Esther Jones on the Healing Journey of Unschooling for Parents

Debbie:
Hey Esther, welcome to the podcast.

Esther Jones:
Hi Debbie, lovely to be here, thank you.

Debbie:
I’m looking forward to talking about unschooling. But through kind of a different lens, you have a new book out called The Parents Handbook to Unschooling Yourself. The subtitle is a mindful guide to embracing a new way of living and learning with your child. But I just was so attracted to even that concept of unschooling ourselves and just your work of focusing on the parenting experience of this. But let’s take a step back. And would you mind telling us a little bit about your kind of personal evolution or that moment when you realized that your kind of work-driven identity wasn’t really in alignment with who you wanted to be as a mom and how that kind of led you to being an unschooler.

Esther Jones:
Hmm. Sure, yeah. So I came from a background of running my own business for about 25 years, which kind of overlapped with having my children. And so I was terribly busy all the time, very productive, you know, trying to get it all done, but when my, so I have three children in there. When my eldest were about eight and nine. They were going to a very alternative school. We were living in Spain at the time and it just wasn’t really feeling right. There were a few things just not really working. So we thought we’ll take them out and we’ll figure something else out. And in the meantime, we’ll just see how it goes at home, which was quite unusual in Spain. within months, so at first I was terribly nervous. I needed us all to be sort of learning all the time and I found it very difficult to let go of what.

I thought it needed to look like. And so I felt this terrible pressure to succeed in this. And yet as the months went by and I really started watching them and observing them, I could see that they were just really getting on with the things that they loved. There was so much learning happening. It was so rich. It was really, my mind was blind every day by them. And it didn’t look like how I had expected learning to look. And so quite soon into this journey, I realized that actually I had a lot of unlearning to do about what my expectations were, what I thought success looked like, what I thought learning looked like. And that was the moment the sort of the penny dropped and that coincided with me leaving my business and really having to go, okay, well, who am I? And realizing that my children knew how to follow their passions, they knew what they were interested in.

They knew when they wanted to rest. knew all of those things. And I didn’t. And I’d kind of lost track of it all. And so we spent two years living in an old house in the hills quite near Barcelona. We moved there and we took them out of school. And it was two years of really intense deschooling for me and just really observing. Observing when I felt triggered, nervous, like I had to do something when I was uncomfortable with them taking the lead on what they wanted to do and just really unpicking all of, all of my kind of stuff as it was. whilst yeah, living in this, this beautiful space with them and really discovering them rather than me thinking, it has to look like, think it has to look, realizing that actually they were these three very different human beings to be discovered. And so that’s kind of how we kind of led into it. so, yeah, mean, the learning has all been my own. And that was some years ago now. Now they are nearly 20, 18 and 13.

Debbie:
So okay, you shared so much that that I can want to go back and unpack a little bit. I’d love to know more about that transition because it is, I think, that’s one of the biggest challenges when people decide I’m going to kind of reject this traditional educational model, you know, and it might be years that they’re feeling that this is a mismatch, something isn’t right or the intuition is telling us, you know, this probably isn’t the best fit, but right and then we have all these like reasons in our mind why doing something alternative isn’t an option for us. So could you talk a little bit more about that for you what those kind of biggest fears or doubts were about you know charting this course?

Esther Jones:
Yeah, I think that it was interesting at the time. Sometimes I couldn’t put my finger quite on what it was. Sometimes it was just that sort of terrible feeling when you’ve stepped away from a system that you feel quite lonely. So sometimes it just felt very alone to do something else. A lot of the time it was a worry about the future. What will happen later? What if they want to go back to school? What if they end up behind? There was a lot about that. And then a sort of what I’ve heard from parents a lot is this sense of, we doing enough? And this question comes to you all the time. Is this enough? And so there was just a sense of, I have to be doing all the time to make sure that this works. Even when I could see them really learning, I could see that it worked. So it was a sort of sense of, am I being a good parent here?

That and what the future would hold. think those are the two things. But I did learn that actually, you know, it is uncomfortable to step away from system. It absolutely is very uncomfortable. But the discomfort is kind of where the work is. And I didn’t realize that in the beginning. So in the beginning, people tend to think, this feels really uncomfortable. I must be doing something horribly wrong. But actually, the discomfort is that learning edge. Where we sit with it and go, hmm, where, is this discomfort? Where’s it coming from?

Debbie:
Yeah, I love that quote by Neil Donald Walsh that life begins at the edge of your or outside of your comfort zone because I and I’ve always thought that especially raising neurodivergent kids, there was really nothing comfortable about it. So we can fight that or resist it or we can decide, okay, I’m going to go all in and see what I can learn from this. But that’s not always an easy or quick kind of reframe for so many parents to make.

Esther Jones:
That’s absolutely right. in fact, something about neurodivergent children there, which is that I think that, so from what I see, many, many people who are unschooling have neurodivergent children. And part of it is because school really doesn’t feel like a good fit often. And there’s a kind of a negative talk around the child can happen, this sort of deficit space, which is kind of where we were heading to, where things feel problematic, they don’t feel quite so good. So I think that for those parents, it can feel like a real relief to say, ah, we’re going to sit in a different space here. So that makes it much easier, I think, sometimes for certain parents, because the standard paradigm clearly isn’t working. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah. Would you take a few minutes and tell us what your kids learning actually looked like? Because you said, you you thought you had to be doing all the things that involving being very involved and structured. And when you stepped back, you saw that they were learning. So what did there, what did it look like for them?

Esther Jones:
Yeah, so what I thought would happen was that I would have projects and I’d lead them, right? And we’d do interesting things every day and I would devise what they were because I was the adult, so I kind of knew what they had to learn. So what actually happened was that they weren’t interested generally in anything I came up with. Not always, not always, but most of the time. And what it looked like was first of all, I had to stop trying to see the things I wanted to see and felt I should be seeing.

Debbie:
Classic, yeah.

Esther Jones:
When I actually started to really watch them, I could see it was just continually happening, but it was very messy. It was very organic learning. So, for example, someone would come in and say, hey, how tall is the Eiffel Tower? And we’d oh, OK, well. And we’d figure out how tall the Eiffel Tower was, and then they’d head off again. Or someone would pop in and say, did you know that? And they would tell me something. And then that would lead to a conversation. And then that led to some research. And then that person said, I think I’m going to do this. And so it was this sort of organic following of threads is how I could only describe it. It never, ever, ever looked like something you’d see at school. Occasionally you would see some, one of them would go, I know I’m going to do this in this way. And I’m going to figure this out in this very structured way. Almost never though. It was just very, organic, messy, and it was joyful was just learning was always fun. There was never, it was challenging. They would do difficult things. They’d set themselves goals and things. But there was never a moment where learning itself was not a fun and satisfying endeavor. So one of my children, for example, my middle son, he started studying our family tree. So for example, I’m going to say for about 10 years, he spent, well, probably a little less than that, three to four hours a day on our family tree, which encompasses everything, cultures. And luckily we have family in all sorts of different places, lots of geography. And that led him to love maps. So he loved studying maps. And then that led him to linguistics and ethnography. And that’s now his field of study.

But it started very much with a sort of sense of who am I, where do I come from? And so these threads have sort of gone through all of their lives. One of my other children has learned through animals. Animals have been her main field of interest from volunteering at a dog shelter to now looking after dogs and cats for other people and now about to embark on some more official studies. So it was just, I’m going to say following little threads, you know, another example would be one of my children finding out about micronations and micronations are, and then us coming up with our own micronation and then they designed a flag for it and they figured out how we would govern it and the tax system. So then there lots of talk about tax systems. It’s hard to sort of even explain what it looked like. It just looked like lots of ideas and then sometimes it looked very quiet as well.

Debbie:
Yeah, I homeschooled for six years. with each year, we were also living abroad at the time. And with each year, did become more and more what I would consider to be unschooling. But also, there was a whole typography phase, and there was a heraldry phase, it was really like I learned so much through the process. So one thing I just wanted to ask when you said that a lot of it was just noticing where the learning was happening and that it was happening in different ways, did you have someone that you were debriefing with? Were you taking notes or was it just kind of like giving yourself time to contemplate and reflect?

Esther Jones:
Yeah, so in fact the very first year I started my blog so I was writing a blog at least once a week and I found it absolutely essential for just because I didn’t have anyone to talk to so we lived in a place where no one was no one’s children were not at school eventually I met one other family but and so there wasn’t really anyone to talk to so I would read I write I’m so I would write a lot and that was really helpful for me to sort of work through these ideas.

Debbie:
Yeah. And I was, I was I’ve been reading your writing online and listeners, I’ll have a link in the show notes, because you do have a lot of writing online, in addition to your book, but just to really give a close lens of what this looked like. And I want to also just touch base on this idea of the stuff it can bring up for our us as parents that we’re not doing enough, you have a section in the book called It May Feel Neglectful at First and that really struck a chord with me because there is so much internal judging that can happen that we’re not doing enough or are we doing wrong by my kid because it you know, even if we can see the evidence in the day to day that actually this is this is feels good, my kids seem to be thriving or this is definitely a better fit than this kind of school structure that is definitely not a fit for my child, but we still might feel like kind of stepping back and leaving them to their own devices can be a form of just being neglectful. Could you unpack that a little bit?

Esther Jones:
Yeah, I think that’s a really hard one. And I definitely felt that in the beginning and I hear it a lot. We feel like we need to be constantly there, constantly kind of cajoling or praising or, but basically our children don’t need that from us necessarily. And I realized that what was really important for them was how I kind of held the space for them. So my role was not to be the motivator, not to be the person who made things happen. I needed to be able to trust them. And it was helpful for me to understand that I did have a role, but it didn’t look like that. And it was this role of creating a space that felt relaxed, where they could be curious, follow threads. They had someone to talk to, so I was always there. But holding a really safe, relaxed, non-judgmental space. And so I learned over time, because it’s hard, to hold back.

And to think, do they need to hear from me right now? Do they really need me to, and to think, no, what is the better thing for me to be doing? And to understand our role in a different way. So for example, if I say, I’m going to go and do a piece of my writing, I’m also doing, it’s also wonderful modeling for our children to show them what does it look like to be an adult who enjoys something. I enjoy writing. I enjoy going for a run. These are the things I do. And to sort of show them how we live, because I think it’s really important in a home that we’re all whole people, that the parent isn’t sort of a diminished version of themselves because they’re a parent. And I know it can be very depleting and tiring. are many, many layers to this, but to the best of our ability to show up as our full selves with our children, I think that’s one of the challenges of this way of life. So I don’t feel success through my children. I can show up as me and say you can show up as you.

Debbie:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s great modeling. I wonder about also things that parents are worried about. let’s just talk about screen time. I’m actually interviewing someone later today about screen time. And that’s such a challenge, especially with parents of neurodivergent kids who are unschooling, neurodivergent kids who might be really drawn to screen time and we know screen time can be really regulating and supportive for some neurodivergent kids and and if a kid is emerging from burnout or they need time to kind of decompress like there’s a lot of moving pieces and I’m just wondering what your thoughts are on that if you have any kind of ways to think about technology use and unschooling that have been helpful for you.

Esther Jones:
Yeah, well, something I do mention in the book is the fact that technology became something that was used a lot by our children, but it was used in so many different ways. It would have been impossible to kind of police. So my son doing the family tree, a lot of that was online. There was Minecraft, but there was also history quizzes. You know, there was this whole mixture of things happening. It was very difficult to pull them apart. And so what we have tried to do, and I think it’s up to every family parent to understand what this is going to look like for them, was to help our children be savvy online, to know how they’re using it, to be aware. So again, it’s that idea of trust but in a held space. So we’ve always had conversations about staying safe online. We’ve always had conversations about the sources where we’re finding things from.

And because children, when they’re self-directed, they’re looking for their own sources, it’s a wonderful place to sort of be talking about, well, are you sure that’s reliable? Where did you find that? What about this guy? Hmm. And so there’s a lot of criteria that they’re bringing to it because they have that trust. I think that, so for me, what I would like for my children is that they go through life with a sense of understanding of themselves so they can say, okay,
Oh, I’ve been doing this too long. I want to stop this now. I’m going to stop doing that or how to stay safe online. All of these things I’d like them to always have. And so I think to practice with us, but in a very safe space with this constant dialogue around it is perhaps the best way of going about it rather than a ban or the problem when we say, okay, you can have one hour of screen time is we kind of also, do we mean by screen time? You know, what’s a worthy activity? And then there we are kind of judging their activities. And we can’t really say that the gaming is not worthy to that child. It’s doing something, you know, so we get into very sort of treacherous territory where our child will feel judged and shamed. And that’s the last thing we want around screens is for our children to not feel like they can come to us with anything, but there’s no shame around it. I think the dialogue is incredibly important.

Debbie:
Yeah, it’s so you know, in preparing for my conversation, this is with Ash Brandin And they wrote a book called Power On, which is about, yeah, it’s about exactly this. Like I, I’m going to be talking with them about specifically not judging screen time and respecting the joy and the the sense of competency that all kinds of screen engagement can provide for our kids. And we don’t want to just paint it with this negative brush.

Esther Jones:
Absolutely. Yeah, I took a photograph of my eldest every now and again, doesn’t game much now, but every now and again he does. I took a picture of the screen he was on the other day because it just was mind blowing to me. It was a strategy game and it was economics and it was calculation. Is that fun to you? He said, yeah. Okay. It’s a little like hard work.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s what sometimes I talk with my kid who’s now 21, who is a computer science major, that interest is continued. Sometimes they’ll be like, what are you up to? And it’s like, oh, I’m just working on this math problem. Want to see? yeah, that is so not what I was doing with my spare time when I was 21. But you go do you. So yeah, it’s fascinating. I really enjoyed the section in your book called nurturing yourself through change because again, so much of what I do here at Tilt is really about what can we do for ourselves so we can show up for our kids. And so I wanted to ask you, you talk about relearning to be yourself. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Esther Jones:
Yeah. So every parent I speak to who’s been on schooling for a while, it talks about this as a healing journey. It’s almost inevitable that it becomes a healing journey for the simple reason that when we step away from this mainstream system, we have all these ingrained ideas about life. And as I was saying before, every time we hit that moment of discomfort, we’re on an edge there and we sort of come through it by bringing compassion to ourselves.
by delving a little bit deeper. So oftentimes we’re delving into things that we might never really have ever looked at before. Our perfectionism, for example, I was a terrible perfectionist and my children have been incredibly healing for that. But all these things that we might have done or people pleasing where we actually are looking at things are going, huh, and realizing we have choice and agency because our children do. And because we’re holding our children in a space where we’re saying, okay, you have choice, you have agency, I want you to show up as your full self. Then we kind of have to say, well, then I must have choice and agency and I must be able to show up as my full self. And so every time we hit one of those situations where maybe we don’t, outside of parenting, we bring that same awareness to it and say, okay, is this how I want to, is this what I want to do? Is this how I want to be? And so I think the very act of challenging these old narratives in the context first of our children, it naturally then expands out to the rest of our lives. For many parents, the first piece, in fact, is stepping away from the system, having to talk to family, having to talk to the school, all of those things which make them feel absolutely terrible, know, nervous system, you know, highly activated. And again, it’s that stepping through and coming to the other side. And so it’s very healing. And that’s that, finding our true selves who’s underneath all of those conditioned layers might be the question.

Debbie:
Right. Yeah, I always say it’s the journey that we never knew we wanted to go on. And maybe if we’d had the choice, we would say no. Now that we’re on it, if we’re able to take the time to pause and reflect and notice and heal, it is such a gift. But it does kind of, we have to, again, surrender to that. Would you mind telling us where are you now? I think, again, with this 21-year-old now, I feel like I’m upleveling every couple of months. If life were a video game, I’m upleveling. And it’s still super uncomfortable for me on a regular basis. Where are you in your own kind of comfort journey?

Esther Jones:
Yeah, I think because I’ve got two who are kind of on the verge of leaving home, I’m also so appreciative of them and so appreciative of the connection and all the time we’ve had together. And so on the horizon, I can see them not buzzing around my house anymore. And that makes me feel like I just want to like, enjoy them. I feel I have moments which has been interesting when as they’re kind of approaching future life and they’ll say, I’m going to do this or I want to do this. And I can sometimes feel my judginess or criticism or a doubt. And so there’s always that checking yourself at the door, know, like, hmm, what’s that bubbling up for me? Is this a me thing? This must, this is a me thing. Yeah, this has got nothing to do with my child. I’m not going to put it on. And so then sometimes I’ll have to sit with that.

And it might be around a course or going to college or not going to college or travel, you know, some like a plan that feels very ambitious. And I have to think, huh, okay, what do they need from me right now? Do they need me to point out some practical things about that? Do they need me to just listen unconditionally right now? Like what, where are we? And sometimes that can take, you know, it’s a bit of a dance sometimes I might get it wrong.
Absolutely. In which case I’ll say, I’m sorry, didn’t quite, you know, I’m sorry, let’s try that again. And that’s fine. So yeah, I guess as they grow, new things come up. I’d like to think I have enough tools now to generally be able to explore it with less, I certainly don’t have anything like the discomfort of those first years. Yeah, thank goodness.

Debbie:
Yes, there is a trajectory there is movement. You have a chapter in the book dedicated to practices that support de schooling journeys. And I’m just wondering if you have some kind of go tos or some practices that you have found personally most supportive or, you know, are they things you still have to intentionally practice? Or is it just kind of integrated into how you move through your life?

Esther Jones:
Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day. So something that I very clear now is that my frame of mind, how I am is really important. And so I take care of that and I do that intentionally and just sort of naturally. Whereas I’m going to say as an, as a kind of in my early mothering, I was, you know, last on last on the scale. And I would tend to myself after everybody else was tended to, but now I understand that my mood is really important in how I am because I’m holding that space is really important. So if I notice that my mood is in a place which doesn’t feel great, then I will go for a walk or I will, you know, find a friend to have a coffee with later. Or I generally understand that I need to tend to myself. And so I build a lot of that into my week and my children are older. So if your children are smaller out there, it is harder. It absolutely is. They are all this. I do have more time for myself. But I do intentionally have that in the week. A lot of that is walking, sea swimming, just really getting outside a lot for me, reading and meditation practice just sometimes 10 minutes in the morning. But finding that quiet space, that’s my go-to.

Debbie:
That’s great. Yeah, I used to incorporate what I needed into our homeschooling. So if I needed nature, then I would be like, we’re gonna be, you we’re gonna do this nature walk together and your or let’s go to work on this project in the park so I could get my outdoor sitting under a tree time. But it can be tricky, especially with younger kids. I want to ask you one last question, which is actually about the last chapter of your book, which is on creating your community. And I obviously think community is so critical for any parent raising, well, for any parent full stop, but especially when you’re raising a neurodivergent kid, you’re on an unconventional path. And it can be harder to find your community when you are just doing things in a way that’s different from what is considered the norm. So do you have any best practices for parents listening to this who are who maybe are choosing to unschool and they’re like, but where do I even start? How do I find my people? And what does community look like?

Esther Jones:
Yeah, I think, I think it’s important. Community is so important. And I think that we were never meant to do this in such isolation. And so never give yourself a hard time if you’re not getting it all done, or you’re not providing enough for your child, because I think we live in a strange society. So I would encourage you to see what’s out there, forget the ideal community, forget your dream, and just see who is around you, who do you connect with, it might be one person, might be one family, it might be one activity, start very small and start building up. And there will be things you try that don’t really work and that’s okay. So I think it’s an exploration. And also I know there are some really good online communities for really, if you need people who get you where you can just go there and share. People who really understand, I think that’s very important. And I would also say that it is important to remember that what you need in community and what your child needs may be very different and that is okay. Difficult but okay. 

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s such a good point. Yeah, I definitely found myself in some communities that I was like, these aren’t my people here. Yet I wanted to be a part of them for my kiddo. So that’s a really good point. Yeah.

Esther Jones:
So, yeah, so consider all of your needs, all of your needs. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s a great reminder. Okay, awesome. Well, I’m gonna I’m actually because this is going to be if you’re listening to this on YouTube, I’m holding up the the book. It is called the parents handbook to unschooling yourself a mindful guide to embracing a new way of living and learning with your child. And Esther, can you just kind of give us your top places where people can engage with you and learn more about your work?

Esther Jones:
Yeah, so the best place is just to come to my website, which is Esther hyphen Jones.com. And from there, you can find my podcast, which is called the unschool space, where I just I interview people from around the world who are doing this at all different points of the journey. And from there, you also find my sub stack and all the different paths out. So yeah.

Debbie:
Great. So listeners, as always, I will have links to all of those places in the show notes. I will also include links to a couple of other episodes I’ve done on unschooling, including a recent one with Dr. Naomi Fisher. And then I’ve had Blake Boles who has written books on unschooling as well on the show. So if you want to kind of do a deep dive, go to the resources in the show notes and you’ll find a lot of places to connect and learn more. So Esther, I just want to say thank you. It’s been so nice to get to know you and learn about your work. And thank you for everything you shared today.

Esther Jones:
Thank you, Debbie. It’s been a pleasure.