An intelligent and articulate homeschooling mother has contacted me. She wants to ask me questions about unschooling and now I am shaking in my boots, the boots I got today at the ocean. My daughter found them for me, just where I had left them so long ago. The ocean knits them of foam and they fit exactly perfectly every time. I used to wear them when I was a kid at the beach. Then I forgot all about foam boots. Luckily my daughter was there with me and could remind me by example.

How can I answer questions about unschooling? Who am I to answer such? My children are still small, not nearly finished. I don't have conclusions yet. Nor do I have literary research to offer. All I have is my heart, and it is at times very frightened.

I can say this. Y'all can let the fury fly and I don't care. I think pullups are demeaning to children. Furthermore, I think it is insulting to the native intelligence of most children to suggest that they can't be potty trained before two. Both of my children where completely potty trained before they were two. I mean they never wore a diaper after age two, neither night nor day. I did force this on them. I felt they could learn to use a potty and I bribed them into it. We played a game I made up called Potty Surprise. It involves chocolate, many excellent new toys, and more chocolate. If you catch children just before they become defiant, (oh and yes, you do have to actually be at home with them for this to work) you can teach nearly any child to prefer the potty over the diaper. EVEN AT NIGHT. Puuuulease, night is the easiest part. If your kid wets the bed I will bet dimes to dollars you have terrified that child one too many times. Generally speaking, kids wet the bed at night because they are scared.

(Oh, praise Jesus, this is my blog and I can say anything I want.)

So I potty trained them both and it was easy. But I nearly screwed the whole thing up good. I suggested their preference and then rewarded their choices. And then I hovered and badgered and over taught the whole concept. Just in the nickety nickest of times, I saw what was happening. They got it and then I kept pushing it. My son was on the very brink of a personal vendetta against me. You could plainly see, if I "reminded" him to "go potty" one more time, so help him GOD, he was going to devote his life to poopie diapers and chapped cheeks. You could plainly see in his gorgeous brown eyes that he was planning an entrance essay to St. John's College on the Environmental Advantages of Portable Pooping. He is just stubborn enough that he might not have potty trained until he was 16 if I did not back off, and super quick.

I don't know how I caught myself in time. I have a looooong history of not catching myself in time for anything. But with my children I pay ninja attention. Or I did when they were small. And this attention taught me that the children will reveal what they need. But you have to be willing to see them first. If you are willing to see them and if you can give them what they need, you begin to understand they arrive here finished, in the most important way. You can not improve on the natural intelligence of most children. You can insult them, you can teach them impatients, you can ship them off anywhere you like, but you are not likely to improve on the intelligence they are born with. That is what I learned potty training my children. I did not know it at the time, but it was my first lesson in unschooling.

I put in uber/over time with the children as babies. I made some mistakes. But I insisted on walking, talking, potty training, and good manners (I know I am a hypocrite). They achieved all of that by age two or three at most. Beyond that core curriculum, I expect my children to read, write, bike without training wheels, and swim with strength. If my children show up for their lives with these tools and if they have not been insulted into stultification, my only other tasks pretty much revolve around fresh vegetables, clean sheets, and taxi service to the big wide green world. Enthusiasm for freshly knitted foam boots helps.

They will do as we do and, unfortunately, they will often fail as we fail. There is nothing I can say about institutionalised education that John Taylor Gatto and others have not already said. I do think that 4 to 8 years of study in a university are important for most adults. I don't think you can get fully grown, with proper moral perspective, without some well rounded higher learning. Plus, it really helps with landing an excellent job. Children prove again and again and again that the 13 year march of pain and weeping we call education, (but is actually corporate babysitting) is a jail sentence they endure for the most part. The gifts of this are minimal. The waste of time is phenomenal. And they excel in college either way - if they intend to and if they manage to arrive unbroken.

What has been a revelation is the slow dawning idea that we do not need the institution, nor do we need to recreate it at home. School (public/private, you are fooling yourself if you think there is much difference) is not what children need. Children need experience and access and love. You can not find those things in measurable quality regimented behind a desk. The time line of corporate education is ARBITRARY. Let me, as a former teacher, repeat. THE TIME LINE OF CORPORATE EDUCATION IS ARBITRARY. Reread that until it sinks in. It is amazingly difficult to grasp. The time line of corporate education is arbitrary and there is no possible reason to recreate it at home.

Have you read any essays by Frederick Douglass? He learned to read when he was 19.

I want to talk more. I want to talk about balance and guidance and boundaries. I think all of those concepts have an important place in a discussion of unschool. But I have to go make breakfast. More later....