Archive for the ‘Podcasts’ Category

Podcast: Keep All Options on the Table

Brave Writer Podcast

There is a difference between having a joyful vision of family life that includes opportunities for growth and learning and love versus a specific vision you feel you must protect in order to think you are successful.

In our last Brave Writer podcast episode, I explored the difference between setting boundaries and setting rules. I want to continue that conversation because there is so much to tease apart between the two.

Show Notes

Part of what makes setting boundaries so difficult is the sense of responsibility parents or caregivers have over their children: responsibility to create a healthy environment, to ensure a solid education – whether at home or at school, and to provide food and a safe place to live. But, in the midst of all of those responsibilities, we can sometimes substitute a personal agenda or dream in its place.

The only way to have a beautiful outcome in your family is to keep all options on the table at all times.

You can make a philosophical choice, but you need to back up that choice by understanding that if that choice no longer serves you or that child, you can look at the other options on the table.

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Podcast: Setting Boundaries, Not Setting Rules

Brave Writer Podcast

Welcome to the first episode of a new segment I’m calling “Julie Pep Talks,” where I narrow in on one particular topic and give you my thoughts about it and suggestions you can quickly put into practice. Today’s topic is all about setting boundaries, not setting rules.

At the start of a new year, we’re often coming from the combined high of family gatherings, as well as the residual resentment that can come when your closest relatives push your buttons in all the wrong ways. Couple that with the cultural expectation to reform our lives in the form of new year’s resolutions of the year and it makes sense that we’d look at our mental welfare and engage in some relationship hygiene. That means setting the boundaries necessary to have a good relationship with the people in your life.

Let’s explore what it actually means to set boundaries, and why, sometimes, what you think is a boundary is actually a rule. The distinction matters.

Show Notes

There is a famous quote from the book Codependent No More by Melody Beattie that says, “You cannot set a boundary and take care of someone’s feelings at the same time.” What I’ve seen happen in the name of boundaries is often just more sophisticated, codependent behavior and manipulation. There’s a temptation to pretend we’re setting a boundary when we’re actually setting a rule. A rule is meant to enforce the behavior of others, while a boundary is meant to protect your own emotional energy.

When dealing with behavior you don’t approve of in others, you have a few options available:

  • pretend there isn’t a problem and cooperate,
  • set personal boundaries,
  • or set rules.

Rules are about what other people do, but we have no control over the behavior of others.

Imagine dealing with an alcoholic. You can set the rule that you do not allow alcohol in your house, but that relies on the other person to follow that rule and adhere to it. Instead, you could set the boundary that you will not buy alcohol for them. That’s something that you have complete control over.

It’s hard to set boundaries because we often feel as if we are losing something: a relationship, control, revenue, respect, or something else. How does this apply to homeschooling? Think about the child who doesn’t want to learn math. You can set a boundary that, if you’re going to help with schoolwork, then they need to have a good attitude, follow through, and do the work. But that’s actually a rule – and it’s one that you’ll have to enforce because the child is really the one in control. 

So what do you do instead? Your boundary could be that, when you show up positive and motivated to give your child a good learning experience, and they show up without a good attitude, you can get up from that table and walk away. It’s not about their performance but the kind of life you want to live.

A boundary is not about the other person. It is about what you need to ensure your emotional wellbeing. Think about how you are being codependent in your relationship with your child, and how you can set boundaries that protect your own mental health.

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Introducing Teens to Unschooling Liberation with Grace Llewellyn

Brave Writer Podcast

This week on the podcast, we connect with Grace Llewellyn, a staple of the unschooling community who shaped my own homeschooling approach. 

She taught for three years before leaving the profession to write a classic in the unschooling world: The Teenage Liberation Handbook. The book was published in 1991, when she was only 26 years old, and has been thoroughly updated and re-released for it’s 30th anniversary in 2021. In 1996, Grace founded Not Back to School Camp to bring together unschooled teenagers and it’s still bringing joy around the world, today.

Grace Llewellyn

After her time in the traditional school system – at a wonderful private school in Colorado – she came to the point where she felt she had seen and experienced too much to ethically continue teaching. She discovered the world of unschooling and quickly realized that it was unfair to rely on parents to introduce their kids to the methodology. She knew what she had to do.

We talk about:

  • the expectations that come with unschooling,
  • addressing fears parents may have,
  • and the joys of dabbling.

Show Notes

Unschooling can lead to lofty expectations. While the principles suggest that kids will be naturally guided to learn what they are most interested in, as parents, the approach can lead us to worry about a well-rounded education, or seeing what others are doing and feeling jealous of their progress. That’s a hard feeling to disauge, but it’s important to remember that kids don’t need to have a passion. Kids can be dabblers. Adults can be dabblers! There’s no one vision of success, which is the exact reason unschooling rejects the traditional school system.

For parents that have hesitations about unschooling – about getting a job or going to college – there are decades worth of data showing that this is not an issue for most children. The other common worry is built on failure. But, failure is a part of being human, and part of unschooling is finding a way to learn lessons from failures by making sense of them.

In the newly released 30th Anniversary edition of The Teenage Liberation Handbook, Grace worked with a past guest of the podcast, Blake Boles, to create a version of the book that holds up even stronger today. What started as a quick, streamlined version quickly became a project requiring hundreds of hours of research. It’s a wonderful resource for anyone interested in easing their teen into unschooling, or for parents who want a different perspective on homeschooling.

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Podcast: The Learning Benefits of Travel & Taking Big Risks with Blake Boles

Brave Writer Podcast

This podcast interview did not go the way I expected – in the most delightful way imaginable. We wound up discussing the power of travel in a teen’s life! Super fun.

Blake Boles is the Founder and Director of Unschool Adventures, and he’s written several helpful books including his most recent title, “Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?” He also hosts the Off-Trail Learning podcast and has delivered dozens of presentations for education conferences, alternative schools, and parent groups.

Studying astrophysics at UC Berkeley in 2013, he stumbled upon the works of John Taylor Gatto, Grace Llewellyn, and other alternative education pioneers. Deeply inspired by the philosophy of unschooling, Blake custom-designed his final two years of college to focus exclusively on education theory. After graduating, he joined the Not Back to School Camp community and began writing and speaking widely on the subject of self-directed learning. 

His biggest passion is sharing his enthusiasm and experience with young adults who are blazing their own trails through life.

Show Notes

The Bohemian Travel Lifestyle

Blake grew up with some great early travel experience, living with a family in Chile for a month at fourteen years old, traveling across Europe with friends at 19, organizing snowboarding trips in British Columbia during college, and taking a transformative trip to South America at 25. Those experiences seeded a love of travel within him, which eventually grew into his founding of Unschool Adventures.

He believes that the most formative and powerful travel experiences are the ones we handle alone or with a few friends, so he tries not to set everything up for the teens he works with. He gives them the space and time to explore, discover, and make mistakes. He makes sure they come home safe, but there will be struggles along the way – and that’s an important part of the experience.

Unschooling vs. the Traditional Learning Environment

When you’re first pushing back against a system that’s being forced upon you, it’s natural to be dogmatic. Over the years, however, Blake has managed to find a good balance between encouraging people to question the traditional school experience without forcing them to believe that homeschooling or unschooling are inherently better.

Traditional school does work for some kids at least some of the time. For some, it can be frustrating, boring, or unengaging. And for those kids, there are several different options, such as going to community college and engaging in academics at an earlier age, or for some it can mean unschooling – full time, self-directed learning, or alternative schools.

The question, “Why are you still sending your kids to school?” is not meant to be rhetorical, but a question to actively engage in. Question why you are sending your kid to school, know the alternatives, and run small experiments to find out what works best for your child.

Getting Comfortable with Risk

It’s one thing to prepare our kids to be comfortable with risk. But how do we, as parents, get more comfortable with exposing our kids to risk? We have to find ways to engage in risk that we are comfortable with, whether that’s letting our kids skateboard or play video games or something else that gives them a world of their own, with choices to make.

We have to push our threshold to the limit and let our teens explore as much as we are comfortable with. Sure, there are certain risks that aren’t worth taking. But coddling our teens and not allowing them to make mistakes will only hurt their learning in the long run.

Travel is a great tool for getting comfortable with risk while opening yourself up to productive forms of it – for both parents and teens. Being willing to step away from what’s convenient and comfortable to take on big challenges is the ultimate goal.

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Podcast: The Culture of Parenting, Marriage & the Mamasphere with Anne Helen Petersen

Podcast Anne Helen Petersen

The hardest part of being a homeschooling parent in this era is the pressure of being caught smack dab in the middle of idealism and the Mamasphere.

Anne Helen Petersen writes the substack newsletter Culture Study, which I’ve followed for quite some time. She’s a cultural commentator and journalist, and is the author of four books, most recently Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home, which comes out in December 2021.

We discuss the influence of the Mamasphere and why mothers trust the advice of other moms over experts or professionals. We also delve into the topic of divorce and the concept of Red and Blue Marriage, sharing examples from my life as well as Anne’s.

Show Notes

The Influence of the Mamasphere

Interestingly enough, Momfluencers – or mom influencers – are garnering more attention and, well, influence, than political pundits or even scientists. The idea of what good parenting looks like is constantly evolving, and so much of that is swayed by Instagram and other social media platforms. 

Part of that is due to an interesting dichotomy: Moms value the knowledge and expertise of other moms, but that knowledge is culturally devalued. That makes it hard to legitimize that information, and makes mothers more willing to trust other mothers instead of experts or professionals. We explore this phenomenon, why it exists, and what we can do about it culturally.

Red and Blue Marriage and the Disruption of the Nuclear Family

Instagram has become the PR firm for the nuclear family. The extra sheen of gloss makes the traditional family model seem far more perfect than it actually is. Many people in my generation grew up under that idea as well – that the nuclear family model was the way to raise a family. Anne wrote an article about the concept of Red and Blue Marriage, terminology coined by legal scholars June Carbone and Naomi Cahn.

What began to happen when the children of parents married or divorced in the 70s or 80s is a divide between the views of marriage. Children of divorced parents tend to wait longer and get married with intention. And this begins to diverge when you look at income rates, where the middle class is getting married later and staying married longer, while lower income families see the divorce rate go up – or they don’t get married at all.

Anne and Julie discuss the way these views impact today’s home educators, and in fact, women everywhere.

For more deep thoughts like this on parenting, marriage, education, and more, be sure to subscribe to Anne’s Substack, Culture Study.

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