Unschooled kids Mythbusting

Generalizations make the baby jeebus weep. And I’m getting a bit over them to be honest. Lets bust some myths shall we?

Unschooled kids are all weird. You know what? Some are. REALLY weird even. But then there are a whole bunch of kids who have never set foot inside a school who are all decidedly un-weird. Like any group of kids they will all be different.

Unschooled kids look like they fell out of the thrift shop bin. Sometimes I see a group of kids (including mine) that will all be dressed quite “eclectically” and I often think that we look like what homeschoolers are “supposed” to look like. But that doesn’t account for everyone. It’s not against the rules to have nice, fashionable clothes for unschooled kids to wear. And you know I buy my girls fancy MATCHING outfits to wear at xmas right?

Unschooled kids play Minecraft all day. Some do. Some don’t. You don’t get a merit badge if your kid likes computer games nor are you a morally superior person if you kid has never heard of Skylanders.

Unschooled kids can’t take extra curricular classes. There is a fair bit of infighting about what can and cannot be called unschooling at the moment (and it’s not cool TBH) but of course kids do classes that they are interested in. Unschooled kids go to horseriding or swimming or clarinet or hip hop dancing lessons and so on and so on. The possibilities are endless!

Unschooled kids always/never eat junk food. Different families do different things. Not to mention kids having different tastes.

Unschooled siblings don’t fight. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no. I’m sure there are some very harmonious families out there but most families will have some periods of sibling conflict. It’s pretty normal really.

Unschooling mothers are more patient than school mums. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. While we do have the kids around all the time we don’t have to deal with homework or school lunches or show and tell or stupid rules/red tape you might not agree with. That all takes patience too. I really want this myth busted because it can be a barrier to some who might want to pull their kids out of school but think they will lack “patience”. If the energy from being an agent of the school was channeled into having the kids at home you might find all kinds of patience.

Any sort of learning or social difficulty an unschooled child has is because they don’t go to school. NOT TRUE. There are plenty of kids in the school system with these issues. PLENTY. Kids are kids and some will have quirks, learning difficulties, behavioral stuff, be introverted, cautious, gifted, highly extroverted, anxious, super ambitious or dyslexic etc etc in spite of-not because of- where they do or don’t attend school.

I’m pretty sure the theme of this post is that there are lots of different families with lots of different kids who choose to unschool for a whole host of reasons. Generalizations don’t help anyone. Neither does the culture of us versus them.

Let’s just knock it off huh?

Got any other unschooled kids myths you’s like to bust?