Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education. This book coming to you really, really soon!

We had some difficulty coming up with the perfect cover for our book, Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education.  Shout out to Tom Raczka blanketstudio.ca for all his hard work!
Here's the final version:

















Here's the progression (various shades not shown here):

You know you want to. Unschooling.

You've heard about it. It sounds amazing: learning in freedom. Learning what YOU want to learn. learning because you LOVE it.
Unschooling, otherwise known as self-directed learning. Learning from a place that starts with being genuinely interested in a thing—because we are actually passionately moved by that thing, truly wanting to learn so that it is impossible to be be stopped.
This, balanced on the other hand with 'incidental' learning: picking up things by merely existing around them with little effort at all. There is all sorts of research supportive of the unschooling learning-style.
There's ample evidence that it works.
But can YOU do it? After all, you have to be around the kids 24/7 and don't you have to have the patience of Mother Teresa for that?
There are so many reasons why you can't do this: You don't have the money not to mention you lack the skills and education that is needed in order to educate others. You don't know anyone else who is doing it and it will feel lonely. If you're really honest with yourself, you just don't have the motivation nor the innovative mindset.
Besides, what will the neighbours say not to mention your parents, your in-laws, your brother, your hairstylist, the people at work, the cashier at the supermarket etc etc.

It's just not going to work for you. So what do you do? You keep reading about it; you secretly join unschooling groups, unschooling Facebook pages, and fantasize about one day leading the self-directed learning lifestyle with your family. And time goes by..

But the thing is, there is no way of knowing if unschooling is for you and your family until you take the plunge and begin already.

Don't be afraid to get your feet wet.

Yes, it's messy, it's non-linear, there are times, many times when you think, "What am I doing?"

Similar to the creative process or like, well, life—right?

Once you open your mind to the possibilities, to the opportunities that abound, once you make the commitment and hold on for the ride, you will find the support you need to help you.

You will get to that place of self-trust, which is better than what any list of does and don'ts can offer.

Play with me!

"Play with me," a child calls to his mother and then proceeds to demand that she play in the exact way he wants her to: "Pick up the blue one, not the purple." "You have to turn left, not right."
"Move the train around the track after  I do."
Not nice.
When you try to suggest ideas, you get turned down with a resounding "NO!"
 "This just isn't fun," you say to yourself. After all, no one wants to be bossed around by their kid.

And while we are constantly being told that we need to be playing with our kids to aid along their development as well as to enjoy tighter bonding, it is often the case that we don't know how to—nor do some of us really want to. "I've pulled out the puzzles, we've done lego and played chase and now what? I'm bored," a friend tells me.

I think about how my kids played when they were little and how I too had to play the roles assigned to me. For example, with Thomas the Tank Engine stories, I had to be the greedy capitalist, Sir. Topham Hat, extracting ever more labour from the non-unionized working trains.
Often I'd be rotten Diesel 10, running after the other little engines and causing havoc.
In Lord of the Rings, I had to be Saruman (always the bad guy, never the good person).
I understood that I was a mere character in the script to be moved around at will but I did not mind because I truly enjoyed scaring the kids and chasing them around.

Interestingly enough, the way we westerners may think of play is not necessarily how other cultures do. For instance, in some cultures and indeed, from what I understand, hunter-gather societies, kids will hang around parents and play along side the parent, usually playing (and even contributing in their own small way),  at imitating their parents working; eventually growing up to do the jobs the parents do.
In other cultures, there is no distinction between work and play..it is all one and the same with adults simply doing their work, but doing it with cheerfulness and fun.

Today, just as we make special arrangements for education, we make special arrangements for play time. So it is not surprising that to many of us, it doesn't feel natural, especially if we are not playful by nature.
I suggest not getting hung up on the word 'play' but rather pursue things you both like to do together--for instance story telling with stuffed animals and puppets was fun because I really enjoyed it.
Maybe you like fixing things; here's a way your child and you can 'play' at fixing while chatting and laughing together. No one says it has to be physical or fantasy to be play--just do things creatively and  cheerfully—that is, don't focus on correcting the child, or controlling too closely the project.
The trick is not to think of play as 'entertaining kids,' but rather authentically being in the moment.