102: Naomi Fisher | Changing Our Minds: How children can take control of their own learning

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Today we are together with Naomi Fisher and first of all, naomi, thank you for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you here.

00:06 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
Thank you for inviting me.

00:08 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yes, and before we hit record, we talked a little about. You Ask Me what is your podcast about? And I came with a long-winded answer to that. But basically, we like to talk with people who have made thoughts about parenting, and it's in the pursuit of freedom for all in the future. I believe, if we we are to create free people uh, that that knows how to be in the world, we need to look at our kids and make sure that they have a free life as well, and also when it comes to education. So if we can start out with a very open question, which is what is freedom to you?

00:54 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
Oh, freedom to learn, or freedom in the whole world?

00:57
I don't know.

01:00
I think it's a really complicated question, but I think, when it comes to education and children, I think that for me, freedom means being able to follow your interests or their interests, without being influenced unduly by the the effect and the thoughts of others.

01:19
So I see that one of the processes that happens at school is that very quickly, we take the responsibility for children's learning away from them and we say to children you aren't the best, you aren't the person who can make the best choices about what you should be learning, what you should be doing. The teacher knows better than you, the school knows better than you and in fact the school knows so much better than you that the school is allowed to compel you to do the things that we think will help you learn. And we're going to do that through a whole set of systems, but partly we're going to do it by rewarding you when you do the things that you want to just we want you to do and by not rewarding you when you don't do the things that we want you to do. So we are going to effectively manipulate your choices because we think we know better for you. So I'm a clinical psychologist and a lot of what I think about is how can I help children and adults make their choices for themselves?

02:13 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
and if we can unpack it a little, what do you think it does to a person to take away that choice? Yeah, um, because that is what made me and and us, and it came from my wife it's. I'm like a classical homeschool unschooled dad, where after 10 years I'd like love to talk about it, but in the first many years all the honor goes to my wife and I was just like what, this weird thing she has going on what?

02:47 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
whatever, I follow along now I hear him say the things I repeated oh yes, oh yeah it's about classic yeah, yeah.

02:55 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And now I I always yeah, yeah, I like to start out with it. So it all honor goes to my wife by leading me down the path and opening my eyes. But back to the question, which is what does it do to a person, you think, to have this choice removed, being controlled in this way?

03:16 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
I think it does lots of things. One is that I think over time it makes it much harder to make decisions for yourself, because you're always thinking more about what do other people want me to make decisions about? And I meet. So I'm a therapist, I'm a psychologist, but I meet women in particular, sometimes in their thirties and forties, and they say I don't even know what it means anymore to make a decision for myself. I'm always just making a choice based on what do other people want me to do? What is going to be the reward here?

03:44
Where where am I go?

03:46
And they don't really have much sense of inner direction.

03:48
And I think that's so sad, because if you see young children, they usually have so much in a direction, they really know what they want to do, they know how they want to do it and you know that's quite hard for their parents a lot of the time.

04:00
And I think that one of the things that happens in a conventional education system is that we kind of subvert that self-direction because we want them to do the things that we want them to do. So I think it has that impact, but I think the other impact that it has is, unfortunately, it takes a lot of the joy out of life, because I think a lot of what makes life meaningful is thinking about what is it that makes life meaningful to me? And in order to be able to think that and to develop that understanding, you have to be able to make choices for yourself. You have to be able to say, right, I'm going to try following this lead and maybe it will go somewhere that interests me, maybe it won't, but that process is something that I can do, that I'm in charge of.

04:46 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Can I add to that? One of the things that I've put a lot of thought into over the years is we're colleagues. I don't know if you know, but I'm also a clinical psychologist and I put a lot of thought into exactly this that growing up self-directed, growing up with freedom you get to make your own choices, which also means you get to make a lot of mistakes. Yes, you get to go to bed at night feeling frustrated and annoyed and overstimulated or understimulated or whatever, realizing you made choices that didn't bring you joy. Yeah, and I think this is one of the skills that my kids now have that they know how to keep themselves happy, they know what they want and they know what they do want because they have experience making choices and realizing what.

05:31
What did this do to me? How did I feel after what? What did it do to the people around me whom I love? And what did it do to my next day? What were my options after making this choice? This kind of things we just steal from a whole generation, and it's from the day they start being able to make choices we tell them what choices are the better choices. It's it's actually before school. It it starts oh, totally yeah, and it begins with stickers, sticker charts and um yeah, anything you.

06:03
you even give them toys, when they are really little, that you're supposed to use in a specific way, so they can use them, right or wrong. I had the most funny laugh ever with my cousin who has young children. She's younger than me and she has young children. One of them is not even two years old and she had, you know, these boxes where you can put a round one in a round hole and wear one in it. But this box was made so that all of the little toys could go into the largest hole.

06:37 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
And the kids figured that out within like 15 minutes. Why bother slotting them into the other one?

06:42 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And she sent me a video and we were laughing so much because the kid was using the toy wrong.

06:48 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
Yes, she'd hacked it, yeah yeah, she's absolutely, and there are research studies that show um. Allison gottnick, who's a psychologist whose work I really like, in the us she writes she does these studies where they give children a toy, a toy that can be played with in different ways, and if the adult shows them how to use it, says, yeah, this is how you use this toy, um, then they play with it less imaginatively and for less long than if the adult says, oh, I don't know how you use this toy, I don't know what it's meant to do, it just like, shakes it and then leaves them with it. Then they learn much more because they explore, they try things out, they test things out, but we're all the time trying to put them in this box of. This is how you should be using this. This is the right way to do this, isn't it?

07:34 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
yes, and I think we do rob them from it.

07:36 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
We take that away from them we have this running joke in our family with our son who's now. He turned 19 yesterday and he's been unschooled um, yeah, forever, yeah, um, and. And we say that he's unschooled, which means he's free to do whatever he wants to do, as long as what he wants to do is what I want him to do. Yeah, because that's the lurking danger, right, that we have to think about parenting in a different we have to really stay sober yeah, yes, it's really hard.

08:10 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
We have to stay non-attached to the process. I think it's part of it that the more, because a parental attachment to a particular ideal of how your child should be is pressure, whether whatever you know I mean. So I meet parents, for example. I think there's lots of this in the home ed community where, um, people will have this idea of what they think a free child should be doing, and it's often lots of time outdoors.

08:33
So you know, I want them to be running around freely in the woods playing and all my kid wants to do is play minecraft on the computer. You know how am I getting it wrong? Because they have this and I'm so and I always say to them you know that's just as restrictive, this idea you have. They must be like. This is restrictive, whether you think that's lots of lovely outdoor play, which might be lovely for you but not so lovely for them, or whether you're restrictive as you should be sitting at a desk doing your maths. You can restrict your child in many ways and I think that's why a lot of the work of unschooling is parental work rather than the children. They, they generally, are much better at it than we are, because most of us were schooled.

09:13 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yes, I also think it's very important for unschooling parents to be very clear if we do have expectations or values because we do and and I I am not a see-through person and I am not without judgment and or values and there are things I think my kids should do and not do and there are things I think they should learn. I'm not saying they will be bad persons if they don't, but, for example, I tell them I think they should speak five languages, and I stand by that. They are three at this point, which is fine, and I do think so. I think they will be just as happy, almost as happy, great people if they don't do it. But the things I think they should, I tell them very clearly that I think so Because I think all the subtleness, all the judgment and all the little signs if I have an opinion, it might be, you might correct me it might be better if I didn't have it, that might be a more beautiful unschooling process.

10:19
But for as long as I do have it and I do I just let them know. This is where I stand. This is my opinion. You're free to have a different opinion, but this one is mine. All of the manipulation was the first thing you started talking about. I find that very interesting and that's why I went back to the little toddlers, because we start so early manipulating our children into becoming something that we want them to become, and that's why we have this running joke you can be what you want, as long as it's what I want you to want, because, yeah, they pick that up all the time and they do, yeah, yeah we have to be very sober with that we do.

10:56 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
I think that transparency goes a long way to negating manipulation, because I think manipulation is generally unspoken, so there's often actually that's not quite true at school. It's pretty, it's pretty overt, but I do think that there's something, particularly as they get older, about just putting it out there that I would like it if you learned five languages. But ultimately it's your life and not mine, and those are your decisions to make, and I think that that's where we want to go with our adult children ultimately, don't we? We don't want to spend our lives with our adult children, not being able to say things to them, and I think that's. I do see that sometimes with unschooling parents, where they're like I can't ever say anything because I don't want to influence them. And I think we do influence our children. We, absolutely everything we do influences our children. We make life choices for our children all the time where we live, what we eat, all of those kind of things we make them.

11:50 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And also children look towards us for guidance. And then if there's just this blank canvas of almost where you respect yourself for having one, that must be very difficult to grow up in, also as a child and it's fake.

12:08 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's fake, it's basically lying to your children, because I, I don't. I'm. I have yet to meet a parent who doesn't have opinions. They do have opinions on bad, they do have value systems and they do have things they think are better than other things. Some a lot think that playing outside is better than playing minecraft. Um, some of the unschoolers even hold it on like a high pedestal to do non-academic stuff and if the kids sit now math or language or history of the world all they're like you why are you doing that? Why don't you go build a stick ship or something like that? Yeah, I mean. So there are these clear values like oozing out of the parents.

12:51 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
It's way better to just to make them transparent I agree, I think I wonder if that's something that's quite danish as well. I'm just thinking about culture. I'm really interested in culture and how it affects what we do because, um, we, we live. We lived in fr, france for a couple of years and one of the things that I really noticed the different culturally between English people and French people is French people were far more direct. They would just tell you down the line English people, we hate being direct, we are really indirect about everything and I would compose these emails I would send to people you know that were very indirect and I would get these emails back. They were just completely no, sorry, can't do that and I was like that's completely not English.

13:27
We never say that we're always like I would wish I could do this, but I can't. So I think there is something.

13:31 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I wonder if there's a cultural element there, partly we are very blunt, we're very blunt, and I personally am yeah yeah, there is during the last uh half year, we've been like three or four months on off in uk and it's uh really weird how you can ask people directly about something and I, with my cultural background, um, believes I will get a direct answer to my direct question.

14:02 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
No, but then even if I ask again, it's like it's very difficult for me to pick up hints that are not there so, even if you say I really need to have your opinion on this matter, can you please tell me what you think about this, because I need to know, yeah where you stand, can you?

14:26 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
please just tell me then you should get an answer no, it's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, it is really interesting and it's very strong, and people, of course, don't realize they're doing it, because when you're in your culture, you're just in your culture.

14:38 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
You don't know that that's different or that other cultures might do it differently well, we have a few english families that we spend time with who have been traveling a lot, and that makes it easier. So they, they say one of them actually said it to me a year or two ago when we met. Like you're the kind of person I just sell you things right, I just say it yes, please, yes, it's just been the foundation of our relationship absolutely yeah and it.

15:06 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And it's weird because our culture is so much alike in many other ways that it's like we we feel it's the same culture and then it's not. And yeah, it's one of the joys of traveling is meeting these different cultures and sometimes just be baffled yeah, and it is often when you think there are fewer differences that you find there are more.

15:30 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
I certainly have had that with americans, that you know, because we share a language, you think, oh, you know, we must share a culture. And then the more time you spend with americans you're more like oh no, this is culturally very, very different and again, the whole way people relate to each other is very different. And the big difference I always see with Americans and English people is that English people don't like to either blow their own trumpet, you know, to say how great they are doing things, but also they don't really like, they're not really so into praise. So I'll often Americans will much more be into well, you know they'll. They'll praise their children a lot more, whereas English people tend to be much more downplayed. Everything's kind of that's quite good, well done, you know, you could have done better, but and that's just cultural again, that's how we, that's how we do it.

16:12 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Um you met. You mentioned the, the people you meet in your work. Uh, where you said, do you it sounded like you draw a line from the experience they have in the childhood up to being that they are indecisive based on they having all these choices made for them. Are there any other similarities where you see the same problem and where you think it might come from the whole schooling system or the way we direct from above?

16:44 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
No, so I see lots of people who've learned to think of themselves as incapable in the school system or they've learned to think of themselves as not good at learning or behind or slow or all the words that we use in the school system, and they've often learned to blame themselves for that. They've often learned, you know, they've been told you need to work harder, you need to try harder, and they carry that with them through life. So I think you know I'm always amazed. Well, I'm not amazed anymore, but when I see people in their 30s and 40s they'll sometimes have the voice of a particular teacher ringing in their head. And that would have been a particular teacher who said you know, I don't know why you're struggling with this, or everybody else finds this easy. What's wrong with you? And those words just kind of echo through the ages for them with you, and those words just kind of echo through the ages for them.

17:34
Um, but I think, particularly with the choices thing, I meet people who when I ask them, what do you want? They've almost never asked themselves that question before that, because they start telling me and it is particularly mothers they'll start telling me what their children want and what their partner wants and maybe what the, even what their mother wants. Actually, you know, that's all about what everybody else wants and it's like there's never been the space for what. About me? What do I want? And when?

17:59
I see, because I work with quite a few young people who come out of school, so young people who've been to school for a certain amount of time and then it's gone badly wrong usually, and so their parents have taken them out of school and then there's this process of recovery that they go through, and one mother who I was talking to about this is telling me about her 14 year old daughter. She put it in such a lovely way. She said I knew she was starting to get better when I saw her wants coming back and it was like she was when she was younger.

18:23
Her wants started to come back and in the case of this young person, the wants were that she wanted to dress as a vampire and she wanted to learn how to do horror film makeup. So and and you know, it's often those those are people's wants. I think people are often looking. If their children have been at school, they're looking for oh, I want to do maths or I want to do English, but actually that's not what it's about, because those are the wants that have been put upon them and imposed upon them. Actually, that's not what it's about, because those are the wants that have been put upon them and imposed upon them. You should be doing these things when it's a want like I want to dress like a vampire I'm pretty sure, probably that's coming from that young person. So you know there's a, and I think that looking for your wants, finding your wants again, I think is such a fundamental process of becoming a kind of actualized human being and becoming a human being who's able to make decisions about your life.

19:11
And what I see in the self-directed young people that I work with and have in my life is that that process of their wants hasn't been taken away from them so they've still in. As teenagers they're usually very in tune with their wants in a way that often can be quite hard to work with or to be with as an as a parent, because they're not into this. You know, I must do this because you want me to, I must do this because I'm being made to, and though all those things make people more convenient, they make them easier to manage. You know a group of teenagers who've learned that it doesn't really matter what they want, because what matters is the is the teacher what the teacher wants? They're going to be easier to manage than a group of self-directed teenagers who are like, yeah, no, I don't think this is the best use of my time, or, you know, I'm not really learning anything from this lesson, so I'll leave that kind of.

19:58 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
You know, that thing is hard to live with, but really useful, really important, I think but isn't it mostly hard to live with if we have them constricted in the school system?

20:09 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
well, it can be hard to live with in your family, depending on the age of your children, because if you've got children who are very good at saying no, I do not want to do this, even though my sibling really does want to do this, and we have to go together because I can't, I'm not old enough to be left in the house, for example, that kind of thing you sort of mean. I think whenever you're managing a group of people, whether they're in a family or in a school or in a home ed group, it can be more challenging to manage. I don't think that means it's a bad thing. I think growing up is full of challenges and that's maybe part of being human is negotiating those challenges, and I think you have to work. You're working, then, with okay, we've got these very different wants in this family. How do we bring those together? How do we make that work in a way, works for you?

20:52
I mean, I don't know in your family if you're traveling all the time, if one of your teenagers was like my want is to stay put, I want to be in one country now, I just want to live here, and I'm going to tell you that I don't know how your family system would manage that. But I think that's. That's the kind of thing. I mean that they're not, you know. I mean that you're.

21:10 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
You're saying what you want and you're not afraid to say it, and you're not afraid to keep on saying it then there's a colleague, actually many, many years ago, when I was still at the office, who said to me oh, but it seems like you have so many dialogues at home that you talk all the time. Because he was like, have you also thought about this and about that and about that? And in the start it was Cecilia doing a lot of the talking. And then I slowly came up to speed. But then the kids, the more they have grown in age, oh man, there's a lot of different ones, and but that means a lot of dialogue, a lot of um, taking everyone's needs into accountants.

21:55
And that's, for example, why we were in uk way longer than I wanted to be, because, as we can move with the sun, uh, uk in december was not my first choice. But the kids have some really good friends they wanted to hang out with. And then it was like, okay, yep, step, that's what we do as a family. Then I, it is my time to say okay and step back.

22:18 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah I think the question I, the reason I asked the question about the teenagers being hard to manage is I I hear this. It's like an like a refrain going on in the parenting world that teenagers are so hard to manage and it's so hard to be a parent of teenagers and we happen to. As from two days ago, we now have three teenagers. We have one year and one day with three teenagers and I've been looking forward to this. I love it, yeah, but actually so our oldest is 25, so we've had teenagers for quite some time now, yeah, um, and the youngest of 13. So in my personal experience with my own children, and also with the other home educated, especially unschooled teenagers that I, at this point, know quite a lot of, is I just love them, I think they are great, I think they are easy to talk to, I think they are clear in their minds, they are straightforward, they are balanced, they are cooperative, they are interested, they are motivated, they are fun. They are interested, they are motivated, they're fun, they have very clear opinions. They have make very nice analysis of.

23:48
I also had just beat cancer when I got the fourth one, so I was pretty tired, but I think even without that it would have been. You know there's a lot of legwork, there's a lot of things that are out of your control, that there's a lot of urgency all the time when they are small and I think that was challenging and we had some things we had to navigate when they were younger. That gave me some sleepless nights, but with the teenagers I think it's a thrill and I really don't think it's hard to work with them. They have very clear opinions and they know exactly what they want, but they are also used to being listened to. They are used to getting the life that they want to have, but they don't want to take it away from their siblings.

24:32
So if there are contrasting agendas, they even just talk to each other before they even come to me and say how about we do it this way? Because then we can all you know, the ship has to sail and I need this and my brother needs that, and why don't we do it like this? And I'm like, yeah, let let's do that, but I'm here too and I'll need a coffee, so could we add that? And then we do that and and it works. So maybe I'm just lucky. Um, I, I really haven't seen these. Oh, it's so hard to have teenagers. Oh, they're so annoying or troubling or anything like that.

25:11 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
I think teenagers are fabulous. I absolutely don't think they are hard or annoying, but I think they are going through a process of individualizing, of becoming who they are, and for some of them, that's quite a challenging process, but also, for some of them, that can include rejecting some of what their parents have offered, even if what their parents has offered has been unschooling, for example, I think, because I mean, obviously I'm going to have a biased perspective because I'm a clinical psychologist, so people come to me when there are problems, so I see the people who have problems. So that's, you know how it is, and and um, and I also know many self-threatened teenagers who are flying and flourishing and are amazing. And also, I think, though I think a lot of teenage behavior which people perceive as problematic is simply part of being a teenager. So when I say inconvenient for others, I mean, in a conventional mindset, you want people, want people to just say, yes, I'll do this, and not to make a fuss about it, and actually what you find with your self-directed teenager is they'll?

26:17
say no, I don't really want to do this, or they'll say, well, I will do it, but I'm going to make it clear I don't want to do this. I'm doing it because of this, and you know that jars with people because that's not what they're used to. But that doesn't mean I think there's a problem with them. I absolutely don't. But I do think that teenage adolescence can be a time of vulnerability and I think the research shows that that it's a time when you're moving from childhood through to independence. And for some young people that change is a really difficult one, and for some it's not, and that's great. But for some it can be a period when young people become very depressed or become very anxious because they become more capable of thinking about the future.

27:03
And I do know young people who've become very angry with their parents at this stage of life because, for example, they say I just wanted to be like everyone else, why didn't you send me to school? I don't want to be having to say to people all the time yes, I didn't go to school, yes, I'm different, you know, I just want to be like everyone else, and parents find that really difficult. When they've made all these choices. They've moved the world to give their children this alternative experience of education. And now the children are turning around and saying couldn't you have just sent me to the local school? Wouldn't it have all have been easier for me? Um, and I think yes, and I think unschooling parents find that particularly difficult when it happens, because they are not expecting that to happen. They, you know, I think conventional. If you've taken a conventional route through parenting, you do kind of expect your teenagers to rebel or to reject you or that kind of thing. It's kind of part of the narrative of what's going to happen. But unschooling parents don't expect that.

27:55
They don't expect their children to turn around and say what about school?

27:59 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
yeah, yeah, no, no, it totally makes sense and it is a. It is a period of great both physical and inner change becoming a teenager. We are on our fourth one going through that process and it is. It can be terrifying with being a parent and you can be, you can be like how do we handle this?

28:23 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
this is part of a process and I think a lot of time when I'm working with parents of teenagers, I am saying to them you know this behavior that you think.

28:39
A lot of time, when I'm working with parents of teenagers, I am saying to them you know this behavior that you think is indicative of something that's really wrong maybe is part of their process of working out what is important to me, and that I'm not the same as my parents and the choices that my parents made might not be the choices that I make, and I have to come to terms with that as a person who's growing up, and I have to come to terms with the fact that I might disagree with their decisions and I still love them and they still love me and we can have different opinions on things and I think that process can be more painful for some parents than others.

29:11
And it's interesting, cecile, you're saying that you feel there's a dominant narrative about teenagers being hard and difficult, and there definitely is. But I think there's also can be a narrative in this kind of self-directed and schooling world of you shouldn't have any of these problems if you've unschooled your teenager right, and that's the parents I see who are like what have we done wrong? You know, we did all of this. We didn't send for school. We they've been unconditional parenting, no rewards and punishments.

29:38
And look here they are at 14 and they're really depressed and anxious. What did we do wrong? And I think so. I think part of what I'm saying is it doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. Growing up is hard sometimes. Growing up is a difficult process and you're with them, alongside them, with that, in the highs and the lows.

29:57 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But it's also actually a really huge expectation to have on your children. If you choose to unschool which is yes At the end of the day, it was my choice to unschool the children he got on board and we did do the checking. I think it was my choice to unschool the children, um, he got on board and and we did do the checking. I think it was once a year. We asked them do you want to go to school, do you want a different lifestyle? And now it's like a waste of time to ask them, but we still do. I mean, it's different now, but for the first years we we just kept checking, so in a way, of course they were on board with it, but still, I know this is my idea.

30:31
This comes from us, the parents. We're parenting in this way and we're going to make a lot of choices while they grow up that will affect their life, that will be defining for the way they can unfold themselves during their childhood, and they might not agree with that. They might. I mean I've known that the whole time that there's no guarantee, and what I'm trying to get to saying is, if unschooling parents think that unschooling is a guarantee that your kids will agree with you forever within everything. No well, you put it like that.

31:13 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
It's pretty obvious that it's stupid actually also a guarantee that life will be easier for them, because I think there is sometimes that expectation that you know they won't go through the other issues that young people sometimes go through whilst growing up, because we've haven't, we've chosen not to send them to school and I think so easy and we could all like see how be in the shining light of all.

31:41 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
We have done the perfect job as a parent.

31:44 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
And I think I think teenagers can feel that pressure. They can feel like I'm. You know, some of the some of the people who I read when I first started out in unschooling were some of the British people would never talk about their children. There was a sort of whole movement of people. They called themselves they were autonomous educators and they would never talk about their children at all, which makes it quite difficult to discuss unschooling and self-directed education. But their rationale was my children are not the product this is not about you know. They are not an outcome of what I'm doing. We're doing what we're doing because it's worth doing and they are not the outcome and I respect them more and more as my children grow up. For that, for that taking that stance, because I think there can be a pressure, and that's one of the reasons I don't talk in detail about my children, because I don't want them to be seen as an outcome of choice of you know that that's not fair on them.

32:34 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
No, it isn't. It is very difficult with the mindset uh, I have grown up with being in school and going to work and all this and and I actually wanted to try to explore a subject us three together which is about the the want of a person, because I know a lot of our listeners also come from a parenting background where they are not necessarily self-directed or unschooling, but are maybe sneak peeking, so it's just a thinking aloud process I would like to invite you to. Which is so if you have a normal setting you go to work, you have your kids in a public school or a private school or whatever how can we, is there any suggestions we can give to how a parent can help increase their child's wants?

33:32 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
keep the wants, keep the ones alive yeah yes, so I think it's harder, obviously, when they're at school, but I think you can try to make the space for that, and one of the ways of making the space for that is making sure that they don't spend all the rest of their time in activities that are structured a lot like school. I've always found it amazing, in a bad way, that a lot of the activities that children do outside school replicate lots of the structures of school in a way that those activities don't for adults. So you know, if you go and do, my daughter did drama for a while very quickly. It was about levels of drama and passing. They had tests, they got certificates and she didn't want to do it anymore and I was like, what are you know?

34:13
we just did drama because it's meant to be fun and and everything becomes really quickly about how well you're doing it. And we tried art classes once and it was all about learning the basic techniques and drawings little lines, and I'm like, why do we bring this school perspective into everything? So everything a child does, they're being told. What you want to do, how you want to be, is less important than how I want you to be, um, and I think we need to consciously look out environments and places that don't do that for our children, and I think we can. I think there are some. You know it's often about the individual instructor or the teacher. You'll meet one and you'll be like, oh, they really get it. I don't know if you have had that experience, but you can can?

34:55 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I was just thinking. And then parents wonder why children like Minecraft, where they have the creative control. I'm like hey, come on, they're in control of the world, aren't they?

35:05 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
Minecraft is amazing because you are in control of your own world and if you die, you just come back to life again and you go and pick up your stuff and you carry on.

35:13 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's brilliant Also. It's life again and you go and pick up your stuff and you carry on. It's brilliant also, I think, if you have your child in a school setting but you want to try to navigate the waters, mindful of allowing the child to grow up knowing what he or she actually really likes, yeah, and be able to make their own choices. It's it's would be a very good idea to be very clear about what the school is, to cut the bullshit. If you, if you talk about the school, why are you in school? What is all this reward thing about? What is the curriculum? Why do you have to obey the teachers? Why do you have to, you know, act in this way and just call it that. This is what it is. You have to do this because, whatever the family has decided, and the system works like this and it's going to affect you in this way and you can hack it in this way and I don't want to see your your um grades when you come home I don't want to see what the teachers write about.

36:32
I'm not going to show up for these meetings where they tell me whether you're good or bad or not. I'm never doing it. I'm never showing up for that in the school. They can keep that to themselves. I'll help you if you ask me for help, but I would prefer not to. I'm not going to be the school's policeman If you handle the school that way.

36:52
I've seen it done. It's pretty radical when it's done, but it can be done. Of course, if you're a responsible parent, you call the school, you have a conversation with the headmaster or the main teacher or whatever, and say this is my opinion on the school and what role it can have in our lives. This is why you're never going to see me. This is why I'm not signing these gradebook things. If I have to do it, it I'll do it with my eyes closed, just so you know, and I'm not going to be your policeman. If you do that, it's a big changer. It really is, and you can tell your child don't let the school get in the way of your life. Make sure you still have a life. It can be done.

37:34 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
It can, but I think it can also be risky if you are somebody, for example, who is likely to trigger concerns by the school, then you, you know, if you are a single parent or if you are living in poverty or if you're marginalized in other ways, then I think if you do that, you potentially trigger a whole set of social care referrals and all that kind of thing. And I think there's also something there which is that I think for some children it's very difficult to be in this school system and then to be having their parents saying it's essentially a game, we're doing it because we need to do it for these things, but I'm not buying into it. As a parent, I'm not buying into it. And I have met children who found it very difficult to be in that sort of halfway place. If I kind of have to buy into it because I'm there every day and I don't have a choice about that, and yet my parent is saying they don't buy into it and where does that leave me? And I've had some children who have become very distressed by that and I've also had other children who have gone and talked about all of that in school very openly to all the other children and that has created a lot of issues in the class, because the other parents don't want their children coming home being told well, these things are you know, and it, yeah, it can go lots of different ways and I think it depends on your child and also the age of the child, because I think, again, that's something teenagers are much more likely to be able to hold than a younger child.

39:05
But the other thing I was going to say about helping keep those wants is I think that you can show, as a parent, that you invest in the wants of the child as much as you invest in the wants of the school, because I often hear of parents, particularly if their child's struggling at school, they will scrimp every penny they can to have extra maths tutoring and extra English tutoring, all in the hope that this child will now be doing better at school, and the message that child gets again is out of school.

39:32
This is what's really important, and those parents will sometimes say things like oh, I can't afford to pay for the full version of Minecraft, for example.

39:40
I can't afford to pay for this new game they want on the console.

39:45
And it's often about video games, because people often don't value video games and they're often a very strong interest that lots of young people have and I'd say to them it's a really powerful message to that child to say if this is what you're interested in, I'm going to put money into it, in the same way as if you were really, really interested in maths, I would put money into it. Because we're all the time dividing up the child's interests, aren't we? We're saying we'll invest in that interest, we'll pay for you to have piano lessons, but we won't pay for you to buy this new game. Or I will sit with you and practice your piano, but I won't sit with you and watch you play Minecraft. And I think you can, as a parent, you can make that shift to say I'm going to invest in the things my child is really interested in, even if I personally think they are not as worthy, not as good waste of a way for them to spend their time as a school-based thing or piano lessons or whatever it is.

40:40 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I like it. I know that we talked about the cultural differences, for example, between the States and UK, and one of the things with people in UK is they don't in the same way brag or promote themselves. But now I'm asking you, as we are trying, I would like to round up the conversation. So if people so you've written a lot of books, so if you can mention a little about your books and also how people can find you if they want to work with you or listen to understand more of your work find you if they want to work with you or listen to understand more of your work.

41:20 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
Yes, so I wrote a book called changing our minds how children can take control of their education, which is really about self-directed learning, and it's particularly trying to bring the psychology research and self-directed learning together. Because one of the things that happened to me when my children didn't go to school was I was watching them grow and watching them learn and I was thinking you know this, so much of this dovetails with what I know about developmental psychology and how children learn, but nobody seems to be noticing that, nobody seems to be writing about it. Because everybody, I realized that all of my psychology training was entirely with children at school. You know, that was like I did a research doctorate before I did my clinical psychology. I it was on autistic children. I visited children at school. I didn't even realize that a very high proportion of autistic children are actually home educated, because why would I?

42:07
So there was like this huge gap in my knowledge of developmental psychology because I didn't know how children developed outside a school setting and I still don't think we really know. You know, we're finding our way and it was so interesting to me to see how differently I think my children have developed and how other children have developed outside that school setting. It's not like you know, you just carry on as if they were, as if they went to school. I sometimes joke, you know. I wish we'd had clones so we could have sent one version to school and just see what the difference would be, because as a psychologist it would be so interesting.

42:42
I'm sure there would be huge differences, but I don't know what they would be. Um, so yes, so changing our minds is my first book, which is all about self-directed education and it's kind of deep dive into lots of the research. Then I wrote another one which is called a different way to learn neurodiversity and self-directed education. That's particularly about neurodivergent families or families with neurodivergent children, autistic children, adhd, other other things, I think as well. And I interviewed lots of families for that book and that was partly because I felt that from my own experience online the kind of stories of those families was often not really there, was often kind of absent in a lot of the home ed discourse. It wasn't, they weren't kind of really. I think it's changed now. I think they're much more visible now, but certainly when we were starting out they weren't really visible.

43:28
And then I've written a book about parenting which is called when the Naughty Step Makes Things Worse, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's for parenting for children, for whom punitive strategies like the naughty step or take time out make things worse. So that's kind of stepping out of the alternative education arena. It's aimed at parents, all parents. And then my most recent one is the teenagers guide to burnout, and that is a self-help book for teenagers, and really it's for teenagers who are coming out of school, for whom school has gone badly wrong and that they often what I find with teenagers who've stopped going to school is that there's very negative narratives that they have around their future.

44:07
Other people have that as well. It's very much like you know. They're told at school if you don't go to school, you're never going to amount to anything. They're literally told that if you don't go to school, you'll never get a good job. If you don't go to school, you're never going to amount to anything. They're literally told that if you don't go to school, you'll never get a good job If you don't go. And they come out of school and they still believe all those things. Yeah, they're just so. They're stuck in this horrible limbo where it's like I know I can't go to school because it it just is awful for me, but if I stay at home, my entire future is over.

44:29
I have no what a what a promise to give children. It's just horrible so that. But this book is for them. So this book is very much about the difficulties with school, why school might not be the right place, and about trying to get some hope for the future cool and please for the people not shows no, yes, the website naomi fishercouk is my website and you can find information about all of my books there and other podcasts and webinars I do for parents and everything else I do Fantastic.

45:02 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Thanks a lot for your time, naomi. It has been a really wonderful conversation, thank you.

45:07 - Naomi Fisher (Guest)
It's been really interesting. I feel like we should be digging deeper into teenagers and all of it. I think it's really fascinating.

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