The Phases of Unschooling

Experience, Expectations, and What Is (Probably) Coming if You Choose this Path

Often unschooling feels like a path with no end in sight. Image by Emma

We spend much time as parents just waiting for this part of parenting to end. Which part? Whatever part you are deeply immersed in and presenting you with challenges. That part. The newborn phase, the obsessing-over-Minecraft phase, the Sharpie-on-walls phase. However we might choose to educate our children, we parents spend a lot of time thinking about how wonderful life will be when our children grow into the next phase, whatever that may be.

Except all that future-fantasy thinking is magical thinking. All the phases have challenges. And they get more complicated and emotionally draining as our young people age. You can count on that, if nothing else.

Parenting books and bloggers write way too many words about the step-by-step changes you can expect in your children as they age. I don’t need to belabor those stages. Unschooling, however, puts a tailspin on what the growth and changes look like since childhood development is now — almost always — viewed through the lens of institutionalized learning from K-12. It is the default.

Below I will itemize generalized stages that my young people (and pretty much all of their unschooled friends) went through when they lived their life without school putting bumpers and pressure on how growth happened and in which direction their maturing brains oriented them.

I’m writing this so you "will know it when you see it.” Are these phases written in stone?* No…but they are likely to make an appearance in some fashion.

Unschooling Ages and Stages

Infant - Age 6 | This is not an unschooling phase. You are parenting; your child is just living their early childhood. Even if you do all the things - read to your children daily, teach them “schoolish” things, and they can read by age 4, you are still just parenting. Try to keep all learning as play-based as possible. That is developmentally appropriate learning for this stage. They have a long life ahead of them to learn about books and numbers, computers and writing. Just enjoy them as littles.

Age 6 - 10ish | In this phase, your children will primarily learn about their world through play and asking (so many) questions. They need to play - alone, with others of all ages, sometimes with you, and with other family members, including pets. Provide as many different modes of play as possible — dress up, toys with multi-function (blocks, stacking objects, Legos, stuffed animals, natural objects), and real-world function (tools, kitchen objects) are good places to concentrate. Give them simple chores they can independently and age-appropriately complete without adult intervention. This helps them feel competent and builds self-esteem. Interpersonal interaction with friends of all ages helps them learn and develop essential relational skills. Reading to them (without quizzing them on words or making it “learning time”) is essential. Observe them carefully for personality traits — i.e., introversion, extroversion, as well as 3-D spatial cognition, physicality, emotional relatedness, neurodivergence, eye-sight issues, color blindness, etc. If they specifically ask you to go deeper on a specific subject, work with them for 10 minutes a day or so on — say — reading, but no more than that. If you make it a chore, you will quickly get resistance. If you are trying to encourage them to learn another language, immerse them in that language either inside or outside the home daily.

This phase is an excellent time to introduce as many concepts and spaces to them as possible: nature walks, hiking, garden visits, zoo visits, the aquarium, the library, travel, historical sites, art projects, any and all things animal, gardening, cooking, theatre, ballet, sports, singing… really, the list is endless. 99.9% of it won’t stick, and they won’t remember it when they are teens. But one or two things probably will stick, and these will become life-long passions, interests, and avenues of learning.

Your job is simply exposure. Their job is to choose what they like and don’t like.

Puberty, Tweens, & Early Teens | This is a time of enormous change in the brain for young people. It is very helpful to research this phase before it smacks you in the face with all the differences you will see in your child’s behavior, focus, and outlook (on top of the sometimes awkward physical growth spurts.) You may find your young person wanting much less physical affection from you (except on their terms, and definitely not in public). Their privacy becomes very important to them. They become boundaried around a bunch of things; they may want to isolate themselves in their room or find a private space outdoors to be alone. They hate foods and activities they loved yesterday; they love things they couldn’t stand last week. It can seemingly happen from one day to the next.

Play and learning through play is still, often, a focus but becomes embarrassing to them. They may feel like babies when they play, and that causes enormous cognitive dissonance. Your young person will gradually find that what they enjoyed doing before is no longer enjoyable, or it is too “cringy” to admit to themselves and their friends that they still enjoy it. Protect their instinct to play for as long as you can. It is a precious gift. Don’t tell them they are too old for play or otherwise disapprove of the five gazillion stuffed animals, Legos, or toys in their room. They need to work through their attachment to play-based learning in their own time without shame.

Reading, watching videos, learning online, texting, “hanging out’ with friends, and gaming gradually replace play and toys as sources of learning in this stage.

Friend groups will expand and begin to develop “drama” and challenges. These wrinkles and bumps in their social life become an arena for learning social skills and handling both interpersonal and emotional success and setbacks. This is true whether a child is in school or not in school. Keep communication open with your child about these issues, and expect tears and suffering. You want them to learn emotional competence from you and their older siblings and mentors rather than (primarily) from other tweens.

It is vital at this time to set aside time every few months as a family to go over what is working and what isn’t working with unschooling and course-correct as needed during this phase especially. Changes are happening so quickly. Interests and foci will come and go. If you genuinely want their learning to be self-directed, you will need to keep open communication about interests, ideas, and challenges regularly.

As a parent, you will need to be nimble, accepting of “quitting,” focused on finding them resources for exploration, and open to whatever weird and seemingly unimportant interest is coming down the pike. Blacksmithing? Sure! Herpetology? Here’s a snake or turtle in an aquarium. Want to start a “slime” business and sell it on Tic-Tok? Here’s glitter and cornstarch. Interested in playing the viola…no drums…no violin…no, being a DJ? You will get used to finding and selling used instruments on FB Marketplace. (Ask me how I know.)

This is a time of oxymoronic relationship with your child — receiving from them both “leave me alone” and “help me do it all.” It is an unprecedented challenge to your parenting skills, but also a time of sweetness.

Mid-Teens | This phase, for the most part, resembles the phase above but with four distinction differences:

There is a LOT of sleeping needed by your young person, and kids tend to develop night-owl tendencies and weird eating habits. This is often hard on the rest of the family and requires constant negotiation of phone/computer time limits, bedtime routines, etc. This is a source of tension and fighting in the family, so finding a way to come to a compromise before resentment sets in is crucial.

We have a family motto: “Try to get to YES.” Don’t personalize this behavior as some sort of aberration in your child that is enacted to make you want to tear your hair out. When a tween/teen is allowed to self-direct, this is quite often the outcome. Take a deep breath and practice your flexibility.

Folks this age might (likely, but not always) a) want to try out school or b) say that your choices around their education have “made them weird” and that they resent you for it. They question whether they will succeed in life, ever make it in the real world and if you - their captor - have ruined their life. They may even do both. Mine did. It hurts. This push-back will feed into every insecurity you’ve ever had about unschooling and whether it is working for your family. It will feel like you’ve failed and that they are ungrateful for all the years you’ve put in as a family to provide them with this educational path that they have, so far, enjoyed. And if you are genuinely dedicated to self-direction as a learning path, you might have to let them just go to school for a spell and see for themselves. OR, if it is possible, you can enroll them in the local community college as a “dual-rolled” student. Our family has done both things. The one who went to high school decided it was dumb and crazy-making and returned home. The one who dual-rolled had so many college credits he saved himself a year of college when he started at university.

They may want to get a serious part-time job or apprenticeship that will be a focus for their learning. This path is easier for them than for their schooled peers because of the amount of time during the week they can devote to a job, apprenticeship, or volunteer position. But they can’t yet drive…so guess who gets to do that. Having their own money and working in “the real world” helps with self-esteem and independence.

Finally, and this does not seem to be only unschoolers (but is certainly common in the unschooling young people I’ve known), this is the time when young people explore piercings, hair-dying, talk of tattoos, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other such modes of self-expression and identity.

Late Teens | There is nothing like looming adulthood to focus your teen’s mind on priorities and directions. What this looks like will vary widely. My two, both, from ages 10-16 said they had no interest in college (with loud conviction!) But when 17 rolled around, both did a complete about-face. They spent long hours discussing with me the defined focus they wanted to study in college, engaged in the path toward getting into college, and began to advocate for themselves to mentors. They sought out travel experiences that would support this path, had Zoom interviews with professionals in their chosen field, and identified skills they needed to have to succeed.

College need not be their path. Kids at this stage my wish to travel, work full-time, apprentice to someone, start a business, focus on a novel or interest outside of academics, or … or… or… They may not have any answers yet, but it is the searching and focus that marks the entrance to this stage, not necessarily the outcome.

This late teen surge to adulthood in my kids surprised and delighted me, mostly because of how “adult” their learning became and how quickly it happened. They looked back over their education and saw that unschooling really did work for them, that they knew as much or more than their college-bound traditionally-schooled friends, and felt empowered to explore the world, knowing that we were still here to facilitate and support them as they moved to independence.

In Summary

Navigating these changes and phases is the hardest part of unschooling. Truly.

But you know what helps? Seek out older unschooled teens and talk to them. Ask them questions about their experience. Join Zoom calls with parents supporting other parents during these phases and talk about your challenges. Work hard at developing community (for yourself, not just your kid(s)) from the very beginning of your unschooling journey. And then lean on your community.

And mostly, grant yourself grace for the mistakes you make. When you screw up, issue apologies to your kids like the nutritious food it is. Let them see you in all your human glory in every phase of their life. Because that, reader, is the most important unschooling lesson of all.

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*Neurodivergence often delays the onset of these phases and may — depending on your young person — radically alter them.