How to Allow Your Homeschooler to Unlearn School Habits

The first time I walked into my AP Chemistry class in high school, my teacher smiled and said, “Everything you have learned about chemistry to this date is wrong. Previously chemistry had been oversimplified to help you begin to understand it, but now you must forget all of that to learn real Chemistry.” When a child leaves a school situation and begins homeschooling, he must also empty his mind and forget everything he has already learned about learning. Habits, methods, and attitudes they picked up in school no longer apply and he must prepare himself to learn in a different way. This is called deschooling. Depending on how many years of school programming your child has had, it may take some time to unlearn school habits. While deschooling, is a term used by unschoolers to prepare kids to learn on their own, it is also used by other homeschoolers to prepare a child and parent to see learning differently.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Realize that deschooling your child also means deschooling yourself. Your child is not in school anymore. They are at home. Treat them as if they are at home and do not try to mimic a school environment.
2. Leave the child alone. Allow your child to decide what they want to do with their day. Within the constraints of home rules, allow them to watch TV, play outside, or just roll around on the living room floor. Over time they will become bored with themselves and start looking for things to do. It could take months before they tire of being left to their own devices.
3. When your child comes to you complaining of boredom or looking for things to do, make suggestions of activities that are fun, but involve a bit of learning. During the time when my own children deschooled we used Learning Adventures CD ROMs from the Reader Rabbit Company.
4. As your child’s natural curiosity (the curiosity that drove you crazy with questions when they were 4) returns, begin taking them to museums, and other places they can explore freely while learning.
5. Encourage your child to start a journal to just write down their experiences for the day. Ask them to write a sentence or two of what they learned each day.
6. If your child is not ready to pick up a book and start reading again, then you should read to him. Purchase chapter books at your child’s own level. Read about a chapter each day, trying to leave off at a cliff hanger. They may force them to pick up the book and read a couple of chapters themselves.
7. Find creative ways to do math that is not separate from living. When baking “lose” all of your measuring cups except one or two. If they need 2 cups, hand them the ¼ cup and let them figure it out. If they need a cup and a half, give them the 1/3 cup to measure with. Also take them to the grocery store and let them add up your bill before you get to the register, or compare savings by looking at the store tags.
8. Point out to them that during all the vacation time they have been taking has actually been spent learning.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember the key to deschooling is to get them to the point where they will freely learn without being prompted.
• They will learn during this time that learning is not restricted to certain times and activities, but is involved in everything they do.
• Do not leave to student to deschool for so long as they lose any good study habits they have, or become lazy about schoolwork.