Ever since I was little I’ve disliked everything that I had to do. If someone tells me that I have to do something I always answer that I may choose to do it but that I don’t have to do anything. If you do something by choice you can be creative about it and give it your very best. If you do something by choice you can enjoy it but having to something is a sure way to take the fun out of it. The things that we do by choice will give us energy while ‘have to’s ‘ will leave us feeling drained. The whole schoolsystem is focussed on making children do things; it’s about molding and conditioning children to behave in certain ways. Children have to go to school, they have to stay in the classroom and they have to listen to the teacher. If the teacher would be talking about something really interesting he wouldn’t need all those ‘have to’s’ because the children would choose to come and listen to him. Forcing children to listen won’t make them learn though because you can only learn something if you choose to do so. That’s why school invented tests and grades; so they can also force their students to remember what the teacher has told as well. This way it seems like children are learning although in fact they’re not. Rutger, my oldest son, resists pressure even more than I do and when he had to go to school it literally made him sick. The best thing about un-schooling is that we don’t have to do anything anymore. Our children are free to learn whatever they want to, when they want to. As un-schoolers we don’t have a system; no mold that our children have to fit in. Instead, unschooling is a celebration of each childs special and unique abilities; of each childs personality. Un-schooling to Rutger meant finally being free to be who he really is. He wasn’t the only one who felt liberated though, in fact our whole family felt liberated and free to finally make our own choices. When Rutger went to school, we had to submit to the system as well. We had to get up at a certain time, I had to get my child ready and bring him to school. Often I had to wait at the school gates for quite a long time before school was over. We couldn’t go on outings anymore, we couldn’t accompany my husband on a businesstrip or go on a short vacation when we felt like it. It was just very clear that we all had to submit to the system; the school putted a lot of pressure on our whole family and drained our energy without giving us anything in return. Now that we’re un-schoolers we’re finally free to just let the day unroll and go with the flow and that makes my job as a mom a whole lot easier. I like to compare the schoolsystem to taking a pair of jeans size 10 and expecting everybody to fit them and wear them everyday. Now, if you happen to be a size 10 and you happen to like those jeans you won’t have to sacrifice much. But if that pair of jeans is too big, too small, too long or too short you are said to have special needs. Un-schooling in this metafor is realizing that there’s a whole big world out there with lots of places to shop. You can look around, fit things on and then decide what really suits you and decide to keep that. Un-schooling is realizing that your children don’t have to fit into the mold, they don’t have to submit to the system and neither do you because you have the freedom to choose.