It is rare that a person is born with the dream to send their child to school and then homeschool them as a teenager! Often when teens come to homeschooling, it's because the system has failed them, they are being bullied or the environment is too overwhelming for them, they don't like school and have had enough of being there (I can relate to this - I hated high school with a passion, and loved university with just as much passion!). 

And as far as mental health goes, the high school experience can make or break the mental health of fragile young people, who are full of bravado on the outside, but experiencing unprecedented changes physically and emotionally, as they try to figure out who they are and what that means. Sometimes coming to homeschooling can feel like a last-ditch chance to pull our teens away from a path that they are already too far along. Or it can be that you see a bright future for them but their teachers see something completely different. 

Either way - starting homeschooling is the easiest part! Particularly as teenagers get older. it is relatively painless and simple. 

But the main things you need to know are:

It is legal to homeschool

You can choose to homeschool at any time.

In most states, you can start the same day that you make a decision!

Just let your high school know that you won't be coming back (you can do this with a quick phone call - something to the tune of "hi, this is __________, we have registered our son/ daughter ________ to homeschool, and we just need to cease their enrolment and get a copy of their records'. It can be a 5 minute phone call, and you don't need to have a meeting or anything else (despite what anyone may convince you of, otherwise!). 

Then you let your education department know. Check what your regulations are in the state you are in, but for most states, you can write an email and let them know that you are homeschooling, and they will send you a few forms. 

Then you are free to pursue what you love! Find some good- quality curriculum (our resources are some of the most fun, and comprehensive resources you will find - and your teen can do them with limited supervision!) and start living life! Got any questions? Check out our FAQ page!  Happy Homeschooling! 

Are you finding my blog helpful? 

 This is a post that is very important to me, because it goes right to the heart of why our children do not go to school. Contrary to mainstream opinion, a supportive, nurturing environment at home encourages resilience, strength and mastery, whereas it is my experience (and the experience of millions of other families who choose to educate outside of schools) that the school environment does not. 

School may force children to learn social survival. But survival in crisis, under constant stress, is not the same as building resilience, or encouraging mastery of skills, in an environment that allows you to fail, then try again - as many times as it takes. 

​In a school environment, it is my experience that children in school are put in to a certain category and that is where they stay for most of their lives. 

The academic kid

The cool kid

The basketball kid

The genius kid

The sporty kid

The shy kid

Room for growth and mastering of things outside of that, are grossly limited by the oppressive, time-poor and resource-poor environment of school. 

Even if you have spectacular teachers, there are hundreds of kids to put you in your place. Remember the overweight kid who was really bad at high jump but tried anyway - and was ripped apart for failing, the first (or second, or third) time? 

Or the sporty kid that wasn't great at reading, and got laughed at, so he didn't put his hand up to read again?

I saw that time and time again when I was in school - and I bet you did too. And I saw it with my three children who started their education at school (and the one who finished in year 12). I saw my children try new things and get teased, judged or labelled. I went to countless meetings where principals (yes we changed schools multiple times), suggested that maybe if our children dressed differently, did their hair differently (one daughter had short hair and that was the cause of a lot of bullying, apparently), were quieter (our eldest was outspoken), pushed back more when bullied (our middle child cried a lot when people yelled at her...), or otherwise changed, then their lives would be easier. 

Year by year I saw their individuality reeled in, and their passion to try new things slowly snuffed out. The change with 5 - 6 years of homeschooling is still shocking to me.

For our daughter who vowed never to sing again after a bout of bullying, we have seen her get up on stage, busk, make YouTube videos, join choirs, write her own music, try new styles and thrive in singing. 

For our son who called himself 'stupid', 'pathetic', 'moron' and 'idiotic' (his private school teacher taught him those words) I see him trying new things, over and over again. Failing. Failing. Picking himself up, and then mastering. I can't quite believe it, even now.

if you got to the end of this novel and you are thinking homeschooling will be better for your child DO IT. If you have doubts, let this be your green light. If you know that your child is capable of more, or deserves more, then try it. And if you would like to hear from other parents that are doing just that, come along to the Australian homeschool summit tomorrow! it just might change your life! 

​Something that I have heard more than a few times in our homeschooling/ unschooling journey is that as parents we need to prepare our children for the REAL WORLD. 

 That somehow taking children out of the school system will disadvantage them in hardening them up to the realities of life, and that once they are out in the REAL WORLD they will not know how to cope with people

with hard situations

with abusive bosses or bullies

That life will be difficult and perilous for them, once they become adults, so it is important to keep them in school

so that they learn to deal with difficult people 

and learn that life is not all happiness and sunshine
I am not sure quite how to react to this mindset, that life is difficult and the world is difficult, and that real life is all about suffering and hardship, and hardening up! 

Where do these ideas come from? 

Maybe that is what happens to us when we grow up from a very young age in institutions? from spending most of our waking day in places where you are not loved by the people around you, and where you are actively prevented from acting lovingly in your daily life? (just look up all the news articles about children not being allowed to hold hands, or kiss or hug at school - and policies that enforce a rule that children need to be 20cm away from each other!). 

Maybe this is what happens when we grow up with many of our primary care-givers (the teachers, or before and after school supervisors who are with you for 6- 12 hours out of your waking day) being the dictators of our every thought, word and action.

 When you cannot think and act joyfully when you are joyful 

When you are not free to move around when you feel like moving

Or  eat when you are hungry
Talk when you are bursting with ideas and words! (yes, this would be me!!!)

Draw or paint when you are feeling wonderfully creative

or tend to your own personal needs whenever they arise...

 Or maybe it is what has happened to most of us, moving straight from the oppressive environment of school, to the oppressive environment (in many cases) of being a young (and older) employee in a workplace, where your time is not your own, and your thoughts and actions and life belongs to somebody else. As an adult, we are still chained by the requirement to be in a certain place, at a certain time. To act a certain way and perform certain duties, and have fun, or be free, at set, pre-determined times throughout the year.


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And maybe this is not everybody's experience - but do you think that this is where these ideas come from? 

that life is hard

...living is a hardship

...we need to harden up 

It is hard to think original thoughts when you are supposed to be, and act and think like everyone else. And it is hard to be your unique, shining, wonderful self when you are constantly assessed by your peers , your teachers, your parents and bosses against the standards of others.  It is hard to feel ok with being you and being happy as YOU when you have been scrutinised for a lifetime, both for your external appearance, your capabilities to achieve the exact things that people your age are supposed to be achieving, and your willingness to do as you are told, when you are told to do it.

No wonder so many of us feel that life is hard, and that children need to be prepared for this life of hardship.

But life does not have to be like that. 

YES, life can be hard. But what if we lived with purpose, and parented with purpose - the purpose to make life less hard for our children?! (now take a deep breath - this can be confronting). I know that sometimes we can give in to those little voices (the ones that have been trained by those around us for a very long time) that your children should experience the same things that you experienced. That life should not be a free ride. That you learnt discipline, and you learnt how to cope in stressful circumstances, and that your children should too. And maybe you don't consciously think like this - but sometimes, I think that most of us do.

What if our main purpose as parents was to facilitate our children in living joyfully? not just on the weekends, not just on our 5 weeks of annual family holidays, not just after 3pm, or 6pm when they are picked up from school or after school care, but all of the time. Every day?

For some of us, this is exactly how unschooling becomes. Because when you start to back slowly away from the school system - a system that you have always been taught is necessary and essential part of life, and you discover than miraculously -you can thrive without it then you may begin to question other things. If children do not have to go to school 6 hours a day to prepare for an adulthood that is pre-determined (school until 17, university until 22, job, children, mortgage, death) then maybe we do not have to take on work for 8 hours a day that we dread going to! If children are free to live joyfully, then maybe we are free to live joyfully! Maybe there is an alternative to the 9-5, or maybe we can be free to pursue things that we truly love? And if we are free to pursue things that we truly love, then perhaps others around us are worthy of that too. 

And suddenly homeschooling or unschooling doesn't only raise the questions of whether our children need to harden up for the real world, but questions about what the 'real world' is and how much we really are able to control in our lives and the way that we feel inside ourselves. 

If you are already homeschooling or unschooling I would really love to hear what unexpected things have happened in your life since starting this journey. Do you feel more free to pursue your own passions or have your experiences been different? x

 TRIGGER WARNING - this article contains triggers around school bullying, suicides and violent pornography accessed at school. 

1) Painting homeschoolers as 'the other'

Discrimination, division and classification have been used at every point in history to divide cultures and communities, and to justify acts that would never otherwise be tolerated in a cohesive society. Discrimination allows us to justify providing less resources to those that are undeserving, to hand out punishments or 'disciplinary actions' to those that do not fit in, and to reach a consensus that those people, whoever they may be, do not need the same things that others need. Simply because they are the other. 

In recent months the voices of dissatisfaction with the current schooling model, have reached epic heights worldwide. It is being reported with increasing frequency that schools are not the best places for our children. And yet families looking to remove their children from a failing system, and to take control of their children's education are most often classified as 'the other'. People who are rebellious or anarchists. People who do not want to do their 'duty' as citizens, and have their children educated in the mainstream like 'normal' people. Media reporting of homeschooling most often includes snippets of the lives of the most radical unschoolers, who are presented as being unacceptably alternative in some way or other, and homeschoolers are painted to be unreasonable, unsocial, anti-community misfits living on the edge of reason and thus undeserving of the benefits afforded to the 'normal' members of society. This classification of the 'other' is the beginning of the justification of discrimination at every other level. 

2) Providing no funding to homeschoolers

Think about this for a minute. The Prime Minister is running for leadership and announces to the country 'this year and for all years to come, we have decided that we will provide absolutely no funding for education. The lap-top scheme for high school students will be discontinued. There will be no funding for books, or computer programs, classes or anything.' Zero funding. Imagine the backlash. A first-world country that provides no funding for education. To put this into perspective, a recent news story detailed the losses that children would suffer with annual cuts to school funding of $100 per year. $100 out of over $11,000 that is provided to schools per year, per student. $11,000 that is presumably important in helping teachers to provide students with their education. Home educators who are not schooling, are still paying taxes that fund their children to access the right to this funding. Home educators are not using the funds in the schools, and yet home educators have no way to access this funding, if they choose to school at home. By classifying homeschoolers as 'the other' - the people who choose not to engage in the schooling system, this lack of funding is normalised through the justification that homeschoolers are choosing not to educate in schools, and are therefore different, and not deserving of the same resources as other children. 

3)Not ensuring safety at school

As a society, at present we absolutely cannot guarantee the safety of our children at school. Therefore we have the obligation and duty to support parents and families as they ensure the safety of their children, through home educating. For many children, school is not a safe place, and at this point the government and the education system are struggling to provide safe alternatives to mainstream schooling. Children with disabilities do not have access to funding to ensure their health, safety and wellbeing at school, other children can not be guaranteed protection from bullying to the point of mental health issues or suicide, sexual harassment and assault at school, or exposure to violent pornography  accessed on mobile phones at school. 

Safety, defined as 'the condition of being protected from harm or other non-desirable outcomes..or the control of recognised hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk' cannot be guaranteed at present, at school.  In just looking at one of the multiple issues that lead to physical and mental health problems for children who in the school system, it has recently been established that violent pornography is one of the main issues damaging the health and wellbeing of Australian children, with children accessing violent pornography from the age of 11, at school. It has been established that schools do not have the resources to prevent this access at school, which is leading to epic levels of physical and mental health problems which start in childhood through to adulthood.

Dr Joe Tucci, head of the Australian Childhood Foundation, recently stated that a public health crisis was emerging, with online pornography, and that it was "impossible for children to not see it". Dr Tucci states that "I think the community would be shocked at the kinds of consequences we are seeing in a small group of children being exposed to this type of pornography", stating that health authorities were seeing increases in the number of children engaging in 'problem sexual behaviour' with other children. Anti-pornography activist, Gail Dines states that pornography is now more violent than it has ever been, and that the average age that children are first accessing pornography is 11 years old "We are now bringing up a generation of boys on cruel, violent porn...this is going to have a profound influence on their sexuality, behaviour and attitudes towards women". 

Educator Maree Crabbe, when interviewed by the Herald Sun in an article published on the 23rd of July 2016, on children's exposure to violent online pornography at schools, stated that "young people find ways to get around school filters, and they don't need school Wi-Fi in order to access things, they might have access through 3G or 4G on their devices". In addition, a submission from hundreds of parents and teachers to the senate states that there was a "dramatic increase" in opportunities for children to watch porn at school. In addition, The Herald Sun stated that 75% of schools surveyed by the Association of Heads of Independent Schools Australia had intervened in cases of sexting among students in the last 3 years. The Herald Sun also stated that 'female students were under immense pressure to do more sexually because of boy's access to pornography". 

In addition, it has also been estimated that up to 85% of divorces can be in some part attributed to complications arising from online pornography usage. Therefore, the failure of the school system to be able to deal with the rapidly changing environment of the internet and children's exposure to these materials has long-reaching repercussions for our children now, the safety of girls as they reach puberty, the mental health of boys as they are exposed to graphic and violent imagery, and the future relationships of our children. 

In addition, looking at bullying at schools, Kids Helpline states that "a survey of schools in approximately 40 countries found that Australian primary schools were amongst those with the highest reported incidence of bullying in the world". Kids Helpline states that bullying is the sixth most common reason why children and young people seek help from children's health services, and Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, speaking at the National Centre Against Bulling conference stated that "we are finding that a lot of schools are really struggling to get this bullying thing right". 

In a case where we are seeing epic, life-threatening incidences of physical and mental health problems with children in the school system, and inadequate resources to address the issues in the immediate future, it is our duty as a society to support families who are doing their best to keep their children safe. 

Having recently moved to a much bigger city than our home town, we have heard many stories of people home educating as a results-driven endeavour. To give their children a better education. A better chance at a good job. A better chance at an academic qualification and a better chance at life. As a university tutor I completely endorse the potential for home education to provide all of that for young people, however from my experience, my students often learn the most when they are offered the seed of an idea and left to their own devices to run with it! Sometimes the deadlines, pressure to perform or reach a certain level, or to over-achieve completely gets in the way of learning what you were hoping to learn in the first place! 

Allowing children space to be themselves will give them the greatest chance at success

​ One reason for this is that giving children space, gives them the opportunity to make mistakes, take a road (within a safe environment) that is completely opposite to where they want to go, and then to discover which road it is that they want to go on - and head there, full speed, inspired by their own motivations to achieve something that is important to them! And when anybody, whether it be a child, young person or adult, heads in a direction that they have chosen on their own, they are much more likely to get where they are aiming to go!

For example, if you have been forced into law school when you really wanted to be a chef, chances are that you may do the bare minimum to pass, then become qualified, maybe practice law for a little while, and then run away to join the circus! Whereas by comparison, if you are really motivated to be a chef, you are more likely to work day and night to be the best chef you can be, perhaps opening your own chain of restaurants, or moving to the Whitsunday's and serving gourmet food on a cruise boat, travel around writing a food blog or starting a food tour business ( I know people who have done all of these things - after years in academia, studying things they didn't want to study in the first place!). Or alternatively, in my case, being given the space to leave school early, and taking up a very short career in delivering newspapers for 5 cents an hour (or $2.50 on a good day!) gave me the time to contemplate a life of living on $50 a week, and to pursue a career in academia and higher education, as I was driven by my own goals and motivations. 

Giving space means ticking off all of the 'no's' 

Sometimes as a parent of young children, it is hard to see how giving your toddler space to (safely) explore the world, climb things, get stuck halfway up a tree (with you spotting them) or make a massive mess in the kitchen is going to lead them anywhere good - but let me assure you that it will.

Every time that you allow your child or young person to explore something new and exciting, to study midwifery for a year at a time (when the math textbook is there gathering dust - perhaps never to be used again), or start a permaculture garden, or get lost in documentaries about WW2, or download 500 karaoke backing tracks onto the ipod and spend weeks singing and singing, you are enabling them to tick or cross of an internal checklist about who they think they are or aren't in the world. And this is a vitally important step to becoming a happy and healthy adult! (and they will be an adult far longer than they will be a child!). 

Giving them space and time to explore different areas and interests without imposing a deadline on their learning, or expecting a set result from them, gives them that time to decide if they really love something and want to go further with it, or if they have had enough of Wildlife documentaries and would like to go fishing (i.e. fire-gazing and processing all of the information they have just learned) for a week. And you do not have to be an unschooler or a radical natural learner to allow learning like this. If the state's requirement is to learn critical analysis in a science topic, the whole world is full of science! Your child is free to choose from possibly half a billion different research or interest areas, from skin grafting to environmental damage, global warming to the periodic table, psychosomatic illnesses to animal reproductive systems - and if they have a high level of literacy, they will be able to do this mostly by themselves, with you there for guidance and help with gaining access to resources. 

Giving space means having the midlife crisis early

It could be argued that the need for constant deadlines, and to 'produce' certain work from set study in school, is something that leads to so many 20-somethings (or 30 or 40-somethings) having identity crisis' - because they might never have had the opportunity to really spend time on anything without the expectation of a pre-determined outcome, or the pressure of having to study something to meet an 'end' of starting a career, or supporting a family with it. I have spoken to dozens of home educating parents who have talked about the 'year of...' when their child was absolutely obsessed with something, and then came to the end of their fascination and started on something new. This freedom allows that child at 20-something or 40-something to perhaps understand themselves more fully. What makes them tick. What kind of person they are. What things they have loved or left behind in the past, and what they are really good at and could take up again. 


Allowing space also allows time for the development of life-long passions!

Recently, my daughter and I had the privilege of sitting in on a conversation (in front of a couple of hundred people!) about home education, the pros and cons of home educating, and the 'final outcome' for young adults who had been home educated and come out on the other side, as fully functioning, inspired and inspirational young people, passionate about their endeavours and excited by life. What was remarkable about the stories of these young people, much like the stories of our own teenagers, was not their exceptional academic achievements (although there were many) or their incredible career undertakings (although there were also many fascinating aspects to these as well!), but rather the vigour with which they embraced life and their passions

. Many of the young people talked about falling in love with something in particular, as early as 13 or 14, and being able to follow that through, to a point where at 18 or 19, many of them were running businesses in their chosen area, and pursuing studies that supported this. Imminent and persistent deadlines can take away or severely limit this opportunity for personal growth and to commence an idea and fully see it through.

We witnessed this first-hand with our daughter who was given the freedom to work without deadlines for a few months, and learned how to play the piano, first through an ipad application, then youtube video's and a keyboard, and progressing to a point where she found a job, saved for many months and bought herself a piano, which she can now play effortlessly, despite not having lessons (yet!). We had watched with increasing interest as her 1 hour practice per day became 8 hour piano marathons, crammed into every free hour of her time - until suddenly she could play complex songs with both hands, with a complexity that left us completely awe-struck! 

What are your experiences of your children or young people learning in the periods of space and less deadlines? We would love to hear them!

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​I read an off-the-cuff remark about the strangeness of homeschooled and unschooled children this week on social media and wanted to wholeheartedly and publicly respond to the lovely random person who labelled all of our children as 'strange'. I actually completely agree with you. In my internet searching of creative definitions of strange, I came across 'atypical, unexpected, remarkable, curious and incongruous' - in my experience of children (and I have had quite a lot) that explains just about every child that I have ever come across. Not just homeschooled children - ALL children!