When we started homeschooling in 2020, I was on fire. I dove in headfirst—printing curriculum, organizing binders, crafting manipulatives, and color-coding everything in sight. It was like building a tiny school in our living room, and I loved every second of it. After years of frustration with the public school system—especially after college revealed just how much of what I’d been taught was incomplete or flat-out wrong—I was ready to do things differently.
But for the longest time, I didn’t think homeschooling was an option for us. I thought it required too much time, too much money, too much everything. Then the world shut down. COVID hit, and suddenly, we were all home anyway. So we figured, why not give it a try?
And at first, it was amazing.
But here’s the thing: I was still trying to recreate school at home. I clung to strict routines, rigid schedules, and the “perfect” curriculum. I stressed over every choice, convinced that if I picked the wrong math book or didn’t cover enough grammar, I’d ruin everything. That worked for a while—until it didn’t.
Eventually, we had to go back to work. We switched to an online curriculum, hoping it would keep things afloat. The kids hated it. I started noticing gaps and issues, especially in the upper grades. So I did what I always do—I tried to fix it myself. I started writing my own curriculum. But between work and life, I couldn’t make it both thorough and engaging. The kids were miserable. I was exhausted. And I felt like I was failing them.
So we gave up. Back to public school they went.
At first, it seemed like a relief. But by the end of the year, we were drowning again. One kid ended up in a partial hospitalization program. Another was on the verge. One of the older two had to walk all the way to the nurse’s office just to use the bathroom—so she just stopped going. One was attacked. Another was threatened. They were still miserable, just in different ways.
We tried to switch school districts. We were denied.
So… back to homeschool it was.
But this time, I knew we had to do it differently.
I started researching unschooling. I’ll admit, I used to think it meant “just let them run wild and hope they learn something.” I was wrong. Again.
Unschooling is like the educational cousin of gentle parenting. People think gentle parenting means never disciplining your kids—which is obviously a huge problem—but it’s not that at all. It’s about patience, love, and real-time logic. Unschooling is similar. It’s not about doing nothing. It’s about doing everything with intention.
It’s about honoring each child’s learning style, their interests, their rhythms. It’s about using real life as curriculum and cutting out the standardized nonsense. Yes, there are still core subjects. Yes, there are things they need to learn even if they’re not excited about them. But there are ways to weave those things in without making them feel like they’re being force-fed irrelevant information.
Now, each week we have a family meeting. We decide together what we want to learn and how we want to learn it. One core subject. One personal interest. They choose. I make suggestions when I see gaps or struggles. I create a weekly plan, a research guide, or maybe an outing that ties it all together. At the end of the week, they present what they’ve learned to the rest of us—so we all grow together.
There are no tests. No endless worksheets. Just curiosity, collaboration, and connection.
They’re engaged because they have agency. I’m not drowning in perfectionism. And for the first time in a long time, learning feels like something we’re doing together—not something I’m forced to force on them.
We’re still figuring it out. But for now, this feels like home.
