by Nanda Van Gestel
My oldest son, Rutger, who is ten years old now, was born premature and is what people call a special needs child. I don’t like to label anyone so I prefer to call him a special child. I soon found out that everything in our society is so focussed on making children, [...]
People often ask me this question when I tell them that we’re un-schoolers. The answer isn’t so easy; we don’t follow any sort of schedule but we just try to make every day very special. Often we succeed in doing so, but there are also days that we aren’t very productive; as long as we [...]
Most people don’t have trouble understanding that it’s possible for children to learn reading and writing at home but they often do wonder about the socialization of un-schooling children. They wonder if un-schooling childeren will be able to interact with other children, if they will have enough friends or if they might get lonely. [...]
A while ago we had a little girl over to play at our house and she told Rutger and Stijn that she had problems doing math at school. Rutger and Stijn felt sorry for her and immediately offered to help her. They started asking her all sorts of math questions and the little girl tried [...]
Horses are my passion and I treat my horses the same way I treat my children: by giving them the greatest possible freedom and by never pressuring them to do something they don’t really want to do. I ride my mare, an Arabian who was said to be a problem-horse and not fit to ride, [...]
As unschoolers our children hardly ever feel bored. They do feel a little bored sometimes, but when they do, it usually doesn’t last long and they don’t need my help to get over it. It often happens that, in those short moments of boredom, the most creative and exciting new projects are born. We have [...]
I believe that you can learn almost anything through books. It’s hard to think of a subject where nobody has written a book about yet. By reading a good book you can take a look inside someone’s mind and heart. There’re as many different books as there’re different people; as many books as opinions. I [...]
These days children go to preschool earlier than ever. I remember that people started asking me if I had already enrolled Rutger for preschool when he was one year old! "If you don’t get him on the waiting list now, you won’t get him in when he’s two" they warned me. When I’d explain that [...]
When I was pregnant and announced that I would quit my job, after the baby was born, a lot of people didn’t understand. "Aren’t you afraid that you won’t be able to talk about anything else but diapers after a while?" they would often ask me. I believe that it all depends on the way [...]
I think I was about eight years old when my mother asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. "Mother and Cowboy" I answered without any hesitation. My mother smiled "Well," she said " I’m quiet sure you’ll be a mother, but a mother AND a cowboy? At the same time? I’m [...]
