Leah McDermott of Your Natural Learner | Why I Chose Unschooling

What happens when a kindergarten teacher moves to teaching fifth grade and discovers that in just five years, the educational system has extinguished the light in children’s eyes? For Leah McDermott, this stark realization sparked a journey from conventional educator to unschooling advocate.

In this episode we talk with Leah about her path out of the classroom and into unschooling with her own family. She shares what it was like to grow up homeschooled in a very rigid, school-at-home way, and how that experience shaped the choices she made later. We hear how becoming a mother pushed her to rethink education completely, and why she founded Your Natural Learner to support families making the same shift.

Leah explains why homeschooling often repeats the same problems as school when parents bring curriculum, tests, and grades into the home. She talks about the process of deschooling for parents, unlearning the reflex to correct or measure everything, and learning instead to trust children’s natural curiosity. Her own son’s love of math shows what this can look like in practice—solving complex problems in his head without ever being taught traditional methods.

We also talk about how unschooling can feel isolating at first, when friends and family don’t understand the choice. Leah reflects on the constant questions children face, like “What grade are you in?” or “What did you learn today?” and why shifting those questions toward real interests matters. She reminds parents that the pressure to justify unschooling often says more about their own uncertainty than about the curiosity of others.

🗓️ Recorded August 28th, 2025. 📍 Åmarken, Lille Skendsved, Denmark

🔗  Relevant links

• https://www.instagram.com/yournaturallearner 
• https://www.facebook.com/yournaturallearner
• https://naturallearningshop.com
• https://bridgeacademy.us 
• https://yournaturallearner.substack.com
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/yournaturallearner 
• https://x.com/therealleahmcd 
• https://www.youtube.com/@Yournaturallearner 

Chapters

• 0:20 Questioning Children and Education
• 11:45 Lea's Journey to Unschooling
• 23:02 The Harmful Effects of School at Home
• 32:48 Rethinking Math Education
• 37:19 The Loneliness of Homeschooling
• 47:51 Bridge Academy for Unschoolers

Transcript

Jesper Conrad: 0:10

Today we're together with Lea McDermott and first of all, thank you for taking your time. It's wonderful to meet you.

Leah McDermott: 0:17

Oh yes, Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Jesper Conrad: 0:19

The reason I reach out to you is because I have fallen multiple times over some of the wonderful quotes you share on social media, and I will start by reading one of them aloud, which is one of the newer ones, and it just, oh, I have seen myself falling into this trap. It goes you don't have to justify what your child does with that time to every stranger and family member who asks why aren't you in school today or what did you learn today? Here's an idea how about we stop quizzing children and ask them about things they really care about? I like this one for two reasons. One of them is that I have seen myself in the role of leading with a banner or a flag of homeschooling and unschooling, and every time someone just like kind of asked in that direction, I gave them a three hour philosophical debate on a simple, simple question, and so part of me I like that part of it to stop yourself in doing that.

Jesper Conrad: 1:29

And the other one I like you ask and suggest to people. One I like you ask and suggest to people why don't we stop this? But at the same time or and at the same time, I have thought about that maybe people are just asking based on what they normally know. They don't know a lot else than when you meet a child. It's a weird size. They are not used to talking with them, so they ask them about you know, what class are you in or stuff like that, or why are you not in school? Because they don't understand it. They're not used to seeing children.

Leah McDermott: 2:06

Sure, yeah, and I think you know that that's a quote. I recently kind of rewrote it, but it came to me a couple of years ago when my oldest who you know, during the pandemic time when everyone was kind of alone he didn't really have exposure to a lot of other people, he was maybe like eight, nine, 10 years old when we were all kind of, you know, sequestered and then when we came out of that we moved across the country and he had always been unschooled and he joined like an after school sports thing and he felt very othered in that moment, even though it had nothing to do with school. The only question any adult in that room asked the children was who's your teacher? What grade are you in? Are you excited for school to start? And he just didn't have any answers. There was nothing he could share, that he felt like he was a part of this situation and, as I've paid attention to that, it also made me realize that societally I think we do the same.

Leah McDermott: 3:09

To adults. All we ask is what do you do for a living? And we've just kind of narrowed humans in general down to their work or their output or their productivity, not who we are as people. But what you know as a child, it's school focused, and then as soon as you turn 18, it's what's your job? How do you you know, how do you exist in this world of work? And I think it says a lot about how we interact with others, what you know, what we think of ourselves, what kind of questions we can ask people. Yeah, so that one's. That's kind of how that one came about.

Jesper Conrad: 3:43

I fall into trap all the time myself talking with people. Often I end with so what do you do for a living? Kind of question. But I'm also trying to ask people the more difficult questions about family relationship and these things.

Cecilie Conrad: 4:01

Wouldn't it be great if what do you do for a living was the same question as what is your main passion, if that was actually the same question. Often it's not actually the same question. Often it's not. I think it's interesting to just scramble it a little bit and ask different questions. I think also we should be forgiving, as Jesper say, about people ask these things because that's what they can come up with and for a lot of children, I mean, it's right to assume that they're in school. Most children are in school. You meet a child, you assume that child is in school. That's not other people being weird, that's us being weird.

Cecilie Conrad: 4:45

We have to own that. And then you ask them things about that, because it will take up the majority of their time and that's what you can come up with. But obviously it's way more interesting to ask them. So, what makes you happy? What do you do in your own time? And, sure, what books do you read? Or what games do you play? What do you like to do? Who's your best friend? What's your favorite game? What's your favorite song? What kind kind?

Leah McDermott: 5:12

of music?

Cecilie Conrad: 5:13

do you listen to All these kinds of things that you might also talk to your adult friends?

Leah McDermott: 5:18

about no-transcript. They are worried about how they're doing if they're messing their own partners. They feel judged all of the time. They are worried about how they're doing if they're messing their kids up, and so a lot of times I think we can take those questions too harshly.

Cecilie Conrad: 6:05

Yeah, when Jesper started reading the quote out loud, it said you don't have to justify everything your children are doing with their time. Let's start asking them other questions. That's where it ends, and that's actually in my mind, kind of two different scenarios. Do I have to justify what my children are doing? That's one thing, and what kind of questions do we ask children can be a completely different thing, and not justifying it is really.

Jesper Conrad: 6:36

It took me some years, it's like so many other things, unschooling.

Cecilie Conrad: 6:40

If you feel you have to justify it to other people, maybe you just need to justify it a little more to yourself. Make sure you know what you're doing, make sure you're okay with what you're doing, make sure your partner is okay with it, make sure your children are on board, have a little breather. But you don't have to justify it and you don't have to fight back either. I think that was my first thing. So why are they not in school? Then I would go. So why are yours in school?

Leah McDermott: 7:12

Yeah, yeah. Or why aren't you at work? Or why are you at work, yeah. Why are you at work? Yeah, you like your job. Why are you here? Yeah, yeah. So that the first part of that quote is one of my most viral things that I've ever put out on the internet is more about it's not your responsibility to make other people feel good about the choices you make for your children, and that one has taken off for sure over the last many years because along those experiences, even if we're not aware of it, a lot of people say, oh, I was fine in school, but a lot of us weren't. We do have things that we carry, even if it's just that need, that fear to show others that we've succeeded, that we're doing something with our time, because we don't value trust as productive in our society. We value passion or art or even talent, if it's not at the top. So I think that's something to be very aware of is how our reactions to questions like that really speak, like you said very deeply, to what we are feeling inside.

Jesper Conrad: 9:13

What you said made me want to promote a totally different podcast that for unschoolers might be weird to promote, but it's one episode of a podcast called Teach Me Teacher with Eric Weinstein, where he talks about what he labels it eugenic harm. What he labels it eugenic harm and it's such a beautiful statement about. What he's basically saying is doctors have a high knowledge about the harm they can do by mistakes and therefore they have a lot of security inside it, but we do not measure the harm the educational system produces and therefore we do not know how to work with the harm it produces. And it's a wonderful podcast. I will link to it in the show notes. He makes me laugh so many times, even though he's kind of pro-education.

Cecilie Conrad: 10:07

And even though it's not actually funny and it's not, funny.

Jesper Conrad: 10:11

No, no, it's the terrifying laughter. It's the terrified oh my God laugh cynical evil laughter. Let me ask you a question, Leah, which is your path to unschooling and your path to promoting what you call natural learning. What happened in your life?

Leah McDermott: 10:31

That's a great question. So I actually I like to say that I kind of came full circle. So I started in public school very early. My parents put me kindergarten four years old, like started as soon as you possibly could, and then my father was in the military. So we moved a lot. And when I was in third grade we lived in a very small area with very limited school resources. I was one of the labeled gifted students, so that just meant I was pulled aside to do extra work that the other kids didn't have to do, and the teachers at the time so this was in the 80s told my parents there's really nothing we can do to help her progress.

Leah McDermott: 11:11

So have you thought about homeschooling? And so I actually was a homeschooled child the rest of the way through my education. But again, this was in the 80s and 90s. Lots of people didn't homeschool unless it was for very religious reasons, and it was still not even legal in a lot of places like it is now. So my parents were very strict. It was school at home. So it was definitely not unschooling in any way. It was very rigid, very. You know, we had a school classroom at home. We had all of the curriculum, the tests, all the red pens everywhere. So I was at home but it was still very, very rigid.

Leah McDermott: 11:50

And then I went to college to be a teacher and went and got my master's degree twice for teaching. So I did, all you know, all the way around and my first teaching job was in kindergarten. So I had all these little bright-eyed kids who believed in magic and they were excited to learn new things and they had questions and they wanted to participate and it was fun and it was still early enough that we weren't making five-year-olds leave reading, you know, way before developmentally appropriate levels. And then, after a few years in kindergarten, my district shift some things around and I got moved from kindergarten to fifth grade. And that was my first real aha moment, because the first day those kids came into my classroom, you could see it immediately None of them wanted to be there. The light in their eyes was gone. They didn't want to read, they didn't want to write, they didn't want to participate, they hated school. And it was just such an awakening moment for me because just the year before, just a few months before, I was with all these excited kids.

Cecilie Conrad: 13:02

And.

Leah McDermott: 13:02

I thought what did we do to them In five years? What have we done? And it was like this moment. What have I done then? Because I'm a part of this system? And then, after a few years, in fifth grade, I got pregnant with my oldest son and I knew I would never put him in that system, and so that was really the second big moment for me. So after I had him, I left the system and just stayed at home with him when he turned three. Then all those gears start turning for me, right, All that conditioning. Well, now I have to. If I'm going to homeschool, I have to find curriculum and I have to make sure he's doing all these check marks. And I started writing my own curriculum, which was very play-based.

Leah McDermott: 13:44

I had done a lot of philosophy research, but more than anything, I just kind of let him guide me.

Leah McDermott: 13:57

Let him guide me, and in that process worked a lot on my own conditioning. And just because by nature, I'm a researcher, I spent a lot of time looking into our brains and child development and how we learn things, and it really just. It was just the more I discovered I was like, wow, everything we're doing in this system is not like it's. Emotionally it's not great for our children, but developmentally the science even says everything we're doing is wrong. We're isolating them by age group. We're making them regurgitate facts long before their brains are ready to process this information. We're teaching them you know all of the testing that we're doing that's the lowest level of learning. We're not letting them talk about it or teach it or get their hands into it. So I really went kind of on my own journey of de-schooling and de-conditioning what I had been taught but replacing it with what the science really tells us about brains and learning and passion and motivation, and that just kind of led me to where I am now, to all the way back around.

Jesper Conrad: 15:02

Now I run a school for unschooled, so it's been quite a journey, oh yeah, I actually have started to start out a little provocative on purpose to advise people against homeschooling, because when they say they want to homeschool, I'm like I think that's a bad idea. At least you need to think about that. You're changing the role of parent-child to one of teacher-child and if you cannot balance that act, then it can be hurtful to your relation. I'm not against homeschooling we are definitely more unschoolers than anything else but I think it's really important for people to stop up and think about oh, I'm changing my role here and what can that affect in my relationship?

Leah McDermott: 15:52

Oh, that's so important and that's a lot of the work I do with families now who are in that position. If we're not careful, if we don't, you know when we make a switch. So many times parents who especially if they start their kids in school and then they pull them out if they don't come at this journey from as soon as they have their child, they know this is their path right. If they start their kids in school and they pull them out, if we have not none of this, we think that it's for the child. Right? My child's having this bad situation or they're being bullied or whatever. They're not getting what they need. And so we tell ourselves that we're doing this for the child, and maybe that's true. But most of the work that needs to be done is on the adults.

Leah McDermott: 16:30

Most of what has to change the mindsets, the beliefs about learning is us, because kids are still, especially when they're young, they're still primed to learn. You know the developmental, natural way that they would. It's us that have been conditioned and have changed. And if we don't do that work, like you're saying, if we don't understand the role that we play in our child's growth and development, if we don't break down those beliefs that we had about learning, or the fears or the traumas. If we don't work through all of that, the only thing we're going to know to do is replicate what we've been shown, which is school at home. But when we do that, we step into a role, like you're saying, that most of us shouldn't be to our children. You know, there's nothing wrong with being a teacher or a guide, but if we step into this role as an authority figure that they already have trauma around, then the only thing that happens is we become the bully in our child's story, and that's even worse because then they can't escape it.

Leah McDermott: 18:19

At least, if they have, you know, bullies at school, they can come home and feel safe. If all we do is replicate that where we've brought the trauma into our home, then there's no escape and that creates resistance, which just creates this. You know this chain of events where you almost can't come out of it. Then there's no way to make homeschooling work at that point.

Cecilie Conrad: 18:42

I think it's really interesting. Actually because it happens, let's face it. Most schoolers like home educators doing school at home or doing unschooling or whatever style most were not born with the idea. You know, it comes with the child, or it comes with a bad schooling experience, or it comes with a wake up call of some sort of health scare. Something happens and for some reason you choose to not put your child in school. But you haven't read like 10 books about it. You don't have 15 friends who are doing it. You know no grownups who have not been in school. So it's kind of just fumbling around in the dark. But it comes from the intuition there's something wrong with this system. I don't want my child in this system. There's something wrong with this system. And then what most people do, including us, is to go home and copy the system at home, do the exact same thing just at home. Very often I hear stories where that didn't make any sense and it didn't make any sense very quickly. Didn't make any sense and it didn't make any sense very quickly.

Jesper Conrad: 19:55

So it's like oh, we pretend our story is I pretended to do school at home for a while because he was.

Cecilie Conrad: 19:57

that was his veto, that if they were not in school. I had to do the schooling, so I was pretending to do the schooling until I realized I'm kind of cheating on my husband and also I'm forcing my children to do things that make no sense to them or to me that we're doing. So this is, this is bad, and we changed that around. It's not about my story, but I've heard the same story over and over. You get the feeling there's something wrong with that system, so you don't want to put your child into that system. Then you go home and you replicate the system at home.

Leah McDermott: 20:33

Yes, that's how powerful it is inside of us, yes, and you bring up a very important point, which is very common as well, that often fathers are the ones who feel more so that it needs to be done. If you're going to homeschool, it needs to look like school at home that it needs to be done. If you're going to homeschool, it needs to look like school at home. But this is actually so evident of the fact that boys are more traumatized in school than girls. Like statistically, there are much more traumas around that and it's almost like a Stockholm syndrome. They know that it was bad and they don't look back fondly on school and think, oh, it was so much fun for me, I was so successful, it felt so good. But that societal pressure to achieve, to be productive, to get a good job, to take care of your family, they tell themselves emotionally well, I got through it and that's what I had to do to survive, that's what I had to do to be successful, to take care of my family, and so that's what will happen to my children too.

Leah McDermott: 21:35

And you know, we also see just that. It's so much harder still, unfortunately, for boys and for men to talk about feelings and emotions and traumas. So there's a very big reason that we see, and so a lot of mothers and women that I talk to who feel like they don't have a partner that's on board. I often have to tell them like this isn't because they don't trust you or they don't believe you. It's their story and that you know needs to come to the surface. For you to be on the same page, you have to be ready to have those conversations of why do you feel that way? Let's break it down, and it's hard, it is hard.

Jesper Conrad: 22:13

It is very hard and for me I was the go-to-work dad, so I had the face outside to the world and I got all the questions. And I will quote my favorite vandalism graffiti in Copenhagen. It is no longer there.

Cecilie Conrad: 22:33

Is it not?

Jesper Conrad: 22:35

I believe they must have painted it over.

Cecilie Conrad: 22:38

We will have to go check, actually, as we happen to be in them right now.

Jesper Conrad: 22:43

So my favorite big painting graffiti just with big white letters. In translated it says anxiety marinated everyday routines, and that is what I think that a lot of us is running around with. We have routines, we have choices, but they are based and marinated in anxiety. For me it was a kind of the classic what would the neighbor say? It was also the fear of taking the responsibility home. It is fun that we have been raised with understanding that if you outsource the responsibility then everything will be so beautiful and good. But I mean, I've unfortunately looked into the numbers and they're not pretty. It's around 80% is on the level they would like to. In the public school system in Denmark, If you have five kids, one of them would fail.

Leah McDermott: 23:50

And that's high. Comparatively to the rest of the world, denmark is way higher than the United States. It would be way, way worse.

Cecilie Conrad: 24:01

Are we circling beautifully back to the quote where we started about asking people the right questions and therefore asking yourself the right questions as well as to why are we doing the things we're doing? Because if you ask yourself, why am I teaching my children math? And you're willing to go a few steps deep into that, why then you stop teaching your children math, unless they ask for it? It happens quite quickly. But we do these things out of routine, because everyone do it, because I did it as a child, because you have to, or you think the state demands it. But if you try to come up with all these answers, you realize, oh, oh, actually, no, oh, actually. There's just something I'm afraid of here, or I'mized so, the asking yourselves why, yeah, but it's dangerous. I also thought that that was where you were going with the don't start homeschooling, that you advise against it, like it's very much a one-way road. Things start to unravel don't start homeschooling.

Cecilie Conrad: 25:08

I mean just if you don't want to do it, then don't start because there's no going back. It's really hard to go back If you start asking why, if you start asking yourself why, if you start questioning everything, you start unraveling your own identity, your own oh, you used a nice term conditioning and you unravel that and you leave your children to be in that context. At this point, when people ask us why our kids are unschooled, it's not like I have a choice any longer. It's not like I could tell them what to do. There's no way I could tell them what to do. I just couldn't. They would not obey and I would not want them to obey.

Leah McDermott: 25:47

But it's very much a one-way road. Yes, yeah, because everything it's like you said. It's like pulling the little thread right and then everything your whole reality starts to unravel. And I think we're in such an interesting timeline now because I feel like that is happening on a global scale, like everything is starting to unravel. And you know you mentioned math and you can start. You know we start with these simple questions like why am I doing this? Because then you start to do, even if you look a little bit into the research, most of us never use math skills beyond what we learned in fourth grade.

Leah McDermott: 26:26

That's it. Everyday adults use fourth grade math or lower. So why are we pressuring teenagers, whose brains and bodies are developing more than they ever have since infancy? Why are we pressuring them to learn trigonometry and geometry and algebra when they'll probably never use it again, probably never use it again, and then we just perpetuate that. Then they'll tell their kids that well, I had to get through it, so you have to. And it's just this generational thing where we just keep pushing it. And now, with the advancement of technology and AI, we really don't need to be just little robots regurgitating facts anymore. The skills that are going to be needed in this world are ones that can't be regurgitated or replicated by a computer. We need artists, we need inventors, we need writers and people that are passionate, and those are the exact skills that are tamped away in a system where we need everybody to do the same thing all the time. So it's yeah, it really.

Cecilie Conrad: 27:33

Just you start asking why and everything just starts coming apart our oldest son came up with a quite interesting idea about why we're pushing math everywhere. Um, I think it's a multifactorial answer. Actually, there are many, many reasons for math taking this center stage, and the worries and the school system alike. But his theory was quite interesting. He said the countries who can produce the most smart engineers coming up with new inventions and creating good planning for construction work, factories, inventions, as I said, planning businesses these people, they know a lot of math, they're smart at math. So the country pushes everyone to know math in the hope that they produce more of these people who make the big chunk of money that makes money for the country. There might be some truth to that that you know. You're just pushing everyone in the hope that more seeds will sprout. Yeah.

Leah McDermott: 28:44

You started it and I started it.

Cecilie Conrad: 28:46

It's not working that way. It's not working that way. Rather, you should let the seeds grow when they grow and give them a lot of light, and remove all the others and give them space. The ones who are passionate about math and engineering, let's say, and the ones who are passionate about math and physics Well, take them off the French class, the history class, and let them just dive deep into whatever they really really want to do, because there are people who are passionate about these things Absolutely, which is great.

Leah McDermott: 29:16

That have those natural inclinations as well. And one thing I like to remind people of all ages. I say this to my children often as unschoolers we're not gatekeeping knowledge. We're not saying we don't ever want you to learn these things. Like I don't tell my children, please don't learn math, because you'll never use it. It's just the information. Everything is available to you whatever you want.

Leah McDermott: 29:42

And I have never once sat my children down. My older two are 14 and 11. I've never once sat them down and made them work through a math workbook. And my middle child, my 11-year-old, is an absolute natural whiz at math and statistics and data. He does things in his head. I've asked him sometimes because I'm so curious how did you figure that out without a calculator, without a piece of paper? And he'll start to tell me the things that go on in his mind and all I can think of is if he were in a classroom from his earliest ages and had been told this is the way you solve that problem. Show me you solved it my way, which that's you know. That's what math curriculum is now. It's teaching it away and then showing it. Show your work. I don't care that you got the right answer. You have to prove you did it my way how much that would have just suppressed that, not just his natural, innate way of solving problems, but the joy that he gets from doing it. That would have been gone, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 30:48

Were you taught to hold the pencil a specific way when you were in school? Oh, yes, and that is actually it's funny you bring that up.

Leah McDermott: 30:56

One of my favorite things to do my secret favorite things to do is when I'm out in public is to watch how other people hold their pencils, and I will secretly snap photos. I have this whole album of people holding pencils in the funniest way, and yet all of their they're still writing my magic. They can hold their pencil in ways that I could never get my hands to go.

Jesper Conrad: 31:19

I I can look at our um, our daughter who is 16, and I sometimes I'm like but you're holding the pencil wrong and it still pops into my head. And then I look at how she's drawing, and then look at how I'm drawing and I'm like no it's so much fun.

Cecilie Conrad: 31:37

It's even before we would call ourselves. I mean, we were quite free thinking people. We just didn't really start out as unschoolers. We were just fumbling around in the dark, I'd guess. But when she's, it must have been even before homeschooling, because she would start drawing before I don't know. She took a pen, she said she hold it wrong teach me how to write the letters.

Cecilie Conrad: 32:03

so I just did like, wrote the letters out, put them in front of her, and then she, she started and I said you're holding the pen wrong Because, yeah, I came out of my mouth.

Cecilie Conrad: 32:15

I'm sorry, I made a mistake. And she said what do you mean? And I said well, I was taught in school at least I was honest about that part that you're supposed to hold it this way so that your micro movements get more nuanced, then you don't get shoulder pain and all these things when you're right for a long time. This is what I was taught and I I'm trying to teach you that because I think it's might be right. And she said well, that's all good and fine, but I'm gonna hold my pen the way I hold it, because that's how she is. She must have been something like three years old and, uh, I well there, there was no talking back at that. And as I'm a little bit the same myself, don't tell me what to do, I respect it.

Cecilie Conrad: 32:58

So she started writing in this wrong way and I had to overcome my fears of the wrong kind of writing. Even some of the letters. She would write them in a wrong way, like back, not at the end. Result looks like the right letter, but she's not writing it in the right sequence, kind of. That also took a little bit of breathing from my side. This is the very beginning. Now I'm like I don't care. But the funny thing is, of the three unschooled kids, we have four children and the oldest was in a democratic school, so the three young ones were not in school. Of the three youngest, she's the only one who consistently likes to write handwriting, who is doing a lot of drawing. She's great at drawing. She still holds the pen, the exact same way she did that day when she was three. Wow.

Cecilie Conrad: 33:54

And she can make all the nuances and all the shadows and she can do all the hand lettering, all the things that I was taught. You can never learn if you don't hold it the way that.

Jesper Conrad: 34:04

It was a specialist even coming into the class teaching us how to sit and how to hold the pen, teaching us how to sit and how to hold the pen and the level of control put over you. If you can only write a D in a perfect sequence like that from top to bottom, I get anxiety. Actually, I would like to talk about a pain point that I think is not often enough talked about with homeschooling and unschooling, and maybe the pain point is bigger in Scandinavia, as we have been on the journey of home and unschooling for a shorter time. When Cecilia and I started these I don't know how many years ago now, but we were among 10 families in Denmark homeschooling.

Cecilie Conrad: 34:48

I keep saying that I think, to be fair, there was probably 10 families on Zealand, so maybe there were 25 families besides the religious ones, but in the whole country, but maybe even not, and I have a client who is in Norway where I talk with him about it.

Jesper Conrad: 35:04

That the pain point I want to talk about is that the society is not conforming is not the right word. The society is not there for us in the same way as I would have loved it to be, because we have taken all the kids and put them in school. We have taken all the adults and put them at work. So when you start homeschooling it is a little lonely. That is not the natural. You live next to your aunt or your cousin and you have your sister living next door, et cetera.

Jesper Conrad: 35:42

I'm not saying everything was better when we lived in like small society, but there were something that was better. There were the extended family and, as we no longer have this, it is quite a lonely journey sometimes for home and unschoolers and I just think it's needed to talk about. What I talked with this man about was that I said but the alternative for your children is worse. Putting them in school would hurt your children, so it's better, but it is lonely. So what are your thoughts on that and how are you fighting that loneliness? Because sometimes we often just say, hey, man, it's so cool to unschool and homeschool. Everything is great. But where are the rest of the world? They're in school or at work.

Leah McDermott: 36:28

Yes, and I think, in my experience and you know, even though homeschooling is popular, and more popular, I should say, in the United States, it is still very like, it is still very common for you to be the only homeschooler in your community, in your town, and I think a lot of unschoolers especially sort of self-isolate. They isolate themselves on purpose because they are trying to, you know, be very against the system. So that's not, it's not an abnormal way of an abnormal thing, for even you know US families to feel very lonely and isolated that way. They feel very lonely, they feel very isolated. For the children, you know, yes, other kids are in school during those hours. But I think it kind of makes you step into the conversation around socialization. If we're looking at children right, which that putting them in school is the only way for them to be socialized, for them to get interaction. And you know, first of all for them to get interaction. And you know, first of all, it's forced, it's controlled, it's manipulated, it's not representative of the real world. We don't only have conversations with people exactly our age that live in this little, you know, radius. But homeschooling and unschooling gives children the opportunity to be social with everyone. They can have meaningful conversations with their neighbor. That's elderly children of all ages. And something that I have really been passionate about recently too, is honoring that.

Leah McDermott: 38:05

Some people are just more outgoing than others and that's okay. I think about a lot of parent-teacher conferences I sat in on where they would talk badly about the quiet child. Well, I'm a little worried because they don't speak up very often, or shy. That's a negative thing. And some people just like being introverted. They prefer to be alone, and that's okay. My middle child is like that. He plays on a travel or tournament soccer team. He is all out and ready to talk to everyone when he's playing soccer. The rest of the day he doesn't want to talk to anyone, usually not even me. He wants to be alone doing his own thing. My oldest knows every single person in our town. Everybody knows who he is. He knows who everybody is because he naturally wants to go out and talk to people and gather people for events. He's a leader, he's outgoing, and I think in both of those situations, had they been in a classroom where their socialization was controlled, they would not have been able to be themselves in either direction.

Leah McDermott: 39:48

But in terms of the loneliness for adults. I think a lot of that is maybe not loneliness in regards to literally being alone, but just feeling very isolated because of our choices that no one understands. That people are judging that we don't have assistance, that we're with our kids all day when other people might not be, that we choose not to work, to stay home with our children and they're you know, then we miss out on that interaction. Um, I'm grateful for the internet. I think that helps a lot for families who feel very isolated. To have you know, other people to talk to. Things like this, having podcasts, having conversations. Yeah, I think a lot of it is just fear of judgment, maybe more than anything else.

Jesper Conrad: 40:38

Yeah, and that we have a skewed version. And I still, even though we live this life, sometimes have a skewed version of how social life as a child would look like, because I grew up like I grew up.

Cecilie Conrad: 40:54

I mean, we are hyper-social people and we are also nomadic. We move around between different communities. We move for people more than for places. We do go explore the planet, but usually because there are some people we want to meet somewhere more than there's some things we want to see. There will always be some things we want to see. So I find it a little bit hard to identify with the problem at this stage of our life, because we're peopled out, we actually are overwhelmed socially. We're with people all the time and when I think about feeling isolated and lonely, it's very hard for me to imagine myself actually holding that emotion, because I don't have it at all. I have the reverse that emotion, because I don't have it at all.

Leah McDermott: 41:46

I have the reverse no-transcript, really and I do not feel that I'm missing out and you bring up such a good point, and that is that a lot of times the transition to homeschooling is so hard because we don't know how to be home with our families. We don't know how to be home with our children Because, especially in like in the United States, maternity leave is six weeks and then your baby's six weeks and then you're not with your baby anymore, that's it.

Leah McDermott: 42:21

They're with a nanny, they're in a daycare, they're in, you know, in a version of school for babies, basically. And so we don't know how to be home, even with our partners, because the traditional thing is you wake up, you say hi, you give a kiss, you go to work, you're gone all day with other people and then you're home and when you add work and school, then you're doing homework and you're getting kids off to soccer practice. If you're just in that rat race all the time and then everything is gone. That's a heck of an adjustment to suddenly have to just be together. A heck of an adjustment to suddenly have to just be together. And a lot of us don't know how to do that, even with our own humans that we created with our bodies. We don't even know how to be with them and be okay with not having somewhere to be and something to do all the time.

Cecilie Conrad: 43:11

It's a big change to choose this. I just feel this. I'm lonely and I'm missing out and I need colleagues and I'm missing out on social life and I don't have the option to go to my yoga class or whatever. It is my wine evenings with my girlfriends. It's actually quite brief this time we have with our children and we have a 13 year span between the oldest and the youngest, so we have a quite long time with children at home and yet now that the youngest is 13, pushing at 14, I feel the time is running out, even though I mean, hopefully we get a few more years and there is really no one I'd rather spend my day with.

Cecilie Conrad: 43:59

And if you let go of the homeschooling, the school at home, and just learn to spend your day with these awesome people, it's just the greatest days really. I also want to. So this thing you say about the good old days when you had your cousin and your aunt and your uncle and your best friend and your village, and there's this whole hype, this whole, and it's actually very much a construct that we have in our minds about the village. It takes a village and then you imagine you have the blacksmith and the baker and the guy with the mail. He has a red coat on, and you know. And then there's the priest.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:38

You think it's a little bit romantic, actually, I don't think society works like that and I don't think it was awesome. I think people they might not have felt lonely because they didn't have the idea of themselves as individual with personal needs in the same way that we do now, but they must have felt trapped personal needs in the same way that we do now, but they must have felt trapped, especially someone, yeah, and in those situations, someone was always marginalized children, people of color, like somebody was always kept out of the bridge, and that's important to remember too.

Jesper Conrad: 45:09

How do we help in these first years where people actually face a major shift in their life, where it is super difficult, where they're not used to being together with their children, where the loneliness is real for them because they haven't built up friendships and people around them, because they have been used to go to work, send their kids to school, and now they're like this doesn't work any longer. Let's go back to it from start. Let's just homeschool, let's figure it out, and then it's quite hard for many people.

Leah McDermott: 45:42

And I think a lot of it is just, I see that and I tend to be more of a dreamer think about the future instead of the current problem. So my answer, long-term, to that is, if we shift as a society the way we teach our children, that problem disappears, because then, when our children are adults, they don't feel that isolation, they don't feel that pressure, that anxiety, that loneliness, right? So I think there's and that's hard to tell parents well, you're doing this for the future too, right, this isn't just for the right now. The choices you make now help your children in the future, help our society, help the world. But I mean, I think you're right and that's.

Leah McDermott: 46:22

I think a lot of it is, for lack of a better word education around why we're feeling this way, you know. Help with the anxiety around it Because, like we've said already, it's so much more than just the education part, like that's really. The academics is the tiniest little piece of choosing to homeschool, it's the piece that matters the least, and yet it's what we put on the top, you know, or what so many people say well, I'm leaving and I have to teach them all these things, I have to check all these boxes, and yet that's the part of who we are as people. The academic part is really just the tiniest little piece.

Cecilie Conrad: 47:01

But we don't know that in the beginning. Fair enough, we feel that that's what we're taking away from our children and that's why we sit there with the school books around the kitchen table for a week or two and maybe a year or two, before we stop. Most of us stop. It makes sense. I wanted to touch upon another thing that is a fear-based thing that often happens. I can't really remember, but it came up several times in this conversation in my mind without coming out of my mouth, and that is, I feel like, very often we project the problems we meet in unschooling life into the choice that we're, the unschooling choice. So let's say, a child is not thriving and that's where maybe loneliness actually is the thing. The child is not thriving and you're living this alternative life and you think, oh, it's because of the alternative life, maybe it's just puberty hitting and that's hard for everyone, but you're there to witness it. You're the one and you should be the one who's closest with the child. So you know and you know it on a deeper level than your neighbor who sends the child off to school, and the child is confiding with friends, not with parents or no one or no one, and it's a lonely experience.

Cecilie Conrad: 48:20

But for the homeschoolers it happens very often and I have these conversations very often with other homeschoolers that are more new to the game where they think there's something wrong, something is not, something is a little bit making a funny noise in the whole family system and they think, oh, it's because we're home educating, it's because we're unschooling and I think even the children, because what can they do other than compare themselves to mainstream norms?

Cecilie Conrad: 48:51

They see other children go to school and have peers and classmates and extracurricular things they do, and if they feel a little bit, then they're like but why don't I do that? Or I want friends, or I want a school bag, all these things. And that's when you have to see the long-term, as you just said. The long-term thing is yes, your child might right now say I'm lonely, I want friends. Is yes, your child might right now say I'm lonely, I want friends, I'm bored. You get that. I'm bored a lot with home-educated children, but we're in it for the long run. We're in this because we believe it's a better life for them and I want to be the one who's close with my children. When they're not thriving, I think they bring up.

Leah McDermott: 49:33

Yeah, and well, you bring up, you know what do we do when we have a problem, and I think maybe that's what the loneliness is is you feel, because it's human nature to have conflict and problems. You know, someone choosing the absolute, most normal mainstream life is going to have their fair share of problems, but they don't feel alone in it because everyone around them has the same problems. Everyone hates homework, everyone hates getting up early for the school bus, everyone hates packing lunches, but you're not alone in that societal drama. And when you step outside of it, when your problems feel unique and there's no one that is also feeling those problems, I think might, might really be where the loneliness is. It's not that, it's not even necessarily that you're alone physically or that you feel isolated. It's your. You feel isolated in what your conflict is.

Leah McDermott: 50:34

If that that makes sense, I think, is something that I'm getting from. What you're saying is at least I want to, because I've had my kid. My oldest has said that before too. He's the only one I've had that has actually maybe asked about going to school and all of it is. He'll even acknowledge I know they'll teach me things I don't need to know, but I want to experience the negativity that everyone else has right, like it's just like he's missing something. Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 51:03

But I think even if we don't personally project the reason for our problems into the choice of unschooling, then we do know that if we talk to anyone about our problems they will make sure to help us project it into that choice oh yeah that's actually quite a lonely path if you're like okay, but I think I'm right with this, but things are wobbly. Who do you talk to? You have to talk to other unschoolers, that's.

Leah McDermott: 51:33

That is a an actual problem, yeah, where you are a little bit lonely because if you're getting that judgment like that, if you tell those problems to someone else, like you said, they are going to feel what's the best way to put this? They didn't question what they chose, they just did it. And so you come. It's almost like a they think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Well, of course you have these problems. You chose to go against what the normal is, so you deserve it, and then that you know it's also a relief if we're wrong, yes.

Leah McDermott: 52:08

We're wrong about this. Sure, sure yes.

Cecilie Conrad: 52:11

Yes, are you familiar with Pippi Longstocking?

Cecilie Conrad: 52:14

Yes, I was just thinking about your son wanting to go to school. I just had this conversation with someone, one of our children exact same thing. I don't know if you remember Pippi Longstocking. She has one day of going to school yes, like one half morning in school, and she does it because she feels she's missing out on the summer break. She can't have a summer break if she's not in. She feels she's missing out on the summer break. She can't have a summer break if she's not in school. Everyone's so excited about summer break so she has to go to school to do to get a summer break, so she goes to school for half a morning. Obviously, the whole experience makes no sense, so she bounces, especially because she can't keep her horse there. Yeah, I highly recommend that we should put in the show note.

Jesper Conrad: 52:58

I will make a link A link.

Cecilie Conrad: 53:00

There must be an English translation of that, but it's amazing I read that he's right. How can he have the negative experience? How can he know to hate it if he's never been there? Yep, yeah Is time flying.

Jesper Conrad: 53:13

Time is flying, and that is both good and wonderful, but we should also turn our direction towards your natural learner. What is it you're doing with your whole project? How are you helping people? What are you offering to the world?

Leah McDermott: 53:29

Yeah. So your natural learner is kind of the business that started just following my oldest son and through that I wrote a curriculum. Because one thing I did find for families who first made that transition from school to home and even if they felt like, oh, I love, it's like seeing the beautiful you know Instagram, I want tea time, I want to just be with my kids all day and make it magical, that's a big jump if you haven't done any of that conditioning, and sometimes just a little bit of school-like structure can help with that. Right, it's like the rite of passage to sit around the dining room table, but if you can make it gentler, if it can still be child-led, if you take away the workbooks, it can feel like a better transition. So the curriculum that I wrote for younger kids is that and that's kind of what I did for many years and just, you know, teaching, workshops and sharing things.

Leah McDermott: 54:27

And then it sounds very cliche to say, but I had a dream about a bridge many years ago and where I was living. At the time I lived somewhere where there were no state regulations on homeschooling. You just told them that you were homeschooling and they left you alone. And then, about a year after I had that dream, I moved somewhere where there were a lot more regulation paperwork. You had to keep a portfolio. You had to prove that you were teaching your child according to these check marks, which is it's a lot for an unschooling family and with my educator background, that was easy for me.

Leah McDermott: 55:00

I know how to use the academic language but it made me realize how many families that would immediately ruin their experience. They would never be able to translate it and make it feel fully child-led, fully unschooling. And that's when Bridge Academy came around. So the school that I run is a private school for homeschoolers and unschoolers around the world and I, you know, we operate as that bridge between that. You know, unschooled life that we want to have, where there are no checkboxes and we just get to be ourselves and learn with life, and then taking care of the documentation and translating it and giving high school diplomas and transcripts so that whatever kids want to do in the future, they still have that. You know, that official check mark. So that's what I do now that's a gift that we know.

Jesper Conrad: 55:51

Many of us are searching for solutions. When we come to the kids being homeschooled the whole period, it's like, oh, you're going to want to go to university, all right, then you need to cross that bridge.

Leah McDermott: 56:05

Exactly.

Jesper Conrad: 56:06

Yeah, wonderful. So to round up the episode, if you can share where people can find you and where they can learn about the different projects you're doing, yeah, Instagram is where I prefer to hang out and spend most of my time, but your natural learner everywhere will take you where I am. Perfect. Thanks a lot for your time. It was a really interesting and wonderful conversation.

Cecilie Conrad: 56:33

Thank you so much.