Unschooling Works

Now, I know I don't have to convince any unschoolers of this but it's still fabulous to hear and see it working. I've been meaning to blog about this for some time but haven't gotten around to it. This happened a few month ago...

Just to give you a background first... Dancer went to public school from K-3 grade and after leaving the system (2005) she HATED reading and she didn't think she was any good at reading. She still had her own books of things that interested her, like animals, weather, and the human body. When we would go to the library, she would only check out books about those things. She wouldn't have anything to do with me suggesting books about other things that she was interested in and a fiction book... well, forget it, there was no way.

So a few months ago, as we were heading to the checkout counter at the library, she looked at me and said, "I'm a really good reader if I can read stuff I'm interested in." Man, she just had a "light bulb" moment! WooHoo! I just said, "Yes, you're right."

The next week we went back and as she headed to the animal section (mainly the big cats and wolves section), I mentioned to her that she had lots of interests and that it was ok to branch out and see what else was there that she would like to read or get a video about. I could just see the light grow in her eyes. She brought home so much stuff that day that I had to tell her that she couldn't bring the whole library home... that we could come back and get more. :)

Now I can make suggestions to her on topics that may interest her and she doesn't "fight" me on it. I can reminder her about things she's told me she wants to know more about and she doesn't get mad.

Ever since then, when we go to the library, she finds the most amazing things. She never really needs my help to find it either. We go at least once a week... sometimes more. She's even checked out fiction books and joined a book discussion group. She's fallen in-love with this series of books about warrior cats (given to her as a gift for Christmas). These are pretty big books for her and she gets through them in 2 days. She's hoping to get the next installments in the series for her birthday which is coming up next month.

It took Dancer almost 2 years to deschool! 2 years! 2 years of deschooling for 4 years of public school. That's really, really sad to me. Thank you God for leading me to unschooling! Thank you to all of my unschooling mentors, who helped me to see that you can't just tip-toe into unschooling.... jumping in is the only way. I haven't forced anything on Dancer since we started unschooling... but it took her almost 2 years to trust that I wasn't going to... 2 years to trust the freedom. And the freedom is truly amazing!