Freedom of Choice to live our lives, the way we deemed fit to.

We've stopped over for a few days at Nottingham at my girlfriend's house for a couple days before continuing forth towards Scotland.

This not only gave us a lovely opportunity to finally catch up with our friends, it also provided Jnr an opportunity to be up close with a dog - a dalmation as big as him, and interestingly, an unexpected insight to how well we've done, unschooling wise.

For a start, we were very pleased to see how comfortable and confident Jnr was with the dog. He was touching, teasing and playing with the dog. I am almost expecting him to roll over with the dog LOL!! 2 years ago, Jnr would have been climbing all over us, trying to get away from the dog. He would have been nervous to a point of panicking.


And then it was the affect Jnr had on my girlfriend. This girlfriend, is married but by choice do not have kids. She was clearly affected by Jnr's very opened directness, confidence of his own decisions and his own freedom in choices.


It was quite amusing to see how my girlfriend is trying very hard to comprehend the sheer "this feels so wrong and unbelievable" fact that my 8 yrs old does what he wants, sleep when he wants, eat when he wants and basically is in control of his life to a large extend.


This incident has basically got me thinking and realised that yes, the backbone of our unschooling philosophy has evolved.

We have started out homeschooling with the objective to learning without school. To learn naturally without boundaries, no schedule and no timetable.

And then we morphed into unschooling. By starting to encourage learning from just living our lives. No co-ercion. Academic learning just happens to be a "by-product" of our daily lives. Like learning to count, ad, subtract, multiply and divide is just another skill Jnr learned from his decisions on how best to spend his pocket money. And now, we even have a DS Brain Training competition going on between him, his dad and me. More maths and spelling trials LOL!!


We encourage any shape or form of self directed interest be it tv, books, video games, the internet or toy purchases and many more. My kid loves toys, every kid does, who doesn't? Even i love toys.

Everything is a Yes and a Possibility.

Every toy or new game, online subscription or trip is a possible Yes to Jnr. It's just a question of how and when. This allows Jnr to understand that every toy he wants is possible, and have the confidence that he will get it, and to use his own mind and skills to analyse and deduce the available resources to match that thought process from "thinking, to wanting to achieving that object of desire". This gives substance to that "waiting period", giving it more reasons and sense, making it less painful.

The saying "when there's a will, there's a way" applies here.


Learning with no boundaries. Because time is no longer a concept applicable to our lives, because we choose not to have it. Therefore Jnr is not bound by any time frame to finish or accomplish any activities or projects. This has allowed him to "buzz" like a busy bee between projects of his choice. Some big, some small, some is accomplishes within half an hour, and some is a constant headache and is constantly put on the back burner, brought out only when he's got a better theory.

But nevertheless, he knows time is plenty, and he has the joyful freedom to allow his mind flow and form, in any direction.


As such, what he is capable of thinking, he is capable of materialising. He knows he is capable of translating his thoughts into it's tangible form because, he knows he has the freedom to progress into any "doing" that he feels is right.


We have realised that because we have relinquish our parental "right to control his life" back to our son, we have allowed him endless opportunity to practice living life, making good decisions, making bad decision, repeating mistakes until he had enough and decide an alternative is required, exhausting his own theories before he's willing to be open to someone else's idea.


No mistake is a bad mistake. It is just sometimes painful, messy and frustrating. But always a lesson in disguise.

All decisions are decisions. It can be a good or as bad as he deem it to be.

But most of all, as we are all individuals and it's a free world, so mummy, daddy and Jnr is entitled to thier "very own" opinion, which is entirely acceptable and perfectly ok. He just have to learn to argue his case convincingly to mummy and daddy, and I have to say, he is beginning to show very good debating skills and is beginning to win us over, more and more now LOL!!!

Over the past 2 years, he has become a very well informed, focus, comfortable, confident boy, aware and wise about the world around him.

Which explains why he has no concern or apprehension stating to my girlfriend that he doesn't need to sleep yet because his mind is too busy completing his game on his DS LOL!!

Yes, I am convinced that Freedom of Choice is a good platform for my son to approach life.

Home Ed. Stories UK

I seems to be having a problem with my blog. Alot of it's facilities dissappeared hence i'm unable to link my blog to Clara's Home Ed stories uk. No wonder alot of my stuff is missing from the page LOL!! Ohh..speak kitchen gadgets to me anytime, but put me infront of a techie issue, i can fee....eeel my migraine coming on LOL!!


So for now, until i figured it out, here's the link
http://homeeducationstoriesuk.blogspot.com

What are we reading...

We always have a few books on-going.

We have finally finished that long story about the Trojan Wars and Helen of Troy.

We were reading George and the key to the Universe by Stephen Hawkings. But unfortunately it belongs to someone else, so we had to return it. I'll have to get a copy form the library soon, but then I'm thinking it might be worth buying a copy fr ourselves.

We've starting The DiVIDE by Elizabeth Kay. Jnr seems to enjoy this story and he has checked out the back cover and mentioned to me of her other 2 books. So I've took note of this and will remember to get it.

On the side, we have another story by Charlie James called FISH. Well, it is about a boy eating some fish crisps that his father (a fish food manufacturer) invented for aquariums usage. We never got further than 10 pages, so not too sure yet what this book is all about. The sypnosis mentioned something about an encouter with a killer whale. Which is why I picked this book, because Jnr loves Orcas.

Pyjama Jones by JA Jennings. We are still struggling thru this story. We just felt that the story doesn't match up to it's exciting title and book cover. Jnr picked this book up, following his fascination with Indiana Jones's adventures. But the it's details and long -winded description is becoming very draggy and...long winded, frankly speaking. We're thru to pg 34, out of a 180 pages book, and we have yet to feel any real exciting adventure other than non-stop description of a mummy tomb and an Egyptian burial. Really, a rehash of what we have already knew from numerous documentaries.

Everything's going swell.

It's coming to our 2nd anniversary of the day we took Jnr our of school.

We have been deschoooling-transitioning to homeschooling to dipping our toes in unschooling for the first 8 months. Followed by 9 months of rocky transition of letting go of expectations of results, of me learning to saying Yes more and less of No, me learning to not let any opinions or rules stop us from doing alot of things. And most of all, no co-ercion or structured lessons.

6 months later, life settled into a comfortable "confident" routine which is leading us to our 2nd anniversary of "education without school" in December.


Jnr is happy and confident. He is very aware of what is happening and is constantly absorbing up everything around him. I have managed to bridge my existance equally to his. So most of the time now, I do look at him equally, as a human being and not so much of as an adult to a child.

This dynamics gives an automatic provision of me allowing him plenty of freedom and space allowing him plenty of life decisions practice, promoting maturity and confidence. Inturn, it allowed me plenty of opportunity to understand and know my son.

We have relinquished all workbooks and don't do any curriculum or syllabbus anymore.


Our learnings can be found via playing. From pc educational games, reading lots of stories, playing with ps2 games and setting up train sets and building Lego.

Recently, Jnr's into Nintendog. So he can always be found training, feeding and grooming his 3 Nintendogs called Cutie, Nacho and Waffles. He named them all, on his own. From a kid who doesn't like animals, I am so proud to see him blossoming into a pet owner wannabe. We're even talking about having a real pet.

We're also into video watching on bed now. So we're catching up on lots more stories via the video. Yesterday, we've finished watching The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.


I've realised I've have successfully merged into unschooling when I am able to approach everyday as a new, unexpected day. My days now is like a new present unveiling itself. Everything my son does, is an eye opener for me.

Like what I wrote in response to another unschooler's plea for help.

Your child is a Flower. It will unfurl and blossom in all pace and directions. You will not tell the Flower that it's unfurling the wrong petal, will you? Or tell it that it is blossoming only on one side first, and that it's wrong because it's supposed to blossom sysmetrically, will you? Will you tell that flower that it is blossoming wrong, and turn out ugly?

Of course not. You step back and wait patiently, having full confidence that the flower will bloom fully.

So think of your child like a Flower blooming his/ her petals in different direction and paces. Every day of tv watching, or ps2 playing is just petals unfurling.

Eventually, your beautiful Flower will unfurl each and every petal and become a balance Blossom, in perfect sysmetrics.


My advice to get to this stage of happy and confident unschooling life?

Patience. Lots of it. It will be very very testing, difficult and rocky in the beginning. When will it get easier, is entirely up to you.

Determination. This is what you want. Wanting the best for your kids is what you want. So, Never give up no matter how difficult and hard.

Confidence. That you will get there eventually.

Focus. When the going gets tough, regain your perspective by focusing why you're doing this in the first place. Look far and imagine what sort character you will wish for your kid. I always visualised a happy, confident and content man. That's my focus.

Be Free. Let go of all your dos and don'ts and start being carefree with your decisions. If it won't kill your kid, then why not try it out?

Be adventurous. Until you try something out, you won't know the result. How would you know eating cupcakes all the time will make your kid sick, unless you have tried it?

How would you know your kid will stop staring at the tv? You won't, until you've tried it and trust me, they will stop staring at the tv. It's only a matter of when. So how would you know how long will it take your kids to get fed-up and walk away from that tv screen? Well, you won't know until you've tried it.