Can photos reflect the beauty of an unschooling life?
We could post loads of pictures of smiling kids involved with impressive activities or running wild and free, surrounded by the spectacular beauty of nature. How about sharing photos of the stunning places where we live? Or visit? The campervans, the rustic cottages, the self-sufficient farms, the yurts, the attractive bits of our more conventional homes, the piles of interesting books and other resources?
We could share eye-catching images that might convince everyone that our lives are indeed beautiful, maybe even perfect.
But can photos adequately tell the story of an unschooling life? Or do they capture only the surface beauty of our days? Could they miss the deeper and more significant beauty of this way of life?
What about the beauty associated with the times…
When we forgive instantly, saying to our kids, “It’s not a big deal”, adding the words, “We all make mistakes”?
When we feel deep gratitude for our family’s forgiveness and, because of it, yearn to be the best parent and spouse possible?
When we refuse to withdraw our love to make our kids feel bad and influence their behaviour?
When we ignore the opinions and expectations of people from outside our family and, instead, listen to our kids and their needs?
When we allow space for God to speak to our kids instead of trying to impose our own ideas upon them?
When we don’t crush our kids’ dreams and value the things that are important to them?
When we refuse to force facts into our kids using such things as rewards, punishments and shame because we’re worried about them getting behind?
When we trust our children are learning exactly what they need to know right now?
When we refuse to worry about the future and don’t make our kids do things ‘just in case’?
When we focus on today, extracting every drop of joy possible, making sure our kids know how much we love and enjoy being their parents?
When we face difficulties together as a family, loving and supporting each other?
When we allow our kids to express their opinions, and listen to them so that they discover who they are and what they believe?
When we accept our kids exactly as they are with all their delights, quirks and individual interests and talents instead of trying to turn them into the people we think they should be?
When we realise we’re changing and are a step closer to becoming the people we were created to be?
When we discover it’s not too late to learn anything and set out on new adventures of our own?
When we experience that overwhelming love and sense of awe that grips our hearts as we look at our kids and feel thankful that we are their parents?
When we feel gratitude for the freedom and trust that allows us to live this beautiful way of life?
When we…?
What would you add?
Our photos can capture a lot, but do they fail to share the deeper beauty of living a radical life of unconditional love? Perhaps we need to experience unschooling for ourselves before we can appreciate the whole beautiful story.
What do you think?
Photos
The beautiful place where my daughter Charlotte works.
Book
I often describe radical unschooling as something beautiful. If you’d like to know more about this way of life, why not check out my book, Radical Unschool Love. There’s an updated edition available now on Amazon!
I hope the pictures aren’t important to prove our value as homeschoolers because I almost never have pictures to share of our homeschooling journey. So much of what we do doesn’t photograph. LOL! I think it’s because we are a watching, doing, conversing homebody family that doesn’t “do” photo-worthy “stuff”. I see all the photos other people share and often feel like my sharing of our homeschooling is sorely lacking. But it is what it is.
Thank you for the post.
Sallie
Sallie,
Hello!
These days, I don’t have many interesting photos to share either. Most of the photos I take of my adult kids involve cafes and coffee cups!
‘watching, doing, conversing…’ oh yes! Years ago, when my kids were registered homeschoolers, they also did things that weren’t good photo opportunities. All my photos of them playing the piano or reading books or cooking favourite recipes or even going on picnics to familiar places began to look the same. Isn’t it a shame that we can’t take photos of the fabulous conversations we enjoy or the joy of sharing a book or a movie?
I used to have this vague unsettled feeling: was I taking photos to impress other people rather than to capture beautiful memories of my kids? I eventually realised that while I was looking for photos for social media and my blog, I was missing out on the experience I was so keen to photograph.
It’s always such a delight connecting with you, Sallie. Thank you so much for stopping by!
A very interesting point, i take huge amounts of pictures of what we do as I still have to provide evidence for my state. This morning I was looking through them all over our whole journey and even though a lot of the pictures I took are essentially to try and prove to someone else that I’m doing a good job, I love them because they give such a nice record of so many things we’ve done and that’s nice for me, especially if I’m worrying about what we are or are not doing so I’m glad I took them anyway. There’s so much we can’t capture though all those lovely moments and conversations. And i never take photos of any of the bad times or any of the times I feel I’ve done the wrong thing so it’s definitely a skewed picture
willcress,
I also took a huge amount of photos for record keeping purposes. Bake a cake and take a photo. Draw a picture and take a photo. Play the piano and take a photo… I was always picking up my phone and snapping pictures throughout our days. They were my necessary photos that I put in my records book to prove my kids were learning. I shared them only with the homeschool people.
The photos I had problems with were my social media and blog ones. I tested the patience of my kids by interrupting a fun outing to take loads of photos. But, as you said, it is good to look back on those photos. They are a record of our days together and I enjoy the memories. Maybe we just need to find a good balance between photography and immersing ourselves in the experience? Take a few photos and then put our cameras away?
Bad times… I haven’t got any photos of them either. I don’t really want to remember those difficult days!
Do you jot down notes about your conversations? Note making is much more time consuming than snapping photos, but it is good to read old conversations and enjoy them all over again.
Thank you so much for stopping by. I’ve enjoyed chatting with you!
Yes I have a web site log, a conversation log, a book log and a video log to record as well as the standard documentation.i also take photos to send home to my family who live overseas. I stay away a lot from social media as I know I would get too obsessed attempting to justify my life to everyone else exactly as you say with photos so as much as I can I try to do stuff that I don’t take photos of and just enjoy certain moments just for us and they are the more precious ones. Thank you I’ve enjoyed chatting to you to x
willcress,
Oh yes, it’s good to take photos to share with family. I love how you do that. I bet your family overseas appreciates the photos you send to them. A lot of people seem to have social media accounts to keep their friends and family updated with their news, but I think emailing or even printing photos and posting them is so much more personal.
We’re not big social media people either. A few of my kids have accounts but rarely post anything. One daughter has never had an account of any kind. She’s just not interested. I keep creating and then deleting my social media accounts! At the moment, I’m on IG, but I’m not entirely happy about that. I feel as if I’ve joined the millions of people who are all saying, “Look at me and my kids!” or “Listen to me!” We’re all shouting and trying to persuade others we have the right answers or the perfect family or… I sometimes just want to disappear from the Internet and leave those feelings of competition and justification behind.
I hope you’re enjoying the weekend! Sue