Food, hygiene, interoception, sleep, chores, life skills
Not all unschooling families have no bedtimes or an open candy drawer, but many do.
If you want to move towards collaborative, consent-based parenting when it comes to some of the fundamentals like sleep, food, hygiene, and life skills, there’s a lot of nuance to this process.
Keep asking questions about what is truly essential. Interrogate fears about the future. Research Health at Every Size (HAES). Think creatively about accommodations and alternatives–finger toothbrushes, room soundproofing, paper plates. . .what might be possible to make things easier?
Look for disability-informed, neurodiversity-affirmative, non-coercive therapy when needed for executive functioning, movement, or sensory challenges that get in the way of physical health.
The most common suggestion for children’s physical health is structure. However, adult imposed structure can feel like a demand and lead to higher anxiety or avoidance. Many of our group members have suggested other accommodations, such as reminders and a daily or weekly family rhythm.
Another resource on collaborative parenting in crucial areas like physical health is Ross Greene’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions model, or CPS. Many unschooling families have found the CPS method to be essential to their deschooling and unschooling success. If CPS has been challenging, seek out lived experience to come up with better solutions and ideas.
Others rely more on connection and emotional mirroring–reflective parenting. These are two different ways of breaking down the “how” of non-coercive parenting.
Unschooling Every Family 