In website after website, scores of unschooling families lined up neatly for inspection, and they appeared to be a crafty lot. Here was an unschooling family showing off their weaving. Here was one with homemade ceramic wind chimes. Here was one daughter making all the family's clothes. Oooh, and so much animal husbandry. If nothing else, it seems to unschool is to never suffer the taste of a store-bought egg.

Then, one late night while I was trying to find a group of craft-fearing, poultry-free unschoolers with whom I could identify online, I stumbled across a subspecies called "Radical Unschoolers." As it sounds, Radical Unschooling is an extension of the basic unschooling model taken to the extreme. If unschooling was, as they believed, the best way to learn, then wasn't it also the best way to live?

Radically unschooled children are allowed to live each day in freedom, being exactly who and what they are at that moment. They have no bedtime, no mandatory foods, no off-limit words. If your child is tender-headed and shrieks like a parrot when her hair is brushed, the Radical would suggest you not brush her hair. If she prefers to let it mass into a giant dreadlock that collects food and gnats, well, it's really not your problem, is it? After all, it's not your hair; it's hers. The basic operating principle is that you should not treat a child any differently than you would treat another adult, which is to say without guilt, coercion or threats.

Several mouse clicks later, I learned that the Radical Unschoolers were going to have a conference. For me it was a perfect excuse to make Daniel the primary educator for three days. Alice couldn't come because she was taking an online class and had a midterm exam scheduled for that week. I decided I wouldn't bring any of this up to my new theoretical friends, because it made our life appear less than blissful.

Entering the hotel lobby, I immediately recognized the Radicals. They weren't hard to spot. Most of them sported a look best described as part dairy farmer, part Deadhead, part Renaissance Faire employee. Had I needed a way for someone to identify me among this group, I'd have said, "I'm the one with the shirt collar."

The next morning, the first item on my agenda was a panel discussion about "Unschooling as a Life Philosophy." I entered the conference room just as the introductions were beginning. There were five women on the panel and between them they had 15 children, three of whom were named after continents.

"Where's Pyramus?" a young girl's voice commanded from somewhere in the room.

Her mother, who was chairing the session, stopped midsentence and said, "I don't know."

"But I need him," the little girl said flatly. The other panel members and the audience looked to her mother.

Finally, the girl declared, "Ionia needs you. I'll get her," and wandered off. The conversation about respecting our children's need to live authentic lives without judgment or labels continued. A preschool-aged child got down from her mother's lap, undressed completely, and dashed out of the room. A minute or so later, her mother followed her.