Teens Living in the Real World

Prevailing social wisdom tells us that teens will start to pull away
from their parents, itching to do things on their own, maybe even
specifically just to get out from under their parents' control; and
that in turn parents will be spending a lot less of their time
involved with them. In many mainstream families it may well play out
that way, with teens leaving the house giving minimal explanations and
parents' interactions mostly reduced to ensuring that the family rules
are met: "Be home by 10, it's a school night!"This quote is from a
paper published by Health Canada in 1999 entitled "Parenting Today's
Teens: A Survey and Review of Resources":"As Matthew Paris observed in
the 13th century, most teens will challenge the authority structures
in their immediate environment, especially parental authority. We can
expect such behaviour since their primary developmental task is to
become independent and to assume an adult role in society. For
parents, the challenge becomes knowing how much or how little to let
go as they guide their adolescent along that road."This may be the
traditional view of the parent-teen relationship but there are a
number ways in which it differs significantly from that typically seen
in an unschooling family.Most blatantly, unschooling families often
choose to avoid the authority structures that many mainstream families
set up at home. Without the "us versus them" mentality, unschooling
teens don't have a "parental authority" they feel the need to
challenge: they know they have their parents' support and help while
pursuing their independence and journeying into adulthood. What a
thoroughly divergent viewpoint from which to enter your teen
years!Sadly, less supported and more controlled, typical teens try to
meet their needs for socializing and independence by finding places to
hang out together outside the home, out from under the watchful and
judgmental eyes of parents, often public places like street corners
and malls. And even though they obviously understand the drive behind
it (as seen by the quote), instead of displaying support for these
needs by welcoming teens into the adult world with real life
opportunities, or even just creating better gathering places for
teens, many towns and cities have reacted out of fear and the need to
control by passing curfews, and malls have responded with security
policies designed to restrict unsupervised mall access for teens to
certain times. They shut them out of, instead of welcoming them into,
adult society.How does this look different in unschooling families?
Unschooling parents will support their child's wishes to socialize, to
get together with other teens. They'll open up their home and provide
a fun and non-judgmental environment for the teens to hang out.
Movies? Snacks? Sleeping bags? A warm and cozy room in which to relax
and chat late into the night? Unschooling parents are able to talk
openly with their teens, figure out what they want to do, and work
together to help them accomplish it. What if their teen wants to visit
others? They support that by driving (maybe hours away), or making
other arrangements like bus tickets, or even flights. Instead of
fearing teens gathering, unschooling parents help make it happen and
create supportive environments in which the teens can enjoy
themselves.Another difference is in the idea of the teen attempting to
assume a role in adult society. The mainstream educational paradigm
says that children go to school to learn what they need to know so
they can graduate into the "real world", into adult society.
Unschoolers create a learning environment for their children that is
based in the real world from the get go. Mainstream society tries to
shut teens out of this "real world" until that magical graduation day,
until they are declared legal adults; it tries to ensconce them in the
high school building where they can be watched and controlled, like
here in Ontario, Canada where they have raised the compulsory
schooling age from 16 to 18.What are unschooling parents doing
instead? They are supporting their teen's wishes to engage in
society-at-large: helping them find opportunities to volunteer in
areas of interest; seeking mentors to help them pursue their passions
even more deeply; driving them to jobs; supporting them if they want
to learn to drive themselves. In other words, they seek out
opportunities for their teens to participate in adult society *now*,
if that is what they want to do.And the last sentence of the quote:
"For parents, the challenge becomes knowing how much or how little to
let go as they guide their adolescent along that road." The journey
along the road of adolescence also looks very different for
unschooling parents and teens. Instead of seeing themselves as guiding
or directing their teens with an attitude of "I know better because
I'm an adult", unschooling parents see themselves as supporting their
child along the road that the *teen* is choosing. They fully support
them by sharing their life experiences, knowledge, and thoughts, not
by directing their path. And as to knowing how much or how little to
be directly involved, they follow their child's lead there as well:
being available for conversations whenever their teen strikes one up;
initiating them as moments arise; and by letting them end naturally,
not forcing them to continue to "make your point".With my three
children I have found that my involvement in their lives has not
fallen off as they have reached their teens as so often predicted; but
it does look different. I'm less involved with their direct learning -
helping them find answers to their questions, helping them get their
day-to-day needs met - and more involved with helping them navigate
their journey into adulthood: talking with them about longer term
goals and researching the various ways to meet them; negotiating plans
to meet up with faraway friends and welcoming local friends into our
home; and driving them to and from the outside activities they are
drawn to explore.In unschooling families the teenage years, though
still full of the twists and turns and angst of life, are not further
complicated by the mainstream assumption that teens are troublesome
and rebellious and need to be controlled; that they are not yet ready
to be welcomed into adult society. Unschooled teens have been living
in and observing the real world for years and, with the loving support
of their parents, know when they are ready to move more directly into
adult society, whatever their age.