Our journey into unschooling on a road less traveled......

As this world seemingly gets crazier and crazier, I’m seeing a huge number of people turning back toward more organic methods of living and learning as they are finding their own unique paths. The one sized fits all cookie cutter ways of yesterday are proving no longer useful.

Some of the more alarming and urgent trends that we are seeing in the areas of forced vaccinations upon school aged children; as well as the increased radicalized agendas that are being forced upon them while they are in school is causing a stunning exodus out of the public education system. A lot of the parents that I’ve talked with are often, understandably, nervous about knowing the correct way in which to educate their children at home. There is no template. Only a zillion different paths to the same goal. Lovers of God as well as healthy, productive adults that are powerful world-changers and forces for good - and not for evil - in the epic spiritual battle that is raging all around us.

I can vividly remember walking into our first parent/teacher conference with our oldest son, Jesse. He and his younger brother, Casey, were in kindergarten and pre-K, respectively, at our church preschool. It was the first of many conferences. The director of the program pulled us in and seated us at preschool sized table to tell us that our son was a bully and had deep seated anger issues. She also said that he was constantly frustrated that he couldn’t finish whatever it was that he was working on when the bell would ring signaling that they needed to move on to their next activities. She also said that when the class lined up in their class “train” formation, Jesse always wanted to be the engine and not the caboose. Although hard to swallow, I could grasp the bully issue. He was inarguably a strong willed and rough and tumble little guy ever since birth. At one point I came downstairs to find him and our little neighbor friend, Jack, who was about the same age as Jess, about to hit Jack with a plastic bat.

To be honest, Jack was undoubtedly a bit annoying to have around. He whined and complained a lot whenever he didn’t get his way but clocking him with a bat didn’t seem to be the correct course of action in my humble little opinion. This, as well as a few other issues, obviously was a bit disconcerting to say the least. But other than normal childhood tussles, we hadn’t seen any serious issues with Jesse other than his immensely strong will, competitive nature and strong desire to complete what he started.

It was clear that Jesse was going to be labeled a bully. We also couldn’t understand the problem with him wanting to finish his projects as well as be the train engine. Seriously. I’ve spent my whole life trying to finish things that I’ve started. We also didn’t believe the fact that he wanted to lead and not follow was a bad thing. He is a natural born leader through and through.

Realizing that public school probably wouldn’t have been a good option (we could see Jesse becoming the leader of the school gang…:)), we began the search for other options for him. We visited the local popular Christian school and I felt like I couldn’t breathe there. I knew it would be a bad fit for Jesse. My husband, Jim, seemed okay with the classroom feel but I truly felt like they were putting these babies and precociously energetic boys in uniformed straight jackets. Leaving very few other viable options available to us on our income, that’s when we decided to entertain the possibility of homeschooling. We had no clue what that would look like but we visited our state’s homeschool convention that spring and fell in the love with the idea of so many available resources that we could use on our own time schedule. Plus, I absolutely really loved spending time with our children and the idea of sending them all off to school for most of the day just wasn’t our desire for raising them. 

Jim was a music education major in college and had also student taught young school aged children after college. Our schedules worked beautifully for us to give this homeschooling a try with Jim as Jesse and Casey’s teacher. Zach and Camryn, our third and fourth, simply had to come along for the ride at this point since everything was going so smoothly for us.

We began homeschooling with all the boxes of curriculum ordered, lessons planned and school supplies galore. This worked beautifully for the first couple of years. Our second son, Casey, was a more timid and shy little guy with a slight lisp. We often joked that we were protecting the world from our oldest and protecting our second son from the world. Either way, it was a wonderful opportunity for us as well as a huge answer to our prayers.

Being in full time ministry leading worship and working with the youth in our church, our schedules were perfect for homeschooling. Since Jim worked most nights and weekends, our school days had the luxury of him being around and therefore able to serve as our children’s teacher. However, my grandmother had had a stroke down in North Carolina and through our difficult journey with her to find and maintain quality in-home care for her (there were no companies providing this type of service in the early 1990s) we ended up starting a home care company here in the DC area to help others in this type of difficult situation. As the business began to grow, I became the primary teacher. This worked for about 1.5 days into the new school year. It quickly became apparent that I’m not the world’s best teacher. By day two of my teaching tenure, we were already behind in our lessons; the children looked at me like they had NO idea what I was trying to teach them and I just wanted to go back to my prior role of handling all aspects of FUN…..i.e. the play, the travel, the field trips, etc.

Desperate, because we were already too far out of sync with the rest of our children’s peers to put them seamlessly into any school system, I researched, prayed and was led by Yeshua to something called unschooling or child directed learning. This was completely foreign to me even though I’ve most often lived my life “outside the box”. Being a faith-based family heavily involved in ministry, the idea of unschooling wasn’t even a concept. Nor was it very favorably looked upon in the circles we were traveling. There were a few families in the area living this lifestyle but whenever we would meet up with them, it became quite clear that we had very different worldviews as well as desires for our family’s spiritual direction. Therefore, we were a very unique family following a road very much less traveled. There were no guides or mentors as well as a bunch of doubts and uncertainties. We knew this could go horribly wrong if we were not hearing Yeshua clearly. Our children’s futures, professional and/or college careers, ability to successfully navigate life, etc. were all riding on whether or not we were getting this right. Our most precious of loves and responsibility for them hung in the balance. It felt - and truly was - incredibly weighty.

So, as much under the radar as we could stay, we pulled back from trying to teach all four of our children what we thought they should learn and when. As soon as we did this, all of them absolutely flourished. They all became deeply unique, self-initiating, confident and completely capable of directing their own lives, paths and journeys. They have all exceeded us, their parents, in all of these of attributes. The three of our children that have chosen to pursue higher education after we graduated them from our “Lindsay Academy” have done incredibly well in university. Obviously, this was one of our greatest concerns when we were in the process of “unprocessing” our children. However, watching the three of them take the initiative, enroll themselves in community college classes to prove they can do college level work (since we had no transcripts, etc.) and then proceed on to top universities has totally quelled this fear. The three of them have completely knocked it out of the park in college.. And our son, Zach, that chose not to go to college is living an absolutely stunning life traveling the world and receiving the most phenomenal education by landing in a foreign country and forging out an insanely exciting and adventurous existence for a few months at a time. *Most of the photo work of this website is his work. More can be seen at: zacharyjl.com

After watching the journey of our two oldest pursue and succeed stunningly well in college and our youngest son forgo it altogether (at least for now), I’m now doing everything in my power NOT to try to discourage our youngest to skip the rest of her two and a half years of college and all the wasted time and money she will spend on it if it doesn’t directly prepare her for her life’s journey. I have to restrain myself from saying anything because it is, indeed, her journey and not mine. All four of our children have allowed the Holy Spirit to direct their paths and choices to an incredible degree. Having watched hundreds of our former youth that we ministered to in our many years of youth ministry go away to college only to return home four years later asking others what they should do next, it seemed to me that school and colleges were causing people not to think for themselves nor outside the box. Seeing our third child at 22 years old land in a foreign country and completely figure out his existence for the foreseeable future is an education beyond compare, I truly believe.

All this to say, I know God allowed our family’s path to show others coming behind us that there are many other options besides the traditional path most of us are used to. My husband, being an elementary music education major had serious concerns about us launching out into this crazy world of unschooling. My parents thought we had totally gone off the deep end and constantly worried about their grand-babies. Quizzing them about what they were learning every time we were with them. Each trip to the doctor’s office and/or the dentist caused fear that someone might report us to the authorities and that our children could possibly be taken away from us; or at the very least made to be put into the school system.

Thankfully, none of those fears were ever realized, but I greatly remember how it felt to live under this concern. My parents are our greatest advocates now. They think our children “hung the moon”. Now, I’m telling everybody that will listen about how we did their education simply to give others permission to not be afraid to do whatever it is that you feel you must to educate and protect your babies. There is currently such a strong pull to cause the family structure to break down. Our homeschooling journey was coupled with our fierce and relentless pursuit of doing absolutely everything we could do together as a family. This was not always easy in ministry nor business but the fruit of our decisions and protective efforts have proved to be the absolute best thing we could have done as a family. We are all incredibly close, even though we all have very strong personalities as individuals within the family. We can have some very passionate debates, shall we say….:))

And, although very confident and capable young adults, none of our children have ever rebelled because we gave them nothing to rebel against. We tried to nurture and protect their hearts instead of focusing on their academics and their behavior. This proved to be a rescue beyond measure of our family as well as each of our children’s lives and stories.

We want our journey to give you permission; permission to raise your children in your own unique style. There are an infinite number of possibilities for you and your family to entertain as you pray about what is best for your family. It’s hard to come out from under the conditioning that we’ve received from our current paradigm and system. However, I truly believe God wants to use us and our journey to help change this. So, if this invitation to live a more daring, more fulfilling and more outside the box is calling to you, let’s stay connected so that we can share our resources and road maps with each other as well as with others coming behind. It’s a stunningly rewarding journey beyond comprehension that’s so greatly worth taking.