Da Ladies #7 | Embracing Unschooling: Practical Strategies for Nurturing Self-Directed Learners

We explore practical strategies for nurturing our children's natural curiosity and love of learning. Together with my three friends—Sarah Bealel, Carla Martinez, and Luna Maj Vestergaard, we get hands-on, shedding light on how unschooling unfolds in daily life.

We share insights into how children learn to read without formal lessons and discuss parents' vital role as facilitators rather than traditional teachers, providing an environment rich with opportunities for self-directed learning.

Listen in as we examine the evolving landscape of children's education, from the significance of play in early childhood to the transition towards more structured pursuits as they grow. We reflect on how our roles as parents adapt to support our kids' changing needs and learning styles.

Discover how embracing flexibility and trust in the unschooling process allows for diverse learning experiences, from gaming and travel to real-world projects that teach traditional subjects like world history and mathematics in unconventional yet profoundly effective ways.

We celebrate the personalized educational paths unschooled children take. Acknowledge the self-directed nature of their learning, which empowers them to make choices that align with their life goals and interests.

Whether your child is drawn to academic subjects or alternative pursuits, this episode reassures you that unschooling is about respecting each child's unique journey, encouraging their innate capacity for reflection, and supporting them as they navigate their way through the rich landscape of knowledge and skills they choose to explore.

🗓️ Recorded February 2nd, 2024. 📍Playa Dorada, Lengüeta Arenosa, Baja California, Mexico

▬ 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.facebook.com/ligronesenruta

Sara Beale: 

• https://www.renegademum.com/
• htt

Chapters

• 0:00 Practical Approaches to Unschooling
• 6:48 Unschooling and Curriculum Concerns
• 23:18 Unschooling and Self-Directed Education
• 34:15 Connected Parenting's Importance in Learning
• 41:17 Facilitators in Self-Directed Learning
• 56:40 The Evolution of Learning in Children
• 1:05:36 Reflections on Learning and Personal Choice

Transcript

00:00 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So welcome to this episode of the Ladies Fixing the World. We are going to fix the world again. We enjoy doing so and we actually believe we are doing so. I am with my three friends again Same friends. This is Sarah Biel, carly Martinez and Luna Myvistakov. I'm not going to do a big introduction today. I decided not to. You'll have to look them up. They will be in the show notes. They are great women. Today, luna proposed a very hands-on question that we could talk about. Do you want to start, luna? 

00:47 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
Yeah, I'm just trying to fix the sound because you're very far away. I know you're not, but I don't know, it's like the sound is just really far away. Anyway, I'll try. Yeah, I don't know. I just thought it's been very philosophical and very that's sort of more heavy. 

01:15
Yeah, I thought something more hands-on, practical, because that's actually a question that I get a lot. It's like, yeah, that's so well and good and sounds great, but how actually? Then, because we talk a lot about, oh, you just let learning, you know it just happens, and just pull the learning out wherever it like pops up and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I realized that a lot of people actually don't really know how that actually then looks. And I think one time that I really thought a lot about it was that when I was asked how my children learned to read, and because I'm like I don't know, they just did. 

02:01
But obviously we did lots of activities and we did lots of stuff and there's been a lot of work from my side. It's just not like planned lessons and stuff like that, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been super instrumental in the whole process. So yeah, just like things like that. So then, like, what did I actually do then, and why and how and all that? I guess, yeah. So my idea was just maybe to talk a little bit about that and like be very practical about it. 

02:36 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think it's a very good idea, luna, because really we very often, when we get that question and we've been on schooling for a number of years our response will always be oh, but that's not the aim, and why do you think they have to learn? That's just a byproduct. All these things, and they are all true, but from the beginner mind, or from the mind who needs to talk to his or her mother-in-law, the hands on, how does it actually happen? We need to know, don't we? 

03:14 - Sarah Beale (Host)
Yeah, I think it's also part of how we stay accountable, because we, as Luna said, she's done a lot of stuff. We do a lot of stuff. There's a lot of. There's a lot going on. Other people might not be able to see it. There's a lot going on. We're like we're not kind of sitting around watching Netflix for 12 hours a day, generally speaking, like we're really instrumental in the learning and educational of our children. 

03:42
So I think, first of all, it's nice to acknowledge the hard work that we do, because it's not always an easy road, although, yes, we get to maybe live in a bit more of a flow state perhaps than someone else, or things happen a bit more organically or naturally, but we are actually really involved with our kids learning and sometimes we have to do things, sometimes we have to move pieces around. 

04:10
So I think it's nice to acknowledge the work that unschooling parents actually do in this as well, because that's the other piece, as well as give some comfort and confidence to people who are just starting out, like there are things that you can do to support your children, whether it's around the environment, things that we expose them to the types of relationships that we're encouraging. So, yeah, I think this is a really cool thing to talk about. And well, I don't think we've stopped. Even though I think we're all fairly confident mothers, I think we're also doing this work all the time. Maybe we just do it more naturally now than a few years ago, but I think we're probably all doing a lot of this stuff like every day. 

04:54 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
Yeah, and what we do changes, like it's different things, right With bigger kids than with younger kids, and like I don't do as much like craft activities anymore Because I just don't. I mean, I don't like my kids aren't that age anymore where they want to do a lot of crafty stuff all the time. 

05:18
I mean it's just, it's not just age, Obviously, it's also personality, because even big kids might want to do a lot of craft activities, but obviously the bigger they are, the more autonomous they are in the thing and the less you need to be involved. 

05:35
But yeah, and I think actually also the fact that we are doing things and like what you said, what they are exposed to, like what we expose them to, because I think there's also a lot of times this kind of misunderstanding that we're not supposed to suggest or ask them if they want to do this or that, because then it wouldn't be unschooling, and that's like one of the huge biggest mistakes is unschooling is not apathy, it's not not doing anything, it's not not saying anything. 

06:07
Quite the contrary actually. Like if you think unschooling is doing nothing, then you aren't doing nearly enough, and I'm quoting not me but Sandra Dodd. She's actually the one who said that. I wear that somewhere in one of her discussions somewhere and I think it's a great quote. It's like, yes, if you think it's doing nothing, then you aren't doing nearly enough, because it's not about doing nothing, and I think that's a big misunderstanding a lot of times when people start out, because we want to be sure that we aren't imposing, so it's safer than to not. Maybe I don't know exactly what's going on. 

06:48 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think another big pitfall is to what I think another big pitfall, a little parallel. I think another problem that arises, often parallel to what you're talking about, is this idea that we have to wait for it to come from the children and then pick it up and run with it. So they have to express something they want and then we have that teachable moment, or we have to create the environment in which they can unfold whatever it was they were saying. So the parents will hold back too much when they try to unschool and not be afraid of proposing things, be afraid of having opinions, being afraid of talking about learning even, which is that's not the case either. I mean, why not ask your kid if they want to learn to play the guitar? It's not dangerous. It's the agenda behind it and the judgment after that's dangerous, but the idea why not you learn to play the guitar? I think you'd find that fun. 

08:05 - Sarah Beale (Host)
And sometimes as a parent, yeah, we've got to be proactive about, oh, I might need to actually do something to shift that thing. Maybe I need to bring in some more resources, maybe I need to make a suggestion to my child, maybe we need to go and do a particular thing. But, like we know that nothing's forever, and when you know that, like there's no fear of the thing, the thing that all the, all the manipulations and coercions that many people are suffering under is very much about thinking that what's happening right now is always going to be what's happening, and that's not true. We know that's not true. 

08:44 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But it's also about being attached to an outcome. I mean, that's the other thing. You can be very attached to a specific outcome of your children's childhood and learning journey, and the sun schoolers we are less so, though of course, we want our kids to thrive, we want them to be happy, we, we. So there is some sort of outcome that we're all focusing on. It just looks different. I still want to try to answer, get us all to answer this question. How does it look? Let's pretend. I mean, can I be the devil's advocate? How will they learn world history? How are they linked? What I'm just saying? 

09:30 - Carla Martinez (Host)
whatever I mean. 

09:31 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Canada is one of the key things and reading is another one, but can we talk about the school subjects? Let's try to be hands on, as Luna proposed, and you wanted to say something, carly. 

09:48 - Carla Martinez (Host)
Yes, because you say world history, and not long ago I, because I asked my questions like how do you learn this? Because sometimes they tell me something that sometimes I don't know, and how do you learn things. I asked this question that we are trying to answer. And Roberto says, because I have a game in my computer that it's about a war. So I learned things about events in this history that I'm playing in. Yeah, so he learned some things and places and events in the history. Yeah, and then we connected because we travel with the. 

10:43
When we were in Normandy it was a lot of history there and because in our case and we are influenced also in the things we are passionate about and David, my husband, love like bellic, history and everything. So, okay, see, he said he learned with this game and also I can say he learned about, he learned a lot of math and counting and he do a lot of calculation with time. And he asked me like how many, how many hours are three days or how many days are? I don't know a lot of hours and I'm like I don't know. But we can do it, you have to do this operation and you will get the number of days or the hours and he's doing his strategy for a game. So in this case, roberto learned a lot through gaming, for example. 

11:54 - Sarah Beale (Host)
I think that's actually we're going to talk about curriculum. We're going to talk about how kids learn the subjects. But even that one example, it's how how it's so hard to separate because it's not relevant. It's not relevant in our lives to separate the curriculum areas. Because one thing, it is really project based learning although we don't call it that and we're not necessarily telling our kids what the projects are. But if you were to use, like project based learning or even like Charlotte Mason, literature based learning, that's kind of how it works and that's an acknowledgement of how our brains generally work in much more of a circular way than the school system allows for that reading a book and reading about a place in a book that you then visit, sometimes by coincidence, sometimes intentionally, which means you then go get a map and you look at the geography and then you look at the surrounding and then you read another story and then you go visit a castle and then, or whatever like that. That's how it happens in our lives Gaming, reading a book, having a chance conversation with someone, and then, because we've got time and we're not limited by the silos, we can. Our kids can just follow these like threads and like tendrils. So I think if we were needing to put things down on paper and some people do, like in various countries around the world, including Australia, by the way, lots and lots of parents the vast majority of parents are having to answer to reporting requirements Then then we have to go through that story and pick out the learning areas and the attributes, which is totally possible. I had to do it a couple of times when we were in Australia. I'm not going to volunteer to do it, but like it is totally possible and I think a lot of parents who aren't yet there would be mind blown at all of the things our children do actually cover. 

13:58
And I think, too, it built like we have to build our muscle to notice those things. I remember when my kids were younger and actually I never, ever had any issues with like I didn't have any concerns that they were learning at all, but Dylan, my husband, did. He would be like he was worried for a couple of years about those core areas, and so I used to notice what they were doing so that I could draw his attention to it. So then he could get used to oh OK, they're playing this game, they're actually counting, they're actually doing engineering, they're actually designing and they're learning to read and they're noticing patterns and they're you know all the things. And he started to notice oh, they're actually covering off on all of these curriculum areas. So I think it can be helpful for parents to get confident with the fact that their children are learning, because I think a parent who's confident is going to also then become, and then that's going to naturally create an environment that is more conducive to natural learning. So it all kind of goes around, doesn't it? 

15:17 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I just think, a problem with that strategy. I think many unschoolers and even homeschoolers started out with a log book and you know, noticing, writing down, making sure we could document that we're doing something right, and in our family we call it a translation that we speak. Education is we translate what's really happening to a language that will be understood by someone inside a curriculum based system, which is fair enough. If they need to understand, I need to speak a language that they do understand. So we've done that. But the risk is that the mind keeps going around these things. So you're playing uno, having tea, laughing, but the mind is like, oh, but I, if I make them count, then I can write down. It was math. This is an extreme that I would make them. 

16:18
But it can be that we start twisting the activities or putting a different focus on the activities in order to make them closer to something that's easy to explain to the education system, and what I say is often that it's a very good idea to have this attention, but only on an example based level. If we try to do a log book and write down everything, I would say do it for a week and then please stop, because it can make this. It's a filter on how we engage in life. It becomes as if everything we do before we sit down with that log book in the evening, we do it in order to have something to write in that log book, and that can become very ugly and counterproductive to an unschooling process. So I mean, I'm not saying don't do it, I'm just saying beware, because there is there's a trap there. It makes sense, oh, completely. 

17:27 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I tell parents the exact same thing. It's, it's. It can be good in the beginning because, especially if you come from the school system, it's, it's okay and it can be actually be good to like ease into it and and keep that sort of yeah, the log book type, like that. It's kind of a scaffolding to keep, like to have around you to support you in the beginning. But you need to learn. If you're serious about unschooling, you need and de-schooling, you need to learn to let go of it. You need to learn to make it smaller and smaller and smaller, so that you stop thinking about the learning outcome of something and you learn to just see the activity for the activity. That's it and that's going to come with time. So, and and yeah, usually what I often say is like the hardest part about learning is learning not to think about it all the time. That's all. The hardest part about unschooling is learning not to think about learning all the time, because once you get there, you, at some point you, you get to this point where you just, you just stop, you don't think anymore, you just live your life. You don't think anymore about what comes out of it because you know, something comes out of it and that's like a like, a knowledge or faith that you develop with time and then you can. Then you can stop thinking about it. So, but that takes time course, and it can be nice to have something in the beginning. 

19:07
And also it really depends on what like. Are you in a country that asks you to like where you need whether you do have inspections or controls Home education, or are you not? Because if you're not, obviously you're not going to do it? I mean, why would you? But if you are in a country like Denmark, for instance, yeah, well, there's a legal requirement to do something. That's when, when you need to learn how to then navigate that and still yeah, and still and still yeah, and navigate on schooling as well. So so it depends. It depends on like what. You're sorry. 

19:55 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But if you're doing it in order to meet a legal requirement, I mean, then be then. That's why you're doing it and that will change it. The problem is if you're doing it in order to make yourself feel safe or in order to have a very beautiful luck book showing everyone that but there are still ways to do it. 

20:18 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
even if it's to meet a legal requirement, there are still ways to do it that are better for on schooling than others, because falling off topic women. 

20:30 - Sarah Beale (Host)
We keep doing it, that's because it's really hard to do today. 

20:38 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Okay, without over-explaining why it doesn't have to be done and why we don't need to do this and why it might not make sense and why the perspective is something different, can we explain to a bystander, to anyone interested, how our children actually learn things? Okay, okay, I can tell you. It's not the main objective of our lifestyle. 

21:03 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
Okay. 

21:04 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
We all agree, but they will learn things. 

21:06 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
Okay, I'll give a very, very hands-on, concrete, practical, no bullshit example. How did my oldest daughter learn the alphabet? Well, because I drew up an alphabet and hang it on the damn wall. That's what I did. There we go. That's very concrete, no bullshit. I hung it up on the wall and she learned it. There you go, did you talk about it? And then you have to talk about now that I did not hang it on the wall because I wanted her to learn the alphabet or because I thought, oh, that way she's going to learn the alphabet and then I can take a box or whatever. 

21:43
It is quite important to just have that mindset angle with it. I did it because she was starting to ask what's written here, what's that letter, etc. Etc. Which tells me, oh, she's interested in this. Well, there's this thing called the alphabet. Here it is. 

22:05
I hung it up on the wall and I didn't actually say anything. I just, one night, I just drew it up and I hung it up on the wall and obviously the next day, when she saw it, she obviously asked me oh, what's that? Oh, that's a thing called the alphabet, and there's even a song to go with it. Do you want to hear it. See, I'm asking a lot, I'm suggesting a lot, I'm like intervening a lot, like I'm teaching, right, except I'm not. 

22:30
I'm just hanging out with my daughter because she thought that was fun and so, yeah, so we were singing the alphabet song, and then there's this really great alphabet song book by a Danish author called Halfdamm Rasmussen for the Danish listeners he's very well known and so I got that book and it has like nice fun drawings and fun little rhymes, with all the letters and songs to go with it, and we love that book. So we were listening to that on repeat for hours, for days, and so that I mean that's very that's hands-on right, that's like very concrete. This is how we did it. So, yeah, I mean that was the start of it, right. 

23:18 - Sarah Beale (Host)
Yeah, I think when people are asking me about unschooling, depending on how the question comes, I often will use different language too and I often will talk about self-directed education, because I think that can be more helpful for people to understand, because you can break that down then self-directed education. And in your example about the reading, she indicated that she was ready for something, so something inside herself was motivated to ask a question of her environment, and then you gave her some stimulus because that is part of our job as facilitators and as parents and then she was directing, like the speed, the pace, you know. She said, oh, I'm ready for the next thing because she asked questions. So I like the idea of self-directed education because I think it highlights where the distinction between unschooling and schooling, where we're always following a child's lead, which doesn't mean we don't sometimes come first, but there's this motivation in them, internal rather than external that sometimes we're waiting for or like depending on the child's personality, like we might wait for an invitation which is, oh, some kids will say, oh, I want to learn to read. 

24:44
Or maybe you're driving in the car and they're starting to ask questions about the street signs or the numbers, or you're in the shop and they're starting to read the food packets or like you've got books around your house, who doesn't have books in their house? And then they maybe they see you reading a book and they might, they might ask, they start to ask questions about how to decode, and then you're like, oh, okay, they're ready for something more. And then you're like, adding in things to the environment. Of course there are some kids who are like and I have one or two of these in my family, but not all they literally do not want me to give them anything Like until they specifically say I want this thing, the specific thing. They're not open to suggestion. So you know, part of this is also understanding the different ways our different children interact with their own learning, because if it's a child who doesn't want any stimulus introduced, then that would, that would be irritating to them and they might even just reject it just to annoy you. 

25:51 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
So okay, so I'm going to play devil's advocate, like Cecilia did. So what about a child like that then? How do you then, like, make sure that they learn something? What does supposed to learn? Whatever, like? What should you do with a child like that then? 

26:09 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Who doesn't want. You just twisted the question, luna, sorry. So from how do they learn to how do you make sure they learn? Yeah we have covered the make sure. Oh my goodness. I mean just go listen to the first six episodes of the Ladies Fixing the World and you will understand. You do not need to make sure they learn. Making sure they learn is counterproductive to being an unschooler. So the real question that we try to cover today is how do these children learn? Thank you Cecilia. 

26:43 - Carla Martinez (Host)
Thank you. So, also with the reading thing in our process, roberto was, I remember, because we were in Thailand. He was three and he said I want to write stories. So then I invented our first like reading material and I guess was piece of paper squares and I put all the letters and then he said a word and we put the letters together with this small squares piece of paper and form a word and then he will copy in a notebook. No, he was sorry, he was five, five, and now that he's almost 11. He decoded, like last year, they started like reading, because it's been like that was in a moment and then in another moment. 

27:50
Another thing, you know, and also I have these moments of they don't read. Already. I have to do something, the thing I have to do. So this come like every two years or something, because we were in 2020, mexico, and I made this thing that I saw this craft with the cardboard of eggs where you write in the, in the bottom of the, the eggs go, every letter and then you have the, the cups of the bottles with the letters, so you have to put them there. So I made this. I also like do this the craft part, and my kids were like we don't know, we don't want this. So it was. I just took a picture of what they are with this, but they didn't use it for nothing. They don't, they didn't like it. Okay, and then I'm again in like they have nothing to do. 

28:54
So and last year in England I they were already forming words and reading something, but not very into it. I said, okay, let's take this notebook and I'm going to make I call it like one phrase a day. And they sat there and I explained my idea Like I will put a fan phrase it sounds stupid, but it was my idea like a fan phrase every day, so you have to read it and write it. And they were like okay, but then the day when we started they were like they weren't really like that. So Greta directly wrote no me gusta, I don't like it. And she underlined with pink like you know this, what do you use to underline? Or you know, highlighter, yeah, highlighter, yeah. And Roberto read it and didn't wrote it. And I was like but then how are you going to learn to read? And then they Roberto told me mom, leave us, we will learn, because we can't. I don't know what he said like, but very secure. He said like we will learn. How do you say by ourselves. I say okay, but then it's like I think about, I thought about Greta just wrote, wrote, she wrote. 

30:39
I don't like it. So she's writing. I mean, oh, that was the end of these two year happening. I have to do something. It's hilarious. It also happens. I mean sometimes I get these peaks like but they are ready, they now they send me. No, mom, julie, leave us alone. But I asked how are you going to learn this? 

31:09 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
because this is important, because blah, blah blah blah, blah, blah and they all come from, this discourse of someone has to do something in order for them to learn. And I think all unschooling parents have these relapses. We call them the black days, where you know, I don't know, I just I don't have it really anymore, but I used to have days where I would fall back into just some sort of panic state of mind, then want to buy school books and push them and could we please have a little bit of structure here? So I totally hear you with. You know, every every two years you have some sort of panic attack and then you learn from your children how to cope with that. So over the years we will arrive at a point where that's not really a problem anymore and looking back, it's easy to trust the process. But if we are in the beginning and we really want to know, okay, I understand this philosophy. It makes so much sense. But really, when they are 16, how will they have learned these things? How will they know how to understand, let's say, fractions or percentage? How will they learn to read? Will they speak more than one language? Can they understand the history of the world and maybe some basic principles of the sciences, at least knowing what they don't know. These questions are relevant from the point of view of someone with a six year old starting on the journey and even someone with a six year old starting on the journey understanding that making this education-ease journal on a daily basis will be counterproductive. They still need to know. 

33:11
How does it then happen? And I think what you said before with the gaming Kali was really about how the questions arise inside the children. They have some experience. Something happens in their life, something they are engaged in. It could be playing with Barbie dolls, it could be playing computer games, it could be going for a walk or talking to whatever a grandparent or friend. Something happens, something sparks some curiosity and from there a ball will be rolling. And how do we pick up that ball or at least run with them alongside that ball, without becoming someone with a notebook and a fun sentence that just annoys them? That's really well? Maybe that's not really, but it's part of the question, right, because sometimes they will, very often they will learn without us running alongside that ball. Just let them run. 

34:15 - Sarah Beale (Host)
For me, if there is to be an answer to the question, there's probably a thousand answers. It's the same as all the other answers to all the other questions and that is around connection that we have in our family Because they are all different. All every single child learns to children who learn. Naturally they all learn to read differently. That's why there's no answer to that particular question. It looks different for every single child. Every single child has their own kind of unique way of seeing the world and interacting with the world. But as long as they know that when they are wanting to extend their learning, or wanting to pay for a resource, or wanting to spend an hour talking to you, or wanting to watch a particular show, or wanting to buy a book, or needing some more social interaction, or wanting to go to a particular place to see a particular thing, that they actually have a responsive parent at the other end. Which doesn't always mean that we can facilitate everything on the same day, right, like we kind of joke about. Every child has its like a turn and it's not all on the same day, maybe not even in the same week, but like if they know that they've got us there as their facilitators, and then all of the waiting that we might do, like, oh, I'm just waiting just to see what's going to happen next. Then when they say, oh mom, this is a real live example do you want to watch a particular movie? And I'm like, literally what mom or dad is not going to say yes to watching a child watching a movie with their child, because we know that that I mean, I think there may be asked some parents to say no, I don't know, Maybe we live in a bubble, but like that, that question oh hey, do you want to watch this movie with me? Yes, of course. 

36:04
And then watching that movie is going to prompt a conversation. Maybe you're going to pause the movie and you're going to look at the map and you're going to find out where it was filmed, and then you're going to maybe pull in some folklore I mean, if they're interested, it just depends, right and then maybe no one else in your family comes to watch the movie Maybe it's two of you, maybe everybody else goes oh, what are they doing in there? And they all come and watch the movie and it's that, that parent, knowing that the parent's going to go yes, of course. Of course we can facilitate that thing and that's really like that's all we have to do, which sounds as simple as it is, because sometimes it means scheduling, finding money, saying no to something else, working out where our priorities are as a family. So it's not always that simple, right, but that first bit simple yes, yes to the question that's ultimately going to come, and the questions ultimately come when they know they've got connected. Parents who are just like ready and waiting. 

37:05 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
True that I mean true that we can get to play a part in their learning journey when they ask us to participate, and a lot of it starts with some little project and then it unravels like you can't even imagine. I agree, but I'm trying to make the exercise in my mind to really okay how my kids are not small anymore. So if I look at the older ones and you know, I know what, more or less where they are with things I mean, should they be put into a school system and tested next week? Where would they be? I can imagine that and thinking about how they learned the things that they now know, lots of it had nothing to do with what I did, really Lots of it was. 

37:57
One of them is a very structured child. This comes down to personality sometimes, but she's the kind who will say, oh, now I want to learn this, and then she learns and she could ask for help. But sometimes she just sits down and learns it because that's what she wants to do. I remember when she learned to ride a bike, she couldn't ride a bike and I was trying could you please learn to ride the bike? Because the cargo bike was getting heavy with all the kids in it and she didn't want to and she didn't want to. She's a very stubborn child and then one day she's I could see it in her face. We had that little bike with us in the park and it was her bike and she could not ride that bike and she just kept falling for two hours until she could ride that bike. So for her it's been very much about decision making and then just going for it. And she does that with many things and it has. 

38:52
It's actually not about me I mean, of course I had the bike but many other things that she learned in life has been she finds a book about it, or or someone to talk to about it, or with languages. It's been. I just want to know. I'll sit, I'll watch a YouTube video about how to learn this and then I will start doing what they say, and then she does it in a very structured way. 

39:24
So, yes, we should be the yes, parents and yes, we can play a center stage in some of their learning journeys, but I think also really trusting the process and letting them take their own. Oh, I'm using a Danish metaphor. I can't translate it, but I mean they go where they want to go and and, and very often that's very, very powerful and they do know geography and they do know world history and they can do math and they do speak more than one language and all these things and I can't take credit for it. Really, it's because they did it in different, in four different ways it's. I just talked about one child now. They did it in different ways. 

40:18 - Sarah Beale (Host)
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I guess what I was, I guess what my point was, around the partnership that we have in our families. That is, that is what's quite different about unschooling compared to the different like a school system, for example, that that actually where it's very kind of symbiotic. So it is very much about the environment. I think, and I you know there are very, very occasionally, you know, conversations come up in different groups where a parent is is asking the question is this a good idea for my family? And actually where a family can't be really closely connected, I don't always think it is a good idea Because even though your, your daughter, learned to ride the bike because she happened to be motivated on the particular day, you you bought the bike presumably also created the space for that to happen, which is really different to a two year old being forced to ride a bike before they're ready and maybe learning to ride the bike because they got forced to but it didn't come from inside them. 

41:17
So I think I think it's about the relationship very much of being at the centre of it, because we're creating this safety and security for natural learning to happen and of course, learning can happen in a forced way, and we see that all the time too, and we all went through the school system, so we all know what it feels like to have learning happen in a forced way, and it can absolutely happen. I learnt heaps of stuff at school. I did really well at school and then I went to university, so that does work, of course, but it but it's different, isn't it Like? Where, where if we're talking about partly what our role is in that learning how do children learn in a self directed way? Are they going to learn the things that they need to learn to get on in life if they're sitting in a room without any interaction, if they've got no resources, if they've got no one collaborating with them, and they wouldn't have a rich life? So I think it's important, too, to acknowledge how much we actually provide in terms of the environment. That then allows the children's learning spirit and their internal motivation to kind of kick in at those decision points. 

42:25
Or, today, I'm going to ride a bike. I'm not going home from the park till I can ride this bike. I've got two children who learn to ride a bike in a really similar way. Something happened they got to a point where they're they were actually irritated with themselves to a point that they went oh, today I'm going to learn to ride a bike, and they didn't say I'm not leaving until I can ride a bike. Actually, peggy might have. It was actually Lily that helped Peggy ride a bike last summer. I think she might have even said that I'm not leaving till I can ride the bike, but she got so irritated with herself. I mean, all we did it. We provided the bikes, we took them to the park, but I think. 

43:07 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
I think you've just like between you, cecilia and Sarah, you've just touched on like, maybe the core of the whole thing and something very important, at least, because I think often also, when, when people will ask us how will they learn, it's because they are still to some extent thinking that learning means someone has to teach someone something. And what you were talking about, cecilia, is really this whole. It's the learner doing the process. They are learning by doing quite a lot, and you were talking, sarah, about the motivation spark that comes from inside, etc. So so that's, I think that's very important, that shift, and that's why we keep coming back to yes, oh, we want it to be concrete and hands on and practical, and how exactly. But we keep coming back because the mindset shift is just so important and instrumental in the whole thing of of knowing our understanding. First of all, that was that John Holt saying that learning is not the product of teaching, it's the product of the activity of learners, or something like that. Right and so. Or another one is like learning doesn't happen when the teacher asks question, it happens when the learner asks question, and that's that's when, that's how do we learn as people, as humans, that's when we want to know something. We want, we want to know something, and then we learn it. So we go on and look for the knowledge some way, but it's because there's a need or a want, like oh, both you know, because we want to, so, and then what was I going to say? Because I was losing the? 

44:50
Yeah, the difference between that, that, what you were just talking about, you too, is, I think, the central concept that we talk a lot about, and unschooling, about the parent being the facilitator and not a teacher. It's about that. That's how it happens. Our role is to facilitate. We talk a lot about that. Oh, our role is to facilitate the learning, which does not mean teaching, but it means all the things we've just been mentioning now and that you've been talking a lot about, sarah creating the like, providing and being there and accompanying that individual process. 

45:33
Because I'm sure that, like, that's how I function, I'm sure that's how we all function. We just, like you just said, cecilia, if they were to take a test next week, you'd have a pretty accurate idea, probably, about whether that was. So would I, and so would you probably, ladies, because of course, that's just because we're in tune again, aligned connection, all that. I don't need to test my kids to know that because we're so close and we're together all the time and they're like the adult child ratio is not one to 25 either. It's like it's my kids and I only have two left at home. So that's so. Yeah, I just think that's. That's probably quite important to the that role, understanding that they are doing the learning. 

46:28 - Sarah Beale (Host)
I think if my kids were going to get tested tomorrow, I'd probably need to just coach them a little bit today, on the days of the week, if that was one of the questions. 

46:44 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
The months I think they always forget November. Yeah, no, but I'm not saying that my kids are in a place where they are parallel to what they would have learned had they been in a structure of school environment. I'm just saying that I have a pretty good idea about where they are. And I also want because I see our time is flying a little bit and I, I don't know, maybe I'm just obsessing over it but I want to talk about the hands on how does it look? 

47:15 - Sarah Beale (Host)
and one thing I've not answered that yet. 

47:22 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I mean yeah, do you want to say something? 

47:26 - Carla Martinez (Host)
Maybe I don't know if you want to go to another place, no, no, no, please, yeah, but I think I think it's something. I think it's relevant because we say how do they learn? So the process inside? I think we know, we you read or you practice something or you experience something and just feel curious. 

47:48
Okay, the thing is, all these academic thing we think they need to know before they were putting in a scaffold and in books, they are already, they were already in life in the world so, and then they were put it in books and in order, and this is here. You have what you have to learn. So, because we are in the world and we are living this life, all the things are here, so it's inevitable, yeah, so, because we have all the yes contents here and they have these parents here for being here, ready to say yes, I will explain this that you want to know, and then not only the parents, but also the rest of the people that know other things that maybe I don't know. So, yes, I only wanted to add this is not that I'm explaining how do they learn, but everything. 

49:02
No. 

49:02 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think it's a very relevant and beautiful point, because that is actually exactly the system that we are opposing, maybe by our lifestyle that we don't need to have that process of there is the reality with everything, and then there is a structured way of organizing that everything, and then we pick out the parts that we think children should learn before the age of 15, organize that in a learning journey and and push it down their throat. That's the concept that we don't want for our children. We just want them to be in that reality where everything already is and and, yeah, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful picture, really. Yeah, so actually answering the question, Thank you for answering the question. 

49:50 - Sarah Beale (Host)
Yeah, I don't. I don't think we can, I don't think we can answer like if someone was listening to this podcast. I hope they're there are listeners, I have. Yes, so someone was listening to this episode hoping to find out how are these people's children learning? Then we can ask the question how do we even know what they need to learn anyway? We don't, we don't get, we can't say what they need to learn. And you know what Carlos saying is all the information that's in books, it's all just out there. There's nothing new in the universe. 

50:24
Someone said that, only different ways of expressing it, different organ. I mean, sometimes I'll pick up a book and read something. Hardly ever will I read something I don't already know. But someone might say it in a different way that resonates with me and I might be like oh, that's a really interesting way of putting that. I really like that. Did I learn something new? I don't know, it doesn't really matter. 

50:46
But this question of like, what do they even need to learn anyway? And again it comes down to like trusting that our children will actually be able to discern what they need to learn. And why would we want them to invest their time, that's special and precious into something that they don't choose to learn, because they often know stuff that we don't know yet they know why they want to learn a particular thing. Even that might not make any sense to us and the stuff that we might think that they should learn makes no sense to them. And, of course, if they decide, like some of our children may well do, that they want to go and do a particular type of formalized learning in university or whatever, that actually all of the foundational skills that they've built up until now are going to position them really, really well to be able to learn what they need to know in that moment. Because we know from living with them what it looks like for each of our individual children and they're all different to get to that point of feeling that friction just before they decide to learn something new. Like we know they can do that. So that's what I want people to know, I guess, who are worried, like maybe, maybe what's helpful is watching your children. 

52:05
I'm a massive fan of just watching and seeing how they all will approach something, not because I need to be comforted, because I find it so interesting to watch my particular children, your particular children whoever I've also watched and go, oh, oh, I see what's going on here. Like sometimes you can see the wheels turning right and you get used to your children and how it looks when they're trying to do something and maybe they're irritated and they get annoyed and then they bust through to that next level, but another child doesn't approach it in that same way. So like when you're watching your own children and we get to do that more than like what's normal, right, like we get to do that a lot with our children, like we get to just watch them, observe them, and then we get to notice, oh, this particular child learns in that particular way, or like actually it's not quite that black and white, is it? But like we don't need to know how children learn, we just need to know, like, what's going on in our family. 

53:09
How is that particular child sitting with the discomfort of being frustrated about trying to learn a new skill like riding a bike? How's that particular child approaching that? Oh, that's really interesting how they're doing that and maybe there's a pattern. Maybe there's some patterns there in particular children, how they approach learning a new skill. You know, some children actually ask for instruction. Some children are like, yeah, I don't want instruction. I just want to spend eight hours in my room watching YouTube clips about the thing that I want to learn, and it isn't going to be the same for everyone, so I don't even know. I don't think we can tell anyone how their children are going to learn. 

53:51 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I don't know. But what we can do is, I mean, some total of the kids that we have and unschooled kids that we have met is quite a few kids. So I think just giving little examples now and maybe in the coming episodes, of how does it look, might shed a little light for those who are beginners on how it looks. And I wanted to say that in that world, the real world before the curriculum, is also the curriculum, which is like a circular argument, but somehow that is true still that academics is part of the real world. The structured learning is something that exists and sometimes in our family someone wants to sit down and learn something in a structured academic way and then they do it. And sometimes when I talk to other unschoolers they can even question. 

55:01
Sometimes our life looks very academic, sometimes it's very nerdy, sometimes it's all about things that look like almost school not all no, I'm lying now but like for several hours a day it can look like school activity. I have one who sits down two, three hours a day right now with a math book, because it's fun, because he wants to, and is that not unschooling? Sometimes in my end in our life, unschooling and how my unschooled kids have learned looks very much like schooling, actually, but the difference is that they say, oh, I'd like to learn this, is there a way? And learning French, for example, it can be done in a thousand ways, but one of the ways and one element of learning to speak a foreign language could be to just get a good old learning book and sit down and grind some verbs and some grammar and get that under your skin so you can become a little confident constructing sentences. 

56:07
It looks like schooling. Sometimes it just looks like schooling. The difference is the relation we have to each other, the freedom the kids have, the fact that it's voluntary, the fact that I'm not coming after them if they stop doing it. So yeah, I just wanted to add that, because I think some unschoolers are a little afraid of activities that look like schooling at the kitchen table. And it's not dangerous as long as it's something the kids want. 

56:40 - Carla Martinez (Host)
For me, even if you go to a course or you look for a teacher, because I mean, my kids maybe want to learn something that I can teach them because I don't know. So I will look for someone who can teach that thing to them. For example, I will go back to the gaming. Roberto likes it a lot and we can help him to a point. But then we couldn't. So we look for like this programming course forever. So he was attending these classes till he learned what we wanted, that he was to make a server, and then he said I'm done, I will continue by myself. So he was getting bored. 

57:35
I have to ask him, like you don't like to go to the club? Because he said like several times, I don't want to go, or don't want to go and say, okay, maybe we should talk about that because it's money, so there is learning here also. Yeah. So I always say I am not a teacher, I don't have to. I mean I can explain everything the things that I know, but there are things that I don't know. I think my and I feel this also in school you are just choosing what you want to learn and you also can choose who is going to teach you or share the knowledge with you. I mean, you are choosing everything. I maybe I'm wrong, but for me this is my school life. 

58:29 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
No, I agree, it looks like that, and sometimes it looks like a teacher, and sometimes it looks like a school book, and sometimes it looks like vacation and sometimes it looks like play. It can really take many very different forms. 

58:47 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
I think what I'll go ahead. 

58:51 - Sarah Beale (Host)
Well, I was just going to say. What I imagine I would have found helpful years ago to know is how it changes as kids get older. Because I think that when you've got four-year-old or five-year-old or six-year-old and they're literally most of the time just wanting to play all day, like maybe made up role play. That's what my kids were doing when they were that age. They were playing out the back, making up games, turning the backyard into a farm. Everything was very much kind of role play based like imaginary play. They were immersed in these imaginary worlds for a really long time and then gradually things shift. So then you get used to as a parent oh, this is how they're learning right now. They're learning by practicing the relationships and navigating conflict within the context of role plays and imaginary plays, et cetera. And then maybe they're like making cakes out of play dough. 

59:56
One of the things that Violet used to love to do was make bakeries out of play dough and plasticine and she would spend hours making all of these cakes out of play dough and then she would make shelves and a counter and a cash register to all be lined up and we'd all have to go buy cakes and whatever. And then things shift and then it's like oh, now I want to make real cakes that use real ingredients that cost quite a lot of money. So then there's some adding up that comes into that. Then there's some recipes. We've got a fun recipe, so then readings employed, and then we've got to measure and we've got to design, and so that changes. So instead of, like, a five year old making cupcakes out of play dough, now you've got a six or a seven year old making real life birthday cakes for everyone out of fondant icing in 16 different colours. And then they're like they get older and then they want to do something, maybe a similar thing, but a bit more technical. 

01:00:57
They get better at reading the recipes, get more complicated. Maybe they don't want to make anything anymore for five years, maybe they go do something different. So, like the, then they get older and they maybe want to get more intentional, like what I noticed with my kids I'd say all of them actually, I didn't have any of them at six saying I want to learn a particular thing. We certainly did lots of activities, we did lots of different things, and now at 16, 13, 11 and nine, all of them at some point are saying, oh, I now want to do this thing, whether it's an intentional like, whether it's a skill or whether it's like, oh, I want to play a game, like it doesn't kind of matter, but there's a lot more intention. You know, then, that and you guys a couple of you have got adults right, and then they're probably going to be like oh, now I want to get a job, how do I go about doing that? How do I go about, like, earning money? 

01:01:55
So I guess the mechanism of learning the bit that we can't see and that we don't fully understand because everyone's different is going to be the same probably. Probably we've all got learning styles. How it looks outwardly is going to be different and they just naturally shift into these different stages and of course we're not necessarily prepared until we're there. You can't foresee that when they're six that making pegs out of Play-Doh is going to turn into something down the road much more complicated Doesn't always follow the thread that logically. Of course I don't mean that. But how learning looks at six is going to look different outwardly to how learning happens at 16, even though they're still getting frustrated about wanting to learn something, feeling internal motivation about what, whatever, the whatever's going on for them in their body. 

01:02:52
But it just looks different on the outside and I think there's a yeah, and some of the fear around a parent who's got a six year old is how are they going to learn to read or whatever? How are they going to learn maths? And, of course, with the benefit of hindsight and having been able to see all these like shifts over the years and how the intention maybe increases in intensity as they get older, I just I mean, I find it comforting to have to notice how we're able to support them through these organic shifts. It's everything's the same. Actually. It's like oh, can you make me some more colours of Play-Doh, because I don't want to just have four. Oh, can you teach me how to drive? Or how am I going to learn how to drive, which is the current thing that's going on in our family? How's that going to happen? Well, what's going on in the body is probably really similar. 

01:03:59 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think another main point I would like to just make, before we maybe should wrap it up, is it's just a good piece of advice, I believe, to chill a little bit as parents, to not be so busy. In my experience, one of the real downsides of the regular school system is we're so busy. They have to read by seven and they have to learn this by that age, and it has to happen now, and if it doesn't happen before they are done with that grade or whatever, then they will fall behind and it will all be going downhill, and really, in my experience, all these things that you would normally learn in schools, it just emerges a little bit later in their lives For some of them, for some of them actually a little bit earlier. But those more academic things, you actually don't have to break them down and exercise learning them for 10 years in order to arrive at a good point. You can also just do it in a more structured and focused and adult style way and do it in a year when you're a teenager. So what you talked about with the play, though, is well, obviously play is very important when you're six years old. That's actually the job and the things that we might fear they will never learn. 

01:05:36
In my personal experience, my older children have picked out what they find relevant to learn. That conversation has arisen at some point, walking a forest or a beach or sitting on a couch, where the child becomes self-aware that, oh, I've never been to school, which is great, but am I missing out on something? And then we have that conversation and then maybe they say but really, I think in my personal life, I think it would be a very good idea if I understood more of XYZ and they make a conscious, voluntary decision. I think it would put me in a better place in life if I could do this just on a basic level. And sometimes they dip a toe and they're like, oh, that's boring. 

01:06:36
And sometimes they dip a toe into hey wait, this is really interesting, I want to do this. And then they sit down for hours and hours every day for several months learning something in a very structured way, in a way that looks like high school, but it comes really from themselves. And several of my now adult kids are like math, I couldn't care less, I can do my life, math and that's enough. And so I think they get to pick and choose. I don't decide for them and I don't initiate that conversation, but it has come from all of them that they've had some reflection. Is there some of the academics that we would be nice to? I mean, do I want this? They think about it and then they make a decision and then they push so, but that doesn't come from a seven year old. You'll have to, as an unschooling parent, to chill. 

01:07:45 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
And I guess you'll have to chill also if that doesn't come, because none of mine have ever said anything like that remotely, it just happened. 

01:07:54 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But, maybe they said something parallel, like I want to learn to drive a car, or I want to learn to drive a car. 

01:08:00 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
Just so that no one sits around thinking, oh, it doesn't matter, because at some point they are going to themselves check whether they miss something, like do you see what I mean? Just so that I just, I think it's really, I know completely what you're saying, right, I totally understand and I agree. I just think it's very important because I see a lot of times on schools, like sort of talk about old school, and go, oh, you see, they do learn what all the others learn, it's just in a different way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just want to just, you know, just, yeah, just remind people of the fact that, yes, that will that can happen, but it can also happen that they don't. It can also happen that you get to adulthood and there are lots of stuff that they have not learned, that actually kids in school quote unquote learn, at least, are taught. They are exposed to that and, yeah, theoretically, hypothetically, they're learning, which they're not really, but blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean, right, just that it's also that is also okay. It's also okay if, because, when you, when you stand there in the beginning and you go, oh, how will they learn? 

01:09:15
I think a lot of times. That's because we're still asking the question inside that box of what they're supposed to learn, the box that you were talking about before. So the question really is how will they learn? And then what they need to, what they're supposed to learn, what I have an idea, or the society, or whatever. And if we then say, oh, but they learn it, naturally it comes, and maybe later, and blah, blah, blah, we just do need. 

01:09:40
I think we also need to say, oh, they might never learn it, they might actually never learn that, right? So, which is also okay, like that's my personal opinion. I'm not speaking for everyone, but that's, that's my. I'm at a point in my life and mine said, and whatever you want to call it, where that's okay, that's okay for me. If there's something you don't learn and maybe I'm going to be just a slightly little bit provocative to like sort of end the thing with, just so that people would be very provoked and go, what? Even if someone did not learn to read, that's perfectly fine with me too. There you go. 

01:10:24 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
No, but I agree, and I was trying to say that with my kids who say I don't care about math, I couldn't care less, fine, fine, yeah, I'm just saying, and I can only, my personal experience is that they do make some conscious decisions when they get older as to where they want to put themselves in life and if there is anything that is relevant to learn, they have strong opinions. And language, for example, because they do speak several languages and they see where that puts them so and they all four have strong opinions on that. Fine, so my kids are going to be language geeks, and I don't think everyone has to be that. But but well, this makes sense in our family and I think that reflection on what do I want, what do I need, how can I make sure I put myself in a place where I want to be? 

01:11:20
Yes, that question is just innate in the human development school or not school and unschooled children. They are just at a great place because when that question arises and it will arise several times during life they know how to handle it. They know what to do if there's something they want to learn or end or twist in their situation, and they know who to talk to, which is very often going to be their siblings and parents. They will have someone to trust. They will have a way to reach out and work with it. And well, just for the sake of the main theme of the day, how do they actually learn things? I wanted to point out that some of mine have been very structured and very academic at stages and then they totally let go of it and go do something else. It's not like they follow a curriculum and take exams. They haven't done that. Well, some of them have a little bit. Anyways, yes, it's all good and fine. If someone doesn't want to learn to read and they never learn, it's very hard, to be honest. 

01:12:42 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
I say that, but that's also. It's actually a really stupid example, but that's because people always pull out the reading thing and I like to be provocative. I agree with you, luna, but it's not going to happen. That's also. What I always say is that's not going to happen, not in our society. That's not going to happen because it's a primary tool of our culture and we've talked about that before. Obviously, at some point they're going to see the need or experience the need or be intrigued, because everyone is doing it and it's all around us. So it's not going to happen. But if it was, then yeah. 

01:13:18 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Then that person really would not have benefited from being pushed. I mean, that rare person that does not somehow absorb this ability should be left alone with that. Yeah, I agree totally. 

01:13:34 - Luna Maj Vestergaard (Host)
I mean in an unschooling context, right, Because that would mean that that's because they've learned something else and that they are doing. They are learning what they are needing and they are living their life with that knowledge instead, and that's why it's. I mean, that's ugh. No, I agree, I mean that's a whole other episode. 

01:13:58 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
You know, I think that's another episode what's important to learn? 

01:14:01 - Sarah Beale (Host)
Yeah, I mean because there's a lot of judgment. Even in an unschooling community there's so much judgment. We've probably all got these like hierarchies. If we're really honest, what are the most important things to learn? What would I be horrified if my child didn't know? And you know we get challenged all the time on that, don't we? When our children don't know the days of the week, or like they don't ever use a cupboard or a letter or full stops or like a book. 

01:14:32 - Carla Martinez (Host)
Oh we have a frozen cerebrial. 

01:14:37 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Very frozen yeah, sorry, that was me yeah. 

01:14:43 - Sarah Beale (Host)
So you know, we get invited all the time to ask these questions and get really honest. Like what is it? I mean, can you function in life without speaking four languages? Yes, you can. Oh, you're totally. 

01:14:54 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Very well. Can you function in life without, especially if one of your languages I'm going to intrude here is a language spoken by so many millions of people? Yeah, absolutely yeah, that's right, I don't actually need another language, and neither do my kids. 

01:15:09 - Sarah Beale (Host)
But if they couldn't read, I really do think that would be very I think it would be difficult navigating a life without being able to read. It's difficult in Australia to live without being able to drive a car, but in England so many people don't drive a car, it's really normal, and probably in some other European countries where people ride a bike, one of my kids can't ride a bike, doesn't have any intention to learn, doesn't care. How would he go if he lived in Amsterdam? Would he thrive in Amsterdam without being able to learn how to ride a bike? So like we get to like really play around with some kids that never played Minecraft Can you believe it? Like we get to like play around with this stuff and challenge ourselves to you about where our judgments lie about the things that people need to know how to do in order to have a good life. I don't know. I don't think there's a definitive answer. It's just very interesting to think about. But it would be a different episode. 

01:16:09 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's another episode yeah, no, I want to hear what Carla wanted to say, though. 

01:16:14 - Carla Martinez (Host)
Yes, Having this. I mean, we are privileged people having this conversation, because I was talking to David about this, exactly Like I think every person will learn what they need to learn. I think you just said this already. But I mean, if you're in this family that I don't know, work in this thing, you will learn the things you need to learn to be, to survive in your life, so you can perform yourself in a good way. So I don't know. So I think, yeah, we manage, but in this case that we have we are present parents. Oh, I lose it. 

01:17:14 - Sarah Beale (Host)
It's done that by saying how lucky we are, how privileged we are. Is that in your head? Yeah, I know. 

01:17:21 - Carla Martinez (Host)
I was thinking about that, but I don't know. I have something underneath. 

01:17:28 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's fine, we are tiring out and we are also I mean, we're pushing it way beyond the timing that we agreed on in the beginning. So maybe we should wrap it up somehow, just like every other episode. 

01:17:46 - Carla Martinez (Host)
Remember I will say something. Yeah, when the kids are little, yeah, it's very different that we already said when they grow up. So our presence, as I was saying, it's important because we are example, giving the example of how you can learn anything. I mean they are learning how to learn right. So then it happened when they are older, like your kids now saying I want to learn this. I mean, and they really think and they can learn anything. Like the other same my kids saying where do you want to go? When they say to Japan, it hasn't not exactly the same, as Luna said. 

01:18:34 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's the same. 

01:18:36 - Carla Martinez (Host)
Anything is possible for them. So once you have this self-confidence because you grow in this way yeah, so I mean, anything you want to learn, at least you can try Then everyone is different and have this is it more things or is complicated because yeah, so I'm sorry I mix, no, no no, it's great. 

01:19:05 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I mean, how does it look when unschooled children learn? It looks like people who believe they can learn. Yeah. 

01:19:17 - Carla Martinez (Host)
It looks like living. Yes, I mean it does. 

01:19:26 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I find my brain is tiring out. I don't know how to wrap it up. There is no real conclusion, but maybe this episode has made I don't know a complex mosaic of ideas into how to unschool kids learn. How does it look? How can we think about it? What will happen over the years? I hope that we have shed some light into that chaotic thing that we can't point our fingers at. Really. I mean, there's no structured answer to the question we started out with, so we're just going to have to leave it here and I will thank you for your time and your presence. It's been fun talking to you. 

01:20:07 - Sarah Beale (Host)
Thank you, thank you. Thanks ladies, thanks for listening.