Unschooling: Absorbed

Many of us have a hard time focusing on the things we really want to do. We are easily distracted. We check emails or our social media notifications because that’s easier than getting down to some serious work. I had a distraction problem when I was writing my unschooling books, Curious Unschoolers and Radical Unschool Love. I used to get frustrated with myself because I seemed unable to spend time doing deep work. I read Cal Newport’s book Deep Work a couple of times, looking for tips that might change my habits. Eventually, I did finish my books!

When we can concentrate, we can do amazing things. We can think properly, come up with unique and interesting ideas, be creative, solve problems. We do valuable work.

Kids often have great concentration skills. They can spend hours absorbed in their interests. They have no trouble doing deep work. The only problem is that we might want to interrupt whatever our kids are doing. Make them do other things. Maybe that’s because we don’t always value what they are doing.

Could the kind of activity that our child is involved with make a difference to how we feel? Perhaps we don’t worry when a child practises a musical instrument for hours on end, but are we concerned when a child is involved with a computer game for a long time?

Or could we be worried about balance? Is it okay for a child to be involved with only one activity for long periods of time? What about the other things in life?

If their health and well-being aren’t being adversely affected, should kids be allowed to spend unlimited time absorbed in their interests?

If we do keep interrupting our kids, is there a chance that they will end up distracted like some of us, unable to do deep work?

These are a few thoughts and questions that were generated by the word ‘absorbed’ which was my original A word for the April A-Z blogging challenge. I had intended to write a series of posts about unschooling based on a list of random words, but then I got distracted by another idea. I ended up writing stories about my life on my where the carol birds sing blog instead of writing about unschooling. But maybe it’s not too late to write my A-Z unschooling posts!

Photo by Sereja Ris on Unsplash