How to Unschool During the Baby Seasons of Life: The Magic Answer

Maybe most people think of me as an older unschooler blogger because, at the moment, I’m surrounded by unschooling teens and young adults. I’m also older in age!

But, of course, my children were once babies and toddlers and younger unschoolers. I remember those hectic days of trying to unschool some children while, at the same time, trying to see to the needs of the smallest members of our family. Like many parents, I searched for the magic answer to this question: how can we fit babies and toddlers into our unschooling life? How can we keep up with everything we feel we need to do?

After parenting seven children, I can confidently announce that, unfortunately, there’s no magic solution. We can’t carry on our lives as normal. We can’t do all our usual activities. Instead, we have to adjust during the baby seasons of our lives. If we don’t, our family life will fall apart.

So, there’s no magic answer, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any magic. Oh no! What can be more magical than mischievous toddler grins or the softness of delicate baby skin? Or the way our little people love us unconditionally? We are their whole world! Or how our toddlers run to us and no one else whenever they can’t cope? They trust us! Yes, babies and toddlers touch our lives in their unique precious way. They give us an abundance of delights. We just need to slow down so we notice these blessings. We need to soak them up while we can. Yes, these delights won’t last forever.

No, the baby seasons might seem endless, but they’re not. They’re just a blink of an eye in the whole scheme of things.

But even a blink might seem too long as far as unschooling goes. Surely we can’t sit around waiting for our babies to grow before resuming our learning?

If we think of unschooling as learning from everything in our lives, during the baby seasons, we’ll have no shortage of opportunities to grow in knowledge. Learning will happen even if we’re busy with babies. With a bit of creative thinking, we can find ways of doing things we enjoy that include our little ones or we can encourage some independent learning.

During baby seasons, we’ll also learn about such things as love and self-sacrifice. Our babies will teach us how to pull together, be kind and considerate, how to help one another. We’ll learn about the important things of life.

So, how do we get through the baby seasons of life?

We look for the delights. We help each other. We think creatively. We recognise that these times give us unique learning experiences. We trust.

We relax knowing that we are meeting everyone’s needs even if life looks different.

And we soak up the magic while we can because life will be back to normal far too soon!