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New to unschooling, not to homeschooling, anxiety help

2K views 8 replies 3 participants last post by  BellinghamCrunchie 
#1 ·
DD (almost 13) has been homeschooled on and off - had been going to Waldorf until last year when she began having stomach aches related to anxiety around school. She was previously homeschooled K-3.

Our homeschool curriculum was eclectic and very relaxed, but she resisted doing any of it, and I could not find a way to make it fun. It seems no matter what I suggested, it felt like pressure to her, and she would sadly comply but her heart was not into it, and in her massive free time she would either make slime over and over, play with friends, or watch youtube videos.

I decided to use an unschooling approach instead. I dropped all the requirements except one: from 9am to 5pm, she could use her iPad, but it had to be for playing games, doing research, etc and not for zoning out to youtube videos. She agreed to this.

I'm nervous because she doesn't seem to want to do anything but use her iPad. Doesn't want to go to the museum, or make a go-kart, or do crafts, or be read to, or do any of the classes she had previously chosen to do while we were homeschooling but not unschooling (e.g. Jam class on animation, self-paced class on moding Minecraft, chemistry experiments with a tutor, parkour classes, theatre, etc).

She seems depressed and anxious. She is anxious about doing homeschooly stuff and anxious about not doing it. She doesn't seem able to make herself do anything to help with her anxiety such as do a little math if she feels anxious about not doing math. She doesn't seem interested in much of anything except watching youtube videos and playing with younger children.

It was because of this tendency towards anxiety and depression that I decided to unschool. I thought that if she had less pressure, she would find interests and we could support her to do them, and she would find her power and strength and jump into her life and her freedom.

I'm not sure what to do next. Should I just wait and see if she develops some interest in something? Should I keep offering to do activities with her or step back and just let her do her thing? Should I remove the restriction with the iPad about not using the iPad between 9am and 5pm to zone out? Will this pass? Does she just need to deschool for a while?

She is also in the middle of hormonal changes. She hasn't started her cycles yet but her pediatrician says it will happen in the next 3-6 months, most likely. Could this be part of it?

Any advice would be really appreciated.
 
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#2 ·
I don't have any advice, but if you find the following question of any help, feel free to consider it.

you mention that while homeschooling your daughter chose to do

> Jam class on animation, self-paced class on moding Minecraft, chemistry >experiments with a tutor, parkour classes, theatre, etc

but no longer does these.

I am wondering why a shift to unschooling would have occasioned a decrease in activities that she had been doing by choice.
 
#4 · (Edited)
I am wondering why a shift to unschooling would have occasioned a decrease in activities that she had been doing by choice.
Just guessing here, but perhaps the choice was along the lines of "what are you going to do for PE, science and math?" Choice from a menu rather than the choice to cook for yourself, or maybe even to not even eat at all if you're not hungry.

Or it could be the settling in of adolescent brain changes and hormonal fluctuations.

Or it could be depression and anxiety getting more entrenched.

Or more than likely a combination.

Miranda
 
#3 ·
She seems depressed and anxious. She is anxious about doing homeschooly stuff and anxious about not doing it.
Normally I would be one to tout a long period of hands-off deschooling, and the practice of giving a kid in early adolescence the freedom to 'cocoon' for a year or so during this crazy-making transitional phase. But what you say above about the anxiety in particular makes me think she might be getting kind of stuck in a situation where her current coping mechanism is actually digging her into a deeper hole. Some active facilitation might help her see past the obstacles.

It can be tough for adolescents to grapple simultaneously with their increasing need for autonomy and with the need for tangible external validation of their productivity, a feeling that they are becoming people who can contribute meaningfully to the world. The first requires that they be in charge, and often they feel that the only way to truly assert their autonomy is to resist the type of productivity that parents/teachers/society seem to expect of them. But resisting that productivity is at odds to their need to feel like they're doing something that is valuable and meaningful.

When that already complicated push-and-pull situation starts to get further complicated by anxiety and depression, kids can need help. The interest and energy needed to assert autonomy in productive affirming ways gets harder and harder to generate if you are depressed and anxious, convinced you don't have much to offer and will likely fail anyway.

I would take her out for a café date to talk things over. Keep it as positive as you can by plying her with some nice food and a pleasant optimistic attitude. Tell her that she doesn't seem as happy or energetic as you wished she could be, and you're wondering if there's anything you guys could do together that would make her life better. Talk about times when she seemed happy and engaged ... "Remember when your cousins were here and you and Tara baked those cookies and then spent all afternoon making memes and laughing your heads off? And remember when you did that big purge cleaning out your bedroom last month and you were super happy with the changes you made? I wish there were more times like that when you had energy and felt good about yourself. I guess I'm wondering if there are things you and dad and I could do, opportunities we could offer you, changes in the structure of your life at home, anything at all really, that would help life feel less dreary to you."

My always-unschooled kids seemed to get goal-oriented at around age 11-12, but they had very rudimentary executive function skills when it came to articulating their goals, setting expectations for themselves, creating a conducive sustainable structure, pacing themselves appropriately, coping with setbacks, creating accountability techniques and tracking their success in ways that were meaningful to them. That's where they needed my help. They didn't want or need me to impose my approach on them; they needed me to help them brainstorm, be a sounding board, remind them to build contingency plans and offer whatever assistance they wanted on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes that first café date would just be a chance to talk things over and start to feel like we're on the same side, in which case we'd meet again in a week to move further along. Eventually we'd get far enough with it to come up with a few ideas we wanted to implement. I'd usually write stuff down so that we could refer back to it. My set of notes from a first meeting might include things like "1. use iPod dock and alarm to adjust waking-up time towards 8 am 2. research online self-paced math programs 3. cook supper together at least three days a week 4. see about a gymnastics class 5. set up a free Wordpress site." Or whatever.

The incredibly important part of this approach is revisiting all these issues and plans on a weekly basis to recognize and celebrate what has worked well, and to deal with the things that aren't working well: we'd either re-commit to them or change the approach. Surprisingly when there's some part of the plan that hasn't worked well, and that fact is recognized early and presented cheerfully as a problem to be solved without nagging or judgment, my kids often rallied without needing a change. They'd say "Oh, yeah, I dunno, I was tired and it was hard to get started so I just didn't bother... but I think I still really want to do that, so I'll try this week for sure" and things would start working. But if a change was needed, if that goal no longer felt important, if a different approach could be tried, we'd make the adjustment. And every week we'd repeat this process until things were going well, and even then we'd try to do a meeting once every month or two just to celebrate how well things were going and start looking forward for new ideas.

To me this is all very consistent with unschooling because the child is completely in the driver's seat. But there's a lot of active facilitation and direct support from the parent when it comes to setting whatever goals and structure she wants. Some of that can end up looking rather schoolish and parent-enforced, if for example your kid asks for something that seems weirdly non-unschooly and controlling like "I don't want you to give me my allowance unless I've done 4 pages of math that week, okay?" well, she chose it, and that makes all the difference.

Miranda
 
#6 ·
My always-unschooled kids seemed to get goal-oriented at around age 11-12, but they had very rudimentary executive function skills when it came to articulating their goals, setting expectations for themselves, creating a conducive sustainable structure, pacing themselves appropriately, coping with setbacks, creating accountability techniques and tracking their success in ways that were meaningful to them. That's where they needed my help. They didn't want or need me to impose my approach on them; they needed me to help them brainstorm, be a sounding board, remind them to build contingency plans and offer whatever assistance they wanted on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes that first café date would just be a chance to talk things over and start to feel like we're on the same side, in which case we'd meet again in a week to move further along. Eventually we'd get far enough with it to come up with a few ideas we wanted to implement. I'd usually write stuff down so that we could refer back to it. My set of notes from a first meeting might include things like "1. use iPod dock and alarm to adjust waking-up time towards 8 am 2. research online self-paced math programs 3. cook supper together at least three days a week 4. see about a gymnastics class 5. set up a free Wordpress site." Or whatever.

Miranda
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

With unschooling, it sounds like you expect your children to have goals, and then support them in the ways they determine to help them meet those goals or drop the goals and come up with new ones, is that right?

I used to do that with her when we were homeschooling but not unschooling, to a large extent. There were some thing that weren't negotiable (reading, writing, and math) but she had lots of choices as to how she wanted to do those things. Minus the cool cafe idea - which I like a lot. Change the environment, make it special, make it less about "this is what you need to do and now you tell me how you want to do it" and more like "what kinds of things are you thinking you'd like to be doing?" And then having a regular time where we review how its going and what changes are needed.

However, my thinking about unschooling was to remove the pressure of even having to have goals. Right now, it seems that she is unable to meet any goals she sets for herself, gets resistant when I try to offer support, and feels badly about herself for not making progress and not really even trying. I'm new to this and am still learning how to unschool. I wonder if part of what is happening is that she needs more time to realize that she does have more control and my position is one of support, not nagging or telling her what she needs to do?

Today we took her to an autumn festival along with a friend. In observing them together, I realized that her friend has way more symptoms of what I am calling possible depression and anxiety than my daughter - lots of "I don't know" and "I don't want to" when asked if she'd like to ride the horses or pet the bunnies or go down the slide, while my DD was gung-ho to do these things. So maybe it is just part of life at that age? This fear and not wanting to commit to anything and having a hard time finding things fun?

DD is an only child and she is currently refusing to even consider expanding her group of friends. Her friends are going to public school. DD enjoys just about everything - including tedious math - if she has someone to do it with. I'm trying to get her into groups with other kids; for example, we attend a class with the family partnership program; she chose to do theatre which I thought was great because there are 30 other kids; there's a homeschool outdoor adventure club in the works in our community which I think she might say yes to... I see that other kids are frequently coming up to her and obviously wanting to be friends with her (she is very outgoing and outrageous) but she won't follow-up with any of them. I have tons of mom's numbers from moms who say, "my daughter would love a playdate with yours" but when I talk to DD about it, she always says, "no, I don't like her/him." So we are kind of stuck because she loves doing schoolwork type stuff with friends but doesn't want to make any friends that would do schoolwork with her.
 
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