#97 Marta Obiols Llistar | How Unschooling Transforms Teens: Self-Discovery & Resilience

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Perfect Hello. 

00:01 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Hi, we're again together with Marta because we enjoyed our talk so much that we wanted to continue it, and continue it on a specific topic. But first of all, good to see you again. 

00:14 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Good to see you too. Thank you for inviting me again. I'm honored, don't be? 

00:20 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So, marta, to set the theme for the talk, I remember back when our oldest, who is now 25, it was before we knew about homeschooling and unschooling we were searching for a school for her and Cecilia wanted a specific private school and for me that felt a little weird, because in the city I grew up, private schools was like the snobbish thing. But this but this was more like a Waldorf-y kind of school based on the teaching by Celestine Frenet very interesting way of doing it. But I remember one of the things Cecilia said when we went to look at the school was try to look at the teens. And that was a wild experience. 

01:13
They, can I say this, they didn't seem like school children. They felt at peace. We came in there and visited the school and one of the first things that happened were a teen 14, 13, maybe 15, came over to us and said hi, can I help you? And it's a very mature thing to do because A they were seeing someone they hadn't seen before. So they are protective of the younger children who is this coming here, but also welcoming. And it had such a great impact that I after that wasn't in doubt at all that my wife was right. Yet again, one more time. 

02:03 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
And what a great advice. Look at the teens of whatever education that you're looking for. 

02:09 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Look at the teens, yeah to me, it was pure logic. You have this cute little child and most children who are five, six years old. They're pretty cute and you know um, you put it in there and 10 years later out comes something, someone who is that. That's what we're looking at. We're not looking at curriculum. We're not looking at if the teacher is nice because the teacher could quit his job. We're not looking at the buildings. We're looking at what kind of transformation are we seeing here? So to me, that was just the way to do it. I didn't need all the conversations, I just needed to look at the teens of the school and it was good yeah and I agree with you that the private schools are for snobby people. 

02:59 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
That's the problem that I came up with when, when I, when I became a mom and I was looking for schools um, it's not like I wanted private, but the different kind of schools, they're always private- and then I realized I cannot. I cannot afford three children in a private school. So, yeah, yeah, it's. It's not that it's for the snobby, but it's definitely. You need money. 

03:22 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, yeah, that was the other thing, and in Denmark it's even subsid tsunami, but it's definitely you need money, yeah, yeah, that was the other thing and in denmark it's even subsidized, and I actually for some reason read the numbers two days ago private schools in denmark are the general income of the people having their kids there is not a lot higher than the rest of the country. It is 13 13% higher in average. So it's not like the multimillionaires and anything in Denmark, but that is because of the system, of course. 

03:50 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
The state pays 70%. I think it is of the budget of a private school in Denmark. 

03:57 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
But it was to set the theme of what happens with these kids coming out in the other end. Your kids are there, our kids are there somewhere on the way somewhere on the way. So how do we feel about them? 

04:15 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
well, I, I am amazed, um, the I don't know the words exactly how how pure, how truthful they are, how, not caring of what you think, not pressure to fit in, like they are okay with who they are. That to me is amazing, because I remember myself in high school you want to fit in, you copy the other people and you don't want to show the true you. At least me, I didn't want to show the true me and I don't think. 

04:48 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I knew the true me at that point well, that's true too. 

04:53 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
So when you educate without the school system, you have that that time to discover who you are without the pressure of oh, they want me to be like this. Oh, everybody looks like this. I should make an effort to look like that. They have that freedom to find themselves. Do not get tinted. 

05:11 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I often think about with our teenagers how much time goes into just being and doing little things and talking. There's a lot of talking and you could say I've heard you say a few times recently oh, they just keep chatting, I can't, what can they keep talking? They just they talk with each other. So, but what? How can they keep they talk about? It seems like it's nothing, but in a respectful way. 

05:56
I just think about how, if they were in this school setting, if there was a curriculum, if they were homeschooled and they had like hours to do and classes and things, all the time to explore this growth of the personality, all the time to explore different ideas and states of mind, and and all the many mental crashes they've had and the way we've had to pick them up, it's, the difference is huge compared to our first teenager who was in school and we're very close with her. It was a great relationship and there's nothing wrong as such, but she spent a lot of hours away from us and she didn't get that. That the three others are getting now and I think it's just. It's such a game changer that they the main part, the main element of their, their being in their teen years is being that is very true. 

07:08 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, yeah, now I can't remember if we quoted Storm. He's 18 now on this, and I will be paraphrasing it because I cannot say it correctly. He said sometimes he feel like saying to people his age. I really don't want to talk with the persona you have on, but I'm afraid you do not know who you actually are underneath. And it's not in a mean way. He doesn't want to say it to them enough, yeah, but it is like who are you? Do you know who you are? It seems like you have a facade on when you're talking to me of a personality, of of some way you have taught to be by the, the different interactions you have in your social field, where it's like oh, we talk like this and say these words and he's like but but who are you? Uh, and and I was both proud and also thinking maybe he wouldn't have liked me when I was 16, because I'm not sure I had I was set in stone on on on who I was yeah, yeah yeah yeah, my daughter is encountering all of this now in college. 

08:25 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
She thought that once in college kids will be more mature, especially because she's the baby one, she's the youngest of all and everybody is much older and she's disappointed that they all act like children that well. Anyway, she's just disappointed that they're not mature enough. And I keep telling her that's the way that they grew up. They're very confused, they're blinded. Give them time. Some of us wake up and get out of that. Just give them time. But it must be frustrating, right To be so free and encounter that every day. So free and encounter that every day. Yeah, when she was here before college, she had two friends that went to high school. They were twin girls and those twin girls didn't fit in into the school. They were awoke, they were awake, they saw the mainstream people, how they act and they were very different. They they got. They became really best friends with my daughter because they had that in common this freedom to be you, the true you. But they were in high school, so that can happen anywhere, right absolutely it's not. 

09:38 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I'm not trying to say it can only happen for homeschooled or unschooled children. I'm just amazed at when I meet more and more of this generation of youth that has been outside the system in the way they have. They seem a lot at ease with themselves. 

10:01 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Yes, absolutely. 

10:04 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I remember once when Cecilia and I talked many years ago now it was a couple of years into us home we had started with homeschooling and I had been the anxious father who wanted her to sit and teach them this and this, and I know now how I ruined one of our children's lust to learn to read with it being forced on him. And after I saw the light, I remember we talked about our goals. What is it we hope we will get out in the other end, and I used time to think about it and my answers were something like if they know who they are and if they know how to take care of themselves, and with that I mean can they make an income? Can they make food? 

10:57 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Be independent. 

10:58 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, then I'm pretty sure they will be able to find love also, because that is one of my greatest goals for them is that they find someone to fit together with and it it just feels so good to see them when they find love. I get relaxed is the best word. It's like they are secure now. 

11:24 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
It's like they are secure now. Yeah, for me, it was. You know which goes with to be you, to be truthful, you To follow your passions, to do whatever you want to do. Don't try to please me or your father, don't try to please society. Do whatever you want. We're not going to judge you. Don't feel judged. For me, that was very important. Don't follow the path that everybody says go to college and become a doctor. No, if you want to be a dancer, be a dancer like to get. I want to make it to not have all those stereotypes. Yeah, that becoming a doctor is much better than being a clean lady. I don't. I wanted them to see everything as equal and you choose whatever you want to choose without labeling what's better. For me, that was very important. 

12:12 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I remember now what it was I was so passionate about when we ended the the previous conversation. What really really puzzles me about the teens? It's something down the lines of I see them, we have our own three and two of their friends right now and we've been living with them for two months, two and a half months, so it's a long time with a group of five teens, and for the past 20 days we've been also in a larger group of world schooling teenagers and in krakow. So I see a lot of them and I think I might not necessarily understand their world. 

12:58
I I think I think the way it was for me to be between 15 and 19, my psychological setup, the machine that was running, was so different from what it is for them that I think I have a hard time even when I try really hard to understand their world. And and of course, parents have always had a hard time understanding their teenagers. But this is like, I think actually, with that level of confidence and that emotional space, I can't even I don't know no really good words for this I think their world is very different from what it was. I mean, it looks in many ways the same teenagers hanging out and all the things and chatting and laughing, and but I think it's it's qualitatively different and I think I have a hard time even trying to empathize with it because, man, were we not there? 

14:13 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
we were so broken by the system at that point yes, what I see is free children and, and I see, I see, wow, this, this could have been me. This is what I could have been if I didn't grow up the way that I grew up. When I was a teenager, all I wanted was to finish the marathon that was go to high school, go to college, get a job. Because that was the marathon. My family wanted me to go to college. There was no other path. 

14:43 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
No. 

14:43 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
It had to be college and I had to find a job. That was a career. So for me was the marathon of finish what your parents want so you can finally leave. So I couldn't even find out. What I wanted, or what I was to me, was leave. How can I finish this life and leave? 

15:04 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
and. 

15:05 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
I finally left. But my kids are, I see, see, like wow, the freedom that they have, that they don't have to escape anything. They already are doing what they want. This is freaking fantastic. Yeah, I'm not saying they have perfect lives. Life gives you problems, but they are free to be themselves and to follow what they want to follow. It's freaking fantastic. 

15:28 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
They are free to be themselves and to follow what they want to follow. It's freaking fantastic it is. And also because freedom can be many things, you could have told me I was pretty free to the extent that I have not been doing what people tell me to do on any regular basis ever. 

15:47 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Well, I was labeled. 

15:53 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I wanted very much to go to college, but but I think the freedom that they have is different because it's based on such a more solid ground of knowing. Sounds banal to say knowing who they are, because they know who they are and they know what the world is and they know they can take a lot and they can process a lot and they will be okay even if they can't. So we talk now a lot about college or not college and when you want to be a dancer or a doctor, but it's not about what they want to become. It's also about what they are and how they can be okay with just being. Just being being is, I mean, probably the centerpiece of the whole puzzle. 

16:42
Can we do, we dare being, and are we being pushed around by other agendas and by inferiority complexes and and and ideas about what we are supposed to pretend we are? Or are we okay being a little goofy, being a little? I mean they, they don't have that. I think maybe it's because they don't have that standard thing. They don't have this. This is the standard, and I'm away from the standard because there's no standard in their life. It's, it's a very free-flowing form of whatever makes you whatever makes you a bold boat, sail. What do you say in english? 

17:26 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
whatever yeah the three foreigners here. 

17:31 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, I, I think, for comparison, I, I think I sometimes need to think back and would also like to ask you about how it was to be young you. But for for me, being young me, I was, um, not rebellious, but I pretty much also had a drive. I I knew what I wanted and my parents were so kind to only ask of me that I went to high school because I I wanted to work with film and make film projects, and I made an amateur feature film when I was 15, 16, around that, and I had like a lot of drive. But when I look at it today I can be curious about how much of it was to get external praise, how much of it was a drive, and the drive is valuable. 

18:30
The external praise, the hunt for external praise, have brought me some places in my life I'm grateful for today I would have loved to be without the insecurity that made me search the external praise. But I'm also a little in doubt if I could just sit in a hut on a beach and be perfectly content, and how to be that. Maybe some of us have to. Yeah, lisa. 

19:05 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
That's in between, because you were searching for external recognition and approval that you were the greatest filmmaker the planet had ever seen. 

19:17 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
The universe. 

19:18 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
The universe and will ever see. Yeah, that's what you went for. 

19:22
Yeah but you did so because you've been growing up in a life where, whatever you did, someone would judge it whether it was good or bad, or, and if it was good, how good. So that's your psychological makeup, that your value as a person can be measured on this scale thing, and you knew that outside of the school system, one scale could be winning an Oscar. So it was not your creative energy or your lust or passion around being a storyteller that was the problem. The problem was that you didn't know who you were. If no one told you who you were because you grew up in that system. That's the problem. That's the real problem. Because you would not, I know you, you would not be happy sitting on a beach no, no, no you would start making 19 projects on that beach within the first yeah, three hours. 

20:30
Maybe you go for a swim and then you start making projects. So it's not about what you do. 

20:34 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It's about why you do it and the dynamic of doing it yeah, and I'm turning uh 50 the day before this episode will be released. Um, and, and one of the changes is now that I was about to say I don't need external praise at such anymore. I still like it, but I can often feel very happy when I've made a project, to look at it and be proud of myself. I like to show it to others and see if they recognize it as something, something. But it's good enough. Uh, and right now my newest project is I make a lot of spoons, wooden spoons. I whittle away and I get so happy when I look at them and see the, in my opinion, perfect shape I've given them and and so there, yeah, so that's a long way around. And to kind of set the scene of where I was, to try to understand where our teens are today, but also asking you where you were compared to what you look at today in your teens. 

21:44 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Well, when I was in school as a little girl, I always wanted to be a hairdresser. I've always had an interest in hair. It's what I notice on everybody and it's where my art comes out. I want to do hair. There were people worse than me so they divided us the bad students and the okay and good students. So I was okay. 

22:12
So they guide you towards going to high school. If you're a bad student, then they guide you to technical school. So to be a hairdresser at the time, you had to be a bad student and go to technical school. So they guide me to high school. High school there's no hairdresser. So then in high school I was really good at math and because I was really good at math, they were trying to guide me into engineering, which I didn't want to do at all. But it's true that I was very good at math. But I wanted to be a hairdresser. But I couldn't be because that was technical school, where the bad students go. But I couldn't be because that was technical school where the bad students go. So I couldn't speak up and say I want to be a bad student, take me to hairdressing school, right? I couldn't say that right, because the external, is you gotta be a good student anyway, when I finished? 

23:06
no, but it's true, right, I want to be a headrest, but that means I'm a bad student. Oh no, zip it, zip it. It was very confusing yeah, oh, I remember it was like that in denmark 

23:17 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
sue elvis just shared an amazing post on social media. She's uh, she's an australian homeschooler. She's got the. She's been on the podcast, she, her website is what stories of an unschooling family. Yeah, she just wrote on social media about the importance of the hairdresser because one of her children has become a hairdresser and she had just got her hair done by her own child and she came out shining and just feeling so beautiful and she is a very beautiful woman and and and just wrote the longest and most amazing post about how hairdressers make people feel happy, how they can change your life by making you feel awesome. 

24:05
It's like psychology and therapy when, yeah, yeah, when you go to the hairdresser and they have the capability of the chat and they make you look beautiful and they say too if your hair looks awesome, but you get awful, but you're getting married and you know all the things. It's just so funny. You say it because it's such a classic example of something you don't want your daughter to become a hairdresser. 

24:30 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, so that was very frustrating. So then I'm in high school and everybody's telling you what are you going to study? What are you going to study in college? I don't know. I don't know because what I already wanted it's's in the garbage. So at the fourth year of high school that you really have to choose what are you going to study in college? They gave me a book of all the careers that you can study in college and none of them said hairdresser. 

25:02 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It was not there. 

25:07 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
So you know page by page what the heck can I do, until I found, oh, and they tell you, depending on what you study in high school, you can do that career or another right. So mine was math, physics, chemics and architecture, drawing. So certain things you cannot study if that's your path in high school. So then I found special ed. I could study special ed and that meant I could study how to be a teacher for hospital kids and I fell in love with that. That's why I studied that. 

25:38
But it was already the wrong path because I just wanted to do hair yeah but anyway, and now going to adulthood, a long, it's a long story. 

25:51
My life is a long story. But I write my first book and the reason why I publish it I told my husband I know there's a mom out there that needs to read this book and it's going to touch her heart and that's why I'm going to publish it. It's just for one mom. She's gonna love it and that mom exists. She found my book and she wrote me and I touched her heart and she absolutely loved it and that was my goal of that book. But no, I had to do the external. I needed to prove that I'm a good writer, because in school I wasn't a good writer. I've never been a good writer, so I needed that external. I need to know am I a good writer? This mom is not enough. So I put my book to be reviewed by weekly review I think it's called weekly reviewers. I forgot the name and they gave me an A plus and that gave me the security that I didn't need. But I need it. How pathetic. Now I'm telling myself how pathetic. 

26:50 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think we should be soft on ourselves because we know what it could have been. But we also do have the psychological makeup that we do have, and I think I'm going to be 50 soon as well and for some reason 50 is like a line in the sand and I'm I'm just cheating and being 50 now, kind of thing all right I feel we're in the era of 50. 

27:23
To me, among other things, it means I'm not going to modify. I mean it is what it is and I'm living with this psychological makeup that I have. It's not getting in the way so much and I can be pretty forgiving about my own flaws and I mean I can observe them. I can see the difference between what I am and what I could have been, but I'm not that frustrated about it any longer because I can't. I can't go back 45 years and start over I, it is what it is and if I need that praise, then I'm going to ask for it and if I need I don't know. I. 

28:02
I recently realized that I sometimes get really insecure, which I've been and I've been. I've always been very powerful and whatever. But I think actually because I just wouldn't realize it when I was insecure. But sometimes I actually feel awkward or don't know what to do and feel I don't know what's going on and I can't exactly. I mean I consider myself pretty smart, but then I can't figure things out. I, I don't know what's going on, I don't know, I don't know. I mean I just need someone to talk to and and I'm also getting over that. I'm not any longer annoyed with that or trying to hide. I'm like I don't understand. I'm just gonna say it. I don't understand what's going on. Please help me, and then I get some help, which? 

28:54 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
is great. 

28:54 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think earlier you just acted weird and didn't vocalize it because I didn't know yeah so it just made me off when I felt insecure and when I wasn't able to fully understand the situation and I didn't really know what to do about it. And so I just, yeah, I would start acting weird because I didn't know what to do about or was pushed around by my own emotions. But we've not not recognizing this is because I don't understand what's going on and I need help. Understanding because talk, I need help, because I need help, but also because alone, alone, it could just be a spin. Yeah, but I'm not so annoyed with the fact it is what it is. 

29:41
We grew up in this way and we can see our children, who grew up in a different way, becoming different people and their perspective is different, the way they stand by who they are and the way they understand the nuances of what other people are. It's pretty epic and I couldn't do that when I was 15, but they can. They're so clear. It's insane sometimes how clear they are, how they they judge like this and I'm trying to be this, maybe even school teacher. You know you should get, you should talk to them, you should give them a chance. Maybe they were just a little insecure the first time you met them. Why don't you? I mean, we could try to unpack this. They're like you know what, but then they're mentioning this. 

30:34 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Now that you're mentioning this, this is a common thing in the homeschooling world, regardless of the age, that kids are very picky about their friendships. They're very judgy, but in a good way, not judgy in a mean way, in a good way that this, this is not a good friend for me. So no, we're not gonna go, we're not gonna be friends like, oh my gosh. But I think also, we grew up in such a yeah, you're not there for a friendship if it's not a good friendship. 

31:05 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Goodbye but what's also not needed for them is the the social life we grew up in. You were trapped with these 25 other kids and you because if you don't like them, then yeah, then you'd have to be me. 

31:27 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
I'm not saying homeschool kids are mean to the kids that they don't like. 

31:33 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
No, they just cut the relationship and that's it like yeah, yeah, bye, bye you don't have to be so tolerant and giving people 200 chances and if you don't click with that person, you don't click with that person. 

31:43
That's fine, they're not even being judgmental, being like that's a bad person, or why are they? They're just being like that's not my new, not even being judgmental being like that's a bad person, or why are they? They're just being like that's not my new friend, let's move on. Which is yeah. And then they are very nice when I ask them to give people a second chance. If they do give people a second chance and then they come back and say I was right in the first place and I think I'm just gonna back off not giving any more social advice to my kids because they know what they need. 

32:12 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
They know what they need. 

32:18 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
What are you learning from seeing your kids grow into young adults? 

32:25 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
What am I learning your own life? Yeah, what am I learning In your own life? 

32:26 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, when you look at them, what have you been like? Ooh, I could have some more of that for myself. Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. 

32:35 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
I think that's a good question, yeah this is gonna sound silly, this is very silly, but you, you caught me that I cannot think, and that's the first one that came it. This is very silly. But my daughter, when she went through puberty, I I told her that, uh, here in America the girls shave a lot, but if you don't want to, you don't have to. So I gave her all this freedom of you don't have to shave, you can be hairy. And at the same time I was shaving my legs, because I live in America where you are very judged if your legs, if your legs are hairy. 

33:22
But I was telling my daughter and anyway she became a teenager. Now she's a young adult and she sees me that I don't dye my hair, I let it be white. She sees me that I don't wear makeup but I shave my legs and I wax my mustache and she's like, why do you do that? Because she's so free, she is hairy and she doesn't care what you think people, she has hair in her legs. 

33:50 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Like all of us. 

33:51 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
I just wish I was brave like her. But when she asked me, I tell her I'm not brave enough. I'm brave to have white hair. I'm brave to not wear wear makeup. I am brave to not do my nails, but when it comes to the mustache and the legs I'm not brave. I want to fit in, but dang. I am proud of her and I wish I was like her. I wish I was like her, but sounds silly. But it's. 

34:19 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's quite amazing. No, it's not silly, because that presence in the body and the way they choose to be who they are and stand by it is actually exactly what I'm so impressed by, and it's not been. It's actually not been an agenda for me in and of itself, at least not one that I thought about for my children but, but I see how they really carry themselves in their bodies in a very different way from what I could do when I was a teenager and, in many ways, from what I can do now. I don't know if I'm more shy it doesn't matter who I am in this context, actually but what I see is we talk a lot about how the, the freedom and and the respect around the unschooled child has a lot to do with the body as well. You're not deciding when they sleep or when they eat or what they eat or all these things, and that makes them just so much more at home with inside their skin and that makes them what I see. 

35:30
The teenagers I know that are unschooled. They're not that they're not ashamed. I mean, they like to be nice and have their hair nice and shiny and washed and the jeans are clean and they look good and all these things, but if they happen to not, it's like, yeah, whatever, I spilled my coffee and I I didn't have time to wash my hair, so, no, it's now, it's oily and where's my toothbrush, and it's it's that. I mean, I think I couldn't have stayed in my body when I was 15 if I had coffee all over my hoodie and oily hair and all these things. But it's as if they were just okay, okay With. They themselves understand why why the coffee is on the t-shirt and and and so it's not a big deal, and it was a big deal when we were young and it's become really. They're really good at this expressing what they need and getting what they need and staying with who they are and and not feeling any shame or any urgency yeah, but I'm, and I have another answer. 

36:39 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
I have another answer of the same question that you asked me. Now it came. All three children have shocked me with with the the having a girlfriend or a boyfriend situation. For example, when I was a teenager, all I care was about having a boyfriend, being pretty for my boyfriend and my three teens have told me that first they need to be okay with themselves, get to know themselves. How can they have a partner if they don't know themselves yet? Then they have told me that they're not going to try to be likable, they're going to be who they are and then the partner is going to like them the way they are. And they have told me so many things about love and relationships. They sound like a psychologist. How can you be so mentally healthy and mature about that? I was so dumb. Always trying my husband, I tried for him to like me. I did things so he would like me. Instead of being myself and my kids know it I'm going to be myself and then let's see what happens Fascinating, amazing. 

37:52 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
That is very healthy. It is very healthy, it is. 

37:59 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
I'm like what, what? A lesson I learned late, but well um. 

38:05 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
But looking at our teenagers, one of the things I really enjoy is also seeing this ease they carry themselves with and how they they feel in. They know themselves at a level I didn't know. As you said, when you were 15, 16, wanting to look pretty for a boyfriend or trying to be something for someone, then I lived a lot of my life. You can say external in this external praise what a charming, what a fun did the girls like me, and everything was more or less from party to party to see if you could be so lucky to find someone who wanted to kiss you kind of, and I just see them preferring having a good talk with a friend and oh yeah, they're not running for anything no no, no, but I thought you're talking about the next transition, so how they move from teenagers to young adults and what we can learn. 

39:07 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
What is different about that? I'm not sure I have enough young adults to. I mean, it's a little unfair to only look at that one daughter we have who's no longer a teenager yeah but they have been doing their own thing. So we have one who's almost 19 and one who's 25. So we do have some, and of course there are some in our, our network yeah, something else that um my young adult. 

39:37 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Let me tell you something about my young adult that shocked me so very much and it shocks people that I talk to that they are in the book writing world. So when he was 17, he started writing his first book and by the time he turned 19, he sent it to different publishing companies. He sent it to different publishing companies and he was only 19 and it's his first book and the publishing company named Penguin, random House, said yes to him. We want to publish a book. And if you are in the writing world, from what I hear, you say yes, yes, freaking, yes, penguin, yes, penguin wants me. Like wow, they all say yes and they all sell their themselves because they want to be part of penguin and they're going to sell their soul, sell their everything to be part of penguin. 

40:36
Yeah, my son who knows what he wants. He said no to Penguin because they were trying to change him, trying to change the book, and he said no to them and that day I died. What's wrong with him? It took me a while, but then I understood. He knows what he wants and he can care less that penguin is famous or not famous. He can give up, he doesn't care, he's following his steps, he's following his rhythm, he's following what he wants for his art. I was amazed, yeah, I was amazed, yeah, yeah, I understand they just don't care that the society loves penguin. 

41:20
Well, I don't. 

41:21 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Bye yeah yeah, that's great or maybe they do actually care, but about where they are and not about the, the external world, so much exactly, exactly exactly, exactly. 

41:36 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But that's where I came from before. They've not grown up with the system of love and compassion and being cared for and having value, being confused with an external measuring stick right, because being published by Penguin would have been success to the society, mainstream world not to him, not to him, not to him. 

42:05 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
That is fascinating. That is fascinating, yeah, to be free to tell what success is to you. Damn, I want that too. 

42:15 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But also a thing that I realized. I have a grandmother who's a hundred years old oh wow, lucky you. Yeah, and she gives the same advice every time we visit her. She says the worst thing you can do in your life is to be afraid. Yeah, and I think it's so powerful. She says that she thinks her success in life. The reason she's lived an amazing 100 years is that she kept being curious like a five-year-old looking at a beetle in the grass, and she's never been afraid of anything and not being saying no to penguin. Most people would be afraid of doing that, thinking maybe this is my only chance and oh, maybe, maybe no one else will publish me. And and the reason penguin has so much power to change the books and the and the artists is that they are all afraid to not get that success and our children do not live with that fear exactly, it's amazing. 

43:28 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
I envy it very. That's beautiful. It's beautiful. 

43:31 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, it is to be free like that yeah, it's about not giving others the power over you, in that sense that we have been brought up in being valued, evaluated, judged so much for her college. 

44:04 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
She had a face-to-face interview. Her coach here in America. Her coach and another person told her million times do not tell them in the interview that you want to work for Cirque du Soleil. Don't tell them that you love Cirque du Soleil because they. They have to see that you like other things, that you are open-minded. You like other circuses, other arts. But my daughter is fixated with Cirque du Soleil. She only wants them. She wants to work for them and nobody else. She loves them so much. 

44:33
So that's what she's going to do. The coaches kept telling them no, no, no, that's too, name other circuses too. No, no, that's too, name other circuses too. And finally, at the last minute, at the moment of the interview, she's like the the heck, I'm gonna be myself. 

44:49
So when they asked her, who do you like? Or I don't remember exactly the question she did say sig de soleil, without a shame, without what her coach told her. And then the people asked her why, sir de soleil? And then she said because their music goes to my heart, their music gives me life, their music makes me want to perform. I adore their music and I want to perform with their music. And then the interviewer was shocked because the answer of loving the music was not expected. So with that I want to say that you know, the mainstream life tells you what to do, but you just got to be yourself and, even if you mess it up, be yourself and answer your true answer right, without fear. Don't be afraid of being yourself and telling them what you like. It worked well for my daughter. They were extremely shocked that she loved the music and that's why. 

45:48 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So, yeah, good for her good for her for being great right so, for we also have listeners who don't unschool and who don't homeschool yet, and and sometimes I'm like, oh, are we standing too far away and shining a light in a corner and say, come over here, it's fantastic. So what is there? Is there some snippets, some nuggets? We can say, hey, if you're over there, then start here. 

46:19 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
It's a good place to start well, I have met families that their kids go to school, but they live an unschooling life. They have an unschooling mentality. So school doesn't have to turn you into the mainstream life. You can still be. You be different and, yes, your kids go to school for whatever reason because it's easier, because it's free, because it's daycare, that's fine. But when they are out on the weekends, in the afternoon, if you live that unschooling life, you're already there, right. School is not that damaging if you already have that unschooling mentality. 

46:59 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think, for what I've seen, well, it would definitely help a lot, and it also what would help a lot is parents, and I think that's hard if you have kids in the school system. I mean, we've had a foot in each camp when we had a child in a democratic school and three children at home. But what was different for our daughter, who was in school, compared to everyone else in school, was that she was there voluntarily. 

47:27
She was there because she wanted to be there and also whenever there was pressure, whenever there was something, we said you can just quit, you don't have to be there, you can do whatever you want, and I understand that some families believe that they don't have the option of home educating, but you can have your kid in school as, as you said, daycare we have in in our country. There's this whole system of there's a platform. You get like a login and then you're you have to log into that in theory, on a daily basis to check if there's messages from the school. The children have their own login. They have to log in and check their homework. 

48:11
Um, there will also be meetings at the school where parents have to show up and get information and have discussions, and some schools I don't know the extent of this, but I'm afraid it's bigger than I would wish uh, some schools have play like social rules, so every so they set up social groups. You have to go home and play together after school in this group on monday and never heard of that yeah, it's a way to make a good social life in school. 

48:45
It's horrible and I have a friend who was a single mom with two children and she had to work to make an income and so her six-year-old and the other child was way older. So that's a different story. But when her six-year-old started in school, uh, she showed up at the school and said I am never going to lock in on that platform. Just so you know, I read enough emails at my work and when I'm done working I I read emails. I get paid for reading. I'm not doing it. 

49:18
If you have something you need to tell me, tell me, or tell my child and she'll tell me. I'm not going to show up to those meetings. If you have something you need to tell me, just tell me. You can send me a text message on my phone. It's not that hard. I'm going to deliver my kid in the morning at eight o'clock in the school. I'm going to pick her up at three o'clock when I'm done working. She's never going to do any homework because I'm not your police and if you have any questions you could just go back to my first three rules. I'm not going to do it, and she actually kept that up for so many years. The kids started to do homework because it became a problem. But the mom was never policed for that. It was because the kid realized I can't be in this setting without doing the homework. But the mom refused to be the police and that child grew up to become a quite free child, even though she was in a public school. 

50:14 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
Yeah, exactly that's the attitude you have to have, exactly like all this homework situation. Then you and your child are fighting at home because of something of the school. It ruins your relationship. With my son, I did the same thing my youngest one, who chose to go to high school. I told him the same things. Like these people send me too many emails, too many emails every single day. I'm tired of it. So he takes care of it. I'm not involved anymore and he takes care of it. Yeah, I'm not involved anymore and he takes care of it, and every now and then he comes with a paper that I need to sign. But he's in charge of everything and I don't want to be involved. This is it's your thing and I support you, but don't make me read all these emails. A lot of them are my goodness oh my god yeah, yeah. 

51:02
And then when the teachers email you because your son is not behaving, I'm sorry, I'm not in that classroom. How can I help you? I'm not in there with you exactly I'm not your police. 

51:13 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I'm not your police. What you need, when you need it, you do it, but when I pick up my child, it's my child and we're not doing homework we're not. We're not showing up for meetings. It's our free time. 

51:25 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
No one's paying us to do things, which means we do what we want to do exactly and if you have that mentality, if your child is really bad at one subject I don't know reading, writing, math, something it's okay. If your child brings an f or a, d or whatever it's called in europe a failure, a failing grade, it's okay. 

51:46 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
They don't do it on purpose, they're not failing on purpose, but I have parents who refuse to see it in my network of parents. I don't want to see it. I'll just sign it. Yeah, don't show me and don't let school get in the way of your real life. I've heard that. 

52:04 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah one of the things I have seen when I look back at the years who have passed and we have a child that have been through the whole school, as not going in school is. 

52:18
When you meet people along the way or people listen to the word unschooling, homeschooling sometimes they can be judgmental and be like, oh, but your child will never learn this and this and this if they are not doing it in this way and all that fear that actually lies behind that worldview of theirs. I can look at them now, as he's soon 19, and I'm just like don't worry, they get it, they learn the stuff, but a lot of the learning takes place from around 14 to 19, more than it did when we were in school, and I just find that very interesting that I was forced to learn a lot of stuff which made me dislike the different subjects etc. And I think a lot of this school made me dislike the different subjects etc. And and I think a lot of this school is just way too early and if we do not hurt their ability to learn and their lust to learn, then it will come, and it comes rapidly when it comes yeah, it does come rapidly. 

53:16 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
When it comes, indeed, yes yeah and also maybe I mean I've had the critique quite a few times about that note when we make that comment that our kids are pretty academically intellectual. So far it looks like that. All of them no. But I mean we have some that are younger, we have some that are not above the 14 mark yet and not wrote, but they are voluntarily going to art museums. They are the last ones to leave a historical museum. They read all the signs, they ask all the questions, they read the wikipedia pages, they do all the things. So it looks like a success. 

53:55
If you're comparing the unschooling of our children to an academic school, traditional school. They speak languages, they know things and they're interested. And sometimes other unschoolers have had the critique telling me you know, they don't all have to come out like that, it's. Some of them can come out not caring at all about the academics and wanting to do other stuff, and I'm just going to stay right here right now that that would be totally fine. But I think in the same way that the mark is still the the mid-teen years when they suddenly take off. 

54:39
And that's what I've seen in my own and I've seen it in a lot of other children, that there's the childhood and then there's the incubation phase and it can have different, we can put numbers, but actually it's all flowy for different children. I call it the incubation phase. It can have sometimes look like simply an incubation and sometimes it looks ugly and they actually struggle and have a hard time. But they do come out and the other end with the metaphor of the butterfly and our butterfly has reading glasses and is a very academic, nerdy kind of butterfly. But. But it could have been something else and I think we still have to acknowledge that they need to be children. While they're children they need to incubate. In whatever way they incubate, it looks different for them all, but it's very clear that everything is closed because because of reconstruction it's like um stops and just let it be and then they come out and and that's when the ball starts rolling, and for hours it's been something that looks like academia. 

55:46 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It could very well be something else. Yeah, could have been theater, it could have been everything whatever yeah exactly, exactly yeah, and that is a place we need to stop, because we try to keep our episodes not too long. It is early where you are, it is late where we are, so thank you yet another time for a lovely, interesting talk. It was a big pleasure talking with you. 

56:13 - Marta Obiols Llistar  (Guest)
It was a pleasure, thank you. Thank you so much. 



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