As a parent, I want to admit that I love being surprised by my teenagers, whether I am surprised by a gift they give me, a drawing they choose to share with me, or when I realize they know way more about something than I realized. That last one? As an unschooling mama, that one is pretty cool, every time. Perhaps the best part of this kind of surprise is how truly unpredictable it is for me. I suppose that has as much to do with the things they discover on their own and squirrel away without me being a part of that process. And for me, that is a large part of what unschooling involves. Even if it involves a meme from Pinterest or a YouTube video, because even those favorite activities can lay a foundation for learning (even if none of us suspects it).
Some of our best unschooling moments can probably be described as heading down a rabbit hole. What I love most about these unplanned excursions is the way each teenager contributes to the conversation and sometimes those contributions will lead us from one rabbit hole to another until we find ourselves in a place none of us could have predicted when we started our conversational journey of exploration. It’s a delightful adventure for me and often I like to sit back and listen more than I contribute, though I do tend to chime in because it’s too much fun not to.
Today’s foray into the known unknowns (wherein I learn what they know but did not realize they knew), focused around some of the topics in our Mystery of History reading, what grace is, why God allows people like Hitler to exist and also allows good and innocent people to suffer as a result, and the stories of folklore and fairy tales and how versions of some well-known fairy tales differ greatly from their Disney movie counterparts. It was a wild and meandering conversation trail that I would never be able to detail or recreate. Still, I can say without hesitation how impressed I was with the curiosity and questioning my two teenagers brought to this dialogue.
As their unschooling mama, I cannot help myself from pointing to the whiteboard that remains propped up in front of our small television stand that also houses homeschooling books on the single shelf beneath the tv. The white board contains the steps of the critical thinking process. Though we finished one book on that topic and have plans to explore another one, the white board stands as a reminder of learning to form their own opinions (even if they are not ready to do that about most things quite yet).
Even so, they are deeply involved in the process. They ask questions. They lean into curiosity. And they are beginning to practice gathering evidence (even if they are not always aware that’s what they are doing). As we make our way down rabbit holes of information spurred by our unschooling conversations, more and more they are picking up their iPads to Google questions that come to mind. They are gaining greater pieces of information and allowing themselves the option of not being completely certain about things. That is a fantastic place to be, for any of us, even if it doesn’t always feel like a fantastic place to be.
But as the outsider to their learning process, I am amazed at the ways they are engaging with curiosity and learning. I am enjoying watching them grow in understanding but also relishing the moments when they admit they don’t get something, that something doesn’t make sense and confuses them, or that there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer. They don’t always understand how right they are or that they are in good company because we all experience these things again and again. And again. Still, they are on the path of understanding and I believe they will discover the answers they seek and draw conclusions eventually. After all, they know way more than they realize, and they definitely know a lot more than I realized. And I am already ready for the next rabbit hole discovery!