All Stories

My beautician and I have thought-provoking conversations. Yesterday, while Bonnie was taming and tinting my ageing eyebrows, making them look fierce, we chatted about time. We started with photography and how phones have simplified the process of capturing images. After buying an iPhone 15 Pro ...

It’s mid-summer, and our days are sticky-hot and stormy. I feel like descending our bush-covered mountain and heading for the coast. “Perhaps we could find a dog-friendly holiday house at the beach,” I tell my husband Andy. I imagine standing in the ocean, waves rolling ...

Driving past a cafe in town, I spied a blue racing car. “I need a photo of the car to send to Callum!” I cried. So Andy turned the car around and headed back to the cafe. As we parked the car, my husband said, ...

I choose the photos I share online with care, looking for ones with good, flattering light. I also need my photo smile to be just right. Sometimes, my smile looks a bit goofy because of my overbite. I reject these images, wanting to hide my ...

Our fluid intelligence - our ability to focus and problem solve - will inevitably decline as we age. Listening to Arthur C. Brooks say this during a YouTube interview, I instantly protested, “No!” What if I keep my brain active by playing lots of video ...

What comes to mind when someone mentions nature studies, famous artists, or living books? Charlotte Mason? What about classical novels, The Great Books or Latin? Classical education? Do you think about unit studies when you hear someone is exploring a topic in many different ways? ...

Sometimes, invitations aren’t genuine invitations. They might sound like proper invitations. We say the right words, “Would you like to…?” but expect a particular response that doesn’t include the right to decline. Then, some invitations are issued without a personal touch. We wonder, “Does it ...

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Isn’t it wonderful to receive an invitation? Someone has chosen us! There are all kinds of invitations, from coffee dates to weddings. I love hearing, “Mum, would you like to meet up for lunch with me?” Sometimes, we eagerly accept an invitation: “Lunch sounds good! ...

A sign at our local nursery recommends purchasing native plants like wattles, bottlebrushes, waratahs, and hakeas for our gardens because we live so close to the Australian bush. Everyone in our village seems to have ignored this advice. Each front garden on our road has ...

People often have favourite breeds of dogs, don’t they? Maybe they love greyhounds like a couple living in a nearby town who dress their trio of thin dogs in bright-striped pyjamas to keep them warm on below-zero days. Or they might be dachshund people like ...

I used to think the defining word of unschooling was freedom. Freedom attracted me. I wanted to be free to do whatever I liked. I wanted to get up each day and do anything or nothing at all. But I soon realised there’s a problem ...

Andy and I take Nora and Quinn to the vet for their annual checkups. We wonder if our dogs are the correct weight for their size. Are their coats clean and shiny? Do they look happy and well cared for? The vet says our pets ...

Strolling through the bush on a spring afternoon, sunscreen on my bare arms, a dog on a leash, I round a bend in a track and almost trip over a writhing venomous brown snake. With my heart beating fast, I jump, tighten my hold on ...

Amina lowers her voice. "I don't like to admit this, but one day I said, 'Harry, can't you do as I want for once? Can't you be nice to me just for one day?' Harry looked confused. Be nice to me? I don't think he ...

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Do you ever feel like taking a course, reading a textbook, or following someone else’s instructions to learn something? Do you want someone to say, “Follow my plan, and when you get to the end, you’ll know how to bake bread, fix a car, understand ...

I got together with a few friends, and while we were sitting around the table sipping tea, our conversation turned towards kids, screens, and the Internet, a popular topic. Someone told us about a doctor who advocated having no technology in the family home because ...

I spend months updating my first children’s novel, The Angels of Abbey Creek. I revise the words, check the punctuation and grammar, add a new image to each chapter, and create a fresh eye-catching cover. Eventually, I reach the finish line: I have a file ...

The other day, someone asked, “When you had younger children, how did you encourage them to say thank you?” My first response was, “I can’t remember.” It’s strange: we realise our kids learnt the necessary social skills, but looking back, we can’t work out how ...

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I’ve written three unschooling books. I focused on the educational side of unschooling in Curious Unschoolers. I extended the unschooling story in Radical Unschool Love by sharing parenting thoughts and stories. And I offered practical suggestions for turning all those interesting unschooling ideas into something ...

Sometimes, we wake up in the morning and want to know exactly how we’ll spend the day. We’d like someone to say, “This is what you need to do today,” and lay out a plan for us. Perhaps we’re too tired, distracted or unsure about ...

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When I look at family photos from a few years ago, I remember those chaotic and messy days when I was at the centre of my children’s lives. I felt like those days would last forever. Sometimes, that was good: I wanted to stay firmly ...

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The other day, I stumbled across a 'hilarious' radical unschooling collection on someone’s blog, and there was the graphic for my post When Rules for Teenagers Aren't Necessary. People online were laughing at me. Now, I'm not surprised when others think my ideas and opinions ...

When I ask my husband, Andy, what he wants to do to celebrate his birthday, he replies, "Let's go on a picnic." It's winter. An icy wind has been blowing for days. It's not ideal picnic weather, but does that matter? No. We'll be brave ...

Everyone has a story to share. Everyone is interesting. Unschoolers and hosts of the Self Directed podcast, Jesper and Cecilie Conrad, roam the world seeing spectacular sights, but the real heart of their travels is the people they meet. As Cecilie says, "People are the ...

Strolling between the gum trees on a winter's morning with Nora and Quinn, my fingers painful with the cold, I meet Matilda. I smile and stop. So do my dogs. They thrust their grinning heads into the undergrowth, happy to sniff up all the smells ...

I've been watching Inspector Morse, an old TV series, starring John Thaw. My dad was a great Morse fan. I contributed to his Morse DVD collection, buying him a new series for some of his birthdays. I knew my dad enjoyed this crime series but ...

I've just updated my blog. I started at the first post I ever wrote and then worked my way through 14 years of stories, reading each one before deciding whether to keep it or revert it to draft. I then checked the formatting of the ...

What do we do if a child refuses to brush her teeth? What if our kids choose not to wash their hair or shower their bodies? Personal hygiene is important, isn’t it? Without self care, our kids might develop cavities. They could end up not ...

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Every time I celebrate a birthday, going up a number, I ponder ageing anew. How do I feel about getting older? Am I reluctant to admit my age? Or am I grateful to be who I am at the age I've reached? I once saw ...

Cecilie and Jesper Conrad invited me to be part of their Self Directed podcast, so I met them online, via Zoom, and I had a fabulous time recording episode 65 with them. After the interview, one of my daughters said, “How did it go, Mum?” ...

I was 58 on Christmas Day, 2019. If you do some real-life maths, you’ll soon work out how old I am today. There have been times when I haven't wanted to admit my age and wished to appear younger than I am. Why? Did I ...

Remember how I was talking about pushing ourselves to do things outside our comfort zones? Well, I almost said no the first time someone invited me to discuss unschooling on their podcast because I didn't want to put myself in an unfamiliar and possibly uncomfortable ...

Often, we push our kids to try new things, don't we? We want them to be adventurous. We say, "If you give it a go, you might discover you like it. You might be good at it.' But what about ourselves? Are we willing to ...

It’s been a while, but I’m back with a new podcast episode! My author daughter Imogen is back too. In episode 205 of my Stories of an Unschooling Family podcast, we’re chatting about: Writing and how Imogen is promoting and selling her YA novels Collaboration ...

Did you hear the story of the photographer who visited the Grand Canyon and took millions of photos of the awe-inspiring sights, and then later realised that he hadn't seen a thing despite having his eye glued to his viewfinder the whole time? He retraced ...

A few days ago, when I arrived at my weekly parish women’s group meeting, I greeted my friend Anabelle, and the first thing she said was: “What do you do to your eyebrows?” My brows? Oh no, did they look bad? I gulped before saying, ...

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To read this post, enter the password below. Password: If you'd like to make a small Buy Me a Coffee donation to support my blog, I'll send you the password to access all my protected posts ...

To read this post, enter the password below. Password: If you'd like to make a small Buy Me a Coffee donation to support my blog, I'll send you the password to access all my protected posts ...

Poppy died, and I cried despite not liking the cat. Poppy was a grumpy animal. She was messy and unkempt, preferring not to groom herself. An unpleasant odour followed her wherever she went. We bathed the cat, clipped her long fur, and sprinkled deodoriser all ...

There are so many things we could fear. We might be too afraid to send our kids to school if we listen to the loud voices telling us how bad traditional education is. We might choose homeschooling because of that fear. If we decide to ...

Lying in bed, trying to conquer insomnia, I noticed bright intermittent flashes of light illuminating the night sky. I slid from under the quilt, padded to the living room, and peered out the window, trying to locate the source of the light. White, blue, and ...

Quinn barked, alerting me to the policeman striding along the path towards our house. After securing the dog, I opened the front door, my heart racing, my hands shaking, thinking, “The police only make house calls when they’ve bad news to share.” “Have you seen ...

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