I was talking with a friend yesterday about unschooling and an analogy popped up in my head when she asked me…
“but how to kids learn if you are not actively teaching them”
First I explained that you are always teaching whether you want to or not, you teach by example all of the time and kids pick up things and learn a lot more than we sometimes want to teach them… They learn our good habits, our bad habits, they learn how we interact with others etc… and unschooling is just an extension of that in many ways…
An example that came into my head was the way that some parents seem to believe that you need to actively teach body parts…
Have you seen those parents that for 15 minutes say…
“where’s your nose?… oh look! I’m touching your nose!…. can you say nose?…. nose…. Nose…. NOSE….. say nose…. can you touch my nose? where’s my nose? can you find your nose? I got your nose!…. say nose…”
and on and on and on….
well…. guess what…
I don’t do that…
and guess what?
my kids know where their noses are…
Now… don’t get me wrong… I am not saying that it is wrong to do it of you enjoy it… or you are doing your kids a disservice by doing it… that’s not my point at all…
my point is that kids do learn and will learn without things being drilled in their heads.
They learn by listening to every day conversations… they learn by asking questions and by getting answers…
So as I explained this to this friend I think she understood what I mean by unschooling being learning without always actively teaching… and that kids will learn the thing that they need and want to learn.
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