Beginnings and Endings and thoughts on Childhood

 Coming into 2025 I'm inclined to reflect on the past years homeschooling as I come to an end of the home ed journey, most likely, with my third child.  There have been so many changes over the years and so many things staying the same, in some ways.  When I became a parent this was the last thing on my mind, and I really thought that there would be some good alternative schools to meet my kids needs.  I feel this has only gotten worse in the last, approx 12years with the implementation of the national curriculum.  There are more teachers under strain, more students being failed, too many unnecessary labels because people no longer seem to understand basic childhood or human development and that these things happen over a curve, and then of course there are the people who actually require the labels, and the extra assistance but are likely lost in the noise of the misundertanding of childhood and a natural education.

As a long term Steiner inspired home educator, I have really liked Steiner's philosophy on giving children time to play and grow via imagination.  I find the Steiner school attitude too dogmatic generally, and interestingly that in reading Steiner himself,  he said that his way of doing would eventually become a dogma as we get further and further from his time.  Some of my main takeaways from reading and learning various aspects of Steiner are: stages of development- birth to 7 is all about imitation, kids copy everything and that is how they learn.  If you don't like how they are doing something, try to work out where it is coming from.  7-14 is about imagination, engaging in storying telling, play, creativity.  14-21 is about inspiration and this is the time when kids recognise their own inner shadows, and it is worth finding inspiring people and characters and mentors to guide them through darkness and into light.  21-28 is about ego and working out who one is as an individual.

Another aspect that I really appreciate in a Steiner inspired education is engaging head, heart and hands.  The head being the thinking intellectual side, the heart being the feeling, spiritual, emotional side, and the hands being the action oriented side.  A well rounded education should offer all of these things, and this is where a modern schooled education currently fails- the curriculum is stuffed too full and gives the impression that it caters to the arts and to movement, but allows the teacher very little flexibility to cater to her students as individuals within their group.

When we moved back to Australia and began permanently home educating in 2007, there were whispers of a national curriculum.  I was not impressed, living in the UK, we had chosen a Steiner school for DD24 because the papers were reporting all over the place that the national curriculum was failing our children.  When we settled into home ed, in Adelaide, and I had to understand the learning outcome style of reporting on education, it was challenging.  I had to take the idea of what was required in the outcomes and work out how what we were doing was meeting those outcomes.  As a basic idea of what this was like to navigate, an outcome could be that children learn to balance. From there it was up to the teacher to work out how their class would learn that skill- it could be skating, cycling, gym,etc.  As a newbie home education parent this was a challenge, and it must also have been a challenge for a newbie teacher.  The national curriculum told teachers what to do and when to do it, and sadly it removed the teachers ability to cater on a more individual level to their class, to garner how to meet the individual's within the class' needs.

As this has gone on the pigeonholing of students has become ever more ridiculous.  Are there any normal children left?  I find I hardly meet a person these days who has a child that is just a child.  I am intrigued by how disconnected we have become to children.  In the last few years I've come to understand children's brainwaves better, and the idea that Steiner put forth that children are in a dream like state.  Until seeing some of the recent research on this, I did not understand just how true this is.  Up til approximately 7 children are in a sleeping awake state.  The older and older they get, the more they grow out of this, their brainwaves change until they are in an adult waking state.  The under 7 stage is perfect for programming their minds and creating life long healthful habits if we treat our children well, but at least in Australia, we are not doing that.  We are asking them to be still, when they need to move and to learn proprioception, we are complaining that they are reading too late- when reading is actively connected to this awakening process,  we are forgetting the power that is in our children's readiness and trying to speed them up to suit school, instead of realising that school should be addressing our children's uniqueness and trying to identify their readiness.  It is interesting to me that instead of copying many of the Scandanavian countries styles of education, which dissuade from academic education before 7 we decided to copy a system that was reported on as failing.  One can only ask, why?

Some links on brainwaves and children (not my original reading, just a few from a brief search for this blog post)-

https://www.psypost.org/new-study-finds-theta-brainwave-activity-in-childhood-predicts-iq-at-age-18/

https://www.amandaleebrady.com/understanding-the-brainwaves-of-your-children/

https://boldscience.org/measuring-brainwaves-to-understand-how-children-learn/

https://startingblocks.gov.au/resources/parenting-and-home/your-childs-development/brain-development-in-children

https://silvamethodgb.com/why-children-learn-so-fast/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4354864/Brainwaves-predict-children-s-reading-ability.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29863816/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5593855/

Some Thoughts on Learning

I've been home educating long enough now, to feel pretty happy with what we do. I've seen my children learn and grow, and many of the things that left me nervous and uncertain in my early days have been overcome. I have two adult children in their early stages of making their way in the world, and on the whole I feel home educating has been the right choice for our family.

Some things that I think are worth considering on this journey are the balance between structured (classes, etc) and unstructured learning (question led and going down rabbit holes!) and multi-generational family and independent learning.

Learning together- exploring colour as a family.

My parents were a blend of structured and unstructured in their approach to learning, and some of my fondest memories are of me spending time with my Dad, and having him explain to me various activities, that perhaps other adults would have thought I was too small to understand. As the second youngest of 12, I assume now he treated me this way because he was treated this way( he died 21 years ago). I feel very blessed to have had this experience and to have been able to bring an experimental multi-generational sense of learning to family, that I now realise was routed in spending time with my Dad.

When we started home educating, Willow who's 23, had been to a Steiner school and the creativity and the practical side, and the screen minimisation (both Damien and I were in favour of this, both of us had computers young, and Damien works as software engineer) and in our early years I was very much trying to replicate Steiner at home. I did quite a bit of reading on it, including reading some of Steiner's takes on education. At this stage now, in my 18th year, I feel this background continues to serve me in how I approach education with my children, as I have this understanding to fall back on, when I am wondering how my children are progressing in life. The main tenants, I find particularly useful are knowing that children in the first seven years tend to imitation, from 7-14 they tend to imagination, and from 14-21 they tend to inspiration.

In practise what this looks like is children under 7 copying everything they see and hear, try to use their vision of the world and what interests them to create the sort of people that they wish to become. For children 7-14, the imagination stage can be creating anything- stories, game, drawings, etc. 14-21 year olds, need guidance through mentorship, inspiring people and stories, and initiation to start to bring themselves into maturity.

So coming back to my earlier thoughts- structured and unstructured learning. Both have value and both have potential. My preference is to have a balance of both in our family. A class with an exceptional teacher/mentor can impart knowledge that I lack and the right circumstances speed up learning. However they do not tend to teach a child how to be a self-directed independent learner. That is something that unstructured learning can offer- particularly I think if a parent/guardian is prepared to be a co-learner with their child/student. Doing research together, asking questions together and exploring together, set up the child to understand how to do the process easily when they are more mature.

Trying out an ice hockey class.

Multi-generational learning, in a family or in extended community, brings enormous rewards in that the student gets to receive skills across the family, or across the generations of people that are becoming or have become significant in their field (this of course does not have to mean paid work- it could be a hobby that they are exceptional at). Independent learning give the student a chance to research , to understand their own boundaries and how far and how much they can push themselves without an adult judging whether they have done enough or are good enough. It encourages them to self-assess and to work on themselves, themselves.

A spontaneous bit of history- on a walk to a park to meet friends.

Some interest led learning- Arden exploring textures of fabric close up, on my camera.

And so, over the years I have noticed a couple of things in my community here, in Perth. People doing very structured home education- with lots of text books and classes can manage the high school years easily. They fall back on the idea of the traditional view of education, probably pre-dating modern schooling. Those that unschool in the early years, and do not learn how to learn with their children seem to come unstuck at high school, and seem to particularly need to send their children to high school, as they are uncertain how to transition into more academic style learning. This seems to be particularly the case when people claim that unschooling is "doing nothing" (I have heard this statement quite a number of times over the years, and I highly recommend reading John Holt for anyone that thinks that this is what it is). I find it quite a shame that many people come unstuck at this point, and I think it would serve many people well to remember that they are the child's first teacher- walking, talking, etc and to remember that what skills one has as an adult are valuable to pass on to children. Not force on to them, just work side by side learning together, so that the best of both world's can be had, and that there is no need to find endless classes (or schools) because sometimes learning in the family at home can be enough.

A past obsession; marble runs made out of jenga blocks. There was lots of self-directed creative play, building, learning and inspiration from youtube.

Gender Equality in Education and Life

Gender equality in education is something that I feel very strongly about.  The first time I remember reading this as an idea, was in regards to Steiner curriculum, where an article I was reading discussing that the curriculum  involved all children learning all skills.  So girls learnt woodwork and boys learnt to knit.  This applied to all sorts of skills; including metalwork, crocheting, etc.  I loved this idea, everyone having an opportunity to try and learn a skill that is useful to life and that they may discover they love. At this point in time, I had two children aged about 1 and 3, and I was starting to develop a relationship with cooking.

 I moved out of home aged 21 and was a useless home maker.  Children being involved in caretaking their living environment was not encouraged in my family and I could cook a bare minimum- I could scramble and fry eggs, make french toast, make pancakes and bake.  Maybe there were a few other skills in there, but they mostly involved cans.  I didn't have the patience to cook 2 minute noodles properly.

So this complete education idea appealed because I felt everyone should be able to take care of themselves.  Going to an all girls' school that valued academics, home making skills had been rejected; girls were as capable as boys!  And whilst this is a fabulous attitude; it should also be noted, that boys are as capable as girls!  So the idea of an education that would teach both genders to be balanced and capable and caring for themselves and others appeals to me.

This was one of the reasons that we headed towards a Steiner education whilst living in the UK.  Along the way, I learnt to be a home maker in a whole sense, as did Damien.  Damien could cook when we met, I was better at cleaning, but not keen to do it! And between the two of us, we made a comfortable home life.  Damien cooked and I cleaned, usually.  However, when we had kids, my lack of food preparation abilities became more and more evident and combined with family health issues I started to take an interest in food.

For us now this is great, but really I should have learnt this as a child/young person, and IMO the same can be said for any basic caretaking skills.  Sewing buttons on, bike maintenance, basic woodwork, cooking, cleaning, etc.  People need to know how to care for themselves in their environments, and the idea that a woman or a man needed to be around to help the opposite gender is just ridiculous!

Due to this equality in education in the Steiner setting we were in, in Scotland, we saw children playing and acting and creating regardless of gender.  Some boys and girls liked dresses and princesses, some liked dragons and princes, some liked pink,blue, green, yellow.  There were far few boundaries around what was accepted for their gender.  This was beautiful, kids were liking things because the thing spoke to them, not because it was what "boys did" or "girls did".  Just because they could.  At home having a daughter and son, and very little media (no TV and only occasional film watching), our children flourished playing all sorts of games sometimes violent, sometimes delicate.  Gabriel loved being able to wear kilts.  He dressed as a fairy.  Willow did the things no-one wonders at any more, she wore pants.  She climbed and hammered things, and built. Willow and Gabriel both getting dressed up in fancy clothes to go out. Both genders trying both things. 

In our home now, this is totally a way of life.  I must admit Damien and I were already like it from the start.  I'm quite a masculine woman and Damien is quite a feminine man.  He expresses his soft side and I express my harder side.  (Generally I'm a bit suspicious of the women and men that are unable to do this.) Everyone tries everything, and everyone is valued for what they themselves offer in our home.

Arden and Irving in their sequin t-shirts from the "girls" range in Zara.  (Who said boys don't like sparkles?)

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2025

I feel this is more important than ever.  The introduction of the trans story into schools and the ridiculous notion of queerness....yes, yes, tell me I'm queer.....seems to me to be a complete spiritual crisis.  There is a traumatised generation that are completely confused by the idea, that they are their bodies, when in fact their spirit/soul is anchored to their body, and that their body may be female/male, girl/boy, man/woman but that does not define their interests and what they would like to do.

I used to wonder about the growing materialistic need to know the sex of one's baby before birth.  We have not found out what any of our babies were.  Partly because, with our first pregnancy in 1999, it was still fairly common for people to want a surprise.  The lovely aspect about this, was that there were a beautiful range of colours for new babies.  Pastel green, lemons, apricots, also navy was considered neutral and white, and of course the baby pinks and blues.  Gradually as the years went on, and more and more people knew the sex of their baby, these colours vanished.  Until by 2013, my choice of neutral colours for Irving was grey, or grey.....there was a bit of red in there too I think.  But I did really have to ponder, why drop the colours?  Why couldn't a new baby still have all these other shades.  (I looked through the baby wear today, and they're still limiting the colours!).

So I tend to think this crisis of confused children is partly created by people, boxing babies into their bodies too soon.  Children are in dream mode (there's more on that here), and are meant to live in the imagination, and are meant to explore characters, but they also need to be reminded that their bodies still naturally grow and behave a certain way.  

And so these small people come to feel that because they do things that are labeled "girl" and they are boys, or they do things that are labeled "boy" and they are girls, they concluded that means that they are other than their bodies are.  This is a complete tragedy.  They always were themselves, and a girl can like trucks, cars, weights, being strong, etc, etc, and still be a girl.  A boy can like skirts, pink, twirling, dolls,etc,etc and still be a boy.  

So I would love  to see more of this revolve full circle.  I do believe it is starting to, where we start accepting our children's essence again, and let them live in their imaginations, playing, being, exploring, and coming to understand that their body grows a certain way, and that it needs no modification.    We don't make ducks into dogs, or cats into flowers, and our children need to be loved and embraced as the souls that they are, and helped with the strange transitions of being anchored to bodies.

More Thoughts on Natural Learing

As we progress through our home education experience, we still continue to use structure and natural learning as a blend for our learning experiences.  Increasingly throughout my life, I've come to value balance- finding the middle view and how to bring that to life.  It seems to me, that so many things that humans do are out of balance; it seems to be an all or nothing approach, success or failure, healthy food or junk food, etc, etc.  As complex creatures we have the ability to be many faceted, to be able to define ourselves by our own rules and intuition, to honour our own voices and our own journey.

The longer I have home educated the more this is important, but so is belonging and fitting in and knowing when it's appropriate to break or bend the rules.  Individualism has been taken too far IMO, and has lead to people feeling isolated and lacking in connection.  Around here our main focus of home education has always been family, but I understand it as a goal more clearly now, than I did when starting out on this journey around 10years ago.  We regularly discuss how to be an individual whilst still being a part of the group; how to support family and still be oneself?  How to express one's inner ness and still be connected outwardly.  To me these are important components in creating a balanced home education experience, and that family must always be at the core.  So as part of that, each and every person in my family has value, no one or other greater than any individual.  As an example since I am the person that manages the education and the home, I have a need for a peaceful and tidy home.  I'm more relaxed and better at focusing on everyone when our home feels and looks tidy.  So this is a priority that needs to be achieved- everyone takes part in home loving day (this year on Fridays) so that as a group we have a more peaceful life because I feel supported with our home and keeping it tidy, and as individuals we need to learn how to take care of ourselves.  Various members of the family have jobs to do during the week to help maintain the comfort of our home, and make sure home loving day doesn't become too enormous.

The more I consider natural learning in this sense, part of me feels that as a society we lost our way over the last 60-100years.  Day in day out at home children would have once learnt all sorts of useful life skills from their parents taking care of the home.  Modern natural learning, seems to me to still be pre-occupied in many cases, that the parents cannot teach the children anything, and that everything must be about the child's interests without regard for the fact that there are some skills that the child must learn for a healthful and useful life.  Perhaps in the early 1900s everyone was totally overburdened with the level of tasks that needed to be done to survive, but we now have an alternative extreme where there are few too tasks to be done that have meaning, and it seems to me that a life without meaning is filled with disillusion.  For me the structure of home ed, balanced with natural learning and following a Steiner path returned meaning to my life.  Thus for me, a balanced approach is still both, some natural learning and some Steiner.

As my two oldest go through the high school years, we are taking a more unschooling approach; as I guide them towards fulfilling their dreams.  However for me I feel satisfied that they are capable young people who can care for themselves in the world, and without any structure in the early years, I feel certain that we would not have achieved that as a family.  Both Willow and Gabriel are able to cook lovely meals, competently clean the house, babysit, do a variety of crafts, as well as follow their own interests- for them both  there is a love of circus, Willow has a passion for writing and music and Gabriel has a passion for board-gaming and financial systems.  I feel like I have given them a solid basis as adults going out into the world, one where they have an understanding of how to support themselves, and how to look for support and guidance when it's needed, from that basis I feel that it's easier to then follow one's own interests, as the basics are covered.  I guess I see a lot of Steiner early education being on par with teaching a small child to use the toilet, be polite, eat a meal with the family.

With Arden I feel much more competent in regards to the journey, I know what's expected of Steiner education up through the primary years,and he's naturally guided towards various goals of the curriculum through our day to day life.  This year aged 7 1/2 he desired to have his own dinner night, as Willow and Gabriel do,  but due to our youngest , only being 2 1/2 I felt that I didn't have time to support that, but Dad (Damien) did.  In terms of Steiner education, this was perfect as we are approaching class 3- with it's focus on taking care of oneself- and it was linking naturally into life, because as a family we now have a solid base of understanding where we are going.  Something that was definitely absent in the early years of our home educating.

In case anyone's interested, these are some thoughts I had on natural learning, earlier through our home ed journey.

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2025

I feel I still pretty much agree with this.  We have varied how we do things a bit around here, now that we have adult children.  For instance, we aren't screen free in our home education any longer, but we are particular that the computers are used as tools for learning.  

Cushion Design and Horses

Gabriel's cushion design.


Willow's drawings.....

Knitting

Since we mostly follow a Steiner based curriculum at our Unicorn school, both Gabriel and Willow have been learning to knit. To teach them to knit I also had to learn. To be honest that isn't entirely true, I actually learnt to knit when I was six, and then spent the next four years knitting my dad a scarf- it was a nightmare, and that combined with my mum taking forever to knit anything, totally put me off knitting.

Anyhow further down the track, and Willow is at the Glasgow Steiner School, and loads of the parents knit, I didn't really feel ready to face knitting, so instead I learnt to crochet. I crocheted a variety of hats for everyone in the family, making them up as I went along. After leaving Glasgow, homeschooling, returning to Adelaide, messing about with schools, we decided to homeschool again and I had to learn to knit to teach the kids, so now all three of us are busy knitting a variety of things.

Gabriel has only started to knit this year, and this has been challenging for me, as I knit left handed, and I had to teach him to knit right handed. Obviously essentially it is the same, but reversed. Apparently my Grandma taught me to knit left handed using a mirror, but since I've learnt most things by watching and reversing them, I figured I could do the same to help Gabriel. Now I'm able to knit both right and left handed, but I am much faster knitting left handed unsurprisingly. Willow ended up being taught by my Mum. She went for a sleepover one weekend with her Grandma, and came home being able to knit. So for the last couple of years I've mostly helped her with dropped stitches, and showed her how to purl, but on the whole it was much simpler, as she already knew the basics.

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June 2025

Since then  I have taught the younger two children to knit too.  Another one, Arden, is left handed like myself, but I chose to teach him right handed knitting for the convenience of following patterns, if he should choose to knit more.  So far he hasn't chosen to do that.  ATM Irving and I are knitting together- I am working on knitting Gabriel a Harry Potter "Weasley Jumper" and Irving is doing his first full knitting project; a black hat for himself.

This post is back when Arden learnt to knit, and when Gabriel made himself socks.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2014/12/2014.html

Willow regularly does craft work still, and probably did the most out of all the kids, so far, in her homeschooling journey.  This is when she was 15, and we were learning to sew, and she was also busy making herself a beret.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2015/05/pirated-away.html

This link is a must read if you are interested in knitting, or Steiner education but wonder about the relevance in a modern education.

https://new.pyrites.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Knitting-begets-thinking.pdf

If you use the search bar, there are more posts on our knitting over the years, for your inspiration.