Years ago, when we first began unschooling, I thought that to unschool properly, we had to get up each morning and take the day as it came. Do whatever we felt like at each moment without thinking too far ahead. This sounded attractive – we’re free to do whatever we like!- but we soon found ourselves drifting through our days not achieving much which was very unsatisfying. I needed to do something. I added some rhythm to our unschooling life.
You might already be perfectly happy with your days. But if you find yourself feeling frustrated because your family never seems to get around to doing all the things they were excited about when you all started unschooling together, maybe adding some rhythm will help.
So, what is rhythm? It isn’t rules and structure and scheduling every minute of the day. It’s about slotting in some regular activities that our children and we want to do. A rhythm has to fulfil the needs of everyone in the family. It has to be flexible because those needs can change over time. They might even change from hour to hour. Also, when we’re unschooling, we want to take advantage of unexpected opportunities: continue conversations, go on spur-of-the-moment adventures, accept invitations, rest because we’re tired, or follow a rabbit trail we suddenly find ourselves on.
A rhythm can’t compromise our family’s freedom to choose. It can’t limit what we do. It can’t take the adventure out of unschooling!
How do we add rhythm to our days? We could get together as a family and decide what is important to our kids and us. Do we want to exercise each morning, pray, do the chores, read books out aloud, spend time with each child, practise the piano, have outside music lessons, work on our own projects, walk the dog, meet up with friends, write in our journals?
Once we’ve decided what we want our days to look like, we can pencil in the important things in a loose kind of way. Our family has always used meal times as our anchoring points for our activities: run before breakfast, chores and prayers after breakfast, reading aloud before morning tea, helping individual children before lunch, having time for my projects after lunch, walking the dogs before afternoon coffee.
Our family’s activities might be slotted in around breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner, but this doesn’t mean that we sit down to eat together at multiple times of the day. Oh no, we aren’t that organised. Except for dinner in the evening, we’ve always prepared our own food and eaten it when we’re hungry. But usually, our paths cross in the kitchen because when we hear someone clattering pots or using the microwave, we think, “Lunchtime! I’m hungry!” Often, my girls make lunch for me. And the first person to arrive at the urn always makes coffee or tea for everyone.
When my kids were younger, piano practices were slotted in at regular times so each child knew when they could use the piano. Choir practices and other meetings were on regular evenings of the week.
A rhythm isn’t about parents getting kids to do all the things that parents consider important. It’s about everyone having the opportunity to do what’s important to them. So if we want to run before breakfast, that’s what we should do. If our kids would like to join us, they can. If they’d rather sleep late, then that’s okay too. Slotting our shared activities into our days means finding times that suit everyone. This might involve some creative thinking and compromise! And, sometimes we might have to accept that our kids aren’t interested in joining us for mutual activities.
A rhythm isn’t something established by a parent that a family lives by. It’s developed in a natural or intentional way by everyone in the family. It’s the way we want to live our lives together.
Adopting a rhythm is easier if we do a few simple preparations. Maybe we can think about the activities we’ve decided we’re going to do, the ones that are important for our family. If our kids want us to read to them, do we have our books close at hand? Do we have things to strew for those moments when someone is looking for inspiration? If our kids would like to go on more outings, do we have a list of places to visit? When we get some free time for ourselves, do we know what we’ll do? Do we need a personal strewing basket?
Of course, your family might not want to add rhythm to your days. Actually, you might say that it’s impossible to do this. And it’s true: there are times in our lives when life doesn’t fit neatly into a rhythm. When our children or we are sick, or we have a baby or toddler in the family, or we’re dealing with a crisis, we have to go with the flow. Take each day as it comes. Live life as it arrives instead of trying to impose our ideas onto it. If we accept how life is, go-with-the-flow times can be rich learning experiences of their own.
Well, that’s a few of my ideas about rhythms. I’m sure you have other ones about how we can live amazingly free lives together but still achieve all the things we’d like to do.
This post started life as one of the unschooling challenges that I sometimes post in the Stories of Unschooling Families community.
