Freedom

Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life.  Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner.  Unschooling will often look different with each family.  This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy.  I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family.  Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more.  Thank you for taking time to read my blog!


We are fairly new in the homeschooling journey.  We started thinking about doing it when my oldest son was 4 years old and started unschooling when he was 5 1/2 years old.  He will soon be 8, so this is about our 4th year for starting a mindset for homeschooling and 2 1/2 for practicing unschooling.  As my husband and I adapt to this lifestyle, we start thinking outside of the box for our own well-being too.  My husband currently works a full time job that includes a moderate income to pay for the basics and health insurance  while I mainly stay home with the kids and work at my counseling private practice very part-time in the evening up to 6 hours a week.  This is a very traditional way to live and does not really fit well with the unschooling philosophy of family time and freedom in my opinion.  I wonder if other unschooling families also run into this dilemma if their lives are more traditional with societal norms so to speak.  It brings about a level of frustration as we are teaching the children about having freedom to make their own decisions and learn what inspires them, but we are in situations where we really are not living out our full potential and somewhat lacking inspiration.


I went to school for a bunch of years when I was younger to obtain my counseling degree and licensure and always wanted to have my own counseling private practice.  My husband went to school for a lot of years too to obtain a master's degree to be a college professor and researcher of anthropology, but has no desire to use the degree, but rather apply it towards being a professional musician.  So the trick is figuring out how to model a life of freedom where we are living out our dreams so that we can set good examples for the children to do the same.  We also would like to incorporate travel as part of the homeschooling journey for education related to geography, history, anthropology, math, among other subjects, so that the subjects can be more hands on and less traditional bookwork.


This is a process and I am going to share our plan and this may help inspire other unschooling families to live a life that models what they want to teach their children in our society of schedules, 40 hour a week jobs, and bills.  The following is our plan and hopefully it can inspire you to apply it to your own life at some level as well if you feel the same way.


1.  First, pay off all of our major bills including our cars and house.  This can be done by careful planning and living cheap.  We do not pay for TV, so our only bills aside from some debt related to credit cards and student loans are our house and one car and utilities, taxes, insurance, things that we have to have along with Internet and phone which are business expenses.  I am going through items at our house regularly and donating or selling, so it helps with not wanting to spend as much money if we are constantly getting rid of things.  I really like the minimalist rationale, but have not quite achieved it yet.  The minimalist philosophy parallels with a life of freedom.  This is approximately a five year plan for us, although, I would like to start traveling in 2 years, so perhaps a miracle will happen and we can do this more quickly.  Freedom and teaching the children to live a free life is important to us.  We have also made attempts to reduce spending on food by obtaining chickens and my husband has started a fruit and vegetable garden in our front yard.  I have learned to crochet and have made a lot of hats and scarves.  I also buy many of the children's clothes second hand or have friends who will often give us 2nd hand clothes, so this reduces clothing spending for our growing children.  I have a consignment account at a local consigner shop where I take clothes, shoes and toys and then have a credit to make purchases there.  Financial freedom is a great place to start and the best way to do this is to come up with a good plan to pay off bills by starting with the smallest and working your way up and reduce spending on unnecessary items in your life.




2.  The second step to our plan is for me to work more as a counselor.  I have arranged to only work three days a week and since counseling is somewhat seasonal where I am busiest in the spring and fall, that will leave flexibility with travel time in the summer and winter.  Since my availability is so limited, I have not advertised up to this point and simply get referrals through word of mouth and insurance companies and can see up to 6 people per week.  However, once the children can spend some time at home alone or if my husband's schedule could be altered slightly, I would be able to have a full time income with part-time hours and have low overhead for my business since my expenses are small.  I simply have to maintain my state licensure requirements, have a phone, Internet, insurance and an office space, which I already have in place.  If you do not have an advance degree, it is still possible to figure out a part-time career for yourself to help with a free lifestyle.  I have known mother's who started up photography, craft or cleaning businesses with no advanced schooling.  Everyone has strengths and finding strengths that will help bring in a fairly regular income into your home would help with finding your freedom in an unschooling home.


3. The third step is for my husband to build up his music career.  He is a song writer, guitarist and drummer.  This is a hobby at this time that he fits into his schedule while working a 40 hour/week job and being a family man, so he has many challenges with obtaining his goal.  He is starting small.  Last summer he played at a local farmer's market at least once a month and is scheduled to play this summer also.  He has entered to compete in a finger style guitar competition in July.  He has a MacBook Pro and is teaching himself how to record his work and has experimented with his guitar and electronic drums to do this.  I have been helping him by contacting places where I think he could be hired to play his guitar.  I know not everyone has talent, but there are many options.  I know some people who have seasonal landscaping companies, tree business or roofing companies.  Or if you or your husband are one with a career related advance degree, being a consultant or doing a job independently will often lead to more possibilities, it is best to just start small and be positive.


These are just steps we have in mind for a free lifestyle where I work as a counselor for about 5 to 8 hours three days a week during the spring and fall and my husband works as a freelance musician where he is able to schedule gigs as we travel to help with funding.  This is our five years plan to prepare for a life of freedom to help inspire and be healthy role models for our unschooled children.  Life is about following your dreams, sticking with your plan to do this, and feeling peaceful and free about life.  I figure the best way to set positive examples for our children is to live the life we are trying to help them create for themselves.  The goal of unschooling in our home is learning to live a life of happiness, contentment and freedom while being inspired and living to our fullest potential.  I am just hoping we can find others doing the same once we reach our lifestyle goal with our new unschooling and traveling mindset.  If you have made positive changes with financial freedom and lifestyle changes, feel free to share ideas.  I would love to learn about them.