Differing Lifestyle Preferences within an Unschooling Family

An issue that comes up periodically in the Unschooling Network is one of lifestyle. More particularly, should unschooling parents be responsible for deciding how the whole family live? By way of some examples, should unschooling parents be able to insist that the entire family are vegan or live off-grid?

It could be argued that since parents have the money, the knowledge, as well as lots of other resources, and will be bringing a child into a world in large part of their choosing, they will inevitably determine the child's lifestyle and range of choices.  This is undoubtedly the case. 

However, a huge part of the unschooling process involves unschooling parents striving to create a rich learning environment for their children, and doing this will involve offering all kinds of information on all manner of different subjects and making the world widely available to a child.  Unschooling parents should do their best to offer best possible information about anything they think their child could possibly want and need to know. And as our children grow in confidence through having a solid base of love within the family, they will go out into the world and encounter new ideas that conflict with ideas that they have imbibed from their families.

If, one day, an unschooled child who has been raised in a vegan household, decides that he would like to try a bacon sandwich, a vegan unschooling parent with a good, trusting, no-strings attached relationship to the child may well offer their best arguments about why they think meat is problematic, but then say "Hey, it is up to you to decide and I won't love you any the less for making this decision.  It is your body and I could understand how a bacon sandwich could seem like a lovely idea.  It could be that you really do need a bacon sarnie right now."

OK, this might seem (vegan) pie in the sky impossible just now!  How many vegans do you know who could say this!  The thing is, that isn't only possible, but it IS what an unschooling parent would need to do and honestly, it has been done!  I know a reasonable number of unschooling families who are predominantly vegan but who live with and adore their meat eating members.

Managing the shift from "All meat eaters are cruel, hateful and misguided" to "I love my child so much and it is their body and their decision" is often not an easy thing, but it can be done. It involves realising that forcing a child to do something (eg: be vegan) when they don't want to be a vegan and aren't convinced that is the right thing to do is not going to get anyone anywhere very far.  It is not only going to cause a rift between parent and child, (with all the unhelpful possible ramifications that that might entail), but it is also not going to help the child with his perception of veganism.  He doesn't see the point of it right now, the parent's explanations have failed to convince him, he might be forced to eat a vegan diet for a bit longer, but come the day when he goes to his friend's party, and mother is out the room, he most likely will be making a bee-line for the sausage rolls, and his mother will be none the wiser. 

Unschooling is about partnering the child, treating the child's needs, interests and passions with respect and love and trying to find ways of enabling the child to make good choices in a safe space.  Far better that a child make their own free decisions about what they want to eat from a range of choices, with a load of good explanations and arguments at their fingertips, maintain a trusting relationship with their parents, and be helped to evaluate explanations for their truth seeking value.

If an argument is good, most likely eventually, with this kind of support, unschooled children will end up making the best decision themselves. (And yes, I can't help noting that there ARE a lot of vegan unschooled young people!:D)

Of course, the principles in the above argument can be applied to any lifestyle question, for example to the situation where the parent wants to live an off-grid, low impact, low carbon, low tech lifestyle but the children want Ipads.  Unschooling parents will find a way to respect and facilitate
these choices since not to do so would mean that they aren't unschooling.