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Take the kids out of public school one day, begin homeschooling the next day; it’s a common rookie mistake. And it seems almost impossible to change to a relaxed mindset when you jump from one stressful situation into another one. Deschooling is the first step for any new homeschool family.
Public school kids turned homeschooled kids are not the only ones that benefit from a deschooling process. Parents who’ve never sent their kids to public school need a deschooling period and need to resist the challenge of beginning public school at home.
How to Shove Back at the Rigidity of Public School
Newbies who follow a deschooling process minimize beginner’s stress and maximize the best beginner’s moments and have good memories for a lifetime.
Homeschoolers, on the other hand, who take no time to understand and implement a plan for the transitional period can set themselves up for a hard road. There are a few guidelines you’ll want to follow.
Start with the basics first. Look the definitions below and then I’m sharing the dangers and how to make this time period a delight.
Deschooling Defined – And No It’s Not Unschooling
Deschooling is a process and unschooling is a homeschool approach.
Regardless of which homeschool approach, i.e. classical, unschooling, unit studies, or Charlotte Mason you follow, deschooling is the first step.
Definitions vary, but most of them include these critical pieces of information.
Deschooling is a period of time when all family members rest both physically and mentally from a public school lifestyle. Resting is the first phase. Even if you have a child that has never attended public school, it’s about defining your understanding of what is homeschooling.
It’s the time to unlearn what you think education should be as taught from a public school mindset and to be open to new, natural, and creative ways to teach your kids.
It’s realizing that taking your kids out of school one day and doing the exact thing at home the next day that wasn’t working in public school is the definition of insanity (ouch).
It’s letting go and letting in something new in your life; it’s accepting the homeschool lifestyle which is opposite of the public school lifestyle.
It’s having humility to start over learning a new educational approach. More important, it means taking time to get to know your child unlike you have before when he was away from you for eight hours.
Moving away from focusing just on curriculum and focusing on the needs first of your family is at the core of the process.
Embracing tears and fears and excitement and eagerness all at once is the norm. It’s not just filtering and embracing raw emotions, but it’s being active in learning everything about how to homeschool.
During the deschooling process, some families take a much needed family vacation, others fill their days with trips to the museum, to the beach, to the library and try to learn another pace.
How to Determine the Length of Deschooling
What to do during the relaxation period and how long to deschool varies for each family, ages of your kids, and circumstances. One rule of thumb says that for every year the child is in public school take off a month.
That may seem excessive to some, but my experience has been it’s pretty close.
During the deschooling period, it does not mean a family is not learning. It does mean they’re learning in a relaxed pace set to the rhythm of the family.
It doesn’t mean rigidity; it does mean routine. Throwing all caution to the wind is not the purpose of deschooling.
In helping many new homeschoolers to transition to the homeschool lifestyle, I know that older children feel more comfortable with a routine pretty quickly. Just don’t saddle them with many worksheets and subjects while you’re investigating together what they want to learn.
A transitional period requires time to allow each member of the family time to unlearn old ways of learning and focus on the interests of each kid.
This also includes you. Stepping back and analyzing what type of teacher you want to be and assessing what are the current needs of each child takes time and you have it.
Part of the deschooling process is not feeling hurried to keep pace of public school to begin in August and end in May.
Many states have relaxed homeschool laws and you have time to start up your school year. Too, as you’ll learn, most homeschool families have a formal start and stop to their year, but we also know that learning takes place naturally pretty well everyday. There are many opportunities to learn that don’t have to be scheduled.
The longer the child has been in public school, the longer it takes.
It’s true too that sometimes it’s harder to take the public school mentality out of the parents than it is to take it out of the kids. Like any other significant change in your life, a job change, adding a newborn to your family, or moving, you can’t fast forward the deschooling or adjustment period. It takes time.
Activities for a Meaningful Deschooling Period
How active or not a family is when they’ve stepped off the public school treadmill varies according to each circumstance.
If your child has been bullied and you’ve fought daily for him at school, you’ll want more time at home healing and being together. If you have a young child that has not been in public school too long, but long enough to be bored, you may want to find local classes for him to join.
Like I mentioned before, deschooling is a relaxed pace or process and it doesn’t mean a state of nothingness. You want to take back the control of teaching and start by feeding your children’s desire to learn subjects or do activities that interests them.
Rekindle the spark of learning and that doesn’t happen by throwing a workbook at a kid or putting them in front of a computer. It just doesn’t.
Kids need you, they need their family, and they need to take ownership of their learning. Start by asking them what they want to learn. Then, research it on the computer or go to the library – together.
Field trips, zoos, living history reenactments, and museums have a way of igniting that dwindling spark.
Activities don’t have to be expensive. A walk on the beach, a trip the local nature reserve, camping together as a family, taking an art class together, taking a cooking class, going to the movies, trips to the library, lounging around reading stories that interests your children, craft time, and park time are just a very few possibilities all now opened to your family.
When Are You Finally Cured of the Public School Mindset?
There is probably not a time that you won’t think about public school because we’re infected by the educational madness and unbalanced view of how much time it really takes to teach a child.
But there does come a time when you see all family members naturally putting their needs and wants for learning ahead of popular opinion on what a child needs to learn.
We all know kids need the three Rs – reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Beyond the core subjects, the rest of what we learn and how we learn it is subjective.
To illustrate: A relaxed homeschool educator knows that learning how to write (a core subject) mixed with reading a history story or doing a hands-on science activity (the fun subjects) makes learning meaningful.
While the core subjects are absolutely essential, it’s valuable to teach them only to the extent they’re practical, useful, and make learning come alive.
When that method for teaching a child is followed year after year, you win over your child as a partner to his learning.
Instead of being passive learners, they’re an active participant in it. Therein lies the subtle, but significant difference between spoon feeding a child to high school ( not recommended and won’t work) and gently guiding your child’s love for learning.
Are You Bulldozing Ahead to Deschooling Danger?
Most all homeschool families have and want rigorous academic standards, but not all of them have abandoned the archaic ways of the past like torture and confinement. Just kidding, although some days I wonder when I read how parents charge ahead to purchase curriculum as if curriculum infuses what was lost at public school.
Curriculum is just one piece of the homeschooling puzzle.
It’s so much easier throwing a workbook at your child than it is to jump in and determine the best learning approach for him, the best schedule, and how to determine the order of the subjects. I’m not saying we can’t start by using workbooks, but it has to be a tool and not the teacher.
Jumping from one stressful situation in public school to another stressful situation at home equals a great big ole’ heap of unneeded stress.
It’s not a waste of time to step back, relax, and read about homeschooling while learning together.
Deschooling Resources
Look at some of these resources that will help you to deschool.
- My free 31 Day Boot Camp on my blog for New Homeschoolers.
- Be sure you know the law of your area and are not homeschooling or choosing curriculum in fear and ignorance. How I can count the ways that a new homeschooler thought she wanted teacher help and grading from a provider to only regret it later. Click here on HSLDA and click on the map to find your state.
- Don’t forget to join my private facebook group with other homeschoolers to get more ideas on how to deschool.
- Grab this guide, Deschooling Gently, as a guide to beginning your deschooling journey.
- The Unhurried Homeschooler: A Simple, Mercifully Short Book on Homeschooling reminds you to not forget the reasons that brought you to homeschooling.
- Real Homeschool: Letting Go of the Pinterest-Perfect and Instagram-Ideal Homeschool is about keeping it real from the beginning.
- Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler’s Guide to Unshakable Peace reminds you to start from a point of peace.
- Staying Sane as You Homeschool (Learn Differently).
- Homeschool Helps. Curriculum that worked for me.
- For the Children’s Sake is a reminder of the joy, freedom, and beauty possible in life and learning.
If you’ll thoroughly grasp the homeschool laws of where you live, fold in family activities that suit your family, begin slowly, read everything you can read while you start slow, you’ll avoid a unrecoverable crash and burn.
Telling you that you won’t have problems or burn out is untruthful.
I’m telling you that you’ll need many times to come back to deschooling to get readjusted and then your journey will be memorable for the right reasons.Do you have any questions about deschooling?
Also, you’ll love these other helps:
- Deschool – Get off the Public School Treadmill!
- Day 3: What is Not Homeschooling! {31 Day Blog Boot Camp For New Homeschoolers}
- Transitioning from a Public School Mindset to a Relaxed Homeschooling Lifestyle
- Homeschooling for the Love of Learning – Does It Really Work?
Hugs and love ya,
