I am going to be honest with you as a parent. Deschooling is one of the hardest things you will ever do. In my opinion it is harder for the parent than for a child.  no matter the age or how long they have been in school.

First let’s go over what Deschooling is and why you need to do it if you plan on Homeschooling, Roadschooling, Traditional homeschool, Unschooling, or my favorite school, Googleschool (Google/Internet – where you find most of your answers).

Deschooling the definition: to abolish or phase out traditional schools from, so as to replace them with alternative methods and forms of education

To me (and this is just my opinion again) it means to let go and let you kids do what ever they want.  No, this doesn’t mean your child should go sit in the middle of the street and eat cupcakes all day.  What this mean is you need to let your kids decide what they want to do. Then watch and see what interests them, pay attention, make suggestions, and watch some more. It means you should let them watch TV, play video games, play outside all day, go swimming, do crafts.  All the things they want to do instead of worksheets, test, or anything they feel is school related.

This means that you do absolutely no school, no workbook sheets, no math, or history if they don’t want to. Basically this is a time that your child needs to decompress. Let your child do nothing, sleep late, stay up late, watch TV all day, play Mindcraft for weeks.  In “normal school” kids are told what to do, when to do it, and given a strict schedule.  Kids become more stressed creating anxiety.  Some kids need this time to figure out what interests them.  While others take longer, many just know (like my youngest daughter).

 How do I deschool my kids and how long does it take?

I know you are ready to get started Unschooling.  This will be hardest part for you, so find a good book, great movie serious.  Tomorrow wake up and do nothing, yep that’s it, let you kids do what ever they want.  Sounds crazy and by week three you and your spouse will be going nuts and asking yourself if you are doing the right thing.

Seriously just let them do what ever they want, if they want to watch TV for the next month every day all day. Let them play on the computer, play Minecraft, play animal jam or wizards 101 or any game.  This is about finding out what interests them, and what they like, and how long will this take? This depends on you and your child, It  will take one week to one year, yep some kids need that much time to figure out their passions.  My daughter is still trying to figure out what she likes and we have unschooled for five years. The experts say it takes one month to deschool for every year they were in normal, public or private school.

Here is the formula for Deschooling: 5 years school = 5 months deschool

Now you have a game plan, do nothing, seems easy enough right? I actually think this is more for the parents.  It took my husband a year and half to deschool once we started traveling. He still has a hard time with our life style but likes it more and more every day.  Here is what I did once we got into the swing of things.  I would ask the family where they wanted to go and give them three options, like a museum, zoo, of tour the city.  Then everyone would vote and we would go do that and I incorporated a little learning without everyone knowing (bonus).

Our first week of Unschooling my kids watched tv nonstop for months.  They finally asked me when are we going to start homeschooling.  I just simply said we’ve been Unschooling for the last month. We would love to hear how you deschool your kids or how it’s going.