How to Do a Child-Led Education and Include your Children

When you’re trying to engage in learning, whether it be numerical literacy or scientific discovery, you quickly learn that everyone is learning differently.

Each child doesn’t have the same interests and each child wasn’t placed on this earth for the same purposes. So why educate them identically?

I’ve had six human subjects: four kids, my husband, and myself. So the one thing I’ve spent my last decade doing, unintentionally, is studying learning.

And I’ve learned that child-led education is where it’s at.

• Some of us prefer to just read a book independently.
• Some would rather have things explained.
• And some would rather watch the YouTube video.
• Some would rather build the math problem.
• And if you’re like me, some take ten minutes to peruse instructions.

One of us wanted to read the directions in English, French, Spanish, and Chinese (I discovered that about my husband when we built our first child’s crib. Me: not so much.)

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Let’s chat how to create a child-led education…

As a registered homeschooler in British Columbia, with no one overseeing grades, transcripts, content, or curriculum, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking what the right things are for my children to learn.

• So, I don’t assume there is one right way to educate a child.
• I don’t assume there is one right complement of activities or curriculum that is ideal.
• I know there will be gaps, as there were gaps in my conventional education. (Also, there are always gaps, unless you’re God or Google.)

I’ve learned to consider these elements in creating a child-led education:

Who is the child?

This is an unending exploration: asking the question, “Who is the child”?

Because when I finally have them ‘pegged’…”She is an ENFJ auditory learner, who prefers to do things with her cat in the room and a latte in her mug, but she hates history; instead, she enjoys reading out loud and acting out her reading”…

Then a week later, that ENFJ auditory learner (who hates history) declares she wants to step up her history learning by taking an online class via Zoom.

Peg them, I can not.

What are their interests?

They might play with Legos indefinitely, or they might flip from Legos to chess to cribbage exploration then back to preparing a teddy bear picnic in the backyard –and I ponder, isn’t he too old for that?

Now they enjoy history reading, next they want to take a psychology class, then they decide they prefer ancient languages.

Whatever their interests, every single one of them can be used for math studies, science exploration, writing, or history study.

What are my and my partner’s interests?

What can we offer our children’s education from our interests or our training?

This is why they were born into our families, so we can share ourselves, our interests, and aptitudes, with them.

You won’t overhear a discussion with me and the kids about how many seats in parliament need to be won for our favoured party to get a minority government, and you won’t see me invite the kids to watch free online broadway offerings or play math logic games on a spare afternoon.

But you will hear me ask the kids to listen to Mendelsohn or watch YouTube videos on Vincent Van Gogh or play a Professor Noggins Fine Arts game or read poetry while eating scones and drinking tea.

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What do our children’s internal compasses dictate they do in their life right now?

Each of them rolls their eyes when I share this anecdote, but I’ve shared it repeatedly because there’s some truth in it:

If you discover you love making miniature stone animals and selling them at the local market, then do it. Find a way to supplement your income or create an income.

Definitely do the thing you love.

We all have unique things to create in this life, even you.

That creation might come in the form of crocheting knit hats as a side hustle, it might be in managing an organization or creating a home from a house. It might be landscape development, helping people manage their interpersonal issues, or calculating numbers for tax forms.

It’s all creative.

We aren’t told in advance what our children will create. So we watch how they play, how they engage, how they interact, and help them move forward toward what they are meant to do.

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Realize school gets in the way of an education.

Mark Twain

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