On a sunny, clear day in January, my 14 year-old always-unschooled girl walked into her first college class. I couldn’t be more proud and inspired by her.
Juliet demonstrates that life can be what you make it to be. And as I grasp to find a net for the worries in my life, I look at this girl and remember that it’s not about controlling the outcome and making the right decisions and (over)preparing for the moment, but the ability to rise to the occasion. Finding flexibility and practicing patience. Believing that we are strong and can figure anything out. There s no right way, only the right now way. Only our heart’s way.
You see, this is the girl who buried her face in the crook of my neck for her first few years. My heart spoke then, telling me to give time for all of that so there could be all of this. A confidence, curiosity, comfort, and connection to her innate ability to learn and march through her days under every kind of sky. Luckily for her, they have been mostly blue.
We can’t see ahead so we rely on hope to be our guide. In this season of independent kids and dependent parents and a news cycle that doesn’t quit, I am digging into my ability to think bigger, bolder, and brighter thoughts. Maybe more than ever, this is the time to believe better is possible. I rise to that occasion and can promise you this: there are more wide sky days ahead for us all.
This mindset has been cultivated over the past fifteen years of unschooling these bright kids of mine. As we’ve followed this life learning path, this college thing was never the goal for us and getting a degree still isn’t.
Our society has long held up college as the goal. The justification for going to school for thirteen+ years and doing all the homework and getting all the best grades. College = Success. It is tempting, then, to rate a kid who has not gone to school with the same metrics. To judge their success by their college attendance or lack thereof. It is tempting, as a parent, to hold college attendance up as proof that unschooling works. To do so, however, is to negate the entire point.
Unschooling success does not hinge upon college attendance. Unschooling does not measure success, it does not have academic goals, it does not have metrics to chart. It instead asks, Do they want to be there? Do they want to be learning this? In this way? At this pace? In this time?
I posted that photo not to prove that my daughter is successful and on her way to achieving some important societal milestone. If I have any goals for my kids, it’s that they enjoy their lives. Every single day, not just after they have checked all the boxes and done what society expects of them.
There is no race. There is no finish line. There is no carrot dangled ahead, enticing them. There is just the day they wake up to and the mindset that they can choose how to fill it.
So, as my always-unschooled 14 year old follows the footsteps of her always-unschooled older sister into college classes, see individuals who are following enjoyment, not chasing achievement. Think about what it means that my kids are sitting in a classroom full of students who spent their entire lives preparing for this moment while mine played. They ended up in the same place, just as ready to go, but with a vastly different energy.
College is not the goal, it is not the measure, it is not the purpose, it is not the justification. It is just one more fun activity in a life full of them. And the pride I feel is that my kids embrace the possibility with confidence and purpose and joy. That is the closest I will ever come to measuring them for success.
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