Da Ladies #1 | Da Ladies Fixing the world

Buckle up for a deep dive into the world of unschooling - an unconventional approach to education that is more of a lifelong journey than a destination.

This is the first episode of 'Da Ladies Fixing the World" featuring Cecilie Conrad, Luna Maj Vestergaard, Carla Martinez, and Sarah Beale.

Together we investigate the boundaries of Unschooling. Listen to our revelations on how unschooling continues to surprise us, even after years of practice.

This episode is more than just a discussion on unschooling. We bring other early education systems under the microscope, critiquing traditional schooling systems and exploring everything from the Danish kindergarten model to the state's influence on parental decision-making in education. We reflect on our own upbringing and experiences and how they shape our views on unschooling.

Be prepared to rethink traditional education models as we illustrate the freedom unschooling offers and its transformative impact on children's learning experiences.

As we journey further, we touch on the challenges of unschooling and the expectations that need to be managed. Recognize the importance of embracing uncertainty when first diving into unschooling and the necessity of being comfortable with not knowing or controlling outcomes. This thought-provoking episode will leave you examining the balance between freedom and boundaries in unschooling, considering the concept of unschooling as natural and integrated learning and reflecting on the implications of de-schooling and the importance of living and learning together.

Join us on this enlightening adventure that is bound to leave you rethinking traditional education models.

▬ EPISODE LINKS ▬

Luna Maj Vestergaard: 

• https://altomunschooling.dk/
• https://www.instagram.com/lunamajvestergaard/
• https://www.facebook.com/lunamajvestergaard

Carla Martinez: 

• https://planetaworldschool.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/ligronesenruta/
• https://www.instagram.com/planetaworldschool/
• https://www.facebook.com/ligronesenruta
• https://www.facebook.com/plan

Chapters

• 0:00 Unschooling and the Limits of Freedom
• 12:19 Parenting: Modern women caught on auto-pilot
• 12:21 Comparing Schooling Systems and Education Perspectives
• 37:56 Unschooling and Personal Journey Towards Education
• 53:29 Transitioning to Unschooling
• 1:07:44 Understanding the Concept of Unschooling
• 1:15:53 Unschooling & natural learning processes
• 1:23:28 Challenges and Expectations in Unschooling

Transcript

[00:00:00] Cecilie Conrad: Walking through this park in Southeast England, I am excited to finally announce a podcast with three amazing women. All together, we are fixing the world. They are radical unschoolers, I think you might be. They don't like labels and I don't like labels, but we are great friends. And we thought we have so great conversations that we should record some of them and share them with the world.

[00:00:31] Cecilie Conrad: really needs fixing, doesn't it? So please enjoy me and my friends fixing the world. 

[00:00:43] Sarah Beale: Okay, so here's my conversation starter. Do it. 

[00:00:47] Cecilie Conrad: Just 

[00:00:47] Sarah Beale: jumping off of the dog conversation. Things you said you'd never do. How deep can you go? Because we say things like, Oh, I would never pay 10, 000 for my dog to go to Australia.

[00:01:03] Sarah Beale: I would never, um, just be okay with my child learning to read. in their own time. I would never let my kids eat in their bedroom. I would never let my kids stay up gaming all night. I would never let my kids swear. I would never, I mean, I could go on. What's the 

[00:01:24] Cecilie Conrad: question? What's the question? The question is how, 

[00:01:27] Sarah Beale: like, well, that's the question is, 

[00:01:29] Cecilie Conrad: um, like 

[00:01:32] Sarah Beale: how, how, how, how deep, how deep can you go?

[00:01:35] Sarah Beale: Like, how deep can you go with unschooling? And it's limit, it's literally limitless. 

[00:01:41] Luna Maj Vestergaard: So 

[00:01:41] Cecilie Conrad: do we, so the question is, do we still have, would we still say, I would never let my child. Do 

[00:01:47] Sarah Beale: we ever say that? What's too much? What's too far? What's not enough? Like how, where does it end? 

[00:01:54] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Where does freedom end?

[00:01:59] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Good question. That has to be like one of the best questions ever asked. Because that just left three women completely speechless all the time. Exactly. So, I mean. There you go. Yeah, that's good. Maybe we could leave 

[00:02:19] Cecilie Conrad: it like hanging there and then say hi. This is a recording of the ladies fixing the world.

[00:02:26] Cecilie Conrad: Um, that I, I, I got this idea because I have these three amazing friends and I really wanted to continue the conversation after we met in Normandy this spring. I thought we met 

[00:02:38] Carla Martinez: before. What? We have met before. We have 

[00:02:43] Cecilie Conrad: met before that. That's true. Um, but I think the long story about who met who first and where and how maybe we've known each other for a long time.

[00:02:53] Cecilie Conrad: That's true. And now I wanted to take our conversations to a more structured level because they are so interesting. And, and, uh, Maybe, no, not maybe, I'm quite sure they're very interesting to other people than just the four of us. So now we will record it and put it out there. This will be a conversation style podcast.

[00:03:16] Cecilie Conrad: We're just talking. And your question is amazing. Um, maybe we could leave the subconscious to work with it for a while while we start in an easier corner. With one of the questions we've all answered many times, which is why your kid's not in school. We need to remember that we are also talking to people who have not unschooled for 10 plus years.

[00:03:40] Cecilie Conrad: So why are the kids not in school? 

[00:03:46] Sarah Beale: Well, I mean, I want to indoctrinate my own children and I don't want the 

[00:03:49] Cecilie Conrad: government to do it. That's the joke. That's the joke. 

[00:03:55] Sarah Beale: Lena and I started this conversation this morning talking about that. Yeah, well, because it's every morning and then we go, why are we recording this over coffee?

[00:04:04] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Um, but, 

[00:04:05] Sarah Beale: uh, I think a lot of people. Come to unschooling. This is not how we came to it, by the way, but I know a lot of people do it now. This is a new kind of trend. They want to protect their kids from something. So they bring them home so they can be in charge. Which I can relate to, to one degree, and of course we all live in our values and it's natural that we are, to some degree, imparting our values onto our children, um, and how, but unschooling is like the antidote, to my mind anyway, to indoctrination, because really in the unschooling world, truly in the unschooling world, we are always asking that question of how deep can we go, how much can we let go, and how much can we let go.

[00:04:50] Sarah Beale: which ends up being the opposite of indoctrination and a whole lot of faith around Our values and our foundations as a family that is not answering the question 

[00:05:02] Cecilie Conrad: at all. No, but I was not expecting you to answer the question. I just wanted to, you know, throw a ball and you can catch it in whatever way you want.

[00:05:12] Cecilie Conrad: I think that that 

[00:05:13] Luna Maj Vestergaard: that is funny, actually, that you're going there right away because I just this morning was thinking a little bit about it and actually put up a post this morning. Oh, what was last night? I can't remember. But anyway, right. Not too long ago about precisely that about about de schooling and about how deep can we go and how deep does it go and when does it end, because sometimes I find that some people like we can sort of think that it's like a destination that we can get to at some point, which is really not, it's more like just continually peeling off layers of onions, and they'll always be an extra layer, even when we think, oh, you know, Now I've got it.

[00:05:53] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Okay, been doing this 10 plus years, 20 plus years, whatever, got it, and then bam, something comes along and changes and you have to like rethink a lot of things again and you have to like, um, I don't know. It's just like, it's like it's an ongoing process that's kind of like lifelong. And even when you've been at it for like many years.

[00:06:19] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Like you still, you still find things that can surprise you and you like for yourself, you still find things where you think, hang on, why am I reacting like that? Hang on. I just thought like this. Hmm. Why did I think like that? I thought I was way past that or something, you know, and I just, I find that super interesting.

[00:06:40] Luna Maj Vestergaard: So for me, at least it's like, yeah, how, how deep can we go? I don't know. It's like infinite. You, you, you won't stop actually. 

[00:06:49] Cecilie Conrad: But is it rather maybe a style of going than a destination? Yeah. To me, at least, I think. The way unschooling, my end of unschooling. My kids actually criticize me quite often to talk about unschooling because they say, um, you're not unschooled and we're unschooled.

[00:07:14] Cecilie Conrad: You're unschooling. You're the mother. You're not, you've been to school for 23 years, mom. You're not unschooled and you will never be unschooled. So how come you stand up to be like an expert? And maybe that's exactly what's happening right now in our conversation. I try to get us started. Defining unschooling.

[00:07:34] Cecilie Conrad: If anyone for some weird reason was listening to this and it was the first time they heard the word unschooling, they would need to know what it is. And immediately we start talking about our own process. What's, what's, what, what is it to be an unschooling mother, which is totally okay. I don't care what we talk about.

[00:07:52] Cecilie Conrad: I'm quite sure it'll be amazing anyway, but peeling off the layers is more, more of a lifestyle way to walk through life than it is. Let me do these 85 push ups and then I'm ready and I can do the unschooling. Maybe that 

[00:08:12] Carla Martinez: couldn't happen. I, I would say that is an attitude, you know, it's like Luna said, like never ends.

[00:08:22] Carla Martinez: What is the limit where it will end? That now I'm, I am done, I can't manage everything, but I think that will never happen because every time. The society is evolving, our kids are in there and they will bring things that, I don't know. So the thing is that I don't have to, I think I don't need to be ready for everything.

[00:08:50] Carla Martinez: Yes, to, uh, because when something happened and I'm like, Oh, and I do this, I always say with my face, like when I do like, so this happening is happening inside me. So then I start thinking, like, why, and why not, but I am ready. I am already there. I am able to like, think about this thing that is happening and see that in the side of my kids.

[00:09:20] Carla Martinez: and see what they are looking at, what they are seeing, so I can see what they are seeing, you know. So, and just from there, that's what I do, and this is what I feel quite calm about. I don't have nothing under control. I, I think I have some things, but then it's like, no, no, but in the end, it's fine because I have, I have the attitude.

[00:09:48] Carla Martinez: And I think that's the 

[00:09:49] Cecilie Conrad: power. It is. It is. 

[00:09:55] Sarah Beale: You said something really interesting, Carla. You said something interesting. Sorry. I think my internet is a bit jumpy. So if I talk over the top of you, it's because, which I think I just did over Cecilia. I think I've got a delay. I apologize. Not really. Not really.

[00:10:08] Sarah Beale: Oh, okay. Cool. Um, you just said, you sort of made a comment, Carla, about actually really needing to be pretty comfortable with not having control. And lots of parents who are thinking about pulling kids out of school, or maybe they're already homeschooling or home educating in a more structured way, and their heart is pulling them towards unschooling.

[00:10:33] Sarah Beale: And the thing that is hard for them before they've taken the leap, and I remember this myself, Going back to the original question about why are we, why are we doing this? Um, you, you, you need some tools. However, you want to frame that to help you be okay with really understanding that we have no control.

[00:10:54] Sarah Beale: And not only do we have no control, but we don't need to have. control, which is totally different to just being completely chaotic, no firm foundations, no values, no, that's different. But being okay with like, Oh, we're going to do this thing. And we don't really know what's going to happen. And we're going to live in trust of our children and of ourselves.

[00:11:22] Sarah Beale: And before you take the leap, wherever you've come from, there, there was this sense for me of like, Oh, I don't know what this is going to look like, which is the same as really kind of still needing to hold on to control. I want to know what my life's going to look like. And if I'm going to put my kids in school, I know what that's going to look like because everyone else is doing it.

[00:11:45] Sarah Beale: So I just have to look at my next door neighbor or my friend down the road to know what my life will look like. And or tv. It's on tv. It's everywhere. What, what, what your life is look like is going to look like when your kids go to school and you finally read school mom status. It's like a prescription.

[00:12:05] Sarah Beale: We have no idea. I had no idea, and that was really scary for me in initially. Until I jumped off the cliff and then I'm like, Oh, I really like skydiving. 

[00:12:18] Cecilie Conrad: I think it's an interesting question to think about where that need for control comes from. And one element that I, I have seen, I think I've seen with some, some elements, some level of clarity is that the need for control comes from fear.

[00:12:37] Cecilie Conrad: And it is. When you think about it, it's quite scary to be alive, to be here. And when we put more people into this world through our own bodies, and, and have this responsibility to take care of them, and try to somehow nurse and mother. around them until they are more ready to not have that vibe around them.

[00:13:04] Cecilie Conrad: That whole thing is quite scary, and modern women are very alone trying to do it. They don't have, uh, other women around them. They don't have sisters and mothers, not to the extent that would be more ideal. So, it's convenient when the state comes with a little... Well, you call that an English brochure telling you how to breastfeed and when to stop and what kind of food to give them when they are like two and a half seconds old.

[00:13:34] Cecilie Conrad: And, uh, and, and, you know, you can put them off to the nursery and they are experts over there. So they know what they're doing. I think, and I know I'm not being very nice right now, but the fear is real and the need for control and systems to, to, to, to, to try to get that fear under control is a normal human reaction.

[00:14:02] Cecilie Conrad: It's, it's basic psychology. And I think a lot of people are in our automatic auto drive, like they just do it because everyone else are doing it and because if you don't do it, you have to look at the fear. You have to look at the fact that these kids are actually your responsibility, and that no one has control.

[00:14:25] Cecilie Conrad: I mean, even if you put them in school you think you know what it will look like. But maybe it will not look like that. Maybe something 

[00:14:33] Carla Martinez: will happen. I did bring my kid to kindergarten when he was six months. And it was this, this thing, like, you do it because it, how it is. I have to go to work and he has to be there.

[00:14:54] Carla Martinez: And I remember perfectly, like, my feeling when I left him and I leave. You know, I was completely sure that this is wrong. Okay. I was like, you know, feeling these like void inside, but you are with these, uh, how do you say anesthesia, 

[00:15:19] Cecilie Conrad: anesthetic 

[00:15:19] Carla Martinez: with these global speech about you, you are feeling worse than they are.

[00:15:28] Carla Martinez: They are better than, you know, this thing that is not. big deal for him. You are getting this like bigger than it is, but I always have trust my instinct and my feelings very much. So I was sure that no, this is wrong. And, but still. He went to the kindergarten for, I don't know, two years, three, and then he has to go to school.

[00:15:59] Carla Martinez: So this is why my kids are not in school. I'm 

[00:16:01] Luna Maj Vestergaard: telling my 

[00:16:02] Cecilie Conrad: story. The question is not being answered. 

[00:16:06] Carla Martinez: Because I have this theory in my experience that when they are babies, okay, they can cry and they can. But not much else, not, but when he was three and we went to school, he could say more and it was really connected to my song and I listened to him and I said, we cannot stay here because I felt that they was in the classroom in this thing.

[00:16:43] Carla Martinez: So they can get used to. And then he was not, and he was not, it's not going to work when we're not going to be here. So I knew already we, we were gonna, we were not gonna stay. So I was, this is quite funny now that I think about like about the past, because I was there in the playground of the school after the presentation, whatever, and all the kids like running around and I was with my kids on top of me.

[00:17:14] Carla Martinez: thinking about other options. I already have my decision because my, my body made the decisions. So it was like, what are we going to do? What am I going to do? I don't know. I have to go to work. What am I going to do? But I knew already we are not going to stay here. So that, I think that's amazing. I think like to be able to, you know, I, I knew that I, I made 

[00:17:38] Cecilie Conrad: the decision 

[00:17:40] Luna Maj Vestergaard: and yeah.

[00:17:41] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Okay. What did you do? 

[00:17:43] Carla Martinez: So, uh, in, I was there in the playground. And a name came to my head, and it's called, it's an alternative project here. I, I knew nothing about other kind of educations, okay? But a friend told me about something where he, he went to make a workshop or something. I don't know, just the name came.

[00:18:06] Carla Martinez: So I look on the internet in my phone, in the playground of the school, and check out the place. And I was there, oh my God, what is this? And I was reading about. Free learning, um, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, what is this? I don't know, but this sounds good. So in that moment, I wrote David, like, we're not going to stay here.

[00:18:28] Carla Martinez: We need something else. I found this. We're going to go this afternoon to check the place. 

[00:18:34] Cecilie Conrad: Right. So 

[00:18:35] Carla Martinez: yeah, we left the place and we just call and call. No one were now, no one answer. So we tried to find it in Google maps. They have no specific point, but we went with the car driving through the area. To see if we can find that place.

[00:18:50] Carla Martinez: In the end we find it and it was like, you know, this little house within the like, um, not in the mountains, you know, like trees, a little forest. There was a house in a tree. There was, and it was like, this is possible? This exists? This for us was like a pass through than to not being in any place just because then we start traveling.

[00:19:15] Carla Martinez: And then, yeah, we're never coming back to something very like school. Yeah, but that was the beginning, like resume in a short 

[00:19:29] Luna Maj Vestergaard: words. So it was like a feeling in, it was actually like a physiological thing for you. Like it was a feeling in your body. 

[00:19:38] Carla Martinez: I can see what my son 

[00:19:42] Luna Maj Vestergaard: feels. So I feel what he feels because I 

[00:19:47] Carla Martinez: know him.

[00:19:50] Carla Martinez: There was two things. One Roberto thing and my thing because I was in that classroom. Three years old and it was all the walls and everything with all the things they were so they they said they don't need to learn this at this age. But still, the walls were full of, you know, the seasons, the letters, the numbers, the, I don't know, but I, and I get stressed because I saw this.

[00:20:18] Carla Martinez: So it was, it was me and it was him. It was like, uh, we were, uh, you know, read for alimentation. Yeah, like to each other, like, Oh my God. And I have a little story I can tell. Uh, when. was the specific moment that I knew we were not going to stay there. And after the presentation in the classroom, we went outside to the playground and Roberto was like, yes, on my arms.

[00:20:49] Carla Martinez: He didn't want to play. No. And the teacher keep on coming. And I knew that it's not going to work if you keep on coming because you are like pushing, you know, like, but still, I was also trying that we need to fit. We need to be here, we need to fit. So I look for the girl that she was in the classroom and she was really extroverted, answering everything.

[00:21:15] Carla Martinez: So I say, okay, let's go talk to her . 

[00:21:17] Luna Maj Vestergaard: So 

[00:21:18] Carla Martinez: she was, uh, laying, taking the leaves of the, the pine, the tree and say, uh, Alejandra, I think so her name was 

[00:21:28] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Alejandra. What are you doing? I, um, 

[00:21:33] Carla Martinez: I am picking up leaves. And I say, just to try to make everybody like being the thing, conversation, whatever. And I ask like, Oh, and where are the leaves come from?

[00:21:48] Carla Martinez: And then Roberto answer, and I have to make a parenthesis here, because Roberto, when she was a little, she never speak to anyone, adult, only me, his father, David, and my father.

[00:22:06] Carla Martinez: He never talked to anyone just right away, not even a kid. So he answered, like, I asked the question, the question, and where are they, where did they come from, the leaves? And Roberto said, like, from the tree, from the tree. And then I was like, because then I felt he was also trying to fit. He knew he needed to fit.

[00:22:33] Carla Martinez: And then my heart was like, stop. Like, it broke. And it was like, 

[00:22:38] Cecilie Conrad: no, 

[00:22:40] Luna Maj Vestergaard: no, we can't stay 

[00:22:40] Carla Martinez: here, you know, yeah, yeah, no, I think I have, and that was the, the moment. And then, here we are, 10 years later. 

[00:22:54] Cecilie Conrad: Oh, I talked on top of you, how many years later? 

[00:22:59] Carla Martinez: Me, 10. I mean, no, from this year it was seven. The school was like three, and now seven.

[00:23:09] Cecilie Conrad: Maybe this is a good point. Thank you for sharing. It's very vulnerable, these moments. I think at least my parallel story only most makes me cry because I think I, I don't do regrets a lot, but there are some things I really wish I never did. And one of them is every second I left my child to another person outside of my home without their consent.

[00:23:36] Cecilie Conrad: I, I regret every single moment of that. Yeah. And every time I tried to, But, um, maybe this is a good moment to say where we are from, because you talk about school at the age of three, which for me, being from Denmark, is quite overwhelming. Yeah, I know it's normal in many countries, but, um, maybe the listeners would like to know where do you start in school at three?

[00:24:08] Cecilie Conrad: Okay, 

[00:24:09] Carla Martinez: I'm from Spain. 

[00:24:12] Luna Maj Vestergaard: I 

[00:24:12] Carla Martinez: live in Canary Islands. But it's the same in all Spain, it's not compulsory at three, but everybody go to school at three. But it is school. 

[00:24:24] Cecilie Conrad: Sit down at a desk, learn to read and write, be quiet, answer the questions, all this kind of. Yeah, yes. I can't even imagine that, three year olds.

[00:24:42] Cecilie Conrad: And so I am from Denmark, and so is Luna in our country, it's the double H six, and I still find that ridiculous. So, so three to me is. 

[00:24:54] Carla Martinez: And before, before six, what do they 

[00:24:57] Cecilie Conrad: go? We call it kindergarten and it's... Of course, it's worsening, but it is, uh, mostly free play. 

[00:25:09] Luna Maj Vestergaard: I don't think it's actually that much. I mean, I don't know the system in Spain, but if I compare it to the French system, which I know pretty well, too, um, they call it maternal school, and that's like, that's the period of time that's between three years and six years old.

[00:25:28] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And yeah, I mean, it is school. But I think nowadays. Uh, if, if we wanna compare to Denmark, for instance. I think, like you said, Cecilia, there's actually a tightening a little bit in Denmark too about they now have, like, I, I don't really know cause I don't ever have kids in that system, but I, I think they now have like y like sort of yearly.

[00:25:55] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Plans with learning goals and stuff even in kindergarten that they kind of because they have to prepare the kids to be What we call school parat which it means prepared to go to school and that becomes uh an aim that becomes something that has to go on in the kindergarten years and so that's like That's getting closer to what the maternelle, like the maternal school, the preschool is, um, I think in Australia you call it preschool, right?

[00:26:26] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And in English speaking countries, that's what they call it, preschool. So I think we, we sort of have a little bit the same thing, even though we call it something different. So we think of it a little bit differently, but in the big picture. And I agree, it's more free, it's less schooly in Denmark, but in the big picture, in, in, in the picture of institutionalization, I think I managed to say the word right, the Danish kindergarten is absolutely as big a thing as the preschool or the, the school that your kids then, or your, um, that you visited, et cetera, that it plays the same role.

[00:27:12] Luna Maj Vestergaard: In in that universe, 

[00:27:16] Cecilie Conrad: it does. But it is, I think, let me state clearly that I don't find it beautiful. I think it's a horrible idea. The kindergarten free play or not. It's just don't do it. But the difference is Um, the expectations and the structure of it. And I just think that the idea of sitting down three year olds at desks with workbook worksheets and, and, uh, chalkboards, uh, 

[00:27:46] Luna Maj Vestergaard: But that's not what they do though.

[00:27:47] Luna Maj Vestergaard: I mean, that's not what they do. And I don't know in Spain, but in France, for instance, that that's not actually what they do. It is like, they have three different levels. So this is not at all, like in defense of anything, but more to say that that. That it, if they call it school, but it's, it really is like a lot of like play based, especially in the first one.

[00:28:10] Luna Maj Vestergaard: But at the same time, it definitely is more schooly than for instance, the Danish kindergarten. I just think that, that like in, in the big picture, it's horrendous how both of the, all of these places play the same role in preparing the kids for the next. Level of schooling and instead to that word that I can't really say, but everyone knows what it is.

[00:28:37] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Yeah. Um, and I think once I just said it, yeah, if I go really slowly, then I can say it. But, but yeah, I just, it's, that's just like the whole, once you start seeing that. You, that's when you really start to detangle things and like, and, and you, you said Cecilia in the beginning, something about, Oh, it's nice to have the state come with a hand, you're a broacher, like a flyer telling you that.

[00:29:04] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And like, I used to get like a lot of flack on social media for saying that, that, um, I don't know what it is in English, the equivalent, maybe, you know, the Sundesplaske, that's like a lady who like comes after you've given birth. Yeah, like a maternal helplessness. Yeah, comes to the home and like, yeah, hands out brooches and tells you about the options for, um, childcare, which is always the, the outside of the house options tells you about, you know, all these things.

[00:29:37] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And so I, I, I think this is where the state propaganda starts and this is where the getting people into the system starts. Um, And holy moly, I mean, people 

[00:29:51] Sarah Beale: were really offended. Before then, before then, it starts when you're pregnant. Oh, yeah, 

[00:29:55] Luna Maj Vestergaard: yeah. 

[00:29:56] Cecilie Conrad: That's when you're pregnant, yeah, I agree. It starts with the word have to.

[00:30:01] Cecilie Conrad: Yeah. When you talk to your doctor and you start the whole process of, okay, I'm pregnant and we have to do something, cope with that some way. And then the doctor says, then you have to have this blood test, or you have to have this piece of paper, or you have to go see whatever. And, um, I think a lot of people, um, kind of comply with this have to based partly on habit, and partly on that fear that no one is talking about that no one wants to cope with.

[00:30:38] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And also they don't know, we don't know that you can like Like, I'm like today, I know so much about the whole birthing system that I'm, shit, I would almost want to have a baby so that I could go through a natural pregnancy, you know, because there's so many things that I didn't know at that time. So there might've been things that I felt was a bit, but like, for instance, like, so all the scans and stuff that you have, all the like tests that they do, I never questioned it.

[00:31:08] Luna Maj Vestergaard: So I didn't really mind them, I kind of liked them at the time, and I did just, I, it never even crossed my mind to question it. And actually that kind of leads a little bit into like how we came to unschooling because I had never questioned anything, I had never heard the term Homeschooling even, not even unschooling, but not even homeschooling.

[00:31:28] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And I was like 18 and after high school, like many young people in Denmark do, and probably other countries too, but in Denmark particularly, young people then go on a like a year or two of traveling, working, etc, etc, before they like go on with their studies. And I had just, I went to France, and I got a job with this American French family.

[00:31:51] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And the mom was like, Oh, wow, she was a crunchy mom, you know, like the crunchy mom, baby wearing long term breastfeeding only eating organic food, like only non toxic wooden toys, blah, blah, all that that type. And it was great. I mean, I had never. Met that before like, and I guess she was very passionate and all that anyway.

[00:32:13] Luna Maj Vestergaard: So, these kids, and they were around three and one at the time or something and I was supposed to, so my job was to help her with, like, caring for them and stuff. Um, but but she was saying, they aren't going to go to school, like, in a conversation, and I'm like, They're not, excuse me, what? They're not, what? I mean, okay, I had never heard of that.

[00:32:37] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And not only were they not going to go to school, but she was also not going to teach them. There wasn't going to be any. And my jaw just dropped more and more. And I was like, Okay. And from there, because I was with them for more than a year. And from there, we just had all these conversations and she started like, like she talked so much she was like so passionate about the whole that free way of life and unschooling and all that.

[00:33:03] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And the more she talked, it's like, it just rang a bell. True for me, and I had like a little bit like you Carla, a light bulb moment, like when, when she first said, you know, they're not going to go to school. Oh, you cannot do that. And when I realized that it was all about the freedom and that you could actually learn what you wanted to learn and not what someone else told you that you had to learn and the whole like the whole unschooling concept was just like, yeah.

[00:33:29] Luna Maj Vestergaard: That's what I've been looking for. Yes. I mean, that's what I'm going to do once I have kids. So, I personally think that I had some sort of a head start because I met the concept before I even had kids of my own. Very much did. 

[00:33:43] Cecilie Conrad: Yeah. It's actually some sort of cheating. At least like a cheat code. No, but it truly is.

[00:33:49] Cecilie Conrad: You got it running before they did the banking. 

[00:33:53] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Absolutely. Yeah, that was actually, that was really great. I think. And this is interesting, actually, I think I want to share this because Like, like you started saying, we all have different voices and we all come to this from a different angle. And my personal angle is absolutely the freedom angle.

[00:34:12] Luna Maj Vestergaard: It's absolutely this, because, because the way like What I remembered from my own school time in school was that I wanted to spend the whole day, I don't know, studying literature, literature, that word. Thank you. Thank you. And yeah, writing essays, I wanted to read, I love poems, languages, I wanted to just learn languages and dive into that.

[00:34:39] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And I loved, like, this is another very difficult one, uh, etymology, like, the, the origins of words and all that. And, and I couldn't, I mean, in school I was told to stop and then I had to do freaking math, you know, things and physics and stuff that I, so when I met this woman and her kids were like, Oh, but they're going to do what they want to do and what interests them.

[00:35:06] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And I'm going to like follow their interests. And I was like, Oh my God. Yes. So that, that just really. Like it was like, um, it hit a chord with me because I was sent back to all the things I couldn't do in school. And you know, that freedom I didn't have. And I'm going to give that freedom to my kids and not only the school, but also I had a very, very, very authoritarian upbringing from my mom's side.

[00:35:36] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And which also like really left me with a very, very strong need for breaking free of like a lot of boxes and things and fences and all that. So, so that I think that's what really spoke to me in unschooling and in when when she presented it. I just immediately knew, oh, this is the truth for me that not the truth in the universe, but for me, right.

[00:36:04] Luna Maj Vestergaard: This is true for me. This is what I want to do. I want to raise my kids this way. So yeah, 

[00:36:11] Cecilie Conrad: that's such a great head start you have there. 

[00:36:15] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Yeah. And yeah. So that's what we did still do

[00:36:25] Cecilie Conrad: for many years. Yeah, you've been on the right track or this track. Maybe it's not the right 

[00:36:32] Luna Maj Vestergaard: track, but the right track for us and for me. And, and, and that's the thing is that it's so because this was in 1994 95 ish. That's a long time ago. Yes. Oh gosh, 

[00:36:45] Cecilie Conrad: I'm old. There were dinosaurs around and no mobile phones.

[00:36:49] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Yeah, I know, but completely, right? So, which leads me back to what I said in the beginning about the onions and the layers. So, even with the head start, even having like dived into like, like I had a couple of years, a few years before I then had kids of my own. And even having done all that. Oh my God, the, the, the learning, like the curve for learning was so steep.

[00:37:12] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And I'm like, I had so much de schooling work to do for myself, even with the headstart, even with that. And even today, after 30 years of peeling a fricking onion inside myself, I still have like, I mean, the birthing thing, that's only like maybe a year and a half. It was during the pandemic at some time, uh, some point, I heard about this whole free birth movement.

[00:37:38] Luna Maj Vestergaard: And my jaw just dropped again because I had never heard about not cutting the cord. I had never heard of that. And to me, that was a hole that opened just a can of worms again, you know, about the patriarchy, about the, you know, the medicine. Sorry, I'm going off into something very conspiracy like here, but I mean, just open up a little.

[00:38:01] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Yeah, you didn't reach 

[00:38:01] Cecilie Conrad: conspiracy yet. No, 

[00:38:05] Luna Maj Vestergaard: but anyone who knows me just a little bit, they're like, Oh, my God, where's she going now? Okay, 

[00:38:10] Cecilie Conrad: well, maybe they tell me some more. Yeah, you can't know that. 

[00:38:17] Luna Maj Vestergaard: I know, absolutely nothing. And that's really, that's the great thing, isn't it about unschooling really that I mean, I know a hell of a lot about myself now, but I would never pretend to know anything about anyone else.

[00:38:32] Luna Maj Vestergaard: Or like be able to be an expert for someone else about anything, not about unschooling, not about de schooling, I would never say, Oh, I'm an expert. Come see me. Never. Because, I mean, that I think that's what all these years have taught me that there's always an extra layer. There's always something that can be challenged.

[00:38:55] Luna Maj Vestergaard: I can't make this for someone else. I can't. Or maybe you can. Well, I can have answers for myself that I can share. You can share your 

[00:39:06] Cecilie Conrad: perspective and your stories. Yeah. And that's why we're doing this, you know, recording this conversation. Because I remember when I started, I should, you know, catch the ball from here.

[00:39:16] Cecilie Conrad: Um,

[00:39:20] Cecilie Conrad: so basically I met you. We did. By proxy. So I had an neighbor down the road. And, uh, when I had my second child and I met her because she had her first child at the same time. And, uh, we met. Because we were neighbors and we became friends. And she had this crazy idea about unschooling that I'd never heard about.

[00:39:40] Cecilie Conrad: And at the time, my first child was seven and just started in school. And she was in this extremely free alternative school in Copenhagen, which was the best option I could find at the time, because inside my mind, you go to school. So I wanted to give her freedom to learn whatever she wanted to learn.

[00:40:01] Cecilie Conrad: And I chose the school that would give her that freedom. Um, But it was still a school. And I met this girl, this mutual friend of ours, and she knew you and one more, uh, family. And I think you were probably at the time two families in Denmark unschooling. It felt like a handful 

[00:40:25] Luna Maj Vestergaard: of 

[00:40:25] Cecilie Conrad: us, yes. Maybe there were five, but that was it.

[00:40:29] Cecilie Conrad: And, and, uh, I had the jaw dropping experience as well. And my husband was very much not on board with the idea. He thought it was the most. Hippie style, crazy thing I'd ever talked about, so I left it hanging there. The kids were small. I talked to the big girl. She wanted to be in the school. So for her, I told her she could quit if she wanted.

[00:40:58] Cecilie Conrad: She didn't. We never, we did change our perspective on schools at that time. Never. So it was already a school without homework, a school without structure, a school without curriculum. So it was not that lots of the Yeah. elements of school was out, but obviously it was still a school. And we told her that we were not going to support any, any pressure on the academics.

[00:41:22] Cecilie Conrad: She could go where she wanted to. She could stay home. She could do whatever she wanted. And, um, that went on for the five years until my second child reached the school years. And within that time, I had had a serious cancer disease and survived it. And after that, it was a very easy choice to take the children.

[00:41:46] Cecilie Conrad: We had two children in kindergarten nursery at the time. Which was actually maybe the one situation where a kindergarten is a good thing. Because my husband was... having not a nervous breakdown, but it was very close when I was almost dying and we had three children and it was, it was a very serious situation and I'm very lucky to be here.

[00:42:16] Cecilie Conrad: Maybe it's not luck, I don't know, but my odds were very, very bad and he needed someone to help him. So in that respect, I'm grateful for the kindergarten because someone looked after my children when I was not able to do it myself. But as soon as I came out, it was an easy choice to let go of the kindergarten because I missed them a lot.

[00:42:41] Cecilie Conrad: And I had a lot of eye opening situations while I was sick, not knowing if I would, you know, live the next day. And, uh, when I came out, we didn't know if I would survive. I was just done with treatment, but not with cancer. We didn't know. So all we knew was that I'll be here today, maybe tomorrow, maybe another week.

[00:43:02] Cecilie Conrad: And obviously we just needed all the time we could get together, me and the children. So we took them out, and when they reached school years, we were already hanging out, Luna and I, and I'd met her children, and you know, first, First thing you do is you look at the children to see if they turned green or, or screen or square or something crazy, and they, they didn't.

[00:43:28] Cecilie Conrad: Um, so when Storm was, my second child, was, uh, approaching the age of school and my husband still wanted him to go to school, to this same alternative school as his sister, he started saying, I don't think that school thing 

[00:43:45] Carla Martinez: is for me. Maybe, maybe 

[00:43:47] Cecilie Conrad: for the other kids, but, but the way I, he knew about the school because we'd been there many times to visit his sister or pick up his sister, go to the parties, and he knew her friends and her teachers, and it was a nice little house.

[00:44:02] Cecilie Conrad: It's a nice place. And he just said very politely. I don't think it's for me, might be for the other kids but it's not for me. Um, long story short, my husband wanted us to try it and I knew that I couldn't unschool the children if he was not on board. So we tried it until the school teachers. I'm not going to share though.

[00:44:29] Cecilie Conrad: It was hilarious when you think about it. But they said it needed to be the father to come with the child in the morning because it was a problem that my son was so, that we had a good connection, which is obviously ridiculous. And so it was suddenly my husband's problem to take the child to school in the morning.

[00:44:50] Cecilie Conrad: My veto, his veto was the child has to try so that he knows what he's saying no to. And my veto was, okay, but we're not leaving him. He doesn't like that. We can take him to school, but then we stay and the school if they don't like that, we're not doing it. So the school complied and, uh, I was there many days with the child in school.

[00:45:11] Cecilie Conrad: And when it came around to being my husband's problem to take the child to school in the morning, um, this could be more fun than it is. I can see it, Sarah. You're expecting something more fun than it. It's not. So, what happened was... Because I haven't seen the story. No, it's okay. It could have been. It would have been.

[00:45:32] Cecilie Conrad: Let me tell you. Would have been what you imagine if this had not happened. We took him to school three times a week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Only for a few hours in the morning until he said, Now, I really need to go. And then we went. Um, so, on a Thursday, when our week was done, the school teachers said, It has to be the father.

[00:45:52] Cecilie Conrad: This will never work with you because the child likes you too much, and that's really a problem. So maybe if the father comes, he'll be more harsh. That'll be better. I thought you idiots. Um, but I had to go on with the process because I wouldn't want to homeschool and let alone unschool with a father disagreeing.

[00:46:12] Cecilie Conrad: I had two more children younger. It would be like a process of 15 years in disagreement with my husband. I didn't want to do that. So on the Friday, my phone rang and a friend of mine had died. Of the disease that I had just beaten. We went to the funeral in the weekend and this was a very. Very, very confronting, confrontational situation.

[00:46:42] Cecilie Conrad: She was there in the casket and I was there on the bench and she died. I survived. No one knows why. Her children just lost their mother. My children didn't. And we had it like, this was just a year after I beat the cancer and we had it like this, like the hammer right into the forehead. What the hell are we doing?

[00:47:05] Cecilie Conrad: This life is too important. Why are we doing something we don't want to do? Why are we pushing our child to do something he clearly doesn't want to do? And he's, he's not just acting out or whatever. He's actually being very polite about it. He's asking us nicely. He even said, I told you many times. This is not for me.

[00:47:24] Cecilie Conrad: When will you listen to me? So driving back from the funeral, we were in the state that you are sometimes in, driving back from a funeral with a very, very hard, big stone in your stomach. And that's when we decided no more. No more institution, no more pushing children, no more doing things that someone else is telling us is the right thing to do when we clearly know in our hearts what's right.

[00:47:52] Cecilie Conrad: And my husband never took the child to school, not even once.

[00:48:01] Luna Maj Vestergaard: I was muted. You were muted. And he is now a fervent advocate. Yeah, 

[00:48:07] Cecilie Conrad: right. Yeah. He's the unschooling flag in our family. He was not against, he was not, he was not against us. He was not being really stupid. He wasn't, he was, he was 

[00:48:21] Luna Maj Vestergaard: just being a man. He 

[00:48:23] Cecilie Conrad: was being man. He was also being the one leaving every day, not knowing what's really going on in the home.

[00:48:28] Cecilie Conrad: And, and, you know, He did that to bring home some money so we could pay the rent and buy some bread, which is like a fair way to leave. And he actually did come home and still does. Now he's not really leaving anymore, but he doesn't like being away from us because of. The story of me almost dying. He just whenever he would never go out drinking with the guys or on a weekend to whatever, nothing.

[00:48:54] Cecilie Conrad: He just wants to be around his family. So I think he's scarred still. Or maybe he just likes us very much, but he didn't know because he didn't see and he didn't disagree. He was just came from another perspective and he wanted to be completely sure that it was the right thing and he thought being completely sure was trying out the other option before giving up, which in many cases is a good idea and, uh, in our case made it very, very clear.

[00:49:29] Cecilie Conrad: We had this very, very clear wake up call at that funeral. Yeah, it's the day we will not forget.

[00:49:41] Cecilie Conrad: Yeah, I'll shut up 

[00:49:42] Luna Maj Vestergaard: now. 

[00:49:44] Sarah Beale: So my story is, has some commonalities and I thought you were going, I did think you were going somewhere different. So I'll share my, my dad taking the child to school story, same 

[00:49:55] Luna Maj Vestergaard: outcome, right? Uh, 

[00:49:57] Sarah Beale: and, and it was our, some of our path is so aligned, Cecilia, obviously we know that in many ways, but I spent a full year going to kindergarten with my second child.

[00:50:09] Sarah Beale: As in, like, I would go there and he was happy to go, but he didn't want me to leave. So I stayed at kindergarten with two other younger children for a year. People thought I was insane. And, um, they couldn't understand, like, why I wouldn't just drop him at the gate and leave the crying child being pulled away by a kindy teacher.

[00:50:31] Sarah Beale: Um, we were very lucky actually and I do think this is some kind of magical luck that the director of the kindergarten really understood about attachment and connection and she understood what I was doing and she actually did not object to it, uh, but some of the other parents and teachers did not understand.

[00:50:51] Sarah Beale: They thought I had an issue. Leaving my child, not that I was actually protecting our attachment. So he was very clear, like your child, very clear, like, I don't want to be here without you. I'm actually really having fun here because I'm playing with my friends every day. I've got no interest in you dropping me off.

[00:51:07] Sarah Beale: So I did not. And, uh. It was, it was a real challenge for me, not because I had anything better to do, of course, because actually it was really great because my other two younger children got to play at kindergarten with all the amazing resources, you know, of kindergarten, like all these cool outdoor playthings, massive sandpit, trees, you know, kindergarten teachers who play the guitar and, you know, they had a lot of fun.

[00:51:35] Sarah Beale: But it wasn't what I was supposed to be doing. I was supposed to be able to leave my child. He was supposed to be able to detach from me. And I was supposed to be able to tick the box and say, yeah, I've dropped my child off. So I had to get over that. I naively thought, and this is the interesting thing about preparing for school, which is really what kindergarten and preschool programs are all about.

[00:51:56] Sarah Beale: So insidious because They are starting earlier and earlier. The preparation needs to start when they're like six months old. I thought, naively, if I put in the time, if I spent that year with him at kindergarten, he would be okay with me leaving when he went to school. Well, we got to school and then he's like, Oh, what?

[00:52:16] Sarah Beale: You have to leave me here. And like, but no, that's not what we're doing. Like, you can't leave me at school. You didn't leave me at kindy. Why would you leave me at school? And like, it's a bit different to kindy. They don't let parents just stay at school. Um, and so for two years, we, there was this combination of the pet, the teachers being that, because honestly, I was that parent, I was like, probably super irritating.

[00:52:41] Sarah Beale: Uh, because I would not leave him crying. So I did stay at school sometimes until he was okay for me to leave. And the teachers would support me in that by making sure the environment was what he was okay with. So they adapted things so that he was okay to stay. He wasn't really ever okay. He was really accepting to a point.

[00:53:02] Sarah Beale: Um, and I spent a lot of time at school again with two other younger children with me, and we continued to do that until I said to their dad. I need you to do some school drop offs because I want you to see what I have to do every day to keep this child at school. And that was our turning point because he then had to do the drop off, which was never a drop off, by the way, by the time we were in year two, where everything just gets more serious.

[00:53:32] Sarah Beale: And we have this awful, awful teacher who, instead of working with my child, Decided it was very obvious that she actually wanted to break him and the school didn't really know what to do. They had clearly never encountered a child like him before that was not going to bend. So they used all their strategies.

[00:53:49] Sarah Beale: I will let you join the Lego club and come and sit in the office for half an hour and play Lego and do some talking in a soothing voice. When none of their sneaky attempts to coerce him worked because he could see what they were up to. They literally had no idea what to do. And then they just went like that.

[00:54:06] Sarah Beale: And, uh, my husband saw all of this with his own eyes, and then it, the penny dropped for him. Like, oh, we can't keep doing this to our child, who was being very clear and also not, not being disruptive, not being naughty, not doing, not, not making a big fuss, but just resolutely standing there and saying, no, I'm not doing it very calmly.

[00:54:31] Sarah Beale: I'm not doing it. So, um, for, for us, we ended up in that same place of going, we actually, we can't do this anymore. I mean, the other factor for our family, and I imagine it was the same for all of you, was that school was actually a very big inconvenience because school and freedom do not align at all.

[00:54:47] Sarah Beale: Doesn't matter. I mean, I, I have a level of understanding for why some people choose it and we chose it for a while too, so I get it. But it doesn't help anyone to be dishonest about what's really going on at school, and it's not to do with freedom. Um, and, and it was really not aligned with our life. It was, we were having to stop the kids from playing to go to school.

[00:55:07] Sarah Beale: We were having to, um, make them go to bed early so they could get up for school. I was having to wake them up. Because, you know, there's, there's, there was a point when all of our kids got to like, maybe six or seven years old. And they started to like sleep beyond the sun coming up and I had to go into their room and like, wake them up to go to this place that no one wanted to go to, which is kind of ridiculous.

[00:55:31] Sarah Beale: So from a values point of view, we got to a point where we're like, this is actually not fitting in with our ethos. as parents. It is the opposite of freedom. It's the opposite of free choice and it's the opposite of honoring the freedom that our children are expressing every day. Um, and, uh, you know, speaking of going deeper, you know, that was just the catalyst for continuing to, uh, you know, as best we can honor what our, what our children are saying that they want.

[00:56:05] Sarah Beale: And that is a really confronting thing for parents. And I guess some parents. Well, what I, what I see when, when parents, uh, you know, maybe reach out or comment on posts or want to have a conversation, they've, they've usually got a heart for it. They kind of know, like, you know, Carla expresses like she knew where her heart was going.

[00:56:28] Sarah Beale: They usually know, as I did, that they've got a heart for it. And. They just need either the encouragement to someone to say, you can do it like people did for me. Or sometimes there will be this event, something that is the line in the sand moment, which is also what happened for us and, and you know, somehow the line in the sand moment coincided with me having enough confidence to know that I didn't need to see the future and that I was actually okay with that.

[00:57:02] Cecilie Conrad: I didn't have a turning point like that. I will admit it, it has been a journey ever since that day. And the beginning was hard and I made a lot of mistakes. I didn't go straight to unschooling and then I was just this perfect mother or facilitator or person in any way. And neither was my husband. We made a lot of mistakes.

[00:57:25] Cecilie Conrad: We had a lot of fear. We had a lot of, I think, it was very confronting to talk to other people. It was very, very hard. The first thing we did, I remember that clearly. The first thing we did that day. That Monday or Sunday or whatever day after the funeral where we decided next day after the funeral, I went to visit Luna, I had to go somewhere where what I was doing was normal because it was in all other context.

[00:57:54] Cecilie Conrad: I had like a crazy thing to do. My family is all academics. It's all teaching. It's all about, you know, the success you have in life is equal. the amount of education, formal education you have. And it was very, very hard for me to, to stay with that truth that I would even homeschool. We called it homeschool in the beginning.

[00:58:24] Cecilie Conrad: And my husband had a hard time sticking to his decision. And he had to, because of fear, tell me we can do this for six months. You have to teach him to read and write. He has to keep up with the curriculum of schools. Otherwise I can't do this. So he was strong and powerful in the moment of that funeral.

[00:58:50] Cecilie Conrad: Wake up, hammer to your face situation, but then quote unquote, reality came and it attacked us. We had to tell our mothers we had to talk to the neighbors. We had to tell our siblings and our friends, and, and in many ways it was very nice to put this structure. Oh, so it's just six months. It's, we'll just wait a little bit and.

[00:59:14] Cecilie Conrad: Cecilia will do a little homeschool with a little bell at the kitchen table and, and it'll be all cool. And, and then we could, we, at least we, we told everyone else that. And, uh, I cheated a lot. I didn't do a lot of bell ringing or homeschooling at the kitchen table, but until my husband told me I could quit it, not told me, it's not like I comply with what he's telling me, but we had conversations about the situation.

[00:59:39] Cecilie Conrad: And until he could let go of that idea, I couldn't let go because I wanted us to be. Aligned with what we were doing. I didn't want to, I mean, I have to accept that we are two parents. I don't always like that because I'm very much about freedom as well. And I had my first child alone and I was. a single mother for six years and I, I, I like grew into motherhood making my own decisions and it was really challenging to learn to share that, uh, responsibility and love and situation it is to be parents.

[01:00:14] Cecilie Conrad: So yeah, I, I, it did change, but it didn't change in a split second. It changed many times over many years and it's, it's still peeling off later. That, that's what I mean when I say that it's ongoing and that this whole like reaching a destination or, or like, like becoming an expert or like, you, you, we really know what we are doing now and I mean, I'm not trying to say that we don't know what we're doing, but.

[01:00:45] Cecilie Conrad: It's just an ongoing thing. And that even if like, I never spoke out these things like, Oh, I want them to learn or know this or that or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I obviously had a lot of stuff like that would be like expectations or, or ideas or narratives or whatever inside my mind and inside my head, like scripts and like automatic things.

[01:01:10] Cecilie Conrad: That like ideas and beliefs and all that. So even if we don't speak them out loud, they're still there. And well, at least they were for me and, and we're processing those and that's the whole de schooling journey, right? So there was a light bulb moment for me when I met this woman and I heard about unschooling at first.

[01:01:29] Cecilie Conrad: And I'm, I've never looked back. I knew a hundred percent. This is what I'm doing. And yeah. I had a head start because there was a lot of things that I was able to like peel off before I had kids, but then I had kids and holy moly that like, it's like, I don't know, they came back on all the layers. Oh, there was just a lot.

[01:01:50] Cecilie Conrad: I just had more onions. I mean, I had one, I had two and then I had 10. I don't know. You know, so, and it just, it just goes on and on. So, so there was a clear line in the sand. There was a clear light bulb moment. I like it. Switched that kind of flicked but then after that it's not like oh, yeah Then I just knew how to unschool from the beginning.

[01:02:11] Cecilie Conrad: I didn't know shit I did not know how to unschool in the beginning because what happened for me was that again, and that's why I think How you come to it is very important because I came to it, like I said before, from a very authoritarian background. So for me, it was very much a response to that. I do not want that.

[01:02:31] Cecilie Conrad: My children, I would want to give them freedom. They must be, you know, allowed to be their own person and have their own, you know, all of this. Um, but because that was my... Angle into it. I actually swung from like, Oh, I'm not going to be a tyrant like my mom was I'm not going to be, you know, the parent who like.

[01:02:52] Cecilie Conrad: So what happened. I, the pendulum just swung to the other side, and it was all about the child and child lead, and sometimes people call on schooling child lead. Learning, which is like that's a nice way of putting it. But the problem is the risk is that if you go from parent controlled to child controlled, that's not what you want to do in in your family life.

[01:03:17] Cecilie Conrad: You want to find that sweet spot in the middle where it's all about consensus and partnership and like all of you working together, right? You don't want to just Swing to the other side where then, then you don't have anything to say anymore or, or you aren't allowed quote unquote to set a limit or say no to something and I spent the first because like the first five years.

[01:03:47] Cecilie Conrad: After my oldest daughter fire was born, there were five years until her brother came along. So I only had a one child for five years. So I had a lot of time, you know, turning around that pancake and trying to figure out how, how that works. And making all those like a lot of mistakes on that and, and learning that it's okay for me to say, Oh, I actually I'm not actually okay with this, or this is not, you know,

[01:04:20] Cecilie Conrad: Realizing that it shouldn't be about what I don't want. It shouldn't be about, oh, oh, I don't want what my mom did. And it shouldn't be about, oh, it's, it's whatever Freya wants or whatever my child wants. Yeah. It's about her freedom, but it's also about me. Like my freedom doesn't go away because I'm now focused on my kid's freedom.

[01:04:45] Cecilie Conrad: Right. I don't know if that makes sense, but I've just, I've experienced that in my own life and I've seen it so many times. And when I speak to parents about this and they are experiencing some kind of conflict about unschooling in their daily life and like bedtimes or too much screen or food or whatever, whatever, or like they can't read us, whatever comes up.

[01:05:08] Cecilie Conrad: It's actually quite often because the parent is afraid of having an opinion. Yeah. They're afraid of setting a limit because people think setting a limit is about telling the child what they can't do. They forget. Well, like I didn't know that in the beginning. I thought that setting limits were like limiting my child, but that's not it.

[01:05:28] Cecilie Conrad: It's about me. It's about what I, you know, I'm comfortable doing what I'm, you know, what, what I want to. Participate in and what I can like support and all that. So, but anyway, it's just, I just think that's really important to keep that balance and to know that it's not about going from one extreme to another, when you like when you shift to unschooling.

[01:05:55] Cecilie Conrad: I don't really know how I got there, but No, but I think it's a very relevant topic to touch upon because it's one of the common misunderstandings about unschooling that it's like, and transparent parents, like, like transparent, like invisible, um, parents who have no opinions on anything and the kids can do whatever they want.

[01:06:20] Cecilie Conrad: And people imagine that what they do want is to eat only candy, play only computer games and jump out windows. Uh, from third floor. Yeah. And maybe that's another 

[01:06:37] Sarah Beale: topic, wasn't it? I'm just trying to think if any of my kids have ever tried to jump out a window, 

[01:06:43] Cecilie Conrad: but we did. I did. I 

[01:06:46] Sarah Beale: think what I mean, I think you're talking really about the foundational stuff, which if you if you, um, read someone's or see someone's really inspirational story.

[01:06:59] Sarah Beale: TikTok or real or whatever about their child doing this cool stuff and they're unschoolers or radical unschoolers and you know that and you know many we're in all the groups right and we see the stories so then someone thinks oh my god that's what I want. I want my child to invent a new kind of airplane and learn 17 languages before they're 16.

[01:07:23] Sarah Beale: And I think that unschooling or radical unschooling is going to get the outcome. So I think there's a lot of stuff going on, but often they don't have the foundations that are important, which are really attachment and connection and conversation and commitment to values. And so perhaps a lot of parents, and I have seen this, have gone from a very authoritarian start, lots of control, or, or maybe they're like natural parents, and they are still all about control, but they're just more likely to do it in a sneaky way.

[01:08:01] Sarah Beale: And then they decide that they want, it looks super cool to be unschooling family when your kids are inventing airplanes. Um, and they think that's the way to get there. So we're going to drop all the limits, because that's what I've heard unschooling is about. And I don't think there's a right or a wrong way, because normally when a pendulum goes from side to side, eventually it sort of stops in the middle anyway.

[01:08:26] Sarah Beale: So maybe for some families, there's the pendulum swing, and then there's a little bit of a correction when you rebalance, et cetera, and, you know, and you get there eventually. Um, but what can happen, and I have definitely seen this, is that the child doesn't invent an airplane quick enough. And then they go, Oh, it's not working.

[01:08:45] Sarah Beale: Not having any limits is not working. So now we have to go back to having limits again. And they've still not done the foundational work. And maybe they just didn't have those pieces in place in the beginning. Maybe they didn't understand because they just saw the 10 minute TikTok what actually goes into an unschooling life.

[01:09:05] Sarah Beale: Which is a lot of inner work on the part of the parents. It's a lot of like, just like sitting back and breathing. And a lot of like, when do I jump in? When do I not? A lot of biting your tongue and sitting on your hands, which might look like you're doing nothing. A lot of trust and also letting go of whether your child.

[01:09:31] Sarah Beale: Invest in a new kind of airplane, and if you don't have the expectation that that's what you're going to achieve, then the pendulum doesn't need to swing as far while you're waiting for that to happen, and you're less likely to be really suffering when your child doesn't go and do the amazing stuff.

[01:09:50] Sarah Beale: You're less likely to then have this idea that, oh, unschooling doesn't work, so now we've got to go back again, which is really confusing for the kids. Um, and the only time I see parents feeling like they need to do that is when they've not addressed. The stuff that's at the bottom, your own, you know, wounds from how you were maybe raised your, um, societal programming, all the stuff that just all those layers of onions that Luna likes, uh, to eat or wear, I don't know.

[01:10:23] Sarah Beale: Uh, 

[01:10:24] Cecilie Conrad: do you use the layers, Luna, when you peel them off, or? Oh my god, I, I, I put soup on them. I'm drifting. Onion soup. Yeah, we have a lot of onion soup. But that's precisely it, that's precisely it, because I, I thought it was about me not saying no to my child. I thought that was when I started. I thought, oh, and that's not what it's about.

[01:10:49] Cecilie Conrad: It's not about me not saying no to my child. I mean, that's, but have we reached a point in the conversation where we can define unschooling and say what it is and why we do it like in a shorter, you know, we spend an hour. They're 

[01:11:03] Sarah Beale: like shorter than an hour. 

[01:11:05] Cecilie Conrad: Imagine this, the wedding situation or whatever social situation you meet someone, they've never met you before.

[01:11:13] Cecilie Conrad: Somehow they pick up the kids are not in school and they ask you the why question. And you want to answer it, but you don't really want to talk for three hours about it. So you say something to someone genuinely interested. It's not the pass me the salt answer. Like, why are your kids not in school?

[01:11:38] Carla Martinez: If the person is interested, you have time to talk.

[01:11:47] Cecilie Conrad: True. I usually say, you know, if you really want to know, I need to know if you have an hour. 

[01:11:53] Sarah Beale: And then you can send them your podcast link. Yeah, 

[01:11:56] Cecilie Conrad: that's, but I didn't always have that. Now I can, I wrote 400 articles actually on the blog as well. So I, I can send them a lot of links. That's why I started doing it because I got tired of that hour, listening to myself saying the same things over and over.

[01:12:12] Cecilie Conrad: It's not, it's not, it's not interesting to me because I've done it for such a long time. So now I can do that, but I still have a hard time. I can go myself and try. What is the unschooling? It's very hard to describe because unschooling is basically something you don't do and even though I still am in the process and I still question everything and I am still very self aware when I tell my children or anyone what I think about something.

[01:12:42] Cecilie Conrad: I really need to know, is this my opinion? Do I really believe this? Or am I just saying a random thing my grandmother said to my mother and now it's just going on and on? Um, because when you share an opinion, you share a judgment. And if you do that to someone close to you, dependent on you, trusting in you, then it will have an impact, and it's not a small one.

[01:13:15] Cecilie Conrad: So I'm very aware of that, but on the other hand, I don't get up in the morning to unschool. It's not on my to do list. It's not something I do. It's not even something I don't do. I basically get up in the morning and I can share with you my to do list and it has nothing, no school words or anything like, I don't put on the list that I have to remember to read my book or talk to my children or, so it is hard to define what it is to unschool because it's something you remove from the equation, basically.

[01:13:57] Cecilie Conrad: In our family now, we, we don't do school. It's, it's not a thing. We have no curriculum. There is no expectations as to... Well, well, it's not even... I, I saw a heartbreaking sentence on another website about unschooling a week ago, where an, an unschooling mother said, now we're really unschooling. She gets up in the morning and she decides what she wants to learn.

[01:14:29] Cecilie Conrad: And I'm like, is that your first question? Is that so learning is what you talk about is to me, then, then the learning for it's still an expectation your, your child had to learn something today. And obviously you can't avoid learning something, but if you still have that idea. That it's child led learning and the child has to decide whether it's zebras or, or Chinese, we're learning today.

[01:14:57] Cecilie Conrad: It's still learning, it's still okay. Then I expect you to suck up some information that we can tick in a box tonight, that you learned today. And we are beyond that in our family. We, we don't think that way, that learning is the focus or the goal or the idea or the value or the. achievement. How about we do so we don't do schooling and we don't do learning.

[01:15:29] Cecilie Conrad: Not learning for learning per se. And therefore, I find it very hard to define what is unschooling because it's something not there. Yeah. 

[01:15:41] Sarah Beale: If you think about the history of schooling, you know, the industrialized education system, which is obviously very modern. It is about removing the child from the family home.

[01:15:56] Sarah Beale: And I mean, we like, everybody likes this story of the school system was set up to protect kids from having to work in factories, right? That's the rhetoric, which then makes it, it's a nice story. And it makes everybody feel very comforted about the school system actually being about protecting kids, which is not what's really happening, but it's still removing the children from something.

[01:16:17] Sarah Beale: And then putting them in an institution where learning happens. So even when you've maybe been through some de schooling or de programming, still very inherent in our modern culture is the idea that learning has to be intentional and separate to living. Uh, and, and, uh, which is, you know, the, I guess what you're saying about this person's idea that that's how unschooling is for them, that the child gets to choose.

[01:16:46] Sarah Beale: What they're learning, uh, which is still a step forward from having no choice. So much better than school. I wouldn't call it unschooling. No, no, because really like unschooling is just living, which is what we all say pretty consistently. And if we think about how our ancestors would have lived. The children were not separated from the adults, except, you know, they would, as they got older, venture off to play, I assume, as our kids do, as we observe our kids doing, they just move a little bit further away and they go play over there in the woods or whatever, right?

[01:17:19] Sarah Beale: But they're not actually being removed. They haven't been removed. And, and so there's no need, there was no need in, you know, ancient times to, which is what I think about when I think about what I'm, I guess, aiming for, uh, there was no need to define it. Or so now we're learning because it just like I imagine we don't know we were there rolled into and at some point kids do uh as do all adults right there's no I don't see a distinction but maybe there's a little bit of um cognitive changes as a child gets older and then they might be like oh I want to learn how to do this thing can you show me how to Hook this meal or like I want to know how to fix something on my bike or like I'm going to have a think about being intentional about learning a skill.

[01:18:11] Sarah Beale: I think that does happen. I think we've probably all seen it with our kids that there's this shift from just playing in the trees to like. Oh, I want to learn how to do something. And they might not even verbalize it. Probably what it looks like is they start fiddling around with something, maybe like they've got a knife and they want to, or they want to chop some wood or something, like, maybe they want to learn how to light a fire, like, and they gradually play around with it.

[01:18:35] Sarah Beale: And you could say then that they've learned a skill. But what the school system does is go, Oh, at 10 o'clock, On Tuesday, we're going to light a fire and we're going to set up everything for you and there's going to be a teacher here and we're going to give you a worksheet, tell you all the steps, and then you're going to line up and you can all have a turn of lighting the match.

[01:18:55] Sarah Beale: And then we're going to see if you can do that bit and then like probably tick a box and then maybe you can inbuilt.

[01:19:07] Sarah Beale: The learning is so that we don't even have to mention it. We don't even have to use the word learning. It's so, it's a ridiculous idea that like, it's anything other than just like living. And of course we all want to be productive and contribute to the world that we live in. Of course we do. So we don't have to, we don't really have to be intentional, actually, about it.

[01:19:30] Sarah Beale: I mean, none of us are locking our kids in the cupboard, so maybe there's a bit of an intention, but like, it's not even, it's not even a separate thing. Learning. It's not even, it's like breathing. Do you like wake up in the morning and remember to breathe? No. 

[01:19:44] Cecilie Conrad: Yeah, it's the exact same thing. I don't wake up in the morning and remember to not put my kids in school and not ask them to learn a specific thing or I, I don't do that.

[01:19:54] Cecilie Conrad: I think that a 

[01:19:55] Carla Martinez: great, great point also that it was for me that I discovered because I never imagine or thing that I wanted to be with my kids the whole day, as I was not in my head, never, till it happens. Even when we start traveling, we were looking for a projects, alternative projects, projects, education.

[01:20:17] Carla Martinez: But then with time and everything, I, I, I realized that time, the family, Yeah, it's so like, it's a big thing in the hands and schooling is just time with your kids and be there. And I think that's a big thing for many families to be there with your kids,

[01:20:49] Sarah Beale: because it's when 

[01:20:49] Carla Martinez: life happened when you are living, you are doing things. And you are not like trying to teach or just show how you live. That's what I always say. I'm just living. This is how I live in this world. You can do it like me. You can do it like her. Or 

[01:21:10] Cecilie Conrad: I think if you're, I guess 

[01:21:11] Carla Martinez: time, I, I, I want to put time, family time in the unschooling thing.

[01:21:17] Carla Martinez: Conversations, just be, hang out. 

[01:21:22] Cecilie Conrad: I don't know. No, you're right. It's that's the thing we do and consistently do as unschooling parents is we spend a lot of time with our children. And what I also see is we find that very precious. I remember I was doing something with you Luna, maybe a workshop we were planning or whatever and we were really trying to find time to jump on a Zoom call and talk about it.

[01:21:52] Cecilie Conrad: I was in Spain and you were in Denmark and the funny thing is that you can actually in this group of people say, Oh, I'm sorry. I can't do it today. I have to, uh, my son is, uh, is sitting at the kitchen table and we're having a very important conversation. Totally. Let's cancel that. That's more important than our work, of course, because that's what we do.

[01:22:21] Cecilie Conrad: And we all acknowledge that the time we spend with our children and if we have a spouse or. Whatever important people we have to share our lives with is that's where life happens. And that's the center stage, not the outcome. But then we're back to that thing we started with in the beginning a little bit, right.

[01:22:46] Cecilie Conrad: About the fear and the control and wanting to be able to control the outcome, because I think that's why it's so hard for many people in the beginning to grasp. The, the core idea of unschooling which is just something we are just something we do like just a way of understanding and seeing life, it's an attitude like Carla said it's just, it's just living life.

[01:23:12] Cecilie Conrad: I like we just get up and we just live our lives and. We don't think about learning, like you just said, Cecilia, of course we don't, because why would we? Because it's like breathing, because we know that it happens, and we trust that it happens, but for a lot of people outside of unschooling, who are still in the school system, who are just starting out, maybe you've just taken the, the, the, um, you've just gone into, jumped into unschooling, and you're still new at it, that trust is not entirely there.

[01:23:45] Cecilie Conrad: That, that, so that actually might actually invalidate a little bit what I started saying about not reaching a destination, because I have definitely reached a destination of 110% trust and faith in that. I know, I do not worry about my kids learning whatever they learn, because I know they will, I know they learn what they need to know.

[01:24:11] Cecilie Conrad: What they need to know, not what they should or whatever in some, someone's definition, but I, I, that's something I know. That's something that I have 110% faith in. So yeah, it's possible to arrive at those kind of like milestones, of course, but that doesn't mean there aren't challenges, challenges, and there aren't things that could come up and all that, but, but yeah, but I think that's, what's lacking in the beginning, that's what, what you don't have in the beginning.

[01:24:41] Cecilie Conrad: And a lot of people. are struggling with in the beginning when they are struggling and unschooling is not working quote again for us it's not working well that's because the outcome that you're expecting is not like they're not building airplanes so they're not doing you know whatever whatever it is that you have a conscious or unconscious idea about that you would like to see happen if I do this that will happen you know and when then that just doesn't happen Well, then you start thinking, oh, it's not working and blah, blah, blah, but a big part of it of being able to just live life to be an unschooler, an unschooling family, blah, blah, blah, all that, a big part of it is Being okay, was that what you said Sarah in the beginning, being okay with not knowing, being okay with not being able to control, you need to reach that point where you are okay with that or maybe it was you Cecilia talking about it as well, just take like being okay with, you know, whatever happens, and like taking things as they come, you need to not have that want that need to control an outcome that need to like, Be able to plan what's going to happen.

[01:25:59] Cecilie Conrad: Right. 

[01:26:00] Sarah Beale: I 

[01:26:01] Carla Martinez: think that the phrase is wrong. Like, if you say, it's not working, because if it's not working for what. So I mean, so you're, you're having already an expectation. So it's not working for what? For you, for the kids, for the society. So if you're saying that you are not already even started, I don't know, or you're starting and then you have to realize, I don't know, 

[01:26:33] Cecilie Conrad: working.

[01:26:35] Cecilie Conrad: Yeah, I, no, 

[01:26:36] Carla Martinez: I haven't heard that, uh, from anyone, the thing that it's not working. I have heard the thing about the pendulous because sometimes you're here and you want to be here. This is your school thing, your school, and here is like the completely opposite, and you want to be here, but then you put your kid here, but you're here.

[01:27:02] Carla Martinez: This is why the pendulum goes here, and you cannot stand there, you cannot manage this because you're here. And then you have to find the way you put the things here, it doesn't matter if it's here or here, but here is when you like are with your calm and you're fine. And maybe at that point, it's 

[01:27:27] Cecilie Conrad: working.

[01:27:31] Cecilie Conrad: But then we have to define then we're back to defining in order to something is working we need to know what machine we're trying to build, and what to do, like I actually always when people say that. Okay. I always say that unschooling always works, precisely because it's not supposed to work. It's not about working.

[01:27:53] Cecilie Conrad: I can't actually formulate that in English really, but, but because it's not, it's not supposed to work. It's not a method to reach like a certain result or like a path to get somewhere specific. So, so there is no like, so it always works. Because, because there's no, yeah, I don't know, because it's a way of life, because it's just living.

[01:28:19] Cecilie Conrad: So, I mean, that's the same as saying life is not working. And I mean, I don't know, life might not be working for some people, I don't know. Sometimes, sometimes, that's the feel. Yeah. Yeah. I think another thing... It's a philosophy in the 

[01:28:35] Carla Martinez: end. So you have to reach that point, calm or alignment with that philosophy that only has to do with you and your kids, 

[01:28:47] Cecilie Conrad: I guess.

[01:28:50] Cecilie Conrad: I think another important reason that it can be hard to adjust. in the beginning is pointing back to that broacher that we are very prone to having installed the idea that you can do it right and you can do it wrong. Life and especially, um, being around your children, there are ways to do it. You do it this way, not that way.

[01:29:23] Cecilie Conrad: And parents, all parents love their children. And I believe all parents do their best. To support their children, to give them the best options, the best life, the best context to unfold within. All parents do their best. Some parents do really shitty jobs, but they, I think from the resources they have and the perspective they have, they all do their best and we have to respect that.

[01:29:58] Cecilie Conrad: And it's very easy, especially if you've been to school and you've learned this whole dynamic of, of, you know, the answer is in the back. So when you fill out the questionnaire, you can do it right or wrong, and you can't look in the back. We're used to that, and then when we get the brochure, this is how you do it.

[01:30:23] Cecilie Conrad: You start, uh, giving them food on a spoon when they are, whatever, months old. Then you start doing it because you want to get it right. And even the women I've talked to, when they arrive at the idea of unschooling and they see they want to do unschooling, they are still habituated into the idea of doing things right.

[01:30:48] Cecilie Conrad: So they want to do unschooling right. And they ask me, how do I do it right? How do I do unschooling? And then we're back to the layers and the onion and we get tired of the onion. We have, we need another picture. Um, but it is. Obviously, you have to work within yourself, but we also have to give ourselves a break.

[01:31:13] Cecilie Conrad: We've been living within this framework. I personally have been to school for 23 years without that gap year, 23 years straight. I was in school, maybe 24. We are habituated into something and this is how we function. And it takes time to learn to let go and start living our lives. To not have the children as a project that we can do right or wrong, but as a bit like the air as well.

[01:31:47] Cecilie Conrad: You have some children. Oops. And now you have to take care of them. Oh, and they will be there all the time. They wake you up in the morning. They disturb you in the shower. They need food and, and you run around, do things. And, and, uh, but if it has to be a project where I have to get it right, then I don't get to have any breaks, any.

[01:32:11] Cecilie Conrad: Breathing time, any space for just living my life. Why did my life go when my children were born? If I have to do it right, then it's a project. I'm living a project. I'm living. I had 13 years between my first and last child. So you do the math for how many years would I have to live a project before I could have a break and just pick my nose?

[01:32:33] Cecilie Conrad: That would be a lot of years. And I think letting go of that project style lifestyle and the idea of doing it right. It takes time to get those shoulders down and start just, just living, just not caring. It's very easy for us to say, Oh, I just get up in the morning and I start living. I do the laundry and I recall a friend and I do whatever I feel like doing.

[01:32:57] Cecilie Conrad: And I feel good about it because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not there. Maybe I'm 70% out of the doing it right concept. And I think for, if I was to give an advice for new one schoolers, it would be just make your mistakes and be happy. Just do it. Make all the mistakes you want. You can't, you can and you will do it wrongly.

[01:33:24] Cecilie Conrad: Is it wrongly? We have one native speaker on the team. I don't know how to say it. I'm not going to 

[01:33:31] Sarah Beale: correct you because we're all able to do it wrongly. 

[01:33:34] Cecilie Conrad: You got my point. Uh, you will, you will make mistakes and, and, and, and you, all parents make mistakes. whatever strategy, philosophy they have, they make mistakes.

[01:33:45] Cecilie Conrad: And all adults will look back at their childhood and say, hell, I wish my mother never did X, Y, Z. That's just, that's just how it is. We can only do our best. And if our philosophy idea is based on freedom and we want to do unschooling. Then we, we will, I think we should give ourselves a break and, and some time to learn it.

[01:34:13] Cecilie Conrad: Without consciously, 

[01:34:14] Sarah Beale: without consciously learning it. 

[01:34:18] Cecilie Conrad: It can be too much. The introspection idea. I have some in my circles who sit down every night with a notebook, writing what they did wrong that day and how it could have been done better and why they did it wrong and what social influences made them do that and I think that is maybe overdoing it.

[01:34:35] Cecilie Conrad: Thank you.

[01:34:40] Cecilie Conrad: But I think 

[01:34:41] Carla Martinez: making mistakes, it's part of everything. I mean, I don't say it's wrong, wrong or right. I don't say wrong. I don't, because I don't know if you mean it, but it sounds that it's wrong to make mistakes. And you are waiting the time you don't make mistakes, but it's not going to happen. Never, ever.

[01:35:02] Carla Martinez: I mean, it's part of the 

[01:35:04] Cecilie Conrad: everyday of your life, I 

[01:35:07] Carla Martinez: guess. And then you, it's also how you learn, right? If you don't try, if you don't try, you don't know, and then you do it wrong, wrong because it didn't get out how you expected or you thought it would be your experiment, your cooking, your whatever, you're talking to this girl or boy, 

[01:35:29] Cecilie Conrad: boy, make a mistake.

[01:35:33] Cecilie Conrad: I don't know. We're right way into, so I can be very loose about the mistake idea and say it was just part of life. We try this, we try that, and then we bounce, you know, like the pendulum idea. Maybe we hit a wall, we change direction. But in the long run maybe we, we do have like a, some, some direction. Um, but I think we are habituated into the idea of right and wrong from our own schooling from a society and a way that.

[01:36:05] Cecilie Conrad: The big machine really very much wants us to walk it all in the same direction, preferably in the same pace, doing the same thing, having the same dreams. Yeah, we absolutely are. And I also think that's, that's actually why it's so complicated, or it's not, it's not super easy to help people with their unschooling and because a lot of black, that depends, but a lot of people.

[01:36:37] Cecilie Conrad: They want you to tell them what to do. They want to know how do I do it? What, what should I do? How do I do it right? And because it's really about reaching that point of being able to let go and trust and just live, you can't tell someone how to do that. They, they have to get there on their own, and it takes time, and you gotta make the mistakes, and you gotta give it that time, so, so yeah, it's, that, that's a, that's a bit a tricky part, when you wanna like, Like when someone asks you for like, you know, an advice or an opinion or whatever, like an experience, because, you know, we've been doing it long ago, whatever, because there is this aspect of, yeah, well, it's going to come with time, you know, give it time.

[01:37:27] Cecilie Conrad: You know, like, I love what Sandra Dodd says, maybe she says it in your podcast too, but you know how she says, read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch. Yeah, she said that again. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's like her, like go to phrase, like, and, and I love that because that is just so true. Try it out. Don't try too hard.

[01:37:45] Cecilie Conrad: See what happens and then, you know, go from there. So yeah.

[01:37:55] Cecilie Conrad: Are we getting tired? Yeah, I think we 

[01:37:57] Sarah Beale: should do a whole episode on judgment, self judgment, because this idea of right and wrong and wanting to wanting to do it right. It's so ingrained in us. I mean, it's literally a programmed thought. I don't believe it's naturally human. Uh, and it really comes down to judgment.

[01:38:16] Sarah Beale: I think like, oh, I want to do a good job. Because I actually want to make sure I'm seen to be doing a good job because other people might know I'm not doing a good job if I don't, which really is about how I feel about whether I'm doing a good job. And it's a, that you can go in this real loop, um, around, you know, around judgment of, of self.

[01:38:36] Sarah Beale: And like that's a two hour, we could let that 

[01:38:39] Cecilie Conrad: be a cliffhanger tune in and it could be a joined with your conversation starter question that we did not answer. Is there any limits to this? Because, you know, and then it's not very interesting, but it's not. Let's face it. Um, so 

[01:39:01] Carla Martinez: I, you can say,

[01:39:05] Carla Martinez: I don't like it, but I was going to say, you, you put the limit. I mean, do you 

[01:39:10] Cecilie Conrad: say, Okay, I don't know, try it. 

[01:39:17] Carla Martinez: I just came with this. You put the limit, what is the limit? I don't know. Till you just stop because you are there or because you give up 

[01:39:25] Cecilie Conrad: or because you ignored with trying to find it end of the road.

[01:39:31] Cecilie Conrad: I don't know. I just think your quest. So let's do it next time because we have spent our nine, whatever, I can't even think anymore. But the time is that we spend an hour and a half. I can see that. Um, with more, we've 

[01:39:46] Sarah Beale: got more than 

[01:39:46] Cecilie Conrad: an hour and a half . Yeah. Yeah. Well, not the actual recording, I think, because we did a lot of tech time and shit time.

[01:39:55] Cecilie Conrad: Anyway, let's, let's leave it here. I think we should. And talk about judgment and self judgment the next time we talk. Interestingly, I just did an interview with Sandra Dodd on judgment and good judgment yesterday. So it's top of mind for me. It's coming out on the 20th of July, which at least will be before this one, I think comes out.

[01:40:21] Cecilie Conrad: I haven't even decided. We have to talk about that later, um, which is four days before learn nothing day, very important day to celebrate as it is Sandra Dodd's birthday and nothing day, learn nothing day, 24th of July. I always fail. Everyone fails. That's the whole point. Exactly. It's a, it's a great challenge.

[01:40:46] Cecilie Conrad: Follow it anywhere you want and share with everyone, you know, when you fail, how long did you from you woke up until you failed learn nothing day. It's a fun challenge. And yeah, I just want to thank you for showing up from different places and having this conversation was fun. Yeah, 

[01:41:07] Sarah Beale: thank you. 

[01:41:09] Cecilie Conrad: Thank 

[01:41:10] Carla Martinez: you for your invitation, and I love talking to you and listen to you.