[Podcast #361] Growing Wild with Ainsley Arment

Brave Writer Podcast

What if the best thing we can give our kids isn’t a perfectly planned education, but a childhood that leaves room for wonder?

Wild + Free founder Ainsley Arment joins us on the Brave Writer podcast to talk about her new picture book, Grow Wild, My Child, and the philosophy behind a childhood rooted in nature, curiosity, story, and play. We explore Ainsley’s unexpected path to homeschooling, the origins of Wild + Free, and why wonder and rigor don’t have to compete.

Ainsley Arment
Ainsley Arment

We also dig into screens, AI, child-led learning, family culture, and the joy of following “contagious obsessions” wherever they lead.

Join us for a refreshing reminder that learning doesn’t need a worksheet to count.

Show Notes

What Can We Give Our Kids Because They’re Home?

It’s easy to approach homeschooling by asking what we need to cover. Which curriculum? How much math? Which history program? How many pages should we finish?

There’s another question worth asking: What can we give our kids because they’re home?

That question opens up an entirely different vision of education.

Ainsley Arment, founder of Wild + Free and author of Grow Wild, My Child, describes “wild” childhood not as chaotic or unruly, but as fully alive. It’s a childhood with room for nature, story, wonder, curiosity, and play.

Those things don’t compete with learning. They help give learning its life.

Wonder and Rigor Belong Together

Homeschoolers can get trapped in false choices.

Are we child-led or parent-directed? Do we prioritize play or academics? Are we following curiosity or doing rigorous work?

We don’t have to choose.

Children can spend hours outside and learn math. They can pursue an obsession and still practice difficult skills. Parents can introduce subjects and set expectations while remaining alert to the interests bubbling up from their children.

The goal isn’t to abandon rigor. It’s to stop assuming that rigor only happens when learning looks like school.

Sometimes an education begins with a musical.

Ainsley’s family became collectively obsessed with Hamilton after one of her sons introduced it to them. Soon they were quoting lyrics, investigating the American Revolution, and asking which parts of the story were historically accurate.

Nobody needed to make a Hamilton worksheet.

The curiosity was already doing its work.

Build a Family Culture of Learning

Our children also need our curiosity.

Kids enter the world without knowing what possibilities exist. We bring them books, music, art, science, nature, history, movies, places, and people. We expose them to what delights us, and they expose us to what delights them.

Over time, those interests become part of a family culture.

That culture won’t look the same in every home. One family may live and breathe Shakespeare and poetry. Another may be building things in the backyard, studying fish, or experimenting with electronics.

Our children do not need us to reproduce somebody else’s homeschool.

They need access to the particular richness of their own family.

Childhood Is Valuable Now

This becomes especially important when we think about screens and AI. Children are growing up surrounded by technologies that ask them to manage distractions even adults struggle to resist.

We can give them something else too: unhurried time. Books. Nature. Making things with their hands. Long conversations. Boredom. Play. The chance to develop a skill before a machine offers to perform it for them.

And we don’t have to justify those choices by pointing to the adults our children eventually become.

A childhood filled with wonder isn’t worthwhile only if it produces a particular college acceptance, career, or accomplishment.

Childhood has value while it is happening.

So follow the rabbit trail. Read the book. Go outside. Investigate the strange question that has suddenly captivated everyone at dinner.

Here’s to more contagious obsessions.

Resources

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Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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