The School Can't Experience

#12 - Understanding Deschooling with Pavlina McMaster and Heidi Ryan

• School Can't Australia • Season 1 • Episode 12

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In this episode, host Leisa Reichelt is joined by Pavlina McMaster and Heidi Ryan to explore the concept of Deschooling. This is the first step in the transition to Home Education but the core concepts of Deschooling are valuable and reassuring to any School Can’t parent.

Pavlina and Heidi share their personal journeys and insights into how they successfully navigated Deschooling, addressed trauma linked to conventional schooling, and prioritized mental health. 

They discuss the importance of community support and provide practical advice for parents and carers embarking on this path. Key themes include redefining education, the importance of parent/child connection, and understanding the gradual nature of this transformative process. 

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The content of this podcast is based on personal lived experiences and is shared for informational and storytelling purposes only. It should not be treated as medical, psychological, or professional advice under any circumstances. If you have concerns about your health or well-being, please seek guidance from a doctor, therapist, or other qualified professional.

Hello and welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast. I'm Leisa Reichelt, and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia Community. Caring for a young person who is struggling to attend school can be a stressful and isolating experience by you are not alone. Thousands of parents across Australia and many more around the world face similar challenges and experiences every day. Today we are going on a deep dive into understanding Deschooling. Now many parents of School Can't kids have at least contemplated Home Education at some point. Many of us start with a real misunderstanding of what Home Education can look like and how it might work for our families. Deschooling is a really important part of how we can ease the transition into Home Education, both for our kids and for ourselves. I am joined today by Pavlina McMaster, who is a coordinator with the Home Education Network, as well as Heidi Ryan, who is a mom to three and has been home educating for about six years.

Leisa Reichelt:

Alright, let's get started. Pav and Heidi, I would love for you to, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and why it is that we are talking with you about Deschooling today. Pav? Do you wanna go first?

Pavlina:

sure. Uh, so I pulled my kid out of school in prep 12 years ago. He's in effectively year 12 this year. We don't really do traditional school. So we're not really following a curriculum of any kind. I'm a volunteer for the Home Ed Network and I run info sessions and things on School Can't and Home Education And we've done a podcast together before.

Leisa Reichelt:

We have, we have. We'll put a link to that so that people can go and have a listen to that one as well. Heidi, give us some backstory.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

I'm Heidi. I've got three kids. We've been home educating for six years now, but most of my kids are at the tail end of that or are beyond school age. My eldest child went right through school to year 11 and we had some not so great experiences there and that led us to investigating Home Ed. Our whole family's neurodivergent and we've found Home Ed to be a really good fit for us. I've got a background in disability and speech pathology. My kids are 17, 21 and 25 now.

Leisa Reichelt:

I should probably put my self interest on the table as well, which is I have a son who is in year nine and after many years of trying to make school work in many different ways, we have just given up on that pathway and are heading into our Home Education adventure as well. So he is Deschooling right now, which is why I wanted to call you ladies and get the nitty gritty and then share that with everybody else so that they can benefit from it too. As you start out on this adventure, there are a lot of different terms. you come across. It's like it is a massive learning curve. Starting to think about Home Education. One of the things that I heard pretty early on was Deschooling, but I heard that along things like unschooling and, all kinds of different things. So let's spend some time really focusing on Deschooling. What is it? Why is it important?

Pavlina:

So what it is, is the process of letting go of our ideas about what education means, and that schooling is not the same thing as education. We don't have to be at school to learn and to get an education. Education doesn't have to look anything like school in order to be successful and engaging. We don't need to follow those structures and strictures. And in fact, trying to do that is detrimental for a lot of children and families and it doesn't work. Why it's beneficial is because, let's face it, a kid with School Can't, they have struggled in that system and in that structure. And if we try to replicate that system and that structure when we bring them home, which is their safe space, a lot of the time that equals trauma. Anything that looks like school can equal trauma. And so there's kind of two real reasons. One is so that we're not revisiting that trauma and also because we need to recognize that perhaps these kids need something different. And they have a different way of learning. They have different needs and a different way of wanting to engage with information.

Leisa Reichelt:

Heidi, when you first heard about Deschooling as you were starting your Home Education journey, what did that look like for you as you were getting started on this process?

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

It actually took me time to fully comprehend what that meant. I think I'd probably heard the term and I'd attended one of Pav's intro to home ed, gathering where you got information and she'd mentioned it, but there was a lot to take in at the time. There was a lot of, and new information about, wow, it could really look like this. Like this is the way we could do learning in our family. It took a while for me to recognize the need and understand what Deschooling really meant. And my understanding of Deschooling is very much an unlearning. So it's shifting from what I thought education had to be exactly as Pav said, from the shoulds and the singular pathway that we're all sort of taught is the one and only way to get from childhood to adulthood successfully. Being able to step outside of that and, and see that differently and view that differently and therefore view my kids differently and view our family and our lifestyle differently. It's definitely a process. It wasn't a, oh, cool, we'll Deschool now and then everything's fine. It took, it took a long time for me to get my head around and I had a lot of time before my kids had time to do that too. So I had six months or so of preparation for Home Ed before my kids then actually took that step out of school. And then me supporting them through that and talking to them about what that meant and, them fighting with the internalized need to do what everyone else is doing. And feeling like they were missing out or, not good enough or doing it wrong because those are the messages that society was giving them. You know, we got there, but it was a process for all of us.

Leisa Reichelt:

I thought it was really interesting that you said that you had a six month head start on this. I'd love to hear more about like, your actual experience of that and how that happened, what that looked like.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

Uh, so the six month thing was, after me discovering Home Ed as an option, biggest kid had just left year 11 and wasn't planning to do year 12. We, we'd sort of made the shift, we can't do this, this is actually going to harm them more than the benefit that we will get from doing that. So we'd stepped away from traditional education for them, but I could see my youngest two were heading into year eight and year five there were challenges I was worried about them facing similar to their older sibling. There were things I didn't want to be part of their experience of education. While they were attending school, they weren't thriving but they didn't know there was another option, right? They didn't know there were other ways of being and doing this. So I had made a shift at that point my oldest had let go of that for them. I began the process of talking to my younger kids about what sort of options there were. For us, they had to be involved in that decision. It had to be something they were engaged in because it was about them. I just wanted them to give it a try. So we actually ended up talking about it and coming up with a right, we'll trial this, this is another option. We've gotta give it enough time to know what that's really gonna be like. You know, a couple of weeks isn't enough and a term isn't even enough. And as it turns out, a couple of years might not have been enough to get our heads around how we actually were going to home educate. But, after we landed on a six month trial and said, if at the end of that you really wanna go back to school, then the ball's in your court, it's still up to you. They had had trouble attending, but it wasn't significant that, they weren't already, weren't at school. So I know that's different to a lot of people's experience.

Leisa Reichelt:

I just wanted to reflect on something you were saying because one of the things I hear some people say is, well, of course kids are gonna stay at home if you give them the option. Like, if they're not gonna wanna go to school, of course being at home is the preferred thing. I had a similar experience to you with my son, where it took months of me starting to put this as an option to him and make it palatable to him, even though he was finding school extremely difficult. Because we'd all spent so many years indoctrinating them about how important school was for their future. You don't just go, how about we do it at home? And they go, fantastic. at first they're like, no, that's a terrible idea. Why would we do that? That was my experience and it took me a long time to get him to open his mind to the idea that there might be a better way. In the same way that took ages for me to open my mind as well.

Pavlina:

And I think too, there's so much pressure from school and they get so many messages from school and they get messages from media, and they get messages from society and movies because you don't see many home educated kids in media, in movies. When you do, they're often the weirdo the outcast or the high school dropout.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

There's real fear, isn't

Pavlina:

There's fear.

Leisa Reichelt:

Heidi. One of the other things that came out is that sense of timeframe and I think as parents who have been trying to get their kids to attend school. you have been given this message. Every minute counts, every hour that you're not at school matters. And so the idea of just going, well, we're not gonna take a couple weeks out. We're not gonna take a couple months out. We might take multiple terms or a whole year. That feels very brave at first, doesn't it?

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

You kind of have to be brave though, I think. You have to prioritize your kids' mental health at the end of the day, it was that simple. I'm concerned about their mental health ongoing in this environment, in this system. Here's another option where we have the ability to protect and preserve their mental health.

Pavlina:

But also it gives them agency. They know that what they think what they need what they want and what they value is valued by other people. Their feelings are valued and valid and people will pay attention to how they need things to go and that they deserve that. They deserve to be listened to. They deserve to, to be respected. They deserve to have their mental health prioritized. They deserve all these things. So much of the time in our society we're told we just have to put up and shut up. to keep going. we have that weaponized word, resilience. Putting up, shutting up and keeping going is not resilience. Learning that you have a community around you, how to ask for help and how to ask for help solving problems that is true resilience. And so when you pull that kid out and you feel like you're being brave, you are actually honoring that child.

Leisa Reichelt:

That was beautiful. Alright, so we're Deschooling, we've decided to do it. What's going on? What does it look like? What are we doing as a parent, what am I doing as a child? What are they doing?

Pavlina:

So what we often suggest to people is to think of it like summer holidays. You know, that period between year levels where you don't have anything you need to'learn' in inverted commas. You don't have any work that you need to do. You can just let those kids be let them do their thing. You know, rediscover, rediscover the things that they love. Figure out who they are. Figure out what they're passionate about.'Cause a lot of kids have forgotten or don't know anymore because they've been so busy on that treadmill, keeping their head above water. A lot of them are so burnt out that all they can do is hide under their doona or game all day, or just sit in a very dark, quiet space and just try and be themselves, or try and forget about their school experiences. So, you know, just let them be, let them do what they want to do and, value connection. Make an effort to connect in tiny little ways. Hey, I'm baking some cookies. Do you wanna come bake with me and be ready to hear No a lot because you will hear no a lot for, from a lot of kids, No, wanna be here with my game console because that's all I can do right now. And recognize that if kids would, they could, you know. Favorite Ross Green line. If they could, they would. And accept that that's what it's gonna look like for as long as it takes.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

Well, I like to think for us it was very much a period of rediscovering themselves. I think the school system has a way of boxing and comparing. Putting people into boxes you know, you have this kid and then you're that kid and your ones who are good at this. Particularly for my teen, actually for both of the younger ones, it was a time of rediscovering what they actually liked rather than what they said they liked or had gotten used to pretending that they liked to fit in and be a part of those social groups. There's a lot of going along with stuff and not really knowing, actually deep inside that's not part of me and what I enjoy and what I like. Having said that, we weren't amazing at Deschooling in the beginning. Even when I'd done my research and I'd taken my six months and I'd thought about how this was gonna go, it wasn't just for me though. the kids had this kind of need to be doing something, right. So they, If we are not gonna be at school, we should be doing some kind of work. We should be keeping up. We should be doing, you know, the maths books and the, make it fun and let's make it different and let's, you know, go out and be in the world. But there were times at home when we were doing a particular worksheet a day or, trying to get through chapters of a maths book. It was much more child led but also was stressing out every time we did it. And I was like, well, you wanna do this? You're mad at me every time we are doing this. We're really not enjoying, nobody's having fun here. I know you wanna do it. I know that you're actually, you know, there's something that you're gaining out of it, but it's not, it's not working for us like this. It took a while to let go of looking at learning as presentable, measurable elements of work. And I think, you know, some people do Home Ed like that, and that works for them. But we discovered fairly quickly it didn't work for us. Even though they were capable, it wasn't meeting their learning needs. When we let go and shifted to a bit more, you know, what, what is it that you wanna spend your time doing? Oh, okay, we're gonna spend two weeks sitting in a cloud sack reading Percy Jackson. Okay, cool. Right. that's two weeks of deep diving into Greek mythology. Which has led to an ongoing lifelong obsession and learning and ridiculous amounts of knowledge around Greek mythology, which actually, you know, intertwines with so much in our everyday life. And there's so much learning and language and, folklore and, richness in that learning. But it was self-driven. Every time I tried to do a check-in or do a, you know, should we do a little quiz about this and see what you know, or can we watch this about it as well? And the kid would be like, Ugh. All right. Pause. Let me tell you all about this before you start. And then would info dump all the stuff they knew about this one particular thing I was gonna ask them? They blew me away with their knowledge, they have so much knowledge just through what looked like sitting down, reading books and scrolling through some interesting YouTube channels.

Pavlina:

Another part of Deschooling that we haven't talked about yet is observing your kid. Because learning while Deschooling is inevitable. Learning to see the learning in all those things is really valuable and it actually helps alleviate our fears and our concerns because instead of thinking, oh, this kid's not getting anything done, they're not learning anything valuable, just observing them and going, you know what? Content is actually not important. There's this thing called Google, right? What's important is watching them learn how to explore the subjects that they love. Watching them, finding their own mentors or finding courses to do, or finding a YouTube video or, some books that they wanna borrow from the library or just sitting and rediscovering who they are and how they like to learn.

Leisa Reichelt:

So look, I wanna pull it back to the early stages, right?'cause I know it's very easy to go, well, this is the pathway that we're heading to. But I am weeks into Deschooling, I had visions of baking cookies and playing board games and going on excursions and looking for resources and all that kind of stuff. The reality is, my son has spent the vast majority of his time in front of his screen. I make offers and he declines on a very regular basis. At what point do I start to panic and go, I must be doing it wrong, because he is not...

Pavlina:

You are doing it right, because you are offering opportunities. Don't bombard with opportunities. Just every now and again, just offer opportunities and look for the tiny moments of connection. If he comes out to get a drink of water and speaks to you, that's connection rather than coming out, not looking at anyone getting a drink of water and scurrying back to his room. That's progress. There's tiny little moments that you will start to see, whether it's sitting out there and, telling you a joke or telling you about something he's played, watched or done while in his room by himself. Those are the little moments of connection that you really need to grab hold of. Whatever you are doing, when those happen, put it down and listen and connect. Because they're offering bits of themselves in those moments, they're being brave it's hard for them to put themselves out there'cause they are so burnt out. And all they can manage right now is the screen because it doesn't judge, it doesn't demand, it doesn't do anything. It just is. That's why they're so glued to it, because it's manageable and it's providing them an opportunity to do something while they decompress and it's a distraction. They're not gonna be ready to deal with all those emotions right now. That's down the track. That's when you're gonna get those emotions out and unpack them talk about them and deal with the trauma. Right now it's just time for sitting and being, and just sitting with what's happened. It's a lot to process.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

Yeah. I think it's hard not to catastrophize or to future project

Pavlina:

Yeah.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

well, if I don't do something about this, this is gonna be the new future. You know,

Pavlina:

Yeah.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

Oh, well this seems easy for them. they're not having to do hard things. they're leaning into what works and makes life cushy, I suppose you might look at it, right? but that's because that's what they need. Nobody actually wants to spend 24/7 in their room gaming with no contact. If they're doing that for extended lengths of time, their mental health is not great. Right. So we've gotta give them time to recover that mental health. So it is really hard not to catastrophize if you've ever been stick in bed or disabled in bed or unable to do daily things, even just, getting up and making your own food, if you've ever been unable to do that, it's not a nice place to be long term. You might need it at that time, but it's not actually doing good for your soul and your body. So the fact that they're in that space is, because that's all they're capable of at the moment. And there is light at the end of the tunnel. And we have seen so many families start where you are at and get to that end of the tunnel. When I learned about Deschooling, there was, there was this sort of time tabling going around that for every year of school they need at least a month to Deschool. So that full decompression. And I think that's actually really, a little bit limiting. Like I think it's gives you an idea of the scale of it, but I actually think it's quite limiting, particularly in this day and age when a lot of kids who are coming out of school are not just coming out of school with, you know, oh, we're just gonna do something different. They're coming out with trauma and lots of really difficult experiences and they're

Pavlina:

Mm-hmm.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

burnout or they're having, lots of other things going on for them. So I think it's scary as a parent to go, oh, you mean my kid might be in his room for two years before he's able to engage in the world in a way that I feel okay about. But again, he's not feeling okay about it until he is, so....

Leisa Reichelt:

It is super scary though, right? Because this is such a parental process as much as it is a child process, right?

Pavlina:

It is.

Leisa Reichelt:

I remember going into the school and saying, look, here's what we can do. Here's what I think we might be capable of doing for this term. And they'd go, well let's do that for three weeks and then we'll see. Right? And so you're used to such compressed time periods of how quickly you need to be seeing improvement. And, you've got the rest of the world telling you screens are bad and all of this. How do you hold your nerve as a parent?

Pavlina:

How do you feel ok? Okay,

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah. How do I not feel like I'm a absolutely crappy parent?

Pavlina:

So surround yourself with people who have been through it before. You surround yourself with people who regularly tell you it's okay. You call us and you say, I'm freaking out over here. And we say, it's all right, Take a breath,'cause this is gonna take as long as it takes. It is okay. Keep going. And you remember some things. You remember that you're not gonna throw your kid out into the street when he is 18. He has time to heal. He has time to figure out what he wants to do with his life. He has time to get there. A lot of people are so worried, Because they think, oh, 18, they have to be done with these things by 18. In school you do. Because if you don't do all those things in school, by the time you are 18, you've missed your chance, That's how they keep parents pressured into keeping those kids going to school by telling us that story, right? It's a story. It's one way of doing things. It works for some people. It doesn't work for all people, and is okay for it not to work because there's a thousand other ways of doing these things. When he finally is able to reengage and his mental health is good, and that is his first priority, right? We have so many adults with mental health issues, stopping them from living fulfilling lives. Once his mental health is good, then you can worry about what's next. Then you can worry about what do you wanna do, buddy? What do you wanna do with your life? You wanna be a pilot? Great. Let's catch you up on your maths'cause you need that to be a pilot. You can do your entire P to 12 curriculum for maths in six weeks or six months when you are developmentally ready, when you're invested, when you're good to go, right? You can do bridging courses, you can go to TAFE, you can do open uni subjects, you can do MOOCs. There's an infinite world of possibilities out there that don't involve the school system and don't involve a timeline of any kind. Just get onto some Home Ed forums. You have your little panic attack out there in the Home Ed world, and then people come and reassure you. I promise, because so many of us have been through that. I sometimes get choked up when I talk about this stuff because I'm 12 years down the road and I'm still traumatized from our School Can't experience and all the things that happened to us. But you know, this stuff's hard, but a lot of us have been through it, so you just reach out.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

I just wanna go back and give some experience of how I navigated that self-doubt and that worry because that's huge. And that is, I think we talk about Deschooling, that's part of the biggest mind shift that you have to make. Right? But there were people that I couldn't talk to about it because it was hard to have respectful conversations with them because they weren't really hearing what I was saying about it. They were just projecting those norms onto us and suggesting that what we were doing was gonna be harmful to my kids. And, and one of the, one of the things that I just kept thinking to myself, but also saying to people sometimes, do you think that I would be making a choice in order to harm my children? is there any time in my kids' lives or as a parent that I've ever made a choice that hasn't been with their best interests at heart? I think, sometimes that made people stop and think, but sometimes they just thought, oh, well you're deluded. You know, you're still doing it wrong. And so we just stopped having some of those conversations. So it did isolate me from certain people in the way that I couldn't talk to them freely about our experience and how that was going. But what I did do differently, I sought out other Home Ed parents, groups within my local area. My kids hated going to the groups. They struggled to do that. But it was so good for me. I gained so much from that. There was so much connection and community and so much head nodding when I would say, oh, you know, isn't it weird that people think like this and then there's this way? And they'd be like, yeah dude, of course there is. Of course you could do it this way. And there was a lot of validation for the really hard feelings I was having. There was a lot of validation for, yes, this is okay, this is good, this is great. You know, there's going to be positives. But there was also validation for all the hard parts of it as well. And I think that was really key to it being successful for us. It's hard to go against the grain, but the benefits are so huge.

Pavlina:

I should very quickly mention, we did a big survey and had over 600 responses And what the data showed very clearly was that the people who had connected in with the Home Ed community, even just online, had far better support and stuck with Home Ed and had far better experiences. When the wheels were falling off, they were able to connect with the community and say, Hey, can you help me with this? You know, we're having this problem. And so having that would be one of the most important things. If you take the plunge into Home Ed connect, even just online, find your tribe. They're out there, whoever you are, there are gonna be people out there that you connect with.

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah. As somebody who's moving towards home education, you know, like you, you could go, like you said, down the Unschooling path. If I'm going down a more structured approach that is more kind of schooley- at-homey,

Pavlina:

mm-hmm.

Leisa Reichelt:

do I still need to Deschool or can I just get straight into that?

Pavlina:

you definitely do, because if the wheels fall off, it would be great to have understanding about what learning can look like. To be able to accept that sometimes the wheels are gonna fall off no matter what you are doing. And to see the learning opportunities in all sorts of different things. And also to recognize that if things aren't working, you need a change and then you can reimagine that change.

Leisa Reichelt:

So that's to help broaden our minds as to the scope of different ways that we can be approaching that if our Plan A doesn't work necessarily as we'd want it to

Pavlina:

Precisely.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

Also because you can do a very schooly approach, but also follow the child's interests much more than at school, right? So unless you've actually moved away from the, an hour of English, an hour of maths, an hour of science, unless you've moved away from that sort of really structured, this is the only way to do it, or thought about it differently, you might still have a lot of negativity and a lot of difficulty engaging with the learning, but you can do very, very structured schooly stuff You know, it could be two weeks of focus on Henry VIII or it might be, every morning we wanna do some poetry reading or whatever it is, right? You can still do that, but I still think that you need that Deschooling, that ability to detach from the shoulds, right? The Deschooling is detaching from the shoulds.

Leisa Reichelt:

Just on a slightly bureaucratic topic, the way we've talked about it, it feels as though this is a really vital part of the transition. Does the Department of Education see it that way as well? If I have Department of Education come around asking me what I'm doing and I say, I'm spending six months or more Deschooling, do they go? Yeah, that's fine. No worries.

Pavlina:

it's gonna depend on what state you're in, unfortunately. So some states, like Victoria, where we are, they absolutely go. Awesome. You just concentrate on that mental health. in other states, it's not that straightforward. But what I would always recommend is join your local state group. and ask in there, just say, you know, I am really struggling with how do I meet requirements? My kids in burnout, they can't engage with any form of schoolwork right now. We need to prioritize their mental health. They're really struggling. How do I go about meeting requirements in our state while still being able to do that? I would get some help especially if you're in New South Wales, get some help on how to word your reports so that you are able to demonstrate that you are meeting requirements. So that you can get your continuation. It is doable. It is absolutely doable. in some states, you just gotta be very proactive about it.

Leisa Reichelt:

I've been messing around a little bit with AI as well, and discovering all of the learning outcomes that you can get from spending 12 hours a day playing Geometry Dash, which, you know, there's more there than I thought.

Pavlina:

Yeah, definitely. there's physics, you know, all sorts of things in there.

Leisa Reichelt:

All sorts of things.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

Leisa, early on, and more for me than for worry about reporting, I just kept a diary of what we'd done the previous day. So it might have been as simple as, we went to the park, took the dog for a walk, someone read a book for an hour and we had a discussion about the solar eclipse that was happening, it might've been just a bunch of simple things or someone took the bins out, you know, like household

Leisa Reichelt:

I wish.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

right? any little thing, just so I could keep some. Because at the end of the week, otherwise I'd look back and go, shit, we didn't do anything right. What have we achieved this week? Whereas if I had kept little notes and gone, well actually, there's some English there and this kid chose and followed a recipe for something. There was a lot to look back on. And just having a visual representation of that eased my mind a little bit because I was like, well, if someone does ask, I can put all this together.

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah. Yeah. Does that give you a sense too, a progress of how you can look back three months ago and go, oh, look, we're doing different things, more things.

Pavlina:

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt:

I.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

and it's not even necessarily that we're doing more, but that I'm recognizing more of the learning that's happening in the stuff that we were doing. I might not have kept note of some of the conversations in early days, but as we got further down the line, the conversations were where so much of the learning was happening and that was sparking... we had a conversation this day about a musical that one of the kids was interested in, and then for the next six months, they were off on a tangent

Leisa Reichelt:

Mm-hmm.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

some kind of historical figure or, researching. One of my kids did a degree, in cinematic screen makeup, so special effects, makeup and stuff,

Leisa Reichelt:

Wow.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

was something that sparked interest for them. They started off with, making scars and things on their arms and turned into, they now have a qualification in that and could work in the film industry doing really awesome stuff

Leisa Reichelt:

How do we know when we're done? how do I know when I've finished Deschooling and now I am going into proper home education?

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

There's not a distinction.

Pavlina:

So when we started, I'll quickly say, when I first pulled my kid out, I didn't even know what I thought it was going to be like. But I did recognize that we needed Deschooling. I didn't know what it was called because I hadn't, hadn't had time to learn about Deschooling. so we just started doing this thing where I was like, okay, Just let him be, let him decompress. Let him find joy again. And one day I turned around and looked at him and went, Hmm, you're actually doing all this learning despite me, you are learning so much. And so we just kept doing it. as he's gotten older, it's looked the same. it's learning interspersed with life taking opportunities where we find them and finding opportunities. It doesn't have to be a defining moment, You just kind of naturally segue into it.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

I'm challenged by you saying, and I'm not having a go at you. I'm just challenged by that'proper' homeschooling, right? Like we go from this to proper homeschooling. I found that's a challenging way of thinking because. as Pav said it doesn't necessarily look any particular way. But there's not a time when you go, okay, we've done this. Now we do that. So, it's hard as a parent to go ball's completely in your court kid, but essentially that's where it needs to be because they're not actually really gonna engage until they're ready to really engage. And they don't wanna not do any of it forever, as much as we worry that that's what they wanna do, they don't really want to. And we've seen it time and time again. So, you know, I just want to, validate that that's the feeling that you're having, but also at the same time, go, it's not gonna be

Pavlina:

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt:

No, I think I'm exposing my early stages of Deschooling in myself at every question that I ask probably. But that's fine.

Pavlina:

It's a normal part of the process. We all go through it, and let's face it, all of us have been through the school system. It's what we know. It's what we're familiar with. It's what we understand.

Leisa Reichelt:

I also think as parents, we're so used to people telling us that we need to do more,

Pavlina:

Yes,

Leisa Reichelt:

The problem is that you are not doing enough, that you're not doing well enough that you need to do better, you need to try harder, if you were doing this, then it would all be okay. And I think you carry that with you into this process where you're like, am I doing enough? if I'm not feeling stressed and harried, if I'm not pushing, if I'm not doing stuff, then I must not be. exactly. Because we've been told that for such a long time. It is very hard to put that down. And like you were saying before, don't offer opportunities every five minutes. stay away, leave them alone.

Pavlina:

Yep.

Leisa Reichelt:

what do I do? What do I do?

Pavlina:

What's my job?

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah, exactly.

Pavlina:

Your job is to love them, support them, tell them they're enough as they are. It's simple and hard at the same time. And also work through your grief and work through your guilt.'cause you'll have both.

Leisa Reichelt:

All right. This is, a good time for us to move into wrapping up. this has been very therapeutic for me. Thank you very much, ladies.

Pavlina:

Glad to hear it.

Leisa Reichelt:

If you think back to when you were first starting this, something that you wish somebody had tapped you on the shoulder and said to you in the early days, what would it be? What do you wish somebody had told you early on?

Pavlina:

It's gonna be okay man. It's gonna be okay.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

Definitely. I mean that at its at its core. That's the main thing I needed was the It's gonna be okay. Your kids are gonna be okay. You're doing the right thing. Because, those are the fears,

Pavlina:

yep.

Heidi Ryan (she/her):

that were holding me back. Those were the things that had me try things that didn't work for my kids, you know?

Pavlina:

and also, it's not working, then just change it. If there's conflict, use conflict as a marker for it's not working. If there's conflict, then you need to have a conversation, simple as that.

Leisa Reichelt:

You talked before about how important it is to have people who are on the same journey or have been on the same journey around you, whether that's in in-person groups that are local to you or finding online spaces. So that's probably the number one most important resource, I'm guessing.

Pavlina:

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt:

Have you got any other recommendations, things people should watch, read, do, that might be helpful as well?

Pavlina:

I think leaning into the work of people like Ross Green and really, really internalizing that message that kids and adults will do well, if they can. Really lean into that, change those lenses, If they could, they would. if you're gonna marinate in anything, marinate in that philosophy. If you can start to see not just your kids, but other human beings that way too, you can treat other people with grace and yourself too. Yeah. And I would say another thing if you find yourself thinking they'should' be doing something, as soon as that word should comes into your brain, examine your biases. Examine your underlying perceptions, because if you're thinking someone should be doing something there is an indicator that you've internalized ideas about what the world should look like, that perhaps may not have any basis in reality or what people need.

Leisa Reichelt:

Amazing. Okay. Thanks so much, Pav. Thanks Heidi. Talk to you. Take care. Bye bye-Bye. Well, I hope you found that deep dive into Deschooling as helpful as I did. If for no other reason than as reassurance that there is always time, there are always options and our kids will do well if they can. And our job is just to love them and do the best we can to support their mental health and wellbeing. If you have other topics that you'd like us to cover, or if you have a School Can't Lived Experience story you'd be willing to share, please email us at schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. If you're concerned that we're overwhelmed by people volunteering to share their stories, that is not the case. We would very much like to hear from you. I've put links to the various Australian State Home Education groups that Pav referred to in the episode notes, as well as, once again links to Dr. Ross Green's website. He's a popular recommendation. I've also put a link to the School Can't Australia website and a link to donate to School Can't Australia. Your tax deductible donations assist us to raise community awareness, partner with researchers, produce resources like webinars and this podcast, which all assist people who are supporting children and young people experiencing School Can't. If you are a parent or carer in Australia and you are feeling distressed, remember you can always call the Parent Helpline in your state. A link with the number to call is in the episode notes. Thank you again for listening. We will talk again soon. Take care.