These resources offer parenting, unschooling, neurodiversity, and disability rights support. Lots of group members have found them to be centered in connection and affirmation, offering non-coercive and anti-ableist advice and insight.
Some of our most often recommended resources are Kristi Forbes, Tiffany Hammond, Ross Greene, Iris Chen, and Emily Hammond.
Intune Pathways (Kristi Forbes)
“Kristy is passionate about radical acceptance, and the profound need for a paradigm shift that moves us as a society from a perspective of autism as a medical disorder to an identity and a culture that is interwoven with pride, inherent and organic autistic expression and intersectionality with our sibling communities such as the LGBTQIA+ community and many others.”
Tiffany Hammond at Fidgets and Fries
“Sharing stories to challenge the perception of disability as a lifelong burden, cultivating a community that explores Intersectionality, and inspiring thought leadership through storytelling, education, and critical discourse.”
Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (Dr. Ross Greene)
“Rather than focusing on kids’ concerning behaviors (and modifying them), CPS helps kids and caregivers solve the problems that are causing those behaviors. The problem solving is collaborative (not unilateral) and proactive (not reactive). Research has shown that the model is effective not only at solving problems and improving behavior but also at enhancing skills.”
*Many families find CPS essential in the deschooling process, and in adjusting when, even after years of unschooling, kids are still struggling. We recommend CPS along with learning about your child’s lived experience from adults who share their disabilities and/or neurodivergence.
Untigering (Iris Chen)
“I am a deconstructing tiger mother who is trying to become a gentle parent.”
Emily Hammond at Neurowild
“Hi I’m Em! Sparkly AuDHDer Speech Pathologist, Mum to three ND kiddos, artist, illustrator, cat-lover.” Graphics illustrating key concepts in neurodiversity affirmation.
Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint
“Our mission is to inform changes in policy and practice to reduce and eliminate the use of punitive discipline and outdated behavioral management approaches and end the school-to-prison pipeline.”
Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network
“The mission of Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network (AWN) is to provide community support, and resources for Autistic women, girls, transfeminine and transmasculine nonbinary people, trans people of all genders, Two Spirit people, and all people of marginalized genders or of no gender. AWN is committed to recognizing and celebrating diversity and the many intersectional experiences in our community.”
Trauma Geek (Janae Elisabeth)
“Researcher-storyteller. Neurodiversity advocate. Here to share the emerging science of trauma, neurology, relationships, and community.”
“Working in a classroom with small children changed my mind about schooling.”
Becca Campbell at Your Vision Coach
“As a coach, consultant, and facilitator I am dedicated to helping creative individuals, small businesses, and families engage more deeply in their lives. With over nine years of experience in coaching, my passion for increasing joy, connection and authentic expression continues to fuel my work.”
Crystal Byrd Farmer at Gastonia Freedom School
“Crystal Byrd Farmer is an engineer turned educator, organizer, and speaker. She attended University of South Carolina and received dual degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Russian Studies. After working in engineering for six years, Crystal became a freelance technical writer and eventually found her way into the world of self-directed learning and intentional communities.” Author of The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization.
“Gastonia Freedom School offers real-life education in an environment that encourages creativity and independence. Our center serves homeschool students with autism, ADHD, and intellectual disabilities. We use self-directed learning to empower children to learn academics and life skills at their own pace.”
“Rayne Depukat is an Autistic, multiply Neurodivergent, multiply disabled professional working as an advocate, consultant and coach. . ..Rayne has extensive experience and training on the federal laws and systems that are applicable to minors, transitional age and older adults with disabilities at multiple levels of government. This includes IDEA, 504 and the ADA and how they apply at different stages of life and in different scenarios. . . . As an ASL/English interpreter, she has specialized in mental health and substance use work as well as working with Deaf disabled populations both as a freelancer and as staff.”
Wandering Brightly (Marni Kammersell)
“As a homeschooling and neurodiversity consultant, I love sharing the latest research in neuroscience. I enjoy helping families transition from traditional educational models into homeschooling in a way that works for their unique learners. I am a SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted) Model Parent Group trained facilitator.”
Nurturing Neurodiversity (Naomi Fischer and Heidi Steel)
Naomi and Heidi are support specialists for families and professionals working alongside children with additional needs. Bringing together their professional backgrounds in clinical psychology, and education, with their own life experience to offer compassionate programmes. See also Naomi’s book “A Different Way to Learn” and Heidi’s podcast “Live Play Learn / Unschooling Conversations.“
“Dr. Bayo Akomolafe considers his most sacred work to be learning how to be with his daughter and son, Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden – and their mother, his wife and “life-nectar”, Ijeoma. “To learn the importance of insignificance” is the way he frames a desire to reacquaint himself with a world that is irretrievably entangled, preposterously alive and completely partial.”
“So here I am, blogging about my Chicanx family’s quest, to reclaim the power and tradition of our ancestral self directed education. I’m a self directed life long learner by necessity, travel writer by passion and activist by conviction and need. We are learning to run our family life from the intersection of reclamation of ancestral traditions, practices and values, while prioritizing the achievement of social justice for our family and those around us.”
At Peace Parents (Casey Ehrlich)
“I’m Casey Ehrlich, Ph.D., and I can give you the tools and strategies you need to support a PDA child or child with a hyper-sensitive threat response.”
“The Fund practices redistributive justice and mutual aid by returning and sharing money directly to and with autistic people of color. We provide microgrants to Black, Brown, Native, Asian, and mixed-race people in the autistic community for survival, organizing, leisure, and pleasure.”
Jules Edwards at Autistic, Typing
“Jules Edwards is an Anishinaabe writer, gardener, accountant, and disability justice advocate. She is a neurodivergent parent of neurodivergent children. Experiencing disability through multiple lenses has helped her to help others. She writes as “Autistic, Typing” on her website and social media. Her first book, I Will Die On This Hill: Autistic Adults, Autism Parents, and the Children Who Deserve a Better World, was co-written with Meghan Ashburn.”
Maleka Diggs at Ecclectic Learning Network
“Maleka Diggs, “Disruptor of Monoliths” and owner of Eclectic Learning Network is an unschooling advocate and equity-centered organizational strategist. With a focus on serving BIPOC communities, Maleka provides consultancy, coaching, and advisory services for families, self-directed learning spaces, schools (public and private), and other organizations rooted in belonging, culture, trust, and identity. She is also co-founder of the Philly Children’s Movement, a “multi-racial and multi-generational collective of families talking, playing, and raising up for racial justice!””
Idzie Desmarais at I’m Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write
“Grown unschooler, life learner, and unschooling advocate. Writer and blogger. Cooker, baker, and fermenter of tasty foods. Queer-anarcha-feminist. Avid reader and watcher of fantasy and supernatural genres. Seeking the radical rural homesteading dream.”
Andrea Landry at Indigenous Motherhood
“Andrea Landry believes that the route to healing from colonialism comes from the heart work that most people avoid in our communities and through how one chooses to raise their children. Through forgiveness, overcoming colonial systems being seen as a means for solutions, and prioritizing indigenous ways of being over colonial ways of being, Andrea believes our communities can become as healthy as they were prior to colonization. For our nations to thrive, we must thrive as parents, families, and communities.”
Living Joyfully Network (Pam Larrichia)
In the Network, we bring together unschooling parents to support and learn from each other as we question and explore many of the conventional beliefs around learning and parenting so that we can more gracefully navigate our personal unschooling journeys, develop strong and connected relationships with our children, and cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in our families.
“Once we acknowledge that behaviors are meaningful and protective adaptations to a child’s internal experience, we can create a whole new range of compassionate and individually tailored options that surpass simply managing behaviors.”
Chemay Morales, My Reflection Matters Village
“Chemay is a Social Liberation Coach and Parent Organizer with over 17 years of experience working as a social justice educator. After teaching in public schools, her work took a turn when she served nearly a decade as an equity coach for NYU’s Metro Center on Research for Equity and the Transformation of Schools. While inspired by the culturally responsive curriculum work she led and developed at NYU, she was frustrated with the lack of culturally relevant educational tools, and left in 2016 to build My Reflection Matters, LLC (MRM). MRM is an online space where parents and educators can easily find resources, services and trainings that center the lived experiences of children of color.. .Chemay provides support for non-profits, educational institutions, family and youth service providers, and un/homeschoolers of color. In the winter of 2018, she started CT’s first self-directed un/homeschooling co-op in Waterbury for families raising liberated Black and Brown and/or socially conscious kids. Chemay unschools her two boys, five and seven.”
Meghan Ashburn at Not an Autism Mom
“Finding the Autistic community – especially those who are Nonspeaking – completely transformed my outlook on autism. It took years to unlearn what I was taught about my Autistic children. In an effort to help the next parent out, I started Not an Autism Mom.” Also includes extensive, well-vetted neurodiversity book lists as part of That Au-Some Book Club.
Raising Free People Network (Akilah S. Richards)
“This work examines the ways that we have accepted coercive, emotionally and physically damaging habits as a normal part of adult-child relationships. We focus on self-inquiry, deschooling, and most importantly, decolonization. Our intention is to expose the world to people who, like us, are working to migrate from the coercion and fear shrapnel of colonization. Akilah is called to be among the many who contribute to the collective walk toward ways of living with children that center community, address civil rights issues, and believe in trusting and respecting children.”
Noleca Radway at Raising Rebels
“Raising Rebels is a parenting podcast featuring courageous conversations with real parents. Parenting can be so lonely. Our work is to encourage children to be fully themselves in a society that doesn’t always celebrate them. This season, we tackle everything from sexuality and race, to co-parenting and money, all with the goal of liberating our children.”
Visual resources and writing from an adult PDAer. Also on facebook.
“I tweet for the Black married moms who homeschool. We outchea. Unschooler. Gentle parenting.”
Tony Kryptonian/Anthony Galloway
“One day I thought to myself, I could not have been the first African American who entered the field with a desire to revolutionize schools and save the youth. After some independent reading and research about the history of the American education system backed up with some knowledge of psychology, it dawned on me that the system wasn’t broken, that it was working as intended. I quickly decided that school psychology was not the avenue for me. What I wanted to do, as it related to children and education, was opposite of the very premise of the traditional model.”
Unschooling Mom2Mom (Sue Patterson)
“Sue Patterson is a coach and mentor for parents whose children are miserable in the school/traditional homeschool system and are looking for a better fit for their child/children.”
“Zakiyya Ismail is an advocate for freedom in education. Her three children have always been unschooling. She has been supporting and has been consistently sharing her reflections on the intersections of unschooling with decolonisation, social change and unschooling’s foundational role in social justice.”
Other Facebook groups
ADHD Adults Homeschooling ADHD Kids
Lens Change: PDA Families Practicing Collaborative Parenting
Mealtime Hostage (selective eating/ARFID)
2e (Twice exceptional) Support Group for Non-Ableist Parents
Unschooling Every Family 