FAQs and Glossary

Joining our support groups

Joining our support groups

How to join:

We have one group on facebook and are developing an alternative private chat group, probably on wordpress or substack.

This website–unschoolingeveryfamily.com–is static, or “read only.” We have comments closed because this site is here to provide publicly accessible information, but not deal with spammers. The private groups are for discussion among members.

Joining the facebook group

Go to facebook and complete the new member questions.
Admin approval usually takes 1-2 days.

Joining the new private group (under construction)

Fill our our new member survey on this website.
Admins are working on creating this group. Once published, an admin will look at your new member survey and add you.
If you are already in the facebook group, just go on facebook and private message your email to an admin there, and they’ll add you to the list for the new group.

What other support groups are available?

You can find a list of other unschooling, disability, and neurodiversity coaches, support groups, and thinkers here. Feel free to suggest others by filling out our contact page.

I don’t like labels. Am I welcome to join the private support and discussion groups?

You can choose how to define/describe yourself and still be welcome in our community. When referring to someone else, please follow terminology guidelines. It is also acceptable to respectfully encourage others to think outside the labels that have been assigned to them or their kids when it seems appropriate. But it is also important to respect others who strongly identify with a label. Debates about the value of labels in general can easily become divisive, but descriptions of your reasons for your personal choice are fine.

Can traditional homeschoolers join the private support and discussion groups?

Anyone who is interested in learning more about unschooling is welcome in our community. However, if you are just learning, it is not appropriate to share advice about how great the curriculum you’re using is for your family. Most homeschooling communities are all about curricula and adult-led academic activities. We strive to create a space where those who are doing things differently can support each other and help and teach newcomers.

No one in my family is neurodivergent or disabled, can I still join your support and discussion groups?

All are welcome to learn from our community. We value respectful questions from anyone. However, we would like advice and support to come mainly from those who have lived experience. Sometimes outsiders can have valuable input on what not to do, but we try to center lived experience in our community.

I am a coach, counselor, therapist, teacher, etc. Can I join your support and discussion group?

Absolutely. We welcome everyone who wants to learn about how to support disabled and neurodivergent learners in non-coercive ways. Please ask whatever questions you have and share what you have been taught and often have to unlearn. If you are already implementing non-coercive strategies to the best of your ability, we welcome hearing about your lived experience, including your frustrations with the systems you are forced to work within. If you are just getting started shifting to a less coercive paradigm, we encourage you to be cautious about sharing advice, even though you are an expert. It takes time to learn to do things differently than the way you were taught. Also, many members of our community have received harmful advice from so-called experts, and we feel the true experts are the ones living with neurodivergence and/or disability.

Please don’t self-promote unless you have provided a detailed answer to the original question, and are mentioning your services at the end. For example, a couple paragraphs on proprioception to help a parent understand why their kid frequently drops things, and a mention that you are an OT is fine. Just commenting “pm me I’m an OT and I help clients with this” will be deleted.

What is your stance on screen time? What if I disagree?

In short, screens are valuable and dynamic learning tools, in general non-coercion means no screen limits, AND everyone should do what works for your family. It’s still unschooling if you have screen limits.

We strive to create a unique space where parents and neurodivergent and disabled adults can discuss life without screen limits. Think of the facebook group especially as a place to consider or play with the idea of dropping screen limits. We want families with no screen limits to be able to ask questions about self-regulation and self-care without being told their kids are addicted or that everything will get better if they just take away the internet.

At the same time, collaborative and nuanced family discussions around screen limits are tricky! We recognize that our members need help with this too. The new private group will have two separate “sections”–one for families with unlimited screen time and one for discussing respectful limits. You are welcome to subscribe to one or both or neither.

Because screentime disagreements can overwhelm all other discussion, if you disagree please scroll by, or look for questions from other families who share your stance on screens. We ask group members to give limits advice to families who are requesting advice on how to do limits, and not to families who ask questions about unlimited screen time.

Why does this group bring up identity, discrimination, politics etc? Things like being pro LGBTQ+, HAES (health at every size), anti-racism, not speaking negatively/venting about children, etc?

We believe that unschooling means respecting kids, and respecting kids means embracing and celebrating identity exploration as well as interrogating biases: respecting trans kids, checking whatever bias shows up when you meet kids and families who are not like you, and celebrating kids as they grow.

As part of this group’s anti-ableism work, we also stick to the idea that all behavior is communication. Parents need spaces to vent, but this isn’t a space to vent. It’s a space to be curious and try to better understand your kid, and come up to solutions when there’s conflict in your family.

I am neurodivergent and am often told I should speak or comment more gently–i.e., more like a neurotypical. Can I participate in the support group without masking?

Our admin approach has shifted a lot. This is a support group, but support doesn’t mean always being positive or agreeing with everything someone says. Support can mean pointing out bias, and we recognize that a lot of neurodivergent folks will do that bluntly. As will marginalized folks who are weary of gently correcting bias. That’s okay.

One thing we ask is to avoid “you” and “you are.” So rather than “you are ableist” or “you are fatphobic,” we ask people to say “this expectation is ableist” or “this langauge is fatphobic.” Heads up that the group as a whole leans toward personal, detailed stories as responses, such as “I had a similar expectation but realized after learning more that it was ableist.”

Admins try to vet posts, and help people rewrite questions, so that commenters don’t need to repeatedly call out ableism or other forms of bias. Generally, if you need to point out bias in a question, it means that our admin team needs to learn more about what we missed, so feel free to get in touch.

I am neurodivergent and have RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria). Will I be safe in this group?

RSD can be a barrier to getting and giving advice in this support group, even though your perspective is immensely valuable! Please let the admin team know the best way to communicate with you if there’s an issue with a comment, or if you are uncomfortable after posting a question. A lot of the work in this group is about constructive feedback, so it’s not a “safe space” to get support when you are low energy or struggling. If you are at that point and need support, please pm an admin on facebook or fill out our contact form here, and we’d be happy to chat one on one.

I have intellectual disability or slow processing, how can I access the information here?

Translating some of our resources into Easy Read is on the longterm to do list! In the meantime, feel free to get in touch and someone on our admin team can help you work through the information you need.

Why doesn’t this group address ABA, curing autism, weight loss, HSLDA, etc?

This group focuses on unschooling, neurodiversity, and anti-ableism. While we might get into the definition of unschooling, we are not qualified to moderate debates about what is and is not neurodiversity-affirming, what is and is not healthy, what is and is not ableist, etc.

There is widespread consensus in the autistic community that ABA is harmful, even while there is debate about how that harm is relative to other systemic threats, and sometimes forced onto marginalized and especially Black and BIPOC kids.

We follow the neurodiversity movement’s view of autism as genetic and how some minds work, and we aren’t qualified to vet safe medical treatments. For weight loss see HAES. HSLDA is frequently brought up as a solution for homeschoolers facing legal troubles, but after researching we don’t recommend them.

Why don’t you show photos of kids?

In a word: Informed Consent. Informed Consent is a basic and vital tenant of unschooling. The internet is a huge and wild place, but even when everyone on it is kind and nonthreatening, children deserve to know and decide who sees photos of them.

In the current age it has become normalized for parents to share photos and videos of their child at any and every stage, happy moments, sad ones, embarrassing ones. Even though parents may think to ask the child if it’s okay to post, it’s impossible for the child to give ‘informed consent’. Children may enjoy the idea of showing many people their art or play, but they may not fully understand the reality of how many people may see it.

There is of course also the risk of predatory people scouring parenting groups for photos of children. This is a real and frightening issue, but frankly, the likelihood that a child is going to feel violated just by a picture of them being posted is much more likely.

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