, like it was for me. I didn't come from a horse-loving family but I was passionate about horses from birth and I think you were the same. So when you were very little, I knew that if I introduced anything to do with horses, I would have your interest. So when we first started doing math concepts we just did like, how many legs do the horses have and if I've got two horses and I want to give each horse a carrot how many carrots do I need? And thinking of putting shoes on horses which we don't do anymore but if we're going to put shoes on the horses and we've got three horses, how many shoes do we need? That kind of thing. And you were super engaged with solving those problems. It was an interest to you. Whereas if I'd have given you a worksheet that said 4 plus 4 equals you would have skipped out. Because what I remember about you in particular I think it's true of everyone but you were very overt in your verbalization of that. It's like, what has this got to do with my life? And if it's not relevant to my life, then I'm not interested. I think I'm still after that. I think we give ourselves that space but we don't give it to our children. Because if I'm not interested in something and it's got no relevance to my life I'm not going to learn it. I am not going to go and learn quantum theory right now. Sorry for the people who are interested in it but I'm not interested in it. So if I meet you and that's your passion I'll listen to you tell me what you want to tell me about it but I'm not then going to go and learn about it because it's not in my zone. Tell me something about how to help a horse be healthier in its body. It's not in my zone and I'm going to be interested and I'll sign up for a course, etc. And yet with our children we expect them to be interested and enthusiastic about a worksheet or a topic that is... but they cannot see what it has to do with their lives. We might be able to see how it's going to be useful for them but they can't. And if we can't help them understand or value that then why are we forcing them to do it? And I feel very, very strongly about it. And what you might end up is with a child that if there hasn't been too much resistance along the way might have all the knowledge about the subject but in the process they've completely lost the interest and the passion. Which is sad. The amount of adults you talk to that don't enjoy reading they're very confident readers. They were confident readers at a young age but do they, for pleasure, sit down and read a book? No. So you have the skill but the interest and the passion and the self-drive is completely gone. And then you think, well, yes, we developed something but at what cost? And sometimes it's a timing thing as well. You might be ready for this in a year It's a careful balance, isn't it, as a parent that you do have a vision for your child and you do also see end point things that are important. Yeah. Partly maybe you feel it's important or your family culture. This is actually something that we as a family would like to do. Also in the UK, you know, we have a legal right to home and to give our children but we are also legally required to prepare our child for the society in which they will live. This is it, yeah. And we need to think about that because our child might be very happy in our home environment but they're going to have to go out in the world and are we actually helping to equip them for that? As a parent, you might see things that you know are important or needed for your child and they're not there yet. Yeah. And sometimes the question is how do we bridge the gap? Yeah. So we're presenting the information or guiding them or sometimes just planting a seed and an idea to guide them in that direction to kind of like a stepping stone towards that end vision of actually this is helpful or this is something that would be worth pursuing. So what do you do with a child who is seriously not interested in something that you feel they need for their future? You pin them down to a chair. You tie them up and you force feed them. That's what we're all about. So I think you have to do some serious soul searching because actually children's questions are really valid. Yeah. We're so quick to go, wow, what an outrageous question. How dare you. But we actually need to, and I think it's taking the pressure off yourself to have an immediate answer. Yes, because life is long and you do have 18 years. Yes. So you go, all right, that's interesting. I'm going to have a think about that. We feel the pressure to, oh, why is this? And to give that answer straight away, even though we're feeling a little bit rocked ourselves, and that just presents conflict between you and the child. That's right. You are allowed to not know the answer and remain silent. Like, I'll come back to this. And as Christians, we can ask God to help us find that answer. And I've certainly found many occasions where I would be out of my depth and then the answer would come. But it wouldn't just come. It would come over a period of time. It's kind of like you're baking a cake. You know when people get so good at baking, they do it for a feel. Yeah. So yeah, they loosely follow the recipe, but they know just by looking at the mixture, oh, that needs a bit more flour. Yeah. Less of this, a little bit more of that. So you're gauging throughout, oh, this and that. So your question of a, what about, there's something you feel is important, the child doesn't. You actually reach an impasse, right? Yeah. Potential conflict. Yeah. Well, the first thing is you go back to, well, why are we doing this? Is it for the child? Is it for my own ego? Or for society, which is valid. Or society, why are we doing this? And hopefully you can come back to, well, actually, primarily my relationship with my child. Their sense of self-worth. All of this is really, really top priority. So we're going to protect that. And then find ways for the other expectations. The other expectations are important. Not that they're null and void, but how do we find a way doing it without conflict? As a parent, you can be the protective screen between those expectations and your child, even while you're thinking about how can I help those expectations. I've got a very good example. Actually, we talked about it yesterday. Yeah. But when you children were little, I mean very little, your table manners were substandard. Because for me, I was just delighted that you knew how to use cutlery and I wanted meal times to be a time of togetherness where we enjoyed food and enjoyed each other. And I didn't want to make a big deal about how you're eating. So, you know, it was acceptable, but not perfect. And your grandfather is very English and very proper and very well brought up. And he had a high standard about how people should behave at the table. Like, you don't put your elbows on the table. You don't talk with your mouth full. You use the appropriate cutlery in the appropriate way. You use your napkin, etc. You tilt the soup bowl away from you, not towards you. These are manners, you know. And he used to get a little bit annoyed because he thought that you children didn't have good table manners. You could say, oh, that's not important. Well, it is important because in our society, and I know it's a rapidly changing society, but in our society we do still have standards of how people should behave in formal settings. And I became aware that you children did not have those skills, did not know those skills, and actually were very unlikely to learn them in our current pattern, which was focused on enjoy your food, enjoy each other. This is a time of connection around the table. That's what we're focusing on. So I don't want to nitpick you about how you're using your cutlery because I want us to enjoy togetherness. So I began to ponder, like, what can I do to help you children gain these skills without sacrificing the values that we held so dear around the family table? And it occurred to me that if we went to a very formal context, you could learn that. And so there was a lovely hotel at the beach which did a buffet breakfast which you could help yourself as much as you liked. And so we made a big deal about this. We said we're going to go and have a family breakfast at this beautiful restaurant. We primed the children. We have to dress up. So everybody dressed up in, like, really smart clothes. So already we were creating a feeling that this is an event. And then we talked with the children about, you know, when you go to this place, people have very particular ways of how you do things. Like you can't talk loud, no shouting, no running, no screaming. You have to sit quietly at the table, and you have to eat very properly because it's it. And, of course, you know what, the context educates because we arrived. And, of course, there's other people there, and they're all behaving very formally, and they're using the appropriate behavior for that kind of environment. And, you know, your children began to do it. Without me having to spell it out and say, this is what you have to do, you observed, you saw that, you know. And then you walked with us to the buffet, and we, you know, they had a hot buffet where you ordered, and we ordered. And then we said, would you like to order? And so we supported your children in doing that. And we, I don't know how many times we went today. It feels like a lot, but I don't think it was because we're quite thankful. I don't think it was frequent, but I think it was a lot over a few years. Over a few years. It was like a special event. And we definitely went for some birthdays. We always went for breakfast because it was a beautiful buffet. And your children's manners were impeccable, and I was proud. It's interesting that yesterday over dinner the story came up. Yes. Because we were talking about fruits that were made in little balls. Yes. But it's interesting, the back story, because I didn't actually realise this back story. So I think that's credit to you and Dad that actually you managed to instil and carry out your vision without making it a boot camp. Yes. We never had to spell it out. It was very difficult because I wasn't actually aware that this was our etiquette training. But I think that's a compliment because sometimes you become so fixated on an idea that we're so fixed on it that we actually kill it. Yes. And my memories of that experience was I remember feeling really grown up. You know, we get to go to this place. I remember it feeling very special. And being the only children there as well. Yes. I remember people complimenting us. And that was almost drawn out even, oh yes, no, look at me, I know how to use my napkin. So I think that's a really good example of actually where you saw a skill that you felt was useful for our lives. You could have drilled it into us at great expense and actually a lot of arguing over the table. But the way you did it, it drew out the gold in us actually. It made us feel very important. That's right. But simultaneously actually developed the skill. Yes. And I do remember at a later stage, I think we were a bit older, wasn't it with our home education group that we did a special meal? We did do that kind of thing. I can't think of which one. And we all, it may not have been us actually, I think it was a friend that did this. But anyway, all the sort of teenagers. Yes. Dressed up. Oh, you know, that was the Duffies. The Duffies. They had four sons and they wanted their sons to know how to treat girls on a date. And so they planned this. Yes. I remember them thinking that. Yes. So it's not always, sometimes the feedback from your child is enough for you to go, you know what, this is a premature idea. Or actually, it just isn't relevant to their life. I've done some soul searching. They've asked me, how is this helpful? And you know what, I can't come up with a better answer than because everyone does it. And I'm not going to make you do it just because everyone does it. I agree. I agree with you, my dear child. Your question is valid. And actually I haven't found anything. So sometimes it's that. But other times it's actually a case of you don't let go of the idea. You just find ways to present it in different ways. In more interesting ways. Sometimes it's even just changing the context. Yes. The way I often get my children's attention is I offer them a snack. And now you're sat down with a snack. I know I've got ten minutes to put you up in the morning. And you're going to be quiet. That is so clever. So is that childhood? No, that's me then. Why? Because I'm a powerful leader in my home. I've got ideas for my home. I've got responsibility over my children. To the state, to God, to them. So they think I think of a brilliant idea. And I have my ways and means. But it's not bribery. It's not kicking and screaming. It's great. This is a good moment. I can interject this idea. And sometimes they catch the idea. So one thing is we'll read poetry. Because I think poetry is wonderful. And sometimes they will finish the snack and it's like, thanks for the poetry. We're out. Moves on, yes. Other times. That little seed is caught. Oh, can we read another page? What does that word mean? Why did they do that? I don't know. And what started out as a ten-minute quick snack of poetry turned into 20 minutes. Of connected, interactive time around a subject that you have interested in. Yes. So it sometimes has to do with the way you present it rather than, oh, this is not working and it's creating so much friction. And what do we even do? One tool that we used extensively, and I know you do as well, is Read Aloud. Because Charlotte Mason said that the best ideas are in books. Because people distill their best ideas into what they write. And, of course, she was very particular about good literature, which I was too. But if you wanted to introduce a topic to a child, to find a really good book, not a nonfiction book, a narrative book, a story book that introduces that topic, is so engaging for the senses. And you find that a child would begin to think about something and maybe it wouldn't even be talked about right now, but suddenly a few days later you can see that something has been picked up from what you shared. Often in their play, you see them start playing an idea that came up in a book and then you kind of give yourself a gold star because you realize that you transmitted that idea. And I think an idea is always the beginning of learning. It's always starting there. It's sometimes just trusting the process a little bit more, isn't it? Yeah. Like your cake analogy. Well, I added more liquid and now I've got dough and liquid sat on the top. That's not a cake. But actually you spend a little bit of time mixing and mixing and then you think, ah, that water that I added is actually making it look more like a cake consistency now. But it isn't necessarily instant. Bam, I added the water, ta-da, here's my cake. You might add the water and then you think, oh, I need a little bit more of this now and a little bit more of that and a little bit more of this. And it's allowing the fluidity of it that actually you might not be ticking the criteria, whatever your criteria is, every day. But if you measure it over a period of time, you'll see the full picture. You fairly recently created a yearbook, a photo book that is a yearbook of your children's experience. And I really want to sit down and look at it in detail because it's phenomenal what you guys did in a year without any of it being, this is what we have to do. It was kind of organic, it flowed, and you recorded what you saw happening and you realised how much you did. I was very encouraged myself. So you did bake a cake, a beautiful cake, but at times it might have felt like nothing was happening. I was really encouraged by it because, you know, sometimes you have seemingly quite random disconnected activities through your day or your week. But exactly as you say, looking back over a year, and especially using photos, it was so clear to see, oh my goodness, these things were linked and they did draw together. One thing led to another, led to another, like building blocks. Even though some things were intentional, but other things, it flowed. Without me sitting there going, right, well, this term, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and all this weight and expectation being on my shoulders to pre-plan where it's going. It's fascinating to see what happens with ideas. Ideas are food for the mind. Do you have questions, comments or insights that you would like to share? Join the conversation on the Christian Unschooling Facebook page or send me a message via the website. Till next time, bye. www.mooji.org