Lara here. Rowan and I have had interesting educational journeys - both for ourselves and for our children. That made interviewing Stephanie Sewell to talk about education and how it doesn’t need to look one specific way to have value something we had to unbox.
During this interview (our second interview ever!) we talk about why school can feel hard for students (and why it might have felt hard for us), why school isn’t as important as we often make it out to be and how nontraditional education can look. Rowan and I both talk a bit about what school was like for us and how choosing a different path has helped us be more successful adults.
We hope you enjoy the episode and would love if you shared any questions or your own experiences in the comments!
A bit about Stephanie:
As an alternative education consultant and mentor, Stephanie Sewell works with families and educational institutions who are seeking guidance and support. To create alternative educational paths for children and teens. Stephanie's approach is rooted in wellbeing and puts a strong focus on mental health. Her special areas of expertise are self-directed learning in both school learning centers and home settings.
Stephanie believes that each young person deserves and is capable of co-creating an educational path that works for them.
Transcript
(please note, we do not carefully edit these transcripts so there might be errors)
[00:00:00] Lara: Hey everyone. Lara here.
Today's episode is all about education and we do talk a fair amount about what education could look like for your kids, but we also hope that what you take from this conversation helps you think maybe differently about education in general or maybe a little bit about how your own education, went. We look forward to hearing what you think.
Welcome to unboxing it. I'm Lara. And I'm Rowan. And we are back this week to talk about something that is near and dear to both Rowan and I's Heart, which is around talking about education and how it doesn't always need to look the same. And we have our second. Ever guest, and this is somebody who has personally helped me and my family navigate a world where we took some different steps through what people think of when it comes to conventional education.
And I am really looking forward to this conversation. So let me start by introducing our guest and then we'll jump right in. As an alternative education consultant and mentor, Stephanie Sewell works with families and education institutions who are seeking guidance and support. To create alternative educational paths for children and teens. Stephanie's approach is rooted in wellbeing and puts a strong focus on mental health, her special areas of expertise are are self-directed learning in both school learning center and home settings.
Stephanie believes that each young person deserves and is capable of co-creating an educational path that works for them.
Welcome, Stephanie. I'm really excited to talk with you about this subject that I think is really important and interesting and that I don't think a lot of people have had the opportunity to really think about because.
School is just thought of as school. And I know Rowan, you were instrumental in helping me when one of my kids was really struggling. And that is actually how I came to meet Stephanie. And that was like, I don't know, eight years ago. Like it's all coming together. So, let's talk a bit about this because like I said, Rowan and I both.
I've experienced not taking traditional paths and I think it's, just an important conversation.
[00:02:42] Stephanie: I'm super glad to be here 'cause I think it is a really important conversation and One of the most difficult things to deal with when school's not working for your kid or when you've been homeschooling and suddenly that's not working.
One of the most difficult things to deal with is the fear that you as a parent are messing up because it's so important to us, of course, that we do the best for our kids, and education is really important, and we're used to education needing to look like the conventional school route or the conventional school at home kind of route.
And so when. That's not going well. It's really, really concerning for a parent, and it can be a real situation of crisis.
[00:03:23] Rowan: And let's talk about the idea of conventional education and how, you know, one of the things that we try to do on this podcast actually, the, entire basis for this podcast is to look at what are considered societal norms, societal rules, What happens when they're not working for us and in fact can be harmful? can you talk a little bit about, the conventional school system and, how that doesn't work for everybody?
[00:03:51] Stephanie: Yeah, it's interesting. I was talking to a relative about the work that I do recently, and he said, but why is this such an issue now?
Like, 40 years ago. This wasn't a thing. Lara, did you wanna jump in?
[00:04:03] Lara: Oh, I just, I mean like there are so many things where people are like, oh, how come this is all of a sudden a problem? Like it was already a problem. We just never talked about it. It was always a problem. There were just people like dropping out of school.
There were just people having a terrible, terrible time, and we decided that they should just get out of our sight and we could ignore that they were there. But it was always happening. So I just, every time I hear people say, why is this all of a sudden so different? I'm like, oh, come on.
[00:04:34] Stephanie: Yes.
And,
[00:04:36] Lara: and
[00:04:36] Stephanie: I think you're absolutely right, and I think that it is a more frequent problem now for a few reasons. One of them. As you know, we have these fun little things that everybody has we have cell phones and Kids have cell phones, but kids have access to technology from very young ages. It depends how it plays out in different families, but the concept of technology playing a role in our lives happens at a very young age.
Yet schools haven't changed that much since 20 years ago. When. People didn't all have phones in their back pockets. And from 20 years ago to like 120 years ago, there was also pretty much no significant change. So the school system is a place that has looked very similar for a long time, and yet most of the rest of our lives has changed dramatically.
And particularly dramatically in the last 20 or so years. So the way I think this plays out for kids is that a lot of what they do in school doesn't have meaning or relevance to them. You know, we're asking kids to memorize dates and write essays and using AI is cheating and all of this stuff that they're doing in school.
Is so different to what the reality is outside of school, that this disconnect creates a lot of angst, frankly. it's like you're living one life and then leave the school property and you live another life. I'm not for a second blaming schools here because the rate of change of the last years is probably unprecedented and.
You know, nobody knows how to, do this, but I think that's a lot of what's going on for a lot of kids. You know, and one of the reactions in schools has been to try to, get back to basics and get a little bit more strict. And, you know, if they feel that kids are sort of talking back a little bit more, standing up for themselves more, one of the reactions is to t down on that.
And so that. Environment for some kids quickly, becomes unsupportable and you know, they're dealing with high levels of anxiety or trauma from things that are said or, ways of being. so it has become more impossible for some kids to go to school. They're trying to just suck it up and make it work.
And, you know, when families come to me, it's, often been after several years of. Really, really trying to make school work and the schools are working so hard to find ways for kids to be able to leave the classroom to go to a special person for a little while or take some time off, you know, once a week or, there's so many ways that we're all trying to make it work.
But I think ultimately there's this disconnect that if we can realize that and start working within that or acknowledging that, then it's going to help.
[00:07:22] Rowan: Yeah, and I wanna say like I, many years ago used to work in the conventional school system in Quebec and I was the special person that would come spend time with the kids and, you know, take them out of the classroom, maybe do some reading with them, or take a little walk with them or take them to a room where they could just cool down for a little bit.
'cause they were overstimulated. Schools really are trying with limited budgets, limited ability to hire staff. a huge amount of what we call here IEPs, individualized education plans, which frankly, I think that should be everybody Everybody learns differently, so we should all have an individualized education plan.
But when you are a teacher with say, 27, 28 kids in the class. And 70% of them have IEPs that that's not uncommon. and you, by law. You have to meet the requirements of all of these different IEPs, all of these different needs of all of these young people, that that's a recipe for burnout.
And it's a recipe for just a systemic failure because I don't think anyone is equipped to do that.
[00:08:28] Stephanie: And it's something that parents will often say to me is. My, kid has an IEP and they're supposed to have these, you know, five things, which would actually really help, but the school's not providing it.
How do we make the school provide it? And, often as you say, the school is doing the absolute best they can with the situation that they have. And it's just simply not possible sometimes.
[00:08:51] Lara: I really think that part of the problem is systemic, right? Like the whole school system. I don't have a solution.
I think the whole thing needs to be rethought to figure out how to actually support students. But one of the things that I really wanted to get into on this episode that is just the first step of this is to acknowledge that if you struggled, if your kid is struggling, that's not 'cause you have to fix something.
There are some ways that just don't work for everybody. It is. Absolutely understandable that school and education in general is difficult for some people. And so while I had a kid who had a really hard time with school, so did I. So did my sister. And so we are looking 40 years ago, like I can remember from like my first and second grade.
Report cards being like, would do better if attended more often. cause I didn't like to be there and I really have understood as I've gotten older why that is right, that I don't learn well when I'm in certain situations. I certainly don't learn well when somebody is just talking at me for long periods of time and I don't have the same sort of internal.
Need or desire to do things the way that maybe people tell you to do them. So there's like so many different pieces that come together that can make learning difficult, that can make being in a classroom difficult. And so, like I said, the biggest thing that I'm hoping as we talk about this, people realize is it's not some kind of failure on their part if they struggled.
It's not a failure on their part if their kid is struggling. It's just that sometimes we need to think about different options and there are different
options.
[00:10:39] Stephanie: Yeah. That's one of the key things and I've often said, you've probably heard me say it before, Lara, that you know, one of my dreams is that when kids get to be like four or five years old, and it's that like you're starting kindergarten, that we would one day be in a society where it's like, oh, are you planning to start kindergarten or will you be continuing.
Your life as it is right now and homeschooling or home-based learning or whatever you want to call it. At that point, if we could have this notion entrenched in our society that school is one option and not school is another option. And they're both good options. They're just different options,
[00:11:14] Lara: which for some people is not gonna compute, right?
Yes. Like the idea that not school could be an option is just gonna seem so incredibly foreign. And impossible for
[00:11:26] Stephanie: sure. Yeah.
[00:11:27] Rowan: I do think, you know, when it comes to being able to homeschool children, or to find other, learning situations that don't involve sending them to school all day.
You do run into a matter of privilege for some people, for sure, right? Like you have to have the ability to stay home. Maybe you have a job that is flexible or one of you doesn't need to work, or one of you only works part-time, then that's assuming that there are two parents there, right? so I do think we need to acknowledge that.
and I say that as somebody who homeschooled, my children at various points, right? I was able, it was tight, it was really difficult to do financially, but we were still able to do it.
[00:12:06] Stephanie: that's why I brought up the impossible, element because it can absolutely feel impossible. And that's often where I start with a client where that's, where our need is.
Our first need is for conversation because there are so many different ways to think. the current education's not working. What are some solutions we can try? It doesn't have to be like school or not school. There's everything in between. So, for example, it might be that for a child to know that they stay home one day every week, it doesn't have to be like, oh mom, I really don't want to go today.
But it's like, no, it's Monday. You stay home. taking a little bit of the pressure off. Something as simple as that can make all the difference for some kids. You know, we were used to thinking about gap years or sabbaticals for adults. We can think about them for younger kids as well. What does it look like to just take a year off?
You know, crazy thought, but it's possible. And then when you start to get into, well, who's going to homeschool this child or look after this child, that's when we look at, well, where do you live and what's around? Do you have grandparents around? You know, if it's a younger child who needs to be cared for, sometimes there's a daycare, like a home-based daycare in the neighborhood, and they're more than happy to have a seven or 8-year-old join in a couple of days a week.
you know, if that seven or 8-year-old is somebody who enjoys some of those activities and like helping with the little kids, like there's so many creative ideas to answer the care need that we can often find a solution. And then from there, 'cause you know, Lara said in the introduction, like.
I always start with mental health. 'cause if you've got a kid who's anxious and stressed and terrified or whatever it is that they're experiencing at school, they're not learning, they're not being educated because they, just can't. So if we can acknowledge that as a first step, like, how can we help you to be feeling safe and well.
Your mental, emotional health, then the education piece comes later. we can get into that in a moment, but yeah, there are many, many ways of looking after the caring for a younger child. And then when you're looking at a teenager who might not need to be cared for that child, just knowing that they have some time at home alone, that in itself might be the thing that turns it around for them.
Maybe they just need a bit of time, like not always on the go and not always people around. And so again, it's looking at it through a new filter, a new set of filters. And that's what I try to help people do because we're not used to looking through those lenses.
[00:14:38] Rowan: One of my children had a really difficult time falling asleep at night.
He has a DHD and he could not do mornings at school. And so we worked it out with the school where he would come in a little later. And so maybe he, you know, whatever he missed that day, the teacher would just email him and he could try and get it done later. And I think like we, we do need to think about the mental health component because it is the most important part of all of this, for various reasons.
Out of my four children. Three of them struggled in that conventional school system, one because they were queer and bullied. And another one because, she has a lot of learning. Disabilities. And I don't like to use the term learning disability because I actually think she learns very well, just not within that system.
and then one, because he has a DHD and they have all taken their own paths. Only one of them graduated from high school out of the three of them. And, that has not stopped any of them from moving on with their lives.
Two of them are college grads, one is in music and doing well. what I like to tell parents from this side of things, from way on the other side now where all my children are adults. They're gonna be okay. they're gonna be okay. But you have to support their mental health more than anything else.
The primary thing is to support them, and as you said, Stephanie, help them feel safe. Because if they don't have that safety, if your kid is going to school and being bullied every day and nothing is stopping, or they're just feeling terrible every time they're there, what does it matter that they're sitting through math class?
They're not absorbing any of it.
[00:16:21] Stephanie: And on the contrary, they may be learning to hate math more and more and more. That may be what they're learning and to feel incompetent in math because their marks are terrible. But actually those marks might have been completely different under different circumstances.
[00:16:36] Rowan: Exactly.
[00:16:37] Stephanie: One of the biggest pieces for me as well, is the notion of collaborating. when we have a baby, we are fully responsible for that little beings. Mental, emotional and physical health. There's a lot on us By the time they're, you know, 20, 25, hopefully they're fairly independent and, you know, we're there to ask advice and to help out every now and then.
So at some point along the way, control responsibility starts to get transferred bit by bit or suddenly. And so when our kids start having trouble in school or, you know, it's not going well for them. Parents, you know, we go into this like, how are we gonna solve this? How are we gonna solve this? I'm gonna meet with it.
We go into like uber action mode because that's what we feel we need to do, right? It's, and we want to do that. We want to solve it for our child. When we see that our child is suffering, we want to alleviate that suffering. Sometimes what can happen through all of our best. Desires to help is that the child actually gets a bit left out of that process.
And so that's one thing that I always encourage people to think about is remember to ask your kid what they think a solution might be. You know, if you could wave a magic wand, how would you want your education to look right now? How would you want your life to look right now? What would you want to get rid of?
And just bringing that voice into the conversation really helps not only because you can start to collaborate on solutions, but also because you remove the defensive energy, the argument, you know, your children who wake up in the morning and the first thing they think about is, ugh, you know, my parents are gonna be expecting me to go to school.
I know I can't go to school. Like, that's their first reality every morning. Is that feeling of gearing yourself up for a fight? And if we can alleviate that again, it's, one action. That can make a huge difference. And suddenly you've stepped away from the situation you thought you were in and you're in a collaborative, okay, it's not working.
What are we going to do? And it can be completely different as a result of that kind of thinking.
[00:18:37] Lara: We're touching on a lot of the topics we've already talked about on this podcast and some I'm hoping we'll talk about in the future, right? But we're talking about perfectionism, we're talking about asking for help.
It's all of the things where. We have been taught as a society that the ideal situation is for your kid to do as well as possible, as quickly as possible to prove that you did a good job with your kids and that , nobody should need help doing it. Like all of these things are so much pressure and a lot of them aren't true.
Like why do kids need to just. Blast through you know, kindergarten to grade 11 without pausing or grade 12. there's so many things they don't need to always get great grades as somebody with two PhDs for parents. and I'm very lucky because my parents are very learned, but they did not Feel that they had to impose that on me. There was a certain amount of that I imposed on myself because of their education, but I really feel, you know, when I was a kid, I remember you, you needed a university degree to think you would get a good job, and now you need like two, like a degree and a diploma or two degrees, like it's The pressure to get more and more and more just gets higher. And I mean, it's probably an entirely different conversation, but I think it's less and less important to get all those pieces of paper just to do well in life in certain situations that not true, but like we need to rethink all of that. Again, I could talk about this for three years, like there's so many parts of it.
But if we can let go of the need for it to always be great for every student to always get, a's you know, I remember when I was a kid, there was a lot of like, I'll pay you this many dollars if you get an A, this one, if you get an A minus. And like, it's always about trying to get the highest grades to be rewarded for success.
And that's the only way it can look. And if we can let go of so many of those rules about what success is. We can start to adapt things so that they work for lots of people.
[00:20:41] Stephanie: Yes. I'm gonna jump in on two of the things that you said or more, I'll try to stop after that so I don't talk at you. I had a great conversation with a teen that I mentor the other day about the notion of always do your best.
We see it on walls in elementary schools, right? Always do your best and. in all the years I've been thinking differently about education, I'd never really thought about that phrase. And of course, as adults we know and we get to know, we're allowed to know that it doesn't make sense to always do your best.
Like there are times when it makes sense just to do it quickly so that something else can be prioritized. That's the whole notion of what are you going to prioritize. It's okay to have like a super simple supper for your family. Some nights so that you guys can snuggle up on the sofa and read a book together.
You might be able to produce a 12 course Uber healthy meal, but you don't always have to do your best because you think about prioritizing. We really lack that notion in schools. I believe if we introduced prioritizing into how kids engage with school, it would completely, shift things.
So that's one thing. so my, I guess we haven't said yet, like, I have two kids. They're 20 and 23 at the moment. The eldest homeschooled for most of his elementary and high school and is now in university, by the way, sidebar. You can go to university without a high school diploma. but one of the things that he and I have talked about a lot is how do you prioritize your efforts in a university context?
You know, you've got your courses that you're taking for your degree, like your core degree courses and others that are electives. You know, he actually had situation which. I don't think he'll mind me saying where he was doing an elective during the summer term, and, you know, he had chosen to do it, it was fine.
But the exam was set for a weekend that some of his friends were going away for something that was a really, really special weekend and he was gonna miss it because of this exam. So he calculated what his mark was going into the exam and realized that he had already passed the course by like 2%.
So he didn't do the exam. And that's a really interesting example, right? Like this notion of you just don't show up and exam and you get zero. Like, we don't have that notion in our, usual way of talking about school. We don't talk about priorities like that. But he has zero regrets that mark doesn't matter.
That weekend was really special and really worth it for him. So that's an example of how I think we can take a lot of pressure that kids feel in school away by helping them start to prioritize. For example, in Quebec, you start gathering credits for your diploma in grade 10 and 11.
That's where all your credits come from. So your marks up until that point. Only matter in so much as if you want to go into the science stream, you need to have certain marks to get into it. But other than that, your marks don't matter really. But it's, a hugely difficult thing to think my marks don't matter.
Like it's, counter to every element of school. So anyway, that was one thing. And then the idea as well, going back to. this need to have so many degrees and can you live life without having those degrees? Yes, absolutely. There's lots of paths you can take through life that don't require degrees, and what I find is that when somebody owns their learning, when somebody's used to thinking about their learning as belonging to them, is being able to make choices like prioritizing and all of that, if they decide to go and get a degree.
That degree is an easier process for them because they know they've chosen to do it. They're not just doing it 'cause that's where they're supposed to be. They know that they can make decisions like not writing an exam in order to go away for the weekend. They own it and so it makes sense. And so it has less of a mental health load.
Or if it does start to get overwhelming, they know that they can make choices to alleviate that suffering, that difficulty.
[00:24:34] Lara: So I have a psychology degree that I got from Carleton that I did fairly slowly. And my major changed like four times through that process because I was just like, university comes next.
And then I was like, uh, English, um, history, uh, like, I don't know, right? Like it didn't. Really care. And so I graduated. I have that degree and I like to tell everybody I had a really solid C average on that degree. and then I went and taught English in Korea for a year. And while I was there I was doing some research and I discovered there was a program at Algonquin called Public Relations.
And I remember reading about it and thinking like, that sounds really interesting. And I went back to school, and then I was on the honor roll throughout because I had chosen and I cared and was really interested. And I wasn't the first time around just because it was, you know, quote unquote time to go to university.
I hadn't bought in and that showed in how well I did. And once I had bought in, that also showed. And so just to know that, that. I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready at 18 and I was ready at
[00:25:46] Rowan: Yeah,
And like for myself,
I had a very difficult time in school by about age 12.
the bullying for me was really, really bad and every day felt like hell, honestly. So I had a really hard time going. I was expelled from school for lack of attendance when I was 14 and then I was allowed back into the system later. And was trying to take it seriously, but then I ended up unhoused and I was living on people's sofas.
I was living in shelters and stairwells, and it makes it really hard to go to school. And then I had a baby at 20 years old, we had our first child, and so I just never went back. Finally around 37 years old, you know, after having three kids. At that time, we hadn't adopted our, fourth yet. I thought to myself, you know, it'd be really great if I just went back to high school and finished it,
I wanna walk the stage. I wanna wear a cap and gown, I wanna get a diploma. I wanna do all of those things. And so I did, I mean, I took all my courses. I did, online, but it was through a local high school and they had an actual graduation. It was an adult high school, and I, won the English award, which is actually up in my office.
Like that is the award that I am the proudest of. And then people kept asking me, what's next? What's next? What's next? I'm like, what do you mean? What's next? No, I just wanna do that. For me, it was a personal thing. I just wanted to finish because I had tried so hard and not managed to do it. I never went to university.
I never went to college, and I love the idea of higher education, but it just wasn't in the cards for me. I still went on to write two bestselling books and I have a shelf full of awards I've done just fine. And I don't say that to brag. I say that because if there's anyone listening who feels like maybe they need to follow this more conventional path to success, or their children need to do that, you don't need to do it.
I mean, if you wanna be a lawyer, yes you have to. You have to go to law school. If you wanna be a doctor, you have to go to medical school. But. We don't all have that goal in mind, and you can still forge your own path and have a fantastic career and feel very successful without it.
[00:27:59] Stephanie: Absolutely. And I think sometimes it's a question of knowing, having a sense of where you wanna go and then working backwards.
Like, my daughter wants to be a lawyer, so she's. Knows that she's doing her undergrad now and she's gonna go to law school and she's working to get experience in the summer. And there you go. For people who don't know where they wanna go, what the end goal is honoring your. Wellbeing and following the things like Lara said, like that program looked really interesting.
Or is it like working in a cafe like the one Rowan's going to open? working in a cafe feels really good to me 'cause I have so many conversations every day and I get to meet people and I understand, like I get to see all these cool things that people do. Like maybe that's serving you right now and helping create, An ability to trust in that. I think that's the biggest thing, right? It's like, yeah, you know, you might be having fun doing music, but like at a certain point you have to go to university and I. And we say that as parents or as members of society with all of the best intentions, because we know that, I think it's still that if you want a job in the government, you're supposed to have an undergrad degree.
[00:29:07] Rowan: Yes.
[00:29:07] Stephanie: Not positive.
[00:29:08] Rowan: Yeah. For the most part.
[00:29:08] Stephanie: Yeah. But I also know that there, you know, there's always a backdoor, there's always creativity. but that's the thing. So you want your kid to have that possibility, but. If we can have as our first step validating and acknowledging just following the things that make you shine, because that's how you're going to find your path.
[00:29:26] Rowan: I really wish that, I had known this when I was younger. I think Gen X, which I'm gonna assume we're all in Gen X here, the three of us, but I think We were the last generation to be taught that. If you do all of these things, if you go to school, if you go to elementary school, then you go to high school and then you go and get a degree, you are guaranteed this financially successful life.
You have to do it all this way and like, and we were also taught like what do you wanna be when you grow up? What do you wanna be when you grow up? Right? And making that thing part of our identity. I want to be a lawyer, right? And so I have to be. And then you, you, you do it, you do the thing, you go to school, you get your law degree, you start working in law.
I was like, well, that's what I chose. I'm gonna be a lawyer until I retire, what we were not taught, but a lot of us have figured out, and I think what a lot of younger generations are figuring out now is it's okay to change your mind. Like we grow as people constantly. So maybe high school wasn't for me when I was a teenager.
Maybe it was for me in my thirties. Clearly it was, I rocked that Shakespeare, but like I remember when I wanted to be a, veterinarian. All I wanted to be my entire life as a veterinarian. I'm not a veterinarian now. That's all right. There were three or four or five things that I thought I wanted to do, tried them out or didn't try them out.
Realize that's not where I wanted to be, and kept going. So can we normalize the idea that we are not stuck in the decisions that we make and we should not put that on our children either?
[00:31:04] Lara: Yes. I like that very much, but my daughter who just finished grade 10, and partially I think because of the conversations we have at home would be like, mom.
I don't know why. They keep thinking we're supposed to know what we wanna be for the rest of our lives. I'm 15 years old, I don't know yet. And I was like, and nor should you have to know yet. Right? But I know that that's not the conversation everybody else is having and it's certainly not what the schools are still saying.
Like, you need to figure this out. You need to find the right career pathway. Anyway. I think it's good to think about what you like, but I think it's so important to remember. That you don't need to figure it all out at 15. Like I didn't know anything about myself. At 15. The person that I am now at almost 50 doesn't look remotely like the person I was at 25, let alone 15.
[00:31:57] Rowan: We're building confidence. We're building, decision making skills. We're building critical thinking skills. We're building all of those things when we're younger. I think as adults, our job is not to first of all, my job as a parent, has never been to make my children live out a set of goals and ideals that I have for them.
My job as a parent is to learn who my child is and support them in becoming the best version of themselves and like , that can look completely different than the story I told myself when our child was first born. That's okay. And I think that is a big disconnect with parents with, but, but, but my sister has two boys and they are super studious and one of them is becoming a rocket scientist and yeah, those are her children and that's who they are.
Presumably those are not the children or that is not the child that you are raising and that's okay too for your child to take a different path.
[00:32:59] Lara: And I think it's really important to remember that most people when they are trying to outline what the best course forward is for their children are doing it with the best of intentions.
Like they really and truly believe that that is what needs to happen. To have supported a child into adulthood and to have them lead a good life. Like their intentions are very good. I also think yes, and that. Not everybody needs the same thing. Not everyone takes the same path. Not everyone has the same dreams and desires, and that is also okay.
And that's Stephanie. Why I've so appreciated your insight and help over the years because truly Stephanie helped me help my kid. Stephanie directly helped my kid. See what was possible and what was different when things were starting to feel impossible. And that's what we need sometimes is somebody who can say, I don't know what to do anymore.
And somebody else can be like, let me help you figure out what else exists.
[00:34:03] Stephanie: Yeah. It's huge because even when people are going to psychologists or school social workers, . Most experts in this field. Know that the best place to be is school. And it's important for us to start spreading the knowledge that the best place for some kids might be school and the best place for other kids might not be school or some combination so that the people who are helping the families can provide them with real options and themselves, be familiar with those options.
I'm gonna go quickly back over three things that. I just took notes on as you were talking, both of you.
[00:34:36] Rowan: So organized
[00:34:38] Stephanie: No. A DHD. I need to write it down so that I remember. The idea of if you're following, like trying to figure out what you wanna do and you're trying different things and you're following your dream and all of that stuff, we're used to feeling held by the school system.
What grade are you in? When are you going to graduate? What degree do you have? If we're not going to be held by that, what are we going to be held by? We need to be held by something. So that sense of like, I'm on a gap year. It holds you. I'm a self-directed learner. Like if somebody's a homeschooler, what grade are you in?
Who's your teacher? Like, it's still the same kind of schoollike questions. So you know, that's often something I work with, , with teens or even with kids. It's like, okay, if you're not gonna be at school, what are you going to say? When people ask you what grade are you in? Or what school do you go to?
What holds you so that you know where you are? And so that you can confidently respond when somebody else asks you. 'cause otherwise, every time somebody asks you, what grade are you in, are you doing math? Like it just, it like chips away at your confidence. And so having a phrase for yourself and knowing what holds you is important.
And that also ties into the notion of, okay, well so and so's kids are doctors and lawyers and all of that. It's that like keeping up with the Joneses type of. Notion. So again, if we can inside our heads know that that doctor might be so stressed out, they might be burning out that teacher who went into teaching, 'cause they love helping children, might be going home every day saying, I don't know how much longer I can do it.
'cause I, I'm just trying to manage, like, I can't engage with my kids 'cause. You know, whatever the things we talked about earlier is not what I thought it would be. So remembering that as a parent, when you feel like other people's families are perfect, and then again, what's holding your kids and your family can help you ground in that moment.
There's this video, a TED Talk, which you've probably both seen by Logan Laplante. I think he probably did it like. Seven years ago now. I've been recommending it forever. was about 12 years old at the time and he's a hack schooler. He's like super, it's, it is such a great video for kids to watch as well 'cause he expresses it all so well.
But one of the things he says is he asked his little brother what he wanted to be when he grows up and his little brother said, dude, I just wanna be happy. And I think, again, like that sounds irresponsible if, if we, as parents say, I just want my kids to be happy. Like we're supposed to be a bit more responsible and practical than that, but we can have that.
So I wanna equip them when they're a kid with tools and the ability to move through life, checking in with what they're doing and how it's impacting their wellbeing. That's kind of what that means. I want them to be happy. Okay.
[00:37:21] Rowan: Wow. No, absolutely. And I think it's great that, you are such a beacon of light in the education system and teaching people that there are different ways to do things and.
You also have a child who's becoming a lawyer who's doing this very, like, you know, conventional route in this sense anyway at, at this stage. But when you empower your children from a young age, they themselves, learn that autonomy, that personal responsibility, they don't have to look to everybody else.
To tell them what to do. And that is what I've seen from a lot of, homeschoolers and a lot of, you know, I, I don't even know what the terms are anymore. There's like un learners or unschoolers. there's a bunch of these different terms, but essentially letting your children lead their education and lead with curiosity and lead with confidence.
And, I, , I think that serves 'em so much through life in a way that we don't acknowledge enough.
[00:38:25] Stephanie: Yeah. And I think as you're saying, we can help them to lead in that way and they might lead themselves into school. Right. I. So you might have a kid sitting in a grade 10 classroom who is absolutely a self-directed learner as opposed to the kid sitting next to them who is there because they think they have to be there.
So we can acknowledge that even when we start to come at this, parenting from this place of collaboration and asking questions like, is school the right spot for you right now? That doesn't necessarily mean that we're advocating or supporting our kids to not be in school. We're supporting them to have this kind of ownership that you're talking about, Rowan.
[00:38:59] Rowan: Ah, makes me happy.
[00:39:01] Lara: There is one last thing I wanna put out there, which is, and I only know the Ontario school system, but there are actually alternative schools. There are alternative programs that exist and from experience, the school boards don't tell you about them super readily, so. If your kid is struggling, it's worth seeing and digging and asking around whether there's a Facebook group for parents in your area or whatever it is, but dig a little bit.
Push the school administrators a little bit because there are more things out there than you might realize and letting your kid try a different kind of program like the alternative high schools. Here where I live have made a huge difference for so many teens I know, but they don't readily tell people, Hey, why don't you go in there?
So just go looking. Find people like Stephanie who can help you, consider different options because they do exist without it. Meaning that you just have to give up and hope everything works out later.
[00:40:06] Stephanie: It's such a good point. And one of the things I know you and I have talked about, Lara, with regard to those, the alternative high schools, is the goal that the school board had in creating the high school might be different than the benefit than your child is getting in being there.
So that's part of this creative thinking. It's like ? You know, what are the options? How might my kid engage with that, even if it's not what. They're intending or expecting from the organizational perspective, it could still really help my child. then one of the things, I just had a client the other day and she had been talking about trying to find a private school and how they were all far, far out of her family's price range.
So look under learning centers and. Things like that. the three of us met originally through Compass Center for Self-Directed Learning in Ottawa, which has since closed, but there's a new center called Dandelion Cafe and Student Achievement Center, which is different than Compass, but provides a similar home for kids who aren't going to school, who want a consistent, friend group or, you know, place to go for a few days a week.
It's amazing the work that they're doing right there. But then like if you were looking for. Private schools in Ottawa. I'm not sure whether Google would bring dandelion up. So that's, that's one of the things as well, is talk to people to find out what are the phrases you can use if you're searching for different types of learning environments.
You know, sometimes, like there's another one that's great for kids, in Ottawa called Blue Whale and I think it comes up if you look for learning co-op. So there's getting creative with all those probably AI can help you figure out all of that stuff.
[00:41:40] Rowan: I find the homeschooling community is often really tapped into that as well.
[00:41:43] Stephanie: Exactly,
yeah.
[00:41:44] Rowan: Where like younger children, when they're very little, might mostly learn at home or sort of, in a neighborhood setting with other parents. and then once they get older, are looking for something where they can actually assert their independence a little more and go somewhere.
So that's where Compass really came in handy for our child, and where a lot of these places would come in handy. my own child who went to Compass and was homeschooled for, I'd say about a third of their conventional education years, never ended up graduating high school, but went to college as a mature student.
Graduated at the top of their class. This kid that we couldn't even get to school who we fought tooth and nail for far too long. Frankly, a great detriment to them,and us getting them into school every single day. who would underperform by their own words, not mine, because they just weren't happy.
ended up going to college, graduated, and now work in their chosen field. So I mean, this is where we give children a space to breathe and figure things out and find out what makes them happy and what helps them get motivated and address any of those underlying, mental health or any other types of issues that they have, they can really thrive.
And mine has certainly done that.
[00:43:03] Stephanie: And one of the things I really point out to parents is if your kid needs to do that, if they need to step aside from the conventional ways of doing things, how wonderful that they get to do it while you're providing them with food, a roof over their head and a loving, supportive, safe adult when they're going through that kind of thing at 18 or 20 or 25 not living at home anymore, it can be much more difficult.
So there's benefit to this kind of process happening younger.
[00:43:30] Lara: And we've talked a lot about children, but also a little bit about ourselves, and I do hope that if anybody listening has struggled with their own relationship with their education, Rowan and I both did things a little bit differently.
Rowan and I both struggled at different times, but also. Have careers and have done well. And so if the inner child needs a little bit of compassion about how they feel about how good they are at school or how well they did in the past, just remembering it's okay to do things differently and to do things your own way and to learn in different ways than other people.
Totally cool.
[00:44:10] Stephanie: And sometimes from my experience, doing extremely well in school. Has its own costs because it took me a long time to be able to decide to do something for somebody. Like other than like I was always used to doing my best all the time. I would burn out. I was doing things for the teachers all the time.
Never for me. It took me a long, long time to recover from school and to discover who I was, even though I was an a plus honor roll student all the way through. and again, it's, I'm not this, it's not to say that the school system is terrible. It's not. It's to say that it's so important that we own ourselves, that our mental health, our emotional health, our physical health, and the more we as parents and adults can help kids have that as part of their childhood learning, the better they
are stepping into their adult years.
[00:45:04] Rowan: Wow. Yeah.
[00:45:05] Lara: I think that we could keep talking about so many different aspects of this. So we may have future podcasts that dig into more of these, areas. If you have any of your personal stories, you wanna come and share them on our substack. Please do. We wanna hear from you. We wanna know what you would like to know more about.
And Stephanie, thank you so much for being here and talking to us about something that both of us really think is an important thing to talk about.
[00:45:34] Stephanie: You're welcome. It was a really great conversation. Thank you both for jumping in and getting into it all.
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