#157 Looking back & Moving Forward: Celebrating our Unschooling Community

Are you curious about unschooling or looking for support on your journey?

In this special year-end episode, I’m Sue Patterson, and I’m reflecting on an incredible year with the Unschooling Mom2Mom community. 

We’ll dive into how unschooling parents in my private membership group overcame fears, embraced real-life learning, and discovered creative ways to help their kids thrive—whether it was making math stress-free, translating unschooling into progress reports, or finding harmony with skeptical spouses.

Learn how connection, community, and confidence make all the difference in creating a joyful unschooling experience for your family. Plus, I’ll share details about the special 6-month membership package designed to support you through the spring and to the end of the school year.

If you’re ready to let go of school-conditioned thinking and embrace a child-centered, play-based approach to learning, this episode is for you. Let’s make unschooling work for your unique family in the new year!

Happy New Year and Happy Unschooling!

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UNSCHOOLING RESOURCES:
mentioned in this episode

• Unschooling Guide:
  New Year's Workbook for Unschoolers
  
  
• Creating Confidence Membership - 6-month package!
  Full Unschooling Support from January-June 2025!
  
  
  

Transcript

Here we are, at the end of the year, I’m getting ready to do the final coaching call in my membership group. It’s more of a Co-Working session where everyone is using the New Years workbook for Unschoolers (yes, you can get it at the Unschooling Mom2Mom shop, but it’s included in the membership)

Anyway, they will be working on all the things that happened in their family over the last year.

The learning. The progress. The adventures.

And *I* will be documenting what happened within the group: 

• what new Challenges or mini-courses I created for them, 
• what books we read together, 
• what PDFs I made because of a question that popped upon a coaching call or within a discussion. 

I love making these, so we have hundreds that are only available inside the membership.

But as I was thinking about the year, I was thinking about the people in the membership group and the actual transitions that have happened. The fears they were able to overcome because they were in the group. And that makes me really happy to create a space where parents can let go of the old ways that aren’t working. A place to brainstorm together, commiserate, and help each other along. 

For instance,

• They send photos of the learning happening in their homes. Examples of how they’ve had a shift and can SEE that subjects are weaving through the experiences that their kids are having.
• Or they’re talking about their teens going through a tough time and how they’ve learned to listen and connect with them.
• Or the moms that were so worried about how this play-based life was ever going to give their kids the opportunity to learn math. They always worry about math, right? But now they can see that math happens in so many ways that don’t look like school math. And they count too. Plus, they talk about how when they stopped panicking about math, their relationships with their kids improved. And they felt less stressed.
• Some how spouses that weren’t really onboard unschooling, but they’ve learned how to talk to them about it in a way that helps them see the learning that’s actually happening.
• Some needed progress reports to turn into their states or their evaluators, and we helped them confidently translate the kids’ unschooled lives into acceptable documentation. We created transcripts and report cards and end-of-year evaluations that satisfied all the requirements.
• Sometimes we had to work through the ideas of kids and motivation or follow-through, getting ok with so much playtime, and undoing so much of the worry that comes from all that school-conditioned thinking that learning has to be boring or hard or some kind of drudgery.
• We talked a lot about structure and how to adapt that to the individuals in the family. What typical days looked like, and shared examples of what worked and what didn’t
• We talked about making friends - our kids AND us! Our own People Pleasing traits and how we deal with critics - including that inner critic that never seems to take a break!
• We read parenting books and discussed what parts were more unschooling-aligned and what werent. Some were mainstream parenting authors and quite a few dealt with neurodivergence.
• We commiserated with each other in group coaching calls, through the WhatsApp channel, on facebook and in the private forum we have.

We’ve had over 100 group coaching calls this year, monthly book discussions and workshops, private podcasts. We’ve had monthly challenges and mini-courses that tackle the topics that trip us up - like
Getting organized,
Typical Unschooling Days,
oping with Technology,
Deschooling,
Critics,
Not going back to school
... to name a few!

I thnk I’m telling you all of this because if you’re feeling isolated -or you’re floundering -
Or maybe you’re being really hard on yourself because that curriculum that everyone said was going to work, didn’t. I want you to see that you’re not alone.

You could surround yourself with a community parents that could help you get through this. That could help you AND your kid actually THRIVE! Some of us do better when we have others around us who GET us. Who aren’t going to give us the side-eye because we want to carve out a truly unique path that FITS our family. I can be there, holding your hand through this. I promise, it gets easier. But sometimes doing it alone can be a lot of 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. Progress, yes. But harder than it has to be. Come for a month, come for a year - some parents have been in the group since it started in 2016! Their kids are about to graduate!

It really helped me to pick the brains of other parents - mostly moms -  on this path. And so that’s why I created this group. I want you to have that opportunity too - no matter where you live in the world!  Thanks for indulging me on my little walk down memory lane with my membership group this year. It’s been my honor and pleasure to hang out with these parents all year. You’re always welcome to join us! 

I’ve decided to create a 6-month package where you can spend a little less than the month by month plan - but you can have support all the way through the spring - to the end of the school year. I’ll put a link to that in the notes below. 

If you need support - it’s ready and waiting! We’d love to have you join us. Happy New Year! I hope it brings you everything you visualize when you think about learning and living with your kids instead of sending them off to school or forcing them to jump through the hoops of traditional homeschooling curriculum. It really can be a wonderful adventure - and a fabulous childhood! You all deserve that. 

Take care. Happy Unschooling!