wild + free kids

My 3 kids currently attend 4 different schools. I won’t bore you with the algorithm of how that all works out, but suffice it to say that we are often moving in inconveniently different directions most days of the week.

This, of course, was not my dream. My dream was that my twins would be best friends and do everything together. That we would find the perfect little educational program (in truth, the one we found is amazing, though it doesn’t work for all our kids right now) and all the kids would go there. Unfortunately, as it turns out, these little humans each have their own needs. And, so, convenient or not, we do our best to give them each what they need. And it means a lot of juggling.

Enter Wild + Free.

I was ready to just keep churning along this way for I don’t know how long… high school graduation? Waking up, dropping kids here and there, picking them up, driving them to activities, making dinner, cleaning up, hustling everyone to bed, and doing it all again. I was actually pretty resigned to this concept. We would just have to work harder to earn more money for those desperately-needed vacations so we could all recover a few times per year. That was the plan. Until Wild + Free fell into my lap.

Wild + Free is a community of homeschooling caregivers that offers resources, support, and inspiration for mamas looking to preserve their childrens’ childhoods by educating them at home. The idea is that we, as the parents who know our kids best, are actually the ideal people to educate them. And that we have our own unique talents and passions - in my case, Spanish, Buddhism, writing, for example - to offer our children as their teachers. Our kids also have their own passions and talents that can guide what and how we teach them best. And that we can create a safe, nurturing nest that protects our kids’ childhoods as long as possible right at home.

The ideas I like in there are several. One is that education can be personalized to our own interests and values and those of our kids. And it’s not just the content. It’s the pace of life. Right now, our family has accepted the expectation that rushing around is normal. That handing over the critical tasks of teaching our children to others is what we believe is best. We are teaching our children that being hurried in order to fit into a rubric someone else created is how we are supposed to live. And Doug and I both agree we don’t want to live like that.

I stumbled upon the wild + free website last week. And then found the Wild and Free Family book blinking at my from the bookshelf in the thrift store this weekend. Synchronicity!! And I read it. And it’s turned everything I thought I knew about homeschooling on its head. And I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I think it’s going to be big. Come find me at www.wildheartmama.com and you can check out more about our family’s homeschooling adventures!