#134: Unschooling in Australia: A Radical Approach to Child-Led Learning

Join host Cheryl as she explores the fascinating world of unschooling with Debbie, an Australian homeschooling mom who's raising three children (ages 4, 11, and 13) using radical unschooling principles. This eye-opening conversation reveals how questioning medical authority led to questioning educational systems, and why some families are choosing to let their children learn naturally through play and exploration.

What You'll Discover:

🎓 Unschooling Fundamentals:

• What unschooling really looks like in daily practice
• Why boys may naturally learn to read later than girls (ages 6-9 vs 5-7)
• How children thrive when they learn at their own developmental pace

🇦🇺 Homeschooling in Australia:

• Legal requirements and reporting processes for Australian homeschoolers
• How 11,000 registered families (potentially 30,000+ total) are homeschooling in Queensland alone
• Recent legislative challenges and victories for homeschool freedom

🌱 Child-Led Learning Benefits:

• Real examples of kids developing business skills through 3D printing ventures
• How unschooled children learn critical thinking and problem-solving naturally
• The importance of protecting childhood while preparing for adulthood

📱 Technology & Screens:

• Balanced approaches to screen time in unschooling families
• Teaching digital safety and online awareness to young children
• Why radical unschoolers don't impose traditional screen time limits

🏥 From Medical to Educational Freedom:

• How questioning unnecessary medical interventions led to educational awakening
• Parallels between hospital protocols and school systems
• The importance of individualized approaches vs. one-size-fits-all solutions

Perfect For:

• Parents considering homeschooling or unschooling
• Families seeking alternatives to traditional education
• Those interested in child development and natural learning
• Homeschoolers looking for community and support ideas

Featured Topics: Unschooling, radical unschooling, homeschooling Australia, child-led learning, natural reading development, homeschool reporting requirements, screen time balance, educational freedom, alternative education, deschooling journey

Guest: Debbie from The Village Hub, Queensland, Australia - Unschooling coach and homeschool community creator

Cheryl's Guide to Homeschooling: Check out The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide- Cheryl's eBook compiling everything she's learned from her interviews on The Homeschool How To Podcast. 

👉 15% off Tuttle Twins books with code Cheryl15

What is the most important thing we can teach our kids?
HOW TO HANDLE AN EMERGENCY!
This could mean life or death in some cases!
Help a child you know navigate how to handle an emergency situation with ease: Let's Talk, Emergencies! 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Homeschool How-To
• 1:21 Debbie's Path to Homeschooling
• 8:38 Unschooling Approach and Philosophy
• 15:52 Technology and Screen Time Balance
• 27:01 Advocating for Homeschool Rights
• 41:23 Closing Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region, and should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome, and with us today I have Debbie from Australia. Debbie, welcome. What time of day is it there?

Speaker 2: 0:39

Thanks for having me. It's 10 o'clock in the morning here in Australia and I think I'm a day in front of you.

Speaker 1: 0:44

All right, don't tell me what happens. Yeah, it's eight at night here, so that's, that's so fun. I have a friend that went to Australia in college to study abroad. She loved it. They're like actually I'm so American right now, I'm sorry. They're actually kangaroos that hop around. Yeah, totally Totally totally that's so cool.

Speaker 1: 1:06

We have like uh, I don't know cockroaches here in new york, but no, I'm kidding. So, all right, tell me, how did you enter this homeschooling world? Is it legal? It's legal in australia to homeschool, right? Yeah, it is a hundred percent germany germany? It is not, but I I believe there in one other place isn't all right, so tell us how did you enter this world?

Speaker 2: 1:22

I was actually homeschooled for part of my schooling career. I went to school traditional school, here in Australia until I was nine or ten, and then my mum fell very ill. I thought she had a stroke. She was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and just because dad needed to keep working, they decided that it was easier to homeschool myself and my brother, and so we lived in New South Wales at the time and so I did the Australian grade six and grade seven through. Each each state has its own requirements. This was obviously 20 years ago, but I did grade six and seven through New South Wales, which was very. You build your own curriculum and then you have the assessor come and interview you and then you just, you know, do your own thing day by day. And then we moved to Queensland and back then the only way you could homeschool in Queensland was to do distance education, which is where the teachers are in a location and they're delivering the curriculum, and so I did that for grade eight, nine and 10.

Speaker 2: 2:27

But back then, like pre-internet, it was very easy to just. You know, everything was as hard copy. You just completed all of your work and sent it back whenever you were ready to send it back, and so I had lots of time to be out with friends. I had a job from the time I was 14. So I was working, so I was working and, like I was working in an office environment, and then on the days I wasn't working, completing my schoolwork, and so I actually think that gave me a really great basis for ending up becoming a homeschooling parent, because I got to experience both ways of homeschooling, even though that's quite different.

Speaker 2: 3:03

Now. The distance education thing is all delivered online and you have to be there in person for the whole. Well, not in person, you've got to be there online physically for the whole day, which I really don't agree with. I really struggle with that school at home kind of thing. But we are very much homeschoolers and in fact we're unschoolers, and I didn't think when I first had kids that I would homeschool.

Speaker 2: 3:24

I had this plan that they would go to private school, and then, as the years kind of rolled on, I realized that actually homeschooling was going to be a really good option, and that was partly just from starting to question all the systems.

Speaker 2: 3:38

You know, I had a cesarean with my first child, which turned out to be an unnecessary cesarean, and so then I went on to have a home birth with my second child and, you know, once you realize that the doctors in the hospital were just operating under their system and they weren't operating in your best interests and they were just doing all of their procedures and protocols and you didn't really matter as an individual in the process, once I started to question that system, and then you know, come across other information and then it becomes easier to start questioning all of the other systems and go down all the other rabbit holes.

Speaker 2: 4:11

So by the time my second child was a year or two old, I was pretty confident that we were going to homeschool and knowing that so many of the countries that have really high educational outcomes don't do any book work until seven or eight years old, that was really easy to go. Okay, we're just going to unschool for the first couple of years and we're just going to play and focus on that and then we'll look at, you know, bringing in some actual educational stuff later on in the piece. So yeah, that's how we ended up down that track.

Speaker 1: 4:42

Yeah, it's upsetting that the medical system in Australia is no different than in America. I would hope that that you know. Okay, it's America, everything's so commercialized. The Rockefellers wrote the medical books but it's like how did those medical books make their way to Australia? You think you know like there? Would just be more alternative methods there we do have.

Speaker 2: 5:04

I will say we do have a better system than in america because we have free health care in australia. So our medicare is you know you can go to a bulk bill doctor and it's free. If you're sick and you go to a public hospital, you know that's free. You can be pregnant and go through the public hospital system and it's almost free. And then of course you can choose to go private.

Speaker 2: 5:29

We do have also really good access reasonable access, I would say to home birth in Australia. There's quite a lot of private midwives and doulas and that kind of thing and home birth is legal in all states. In Australia, you know, they do try and put more restrictions on home birth and now you have to have two midwives attend every home birth and then that's hard in rural areas because it's hard to actually get two midwives to, you know, sustain a business out there or to travel to you. So there are things that suck and aren't great. There are things that that suck and aren't great, but overall we do have better access than America. But our intervention rates in pregnancy and birth are super, duper high. Our cesarean rates are super high. Rates of complication are super high. Yeah, we, we do. Australia follows America in a lot of things, a lot of things.

Speaker 1: 6:24

That's unfortunate. And yeah, my second was a cesarean and I always wondered, now that I know what I know, I'm like did she have to be? They told me that the placenta was like covering where she was going to come out and I would just hemorrhage and die and I'm like all right, cut her out. But now I'm like I wonder, I don't know that when you're going through all the hormones and stuff, you're I throw my hands up after certain things, like fine, whatever, I put up the vaccine fight. But I was like just all right, cut her out. Now I wonder, you know, maybe we could have like tried and then do an emergency C-section if necessary, but they didn't even want to do that. But you know, whatever you can't live in the past you learned from from whatever you didn't share your story, so other people know with my daughter as well.

Speaker 2: 7:08

You know she was a cesarean and I know that I just was in early labor and I went to hospital too early and they broke my waters and they put a skull clip on her and they had me lying on my back and she was posterior and I was like there's no way she's going. She wasn't engaged. There is no way, looking back, knowing what I know now, that that baby was going to be able to come out and I ended up having an epidural and it just I can see how the cascade of interventions happened for me. But at the same time I realized that that was probably a really important turning point in my life because if that hadn't happened to me, I wouldn't have then gone down the track of going. Okay, I think I want to have a home birth because I really want to have a VBAC and that's the way that I think I can achieve that. And I ended up in VBAC groups, where then people were talking about, you know, and Facebook groups were in the infancy back then. But that was when I was able to get in some breastfeeding support groups and VBAC support groups and just come across a whole lot of alternative information that I wasn't getting from anybody that I had seen previously in the medical system.

Speaker 2: 8:19

So, you know, off track of homeschooling.

Speaker 2: 8:21

But that's how I found out that my daughter had a tongue tie and just went down all of those paths that ultimately have led me to where I am right now, which is, you know, operating outside the system. Like we, I'm here to create the new systems, the new ways of being, all of the alternatives that are viable and sustainable and nourishing and nurturing for families. So you know, I actually have. I have my, my business and my, my homeschool co-op that I was talking to you about, but I also have another business where I support families in breastfeeding and tongue tying, all of that kind of things. You know as much as, for my daughter's sake, I would love for her to have not been born via cesarean. I do think that maybe that was our sole plan for her and I, that she would come into the world this way, and then it would, you know, take me from tracking down this fairly mainstream path and just off on this like completely side path, which has just led to an absolutely incredible life for all of us.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Yeah, and you know you say it doesn't have anything to do with homeschooling, but I think it does, because the school system trained you to just believe authority and don't question it, and that's that. It's exactly what we're trying to. Not teach our kids in homeschool is no, you don't have to question authority, you don't have to. You know, you can say, oh, that's a good point of view. Let me look at some other points of view, because yeah, we didn't learn that in school.

Speaker 2: 9:47

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And when I run a homeschool workshop and I start out telling the story about the cesarean because that really for me was the point and it wasn't even at that point, because then I believed that I needed it and that the doctors had done everything that they could and et cetera. And it was only after I joined those groups and started talking to people that it dawned on me and people were saying to me the doctors are not necessarily there for your best interests and they're not treating you as an individual person and et cetera. And the number of parallels between the medical system and the school system is huge. And that, you know, was the first.

Speaker 2: 10:30

That was the first step in my de-schooling journey to start to question authority that way. That then led me to be able to start to question authority in other ways. And, you know, despite being homeschooled myself, my parents were, you know, a fairly strict religious background and they were very much. Everybody else is the authority, you know. The doctors are the authority, the police are the authority, every other person outside of our family is the authority.

Speaker 2: 10:55

Yeah, so, despite having a fair bit of freedom in my childhood in how I was learning, everything was still very mainstream from that perspective. So it wasn't until. You know, I often say it's, it's sucks, but we often have to get screwed over by the system before we start questioning it and going hang on a minute. That was really horrible. I don't want to do that again. And then we go down a different path and start researching and, you know, doing different ways.

Speaker 1: 11:25

Most of us that guy here were mainstream. At one time we didn't have the hippie parents that. Ironically, the hippie parents now seem to be the people getting the COVID shots and this and that so I don't know what the heck. The world flipped upside down.

Speaker 2: 11:40

Yeah, all right.

Speaker 1: 11:41

So you said that you do some unschooling. Now, how old are your kids?

Speaker 2: 11:45

My eldest is nearly 13. My middle child is nearly 11. And my youngest just turned four yesterday.

Speaker 1: 11:51

OK. So you said places like and I know you're talking about like Finland, they have very successful rates of you know, education and you know just how kids turn out. They don't start any sort of book work until they're in seven years old. So you said you started out early homeschooling or unschooling because you didn't really have to do any sort of formal book work. But once you got to that age seven, were you like no, we're actually learning a lot. We can keep going with this?

Speaker 2: 12:19

Yeah, absolutely yeah. So I, you know, I started following people like Dana Martin and some of the other you know unschooling advocates and, yeah, it got so easy. Another similarity it was like breastfeeding I'm going to breastfeed until they're one. And then you got to one and you're like, oh, I could totally go until they're two. And then you got to two and you're like, well, they're still so tiny, I'll just go until they're three.

Speaker 2: 12:43

Unschooling was exactly the same, because we got to seven and I was like they're learning heaps through just living life and following their interests, and we could totally keep doing this for another year or two and, you know, maybe when they get to 10, I'll start introducing something. And now, you know, I actually offer unschooling coaching for mums in Australia because my kids are, you know, older and so you know I'm supporting mums who are coming in whose kids are a little bit younger. And I get the concern because it was my same concern when my kids were younger that oh, they'll definitely need some kind of book work to make sure that they're up to scratch and they'll definitely need me to be enforcing something on them, otherwise they're going to be, you know, failing at life. And as I went further and further down the path of trusting them and trusting myself, trusting that they will learn what they need to learn when they need to learn it. You know my kids are flourishing in life and loving life, just following their interests, spending time with their friends. My son, my middle child, was late to learn to read, comparatively to, you know, his peers in school. But I have a firm belief now, not just from my son but from all of the kids that I see in unschooling groups, which is, you know, if you think about it, unschooling groups are the only place where you know, maybe some homeschooling mainly, unschooling groups are the place where we can see what a child is going to learn naturally, without being forced to learn it.

Speaker 2: 14:17

Because everywhere else across the world in the school system, we're putting kids in school at age five or six and we're teaching them to read, because we've got a classroom of 30 kids and we've got one teacher and maybe a teacher aid, and if the kids can't read, then we can't get all of these kids to do the bookwork that we need to get them to do to prove, all the way up the line of the system, that we're teaching these kids something because that's you know, the whole system is predicated on. I've got to prove to my principal and we've got to prove to the parents and the school board and the education department that we're teaching these kids something. So we've got to get them to do some book work. And in order to get them to do the book work, they've got to know how to read and they've got to be able to do it themselves.

Speaker 2: 15:00

Because we don't have the capacity to support them one-to-one or to support their individual learning needs or the way that they want to learn. And so everybody has to learn to read at five or six, even if that's not actually what they're, you know, developmentally ready for. And I now firmly believe that girls will naturally learn to read between five and seven. Boys are more like six to eight, maybe nine years old, and that's really common in the unschooling groups that when they do a poll, the boys all are later to pick up reading. And I do wonder I don't know if it's the same in America but is this why we have generations of men who don't like reading? Because they were forced to read too early and it killed their love of reading?

Speaker 1: 15:47

Yeah, I definitely think so, Thinking about homeschooling but don't know where to start. Well, I've interviewed a few people on the topic Actually 120 interviews at this point with homeschooling families from across the country and the world and what I've done is I've packed everything I've learned into an ebook called the Homeschool How-To Complete Starter Guide. From navigating your state's laws to finding your homeschooling style, from working while homeschooling to supporting kids with special needs, this guide covers it all with real stories from real families who've walked this path. I've taken the best insights, the best resources and put them all into this guide. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident. Get your copy of the Homeschool how To Complete Starter Guide today and discover that homeschooling isn't just about education. It's about getting what you want out of each day, not what somebody else wants out of you. You can grab the link to this ebook in the show's description or head on over to thehomeschoolhowtocom Now. So what does your day-to-day look like? You're not enforcing anything, but are you like reading to the kids what is your day-to-day typically?

Speaker 2: 16:51

Well, we run a modern co-op which is unschooling friendly, so we do a lot of free-flowing activities. We do kind of science-based activities, stem-based activities, but none of them are in any way enforced or it's not obligatory for the kids to participate in them. So my kids do that two days a week with me, so they're spending time with their friends. You know we've got a heated swimming pool, we've got the big play equipment. We've got this really you know kids wonderland kind of space set up where the kids can just play. We've got a creek that runs through the back and the kids hang out down there. So we do that a couple of days a week and then my kids and myself certainly we need some downtime after those. You know big days where we're socializing. You know, on days when we're not running the hub, that's when we'll have, you know, kind of chill out days like it's 1030 here.

Speaker 2: 17:50

My eldest child was up until I don't know sometime after midnight crafting. She's still asleep. My middle child is up until I don't know sometime after midnight crafting. She's still asleep. My middle child is up. I think he's on a video call with his friend from Sydney and they might be doing some gaming together. My youngest child has gone off for a walk to the park with his friend and a mum my other friend, and you know today we'll just have like a quiet day, just chill out.

Speaker 2: 18:13

At home I tend to do a lot of reading with the kids when they're younger. My eldest kids I don't really read to them as much these days, um, but we do a fair bit of um, you know, we love chatting when we're driving. We you know off to go places and we have really great chats in the car. And, um, you know off to go places and we have really great chats in the car. And you know, hanging out watching, just really fun stuff, like you know we love watching Do Perfect and trick shot videos and all kinds of stuff that you know. When we're then experimenting and trying stuff at home is, all you know, fulfilling aspects of the curriculum and physics and science and all kinds of stuff like that. But none of it is me saying to them okay, you really need to learn about this.

Speaker 2: 18:59

But we do have conversations where, you know, my kids are of an age now where they could start to think about having a job in a couple of years time, and so you know, I talked to my son because he can read but his spelling's not great, and so I talked to him about that only in a really casual way to say, hey, like, is that something you want to work on this year?

Speaker 2: 19:20

Tell me, what are the things that you'd like to work on, what things do you feel like you don't know yet, that you want to learn some more about, and then we, you know, go down the track of learning that way, at the moment, what we're talking about, their grandfather bought a 3D printer and they're loving seeing what he's creating, and so we're talking about buying a 3D printer later in the year so that they can start business, and they both my two older kids have some really firm but really different ideas on what they want to create and sell, and we have lots of active homeschool markets and kids markets around here, so they actually think that that more so than getting a job.

Speaker 2: 20:01

My middle child in particular very entrepreneurial, you know he's really going to excel at having his own business, I think, rather than working for anyone, and so I think that that in the next year or two, will actually develop a lot of skills for them in, you know, budgeting and marketing and even writing and spelling and all of that kind of stuff that you know, if you were to look at those things in comparison to their school peers, they would be behind in at the moment.

Speaker 2: 20:33

But I think a lot of unschooling kids you know that they're a little bit ahead in this thing, but they're a little bit behind in this thing and then when they get out into adulthood, actually they've still got all the skills that they need. Even though they picked up a thing at 16 that another kid was being taught in school at 11 years old, they still actually end up with everything that they need. And I know quite a reasonable number of unschooled adults who are absolutely thriving and loving their lives and not in any way feeling that they are. You know that they were shortchanged in their education because they were able to just pick things up when they needed to learn things when they needed to, and I mean honestly the internet now, like you can learn anything whenever you want to just access some tutorials.

Speaker 1: 21:20

You know Right. I did not know anything about podcasting before I started and you learn all that stuff along the way. You learn how to. I didn't know anything about publishing a book. I learned all that from the internet, or you know or taking a course.

Speaker 1: 21:34

People sell online courses all the time and you know so. Yes, there are so many other ways to learn, and when it's actually relevant to your life is when it sticks. Do we all need to know Pythagorean's theorem? You know, are you ever going to use this stuff? I had a teacher that I interviewed I just released that episode last week and Angela and she said I was a teacher and they'd asked me Ms Harters, when are we going to need to use this? And she said I was honest, you're never going to need this. I'm so sorry. I had to take a precious time from your childhood and you could be out playing and you know being in nature to sit here and talk to you about cosigns.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Oh it is. It is crazy when we think about it now. Ok, so how, how do you manage technology as someone who understands clearly that there is a system out there and you know they're against us? There is a, you know, probably an elite group running the world. They're using technology, but you know there's a fine line between also shielding your kids from it forever and not teaching them how to use it. You know it's like that kid that never got to drink alcohol and goes to college and gets wasted every day and can't handle it, you know. So how does it work in your household? So?

Speaker 2: 22:46

we're. It's funny because when I started, way back when my son was really little, it was the first time I came across dana, dana Martin and I watched her interview on 60 Minutes in Australia and I was like, wow, that's really really out there, like her kids don't have a bedtime and they were living out in the middle of the woods as well, and she seemed really really out there and I realized that like 10 years later, I'm there, I'm in that place now, and so we're.

Speaker 2: 23:10

We're very much a radical unschooling family now, so we don't actually have I so we're very much a radical unschooling family now, so we don't actually have I'm going to say this phrase and then I'm going to clarify it we don't have any real limits on screen time Now. We do have some limits because there's various games that my son isn't allowed to get or play. We have those conversations about whether that's an appropriate game for him to play at this age and you know, no, that's not. We're going to leave that until you're older. We have some pretty strict rules around when they're playing online that they're only playing with talking to friending in the games, kids that they know in real life, and so you know we have. I'm really grateful that in our homeschool community we have, you know, a fairly tight knit group of mums and our kids. When they're playing together. They are playing. They're on like video chat with each other outside of the game, so they're using messenger kids or something like that to talk to each other and we're always around, you know, so we're always behind them and passing by and sitting in the same room and so on, so all of us are able to keep an eye on what games they're playing, who they're playing with, how they're interacting with each other, and, honestly, the amount that they learn just from doing that and playing those games is phenomenal, like the social development and the teamwork and the leadership and negotiating and conflict resolution the skills that they've picked up from doing those kinds of things is just phenomenal, really.

Speaker 2: 24:40

And also, you know, I have two sort of sides of feelings about the internet. The first is, you know, yeah, I don't want my kids being exposed to stuff that they're not developmentally ready for and being exposed to stuff or being, you know, influenced in negative ways. And I also know that I don't want to be approaching everything with fear, because that's just going to make it worse. And I want my kids to be really well equipped because they are the generation where screens, technology, ai is going to be dominant in their lives most likely. I mean, unless they do manage to go and live in a beautiful little commune out in the forest somewhere, they're probably going to have it dominating a lot of their lives and I want them to be really well equipped for that and I want them to feel confident about it. I don't want them to feel fearful like they. You know, for example and I have nothing against this, but if I was to completely restrict screens until they're much older and then they're just launched into it, like your example with college, you know, then we're, you know they don't have any skills and they haven't been able to develop that over time. And so you know, already I've been able to have good chats with my kids about.

Speaker 2: 26:02

You know, there are people online that might pretend that they're being kids in a game but actually they're not and they're an adult and they're not safe. And you know, we've had conversations about sextortion and kidnapping, and people that you know use any kind of avenue to be able to access kids and talk to them and find out where they live. And so it's really cool actually to see my kids, you know, because they do a bit of content creation, like my daughter writes full skits, full pieces and has her friends act out all of the parts and then she edits it and all that kind of thing. But it was very, very cool to see how like well educated they are on protecting themselves. You know, like if they're online in a game, they know not to use their friend's real name and they all have screen names and they all use their screen names with each other.

Speaker 2: 26:53

And you know my daughter was sharing some travel photos from when we were overseas and she knew to blur out her little brother's face.

Speaker 2: 27:02

You know, even though I've shared his face in a few places on, you know, for when we're doing, you know, our co-op sort of stuff, I share it.

Speaker 2: 27:08

But you know it's really cool to see how automatic that is for them and how good they are with just being savvy and being aware, even at the age that they're at, when stuff pops up that's dodgy or that's, you know, that person's not great or that person's using swear words or whatever it is, and then they know to get out of that situation. So you know, I'm not saying that our approach is perfect by any means, but it's working for us at the moment and my approach is always we'll do what works until it doesn't work and then we'll figure out a different way. If this thing's not working, then we'll look at it and we'll try something else, and if that thing doesn't work, then we'll try something else and we'll just keep going until we find, you know, something that does work for all of us as a family yeah, and I think that the fact that they're taking it seriously says a lot too.

Speaker 1: 28:03

You know, oh, we're going to use these screen names, we're going to blur out his face. They're not just like it's mom being crazy again. You know they're taking it seriously that, yeah, yeah, stuff like this does happen and you know we're going to try to mitigate that the best we can because, yeah, you can't really shield them from everything. I give props to the families that do not do screens at all, have all these strict limits. I haven't reached that myself, but where I mean at least we have a TV. My kids are young enough they do the TV.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Tv we have like an old I don't know what's the xbox or something from when my husband played video games as a teenager. So my son has that. He I think he thinks that that's all that exists now, like he doesn't realize there have been upgrades over the decades, but he's happy with that. He's never asked for anything more. Other kids will come up to me at play groups like can he play minecraft? Or his cousin will say something, and I'm like he's never actually asked me. So I have my other worries with him, because he rides dirt bikes and four wheelers and I had to take the dirt bike away because I'm like, oh my god, you're six years old, you're driving like a bat out of hell and no like you are going to crash that. So that's my, the battles that I'm trying to overcome. Now it's like they're always. They're always on a suicide mission, no matter what it is. It is.

Speaker 2: 29:23

Parenting is just so incredibly stressful. I remember, I remember, when I was a kid, and you know I'm I'm 40, I am 42, now 41. And we didn't have the internet, was in its absolute infancy. Back then my you know, my dad was quite ahead of you know. He'd always been interested in technology. So we had a family PC at home, probably before anybody else did, but I was.

Speaker 2: 29:48

I was into books. I read voraciously as a child. I picked up reading pretty early, at about five, and I just read and read, and read. And I remember people saying that they were concerned for me. They were worried for me because I read all the time and I wasn't like I did go out and play outside. But you know I wasn't playing outside enough and I wasn't running around enough and I wasn't engaging with other people enough and being social because I just like to curl up in the corner and read my book.

Speaker 2: 30:14

And so I look back to that and think, you know, now when I see my kids reading, I'm like that's awesome, that's great, and I have none of the same concerns that they had back then. But I think I feel like we just every generation there's going to be new things that come up that parents are concerned about, or that, where, you know, I do feel like with with screens, there are genuine concerns, and then I also feel like it's a very easy way for you know, for the media to manipulate us in terms of feeling guilty and feeling scared, and being very fear-based and and dividing people. You know, the only way you can protect your kids is if they're never on screens and, um, you, you know, you have to be the perfect parent and be present the entire time and make sure that your kids are always doing all of these activities so that they never need a screen. And it feels like just an easy way to divide and conquer. And also, to you know, keep us yeah, keep us fighting amongst ourselves.

Speaker 1: 31:11

I suppose and feeling like we're not enough.

Speaker 2: 31:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:14

I can. I can see that too right. You know I think about like okay, I have the two kids. How often am I really like laying on the floor with them playing? It's just not something I've ever joy doing like there are. My husband is the one that more plays with them, so I think you know they have.

Speaker 1: 31:33

They get stuff from other areas, whether it's their friends or the different parent or the aunt, the uncle, the grandparent, um, and then there are moms that do love playing on the floor with their kid. That's just what they like to do, but yeah, it's like no matter what. That's so funny that you say that about your parents were worried about you because you're always reading, or people would be where, like I've always had this thing the last couple of years attending the homeschool groups. My son, if there's a group, he goes off by himself or he'll find the younger kids to play with. And I'm like, dude, why don't you play with the kids your own age?

Speaker 1: 32:05

What's wrong? Like what's going on? I mean for what's wrong? Like what's going on? I mean for years. This was a battle. I didn't bring you here to play with the two-year-old when you're five, like I, why didn't you? But obviously, now that I look at it and I've talked to more homeschooling families, I'm like it's fine that he wants to play with the two-year-old. He finds that more comfortable being an alpha and the two-year-old is not going to question him or belittle him.

Speaker 1: 32:29

You know he one-on-one, he's fine with kids his own age or kids that are older, but it's in the group setting and he's getting better. You know, we were just at a creek day today with the homeschool family that meets every week and like the woods and the creek kind of like you were talking about, and, uh, you know, he was off by himself for a little bit but then he brought, he was bait trading with the boys and he was fishing with the one kid and you know so it's like this stuff does just take time because everybody's personality is so different and it's it's cool because when we homeschool we can witness this as the parent. Maybe there, if there is a worry or a concern, you can talk to them about it, but at school they're just thrown into a classroom and it's like, well, you all just have to be here together, whether you like each other or not, and you know. So it is really cool that you get to actually watch them. You know what, what are their fears?

Speaker 1: 33:20

You know being in a crowd or being belittled, or being bullied, or you know, are you the? I always say to them did you do something first to get bullied there? A reason, because sometimes you say stuff and mommy gets a little mad. And you know, did you say something to make them for you know? But it's interesting and I don't do everything right, but it's cool being there for it all and working through it together yeah, because then you get to.

Speaker 2: 33:47

You get to. I was going to say teach, but it's not the right word because I don't consider myself a teacher in any capacity. Um, you get to, you get to. I was going to say teach, but it's not the right word because I don't consider myself a teacher in any capacity. You get to parent and facilitate what it is that your child needs at that moment in their life, which is as much as. Teachers are beautiful and I know that they try their hardest. They're still one to two teachers dealing with 15 to 30 kids and they're just not going to be able to do that. And that's why I say, for parents that are considering homeschooling but they're feeling scared because they don't think they're going to be enough, I say to them you know your child better than anybody. You are your child's best advocate, you love them and you care about their happiness and their outcomes in life. You're absolutely the best person to be able to find out what they need right now.

Speaker 1: 34:44

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Speaker 2: 35:15

We are our kids' best advocate and we are best placed to help them live a beautiful life. And I do also feel you know you said before about it was it's pointless trying to learn some of these things in childhood when it's taking away from your childhood. And I feel very much that my role is as a protector of my kids' childhood and and not in a way of trying to stifle them and keep them in a little bubble, but letting them enjoy their childhood as much as possible, because they're going to reach adulthood and they're going to have to deal with all of the crap that we deal with and all of the adult decisions and problems and angst that goes with that. Um, and I just feel like I want to let them enjoy their childhood for as long as possible. And and that's also, you know, one of my reasons for continuing on the unschooling path is they're still. You know they're 11, they're 10 and 12,. They're going to be 11 and 13.

Speaker 2: 36:21

A lot of people I'm seeing I don't know if this is happening in America, but I'm seeing in Australia a lot of people when they're getting to this age the 10, 11 is when they're starting to want to put their kids in more structured classes and activities, even when they're homeschooling or they're looking at going back to some kind of independent school sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 36:42

Because I think the fear is kicking in at that point that if I don't make sure that they've got all of this base level knowledge, then they're not going to be able to get a job and they're not going to be able to survive in life. And my response is they're still just kids, like they're still just 10, 11, 12. And yes, they're. They're maturing and you know a couple of my daughter's friends who are 12 are like six foot tall and their voices have dropped, you know, but they're still just kids. They still have this, you know, this critical stage of their childhood left, which is that part of maturing into an adult, and I want them to be able to enjoy themselves and have the least amount of stress and concerns for as long as possible.

Speaker 2: 37:30

It's just you know you spend long enough in adulthood. I feel like I don't want to press adulthood down into their childhood.

Speaker 1: 37:39

Yeah, someone said to me once that anything your child needs to know to be successful in life, they can learn in their high school years, and I think that you kind of talked about that when you said you know because you explore their interests. It's not like you do nothing all day. Is this the year that you want to learn to write, because you know you might need to write to have a job someday. So you know as they get older and it's only going to be easier to learn how to write as you're cognitively ready anyways, like, oh yeah, that's a B. Well, I know, I use that letter all the time. I'm going to need to know that one. So, yeah, they can learn it. So they're already finding things that interest them.

Speaker 1: 38:16

So then, when you get to those high school years, like you said, you're okay, what do you want to start selling? We could start a business, you know, and, oh, that didn't work out. Well, what did we do wrong? We could switch the product, we could switch the marketing. And they're just learning so much that we, and also what we're learning in school today, it's like, how are you going to teach someone at age four? We start school at age four here in America because we have universal preschool and then preschool or preschool and then nursery school or maybe kindergarten, preschool, kindergarten, first grade through 12th grade, and it's like like how are you teaching kids things that once they are graduated you don't know what the world's going to be like with the ai and the technology and all that? So it is such a waste of time.

Speaker 2: 39:01

Yeah, because they might not need to know any of that stuff you look at the advancement in ai, which, honestly, you know, I try not be fearful but the speed at which it's happening does scare me a little bit. Because you look at last year and the year before with AI, you know photos, photos. You can still reasonably easily tell if it's something that's been created from AI. It's an AI image Videos. Last year it was really easy to tell if something was AI or not. You know there's too many fingers their arms aren't moving right Now this year, like it's only 12, 18 months later that we're seeing AI, that we're all double taking on and going oh, is that a genuine video?

Speaker 2: 39:41

You know, and I've got friends sharing videos of like there's that one that's doing the rounds at the moment of all the different animals jumping on the trampoline.

Speaker 2: 39:48

So there's, like it's meant to be a, you know, a CCTV video from outside your house of a nighttime shot and it's like the raccoons jumping on the trampoline.

Speaker 2: 39:57

And then there's another one with kangaroos and there's another one with bunnies and stuff, and one of my friends shared the kangaroo one the other day and I said I'm pretty sure this is AI.

Speaker 2: 40:07

Like I've seen this very similar setup with different animals about four times in the past couple of weeks, but that's the only way that I really picked up that it was AI, because the video itself looks so believable and, yeah, for our kids by the time they are, even for my eldest, by the time she graduates and, you know, is an adult, that's five years from now. We're going to be in such a different world where so many things are going to be run by AI, and I think actually the benefit of it is it's going to increase the value of face-to-face interactions and face-to-face businesses and just person-to-person human interactions, I think, are going to become so much more important because it's going to be the only way that you can genuinely tell that a person is genuine by seeing them actually in the flesh. So I think that that's going to be a really good silver lining to all of this.

Speaker 1: 41:08

Yeah, it's almost like they're pushing it so much, so fast, that people will pull back and, yeah, find your local farmers and go to your local farmers markets and go to the park and that stuff. I agree, okay, last question here reporting. Do you? You mentioned a little bit in the beginning of, like, what you have to report. How do you report as a homeschooler?

Speaker 2: 41:30

So homeschooling is a legal option in australia and we did have to fight. They brought in some legislation last year in my state, in queensland, where they wanted to um change homeschooling so that you had to comply with the australian. So there's an Australian-wide curriculum. Now that's not so bad, because it's not super hard to comply with that. But they did bring in some other concerning aspects of like you needing to prove that homeschooling was in the best interest of your child, and that was very conveniently vague and that really, really concerned me because at the moment there's three choices for education in Australia you can be registered at a public school, you can be registered in a private school or you can be registered in every state for home education and then distance ed is kind of in the middle there, because you're registered with a school but you're doing it at home. If we now say that homeschooling is something that you have to prove is in the best interest of your child, we're now saying that homeschooling is not an equal legal choice, the same as the other ones. It's now something special and who do I have to prove that to and what kind of government official is going to be making that decision about me and my family, and that was one of the very, like you know, those sneaky ones that they it's way down buried down the back here of like. Just this random little piece of thing that I was really concerned was going to become a massive thing, and partly because it had no information about how this was going to be implemented or who was going to be making that decision for you.

Speaker 2: 43:06

Um, and when that legislation was brought in in Queensland, the Labor government at the time had the majority so they could have actually just pushed it through, and Queensland's kind of like California. They put stuff through here in Queensland first as their testing ground, and what happens in Queensland then sort of rolls out to the rest of the country. And so there was conversations that we got back from political channels that this was the testing ground, that we're going to put this through in Queensland, and then they were going to roll it out in a lot of the other states and particularly because you know Labor's kind of equivalent to Democrats over here that they were going to roll that out in other states as well.

Speaker 2: 43:45

And the basis of that was a child who had been in the school system had been removed from the school system and was then homeschooling, and there was a lot of bullying and mental health issues happening. The child was in the mental health ward and mentioned to one of the counsellors there that he wished he was back at school because, although homeschooling was protecting him from the bullying, he was missing his school friends. And unfortunately that child I think he was about 12, he went on to commit suicide, which is so tragic. But the concern then became that he was homeschooled when that happened, which is not looking at the whole picture at all and so that became the basis of wanting to place these extra restrictions and extra visibility supposedly on homeschoolers, despite the fact that they don't actually have the budget to be able to do that, to like come out and inspect everybody's learning environment and that kind of thing. So we were able to have that legislation stopped. And then there was an election coming up and the other party won and they promised us if they won that they would put that legislation in. And then there was an election coming up and the other party won and they promised us if they won that they would put that legislation in the drawer. Basically, and all they have implemented as changes are actually really positive changes that we needed. So there's different requirements across different states in Australia.

Speaker 2: 45:07

In Queensland, where I am, you're registered with the Home Education Unit, which is part of the Department of Education. It is compulsory to be registered for some form of education by the time a child is six and a half. In Queensland there are 11,000 registered homeschoolers in Queensland as of last year. That will have gone up this year. It's estimated that that is only about a quarter of the actual homeschoolers and that there is probably about 30,000 unregistered homeschoolers in Queensland. So then, if you extrapolate that across Australia, we've got 40,000 registered homeschoolers in Australia. So actually it's probably more like 100,000 homeschoolers in Australia. So lots of families are unregistered. But if you are registered, it's fairly easy as it stands to be able to translate, especially with AI, to be able to translate everything that you're doing in your life into the edu-speak that they want to see, to be able to see you know how your child is is progressing, and all you are required to do in Queensland is provide your child with a quality education, so they want to see how you, as the parent, are striving to support your child and to teach your child some things.

Speaker 2: 46:23

Um, you know they're not looking to see that the child has made this massive level of improvement or that the child is at this particular grade level. We're not required to do tests or anything like that. But in our reporting process they want us to do two samples, for example, where we say the first sample is the child at this point in time, for their writing, for example, and then they want us to explain what we did to support the child and then to see a second sample, you know, from later in the year or whenever, to show what the improvements are. And it's mainly just for us as the parent, to be able to prove that we understand what we're doing and that we are actively supporting the child. That's actually all they're looking for. They're not looking for the child to be at a grade level passed a test, anything like that.

Speaker 2: 47:15

So homeschooling in Australia and that's very similar across the states Some of the states when you put your plan in for the year, they will do either an online or an in-person visit for an assessment and an interview. In Queensland we don't have that at the moment, but homeschooling in Australia is relatively easy, like it's not super onerous. It's not, you know, you're not required to submit a whole bunch of paperwork. It's actually yeah, it's quite good right now and we'd like to keep it that way.

Speaker 1: 47:50

Yeah, it's quite good right now and we'd like to keep it that way. Yeah, exactly, and I couldn't help but think, when you said about the tragic story with the kid committing suicide, it's like, okay, that's one case of a homeschooler. How many kids in the school system commit suicide? And who do they have to prove anything to? I mean, that should be parents lining up at the door then and saying you have to prove to us that you have a safe environment here.

Speaker 1: 48:14

You know, um, cause, like you said, it either has to do with the homeschool and if it does, then it has to do with the school when it happens to a school student, or it didn't have anything to do with the school and he was on social media and maybe even being groomed by the ai. And you know, because there is some crazy stuff going on right now, I follow this lady scrolling to death and she always has this stuff about, like kids being groomed online where it's telling them to kill themselves. I mean, it slowly works in as like, oh, do you want to talk to, you know, ginger? And you know a 13 year old boy's like, yeah, sure, but she's not real, it's AI, and they're forming this friendship almost with this child. And then, and I don't know what's behind that I haven't researched it at all, but enough people have complained about it, so it's like, yeah, what is happening?

Speaker 1: 49:03

It's either in the home itself, which the kids homeschooled, and the kids in school go home. So it's, you know, it has nothing to do with the education part, the school's not going to save that kid, but it happens in the public school system to public school kids, private school kids, all the time. So why should one have to prove themselves and the other one doesn't? It doesn't make any sense. But, debbie, thank you so much for chatting with me today. This has been awesome. Do you have any links or anything that you wanted to mention where people could follow you? Because, since you do do this for your line of work, yeah, so for families in Australia, we are the Village Hub.

Speaker 2: 49:39

We're in Queensland. Like I have a physical location in Queensland. We're halfway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. I'm actually running an expo at the end of this month. I'm actually running an expo at the end of this month and I don't know why they've rocked up right now and I also do unschooling coaching for families across Australia and New Zealand mainly. But yeah, you can look us up on social media. The Village Hub. We're quite a unique setup when it comes to we're one of the only unschooling-friendly homeschool sort of drop-off programs Australia really. And we also have, you know, workstations and offices for parents to be able to work in while the kids are playing. So we're like that sort of one stop shop. And, yeah, we just love, we love supporting homeschool families and families to come into homeschooling and to be able to make sure that it's viable for them and that they feel connected and part of their community.

Speaker 1: 50:34

And yeah, it's beautiful, we love it. Oh, that's so great. I can link that stuff in the show's description so people can easily check it out there. Debbie, thank you so much for chatting with me today. This has been a pleasure, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 50:43

Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the homeschool how to. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.