Anxiety in Unschooling

My family has been unschooling for the last 5 years. It’s been a wild ride of highs and lows, and sometimes the hardest part is that there isn’t a manual or even real guidelines for how to go through this process with your kids. It’s largely the removal of curriculum that defines unschooling, but how that plays out in your family can look totally unique. My favourite unschooling friends centre things like consent and intersectionality in their unschooling practice, and I try to do the same, although sometimes it feels more like flailing through the universe than intentional parenting.

One of the unique things about unschooling is that every child is inherently different. They are all different recipes of interests and super powers and preferences based not only on lived experiences but also on innate being. If you have more than one kid, the interaction of siblings will also play a big role in the dynamics of your unschooling experience. Last but not least, you, as a parent, also play a huge role in what unschooling might look like. Lots of parents claim that they “couldn’t teach their kids” but of course we all have ways of sharing experiences and knowledge. It just won’t look like what we think a teacher looks like in the sense of the modern education system.

There are so many different factors that play into what unschooling looks like, and it’s one of the reasons you’ll hear many unschooling families say that there is no secret sauce. There is actually a rejection of “unschooling gurus” because those who claim to be able to teach unschooling are probably bullshitting you, especially if they profit off it.

One of the major influences on our unschooling lives is that both I and one of my kids suffer from anxiety. This isn’t just a run-of-the-mill “oh, I feel anxious!” type of anxiety. It’s more akin to being neurodivergent or suffering from mental illness, although I don’t feel particularly attracted to either of those designations when talking about anxiety.

There’s a weird dynamic that occurs with self-directed education and anxiety that I didn’t pick up on in the early years, and I think it’s worth exploring in some depth.

But first, here’s a quick primer on what happens to someone with anxiety. I often refer to my own attacks as panic attacks, but disregulation is another term that feels comfortable for me (and a little less violent).

For the science behind anxiety, I really enjoy this video:

The truth is that everyone feels anxiety, but some folks feel it more than others, especially at times when there’s no real threat. When this happens, a person might have a panic attack and hit freeze, fight, or flight, or they might just be disregulated. For me, disregulation is a feeling of discomfort. It’s often exacerbated by lots of external stimuli because I’m a highly sensitive person. When I’m feeling disregulated, I have a hard time focusing on anything, and often my internal dialogue is yelling instead of just talking.

There’s a massive discussion to be had around what it’s like to suffer from anxiety in late-stage capitalism. The culture that capitalism enforces is exceptionally triggering for folks who have acute anxiety.

But for the moment, I’d like to talk about what anxiety looks like in an unschooling environment.

One of the key tenets of unschooling is to not force specific learning initiatives or curricula on learners. We actually chose unschooling because of this freedom. For folks with anxiety, being asked to perform in a classroom can immediately trigger an attack, sending them into freeze, fight, or flight pretty much all day long. And that is super exhausting for young people!

Unschooling is great because it allows the learner to move at their own pace and learn based on their interests rather than feeling pressured to perform. In our case, even that pressure can send someone into a freeze state, in which case there’s very little retention of information. It’s an unending cycle where the learner won’t be able to take in the information because they’re stuck in a freeze state, and then every time new material is presented, it triggers the state because the learner panics, thinking that they are simply unable to learn. Super duper duper exhausting.

But there are aspects of the unschooling environment that can also trigger anxiety, and I didn’t acknowledge these back when we started this journey.

As mentioned, unschooling is grounded in choice. As parents, this means that part of the gig is to provide lots of options and let the kids choose what makes sense for them. But what happens when the act of choosing itself becomes overwhelming?

Elizabeth Hannam wrote a post on her substack The Other Path today about open-ended play. It’s a beautiful piece that explores the effects of imagination on learning development and falls right in line with the tenets of unschooling. While I believe firecely in this approach in principle, the reality is that this type of play and learning hasn’t unfolded for my family in the same ways that it has for hers.

It's like handing a child a box of possibilities and letting them decide how to unpack it, encouraging their minds to wander, wonder, and weave stories. So, in a nutshell, open-ended play is the joyous art of letting imagination run wild, with no limits or predetermined endings – just pure, unbridled fun!

For someone with anxiety, those possibilities can feel like a threat. Endless choice can be a chokehold. So rather than exploring with wild imagination, the requirement to make decisions can trigger disregulation or even attacks. For me as a parent, this can be overwhelming!

I remember asking my child what they were interested in or what topics they might want to learn about, and the response was deafening silence. I would suggest some options, trying to gently push in different directions but making sure that I didn’t overly influence their decision. After all, this is what self-directed education is all about, right? Allowing them to have control over their own choices.

But it always backfired, often leading to tears, because they thought something was WRONG with them for not being able to choose. What I think was actually happening, though, was that they were hitting a freeze state where the mind goes blank and words aren’t able to come out.

Since those days, I have learned more about co-regulation and the importance of understanding my own children as an unschooling parent. Providing more limited options is a better fit for my child. Often, making the decision for them is a better choice than pushing them to make a decision themselves, especially when it comes to new experiences. The reality is that people with anxiety can only make decisions in an environment that feels 100% safe, so my job isn’t to gently push them in a direction. It is to provide a space where it feels safe to make decisions on their own, in their own time.

When the space is safe for them, beautiful things happen! Homeschool activities that I never thought would ever happen are completed joyfully. Tasks get marked off of checklists. There are even instances where “teacher-student” learning starts to appear. And when those passions show up, we jump on them and deep dive like any unschooling family would, but often we need a bit more structure to them than might feel warranted in a self-directed environment.

And that’s okay! Because unschooling, self-directed learning, or consent-based education doesn’t have to look just one way. It’s always got to be rooted in the dynamics of your own family and what works best for you, especially for ND folks and those who live with mental illness. There’s truly room for everyone.