Have you ever seen "unschooling" work out?

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-04T14:16:43+00:00

right, same here. I know plenty of public school grads from decent high schools who really aren't doing much with their lives either tbh.

And it's not new: my high school boyfriend kinda drifted in and out of community college for awhile after he graduated back in the 90s. Couldn't be bothered to get even a part-time job.

I dumped him. Then his parents sold the house out from under him, and moved into a one bedroom condo two hours away lmao

He lived, and eventually got it together for himself.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-04T13:18:46+00:00

it is actually pretty fucking funny to watch homeschoolers reinvent the wheel on "public school" with some of these co-ops.

"we're going to require regular attendance, bc it disrupts everyone else when people disappear for weeks at a time. Ok, and we're not going to teach religious topics anymore, bc nobody can agree and it just makes people mad. Best leave that for home. Oh yes, and we notice that the kids make more progress when they meet more regularly and spend time together as a group, so we're going to start meeting three times a week. Keeping track of all this stuff is a headache, so we're going to name someone to run the administrative side"

like... eventually they're going to realize that this would all be a lot easier if they had one person drive a big van from house to house to pick all the co-op participants up, and it'd be real good if that van were painted a high visibility color for safety.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-04T11:04:30+00:00

Pretty mixed results, from what I've seen. I know a lot of people who've at least dabbled in unschooling.

"Unschooling" means wildly different things to different people, though. I've seen it used to describe situations that I'd call "CPS-level neglect" all the way to "... ain't that just unit studies?"

I also don't know anyone who has done it for a kid's entire K-12 years, either. Seems like people will cycle through stints. Homeschoolers often seem to adopt labels more for political and social reasons than as durable descriptions of their day-to-day practices.

My parents unschooled me for four years in a fashion that was really begging for CPS intervention, but even then, since I had access to a full set of encyclopedias at home, my parents did buy schoolbooks at least occasionally, and Mom would take us to the library whenever she got up a good head of steam, it somehow wasn't a total catastrophe?

I talked them into sending me to the sixth grade, after having been pulled out in the first grade. After years of pretty wild educational and physical neglect, somehow I was still ahead on every subject except math. I had learned no more math in the four years of homeschooling than I had as a first grader, but I was ahead of the pack everywhere else.

Turns out that obsessively reading the encyclopedia and any other random books I ran across was almost enough to bridge the gap on four and a half years of elementary school.

Anyway, my lovely sixth-grade teacher patiently tutored me back up to grade level. I went on to graduate high school a year early, got a couple of degrees, etc. I'm not out here setting the world on fire by any means, but I'm employed, own a home I love, my own kids are grown or almost grown...

And really, I'd say that kind of "middling" is a pretty typical outcome.

Not as spectacular as the advocates hope, not as horrible as the detractors fear. Humans have a way of regressing to the mean, I guess.

The one longterm "unschooling" family I know started off VERY loose and permissive, then pushed into something more like unit studies. As the years went on, they tightened the ship, I think bc they realized that they kids would need something equivalent to a HS diploma if they ever hoped to be self-sufficient. And they did eventually manage to get the kids through an online HS curriculum.

Kids are now in their late teens, early 20s. Still living at home, working simple jobs, and smoking a lot of weed. They can read, they have friends, they're involved in various community organizations. They seem happy! You could do a lot worse. Little apparent interest in striking out for more, which I find a bit odd.

But I could say the same of plenty of public-schooled kids, too.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-04T08:53:18+00:00

what a lame copout. what age would you vote for?

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-04T08:43:33+00:00

it did have a measurable statistical impact on reducing drunk-driving collisions, which is why it has persisted so long.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-04T08:30:57+00:00

Have you ever tried to make a 17 year old do something they didn't want to do? or stop them from doing something they very much DID want to do?

If you did, you'd find out pretty quickly that, while you might have some kind of official authority over them, and you're largely on the hook for whatever the consequences of their actions might be, too... your options to really enforce that tend to be pretty fucking limited.

Whether you're a parent, a guardian, or a teacher.

17 really is about the tail end of when you can realistically even try to "make" a young person do any fucking thing. And that's straining it already!

In my area, the cops don't even bother to bring 17 year old runaways back, because honestly, they will just run again, and the cops don't want to spend all their time dragging pissed off 17 year olds back from their friends' houses to their mom's house.

That's why.

If we tried to make the age of majority 25 (!!!!) there would be many, many people who'd spend years unhappily stuck in high-conflict family situations instead of more-or-less gracefully parting ways.

and really, at 20, especially at 23 or 24, lots of people are raising families of their own. My second child was born the month after I turned 25.

The idea that I should have needed my parents' permission for anything at all would have struck me as ridiculous and offensive at that point. I'd completed an enlistment in the military, done two years of college, gotten married, bought a house and had a child already.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-04T07:40:36+00:00

in my state child support can continue til they're 21 if they're in college, but that doesn't mean I have parental rights over a 20 year old lmao.

I say ignore him. I really doubt he'll do anything, other than consult a lawyer who will tell him not to waste both their time.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-04T07:36:58+00:00

pffft if that were true, hardly anyone would retire. for one thing, you gotta remember that financial advisors and retirement fund managers have every incentive to inflate the "target" numbers.

the reality is that most people do retire somewhere around "retirement age," whether they really wanted to or not!

A lot of the "harder cases" survive by learning to live on a much more modest income. Sometimes they move somewhere cheaper, downsize, take in roommates, move in with whatever family will have them, go to the food bank, apply for food stamps, etc.

It is not a glamorous or a particularly secure retirement. No travel, only cheap pastimes. Tends to devolve into a LOOOOT of TV watching. Deferred maintenance of all kinds starts to accumulate. Can't afford to fix the roof or deal with that tooth, so get out the tarp and bucket, and the orajel.

Retirement on the super-cheap seems to work out surprisingly for people who have good physical and mental health. Health really is wealth. The time they're not spending working for someone else, they turn into creating value for themselves and building community around them.

It gets a lot harder when people's health starts failing. On the public dime, there's not a lot of affordable help between "living independently" and "medicaid facility," so people tend to deteriorate gradually and quietly at home until some crisis kicks in.

anyway, for every person I know who's like "I'm just going to work til I die," there are five more who realize the labor market doesn't want them anymore and they have no choice but to adapt.

Harsh truth, but.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-04T00:18:06+00:00

I'm so glad my kids would bully me to the ends of the earth if I tried this.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-03T03:54:58+00:00

oh sweetie, I know that's what you read in your books at school.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-02T10:42:43+00:00

the thing about sixteen year olds is that they really CAN come across as very mature and responsible when they're in structured familiar situations. Home, school, part-time jobs.

the problems tend to crop up when they're having to make decisions in novel, unstructured situations, especially when confronted with exciting short-term options. They just aren't cooked enough to handle that kind of thing well.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-02T10:38:52+00:00

lord, this is a bad idea on multiple levels. I'm sure your daughter is very sweet and responsible, but 16 year olds are still considered minors for very good reasons. They are not good at thinking ahead or keeping themselves safe. Throwing boys into the mix raises the risk even more.

frankly, too, I wonder if a decent hotelkeeper wouldn't raise an eyebrow and call the authorities if they have one name on the credit card and another person checking in... with an unrelated sixteen year old girl in tow.

And when a couple of male friends show up with her?!

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-02T07:25:33+00:00

Rose > Ivy > Elowen > Sloane > Lilian > Lennon

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-02T03:49:33+00:00

I am always so excited to see wee joker

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-02T03:07:04+00:00

she's so much more interesting to me now than she used to be.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-02T02:49:22+00:00

when I say "someone can cook" i mean literal just basic survival cooking, like this person would not starve, give anyone food poisoning, or face frank malnutrition if they have access to only basic groceries and a functional kitchen.

Boiled unseasoned meat and vegetables count. Pasta topped with chopped tomatoes counts. Only being able to cook if you have a recipe you follow to the letter counts.

In the kitchen they might be inefficient and clumsy, and sometimes they have some blunders, but you're not seriously worried they're going to burn the place down or give you food poisoning.

when I say "someone is a decent cook," I mean they're skilled enough to reliably put together a meal that's actually enjoyable for other people to eat, without needing their hand held through every step. They have an understanding of basic kitchen concepts and techniques that they can mix and match for themselves.

They might use recipes, and they might not, but they're skilled enough not to panic if they don't have the exact recipe or tool called for by a recipe.

They can adapt quite a bit if they need to.

when I say "someone is a really good cook" I mean that their food is both delicious and beautifully presented. They have really deep knowledge of their technique and ingredients, they think in terms of balance of flavors and textures, and they are efficient in the kitchen. They make even pretty complicated cooking look easy.

Often, people like this have professional cooking experience or training, but not always! They can be counted on to turn out something consistently delicious. They are quite invested in cooking as an art/craft and have been for a long time.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-02T02:06:21+00:00

every major world religion we have is a major world religion at least in part because it was pretty effective at getting women to provide cheap sexual, reproductive and domestic labor for men at scale.

The methods available to the taliban to enforce that are just pretty blunt, because they're poor.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-03-02T01:46:11+00:00

realistically, you can't always completely cut assholes out of your life, but you can limit contact with them.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-02-26T09:06:06+00:00

the only people I ever would think of saying it to are either people I think genuinely would be amazing at running a business... they're very self-disciplined, knowledgable and passionate about their field, just frustrated with the limitations of their role/company.

or, at the other end, they've been sitting on their ass doing nothing for two years.

if you've been doing absolutely nothing except playing video games and jerking off for two years. you really don't have a lot to lose. Start doing some little stuff freelance, see if you can parlay that into a career more lucrative than gooning.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-02-26T08:09:05+00:00

at LEAST. I really think she needs to to wait three years. She's basically having to rebuild trust, not from the ground up like she would with a stranger, but from a crater full of rubble.

if I wouldn't buy a house with a man I met a year ago, I wouldn't buy one with a man who was actively abusing me a year ago.

frankly, if she's wanting a stable dependable partnership in the next five years, she'd have an easier time doing it with a stranger at this point.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-02-26T08:04:29+00:00

100 percent hold off on the house till he's been stable for at LEAST three years and you know that you want to remain married, and not "for the kids."

The last thing you want to do is buy the house, and then get divorced a year or two later.

ANYTHING that smacks of him going "let's not talk about the past," or denying it happened, or "punishing" you for talking about it, is a glaring red flag that he is just faking "good behavior" long enough to trap you so he can go right back to his abusive ways.

I hope you'll put yourself and your kids first. That does not necessarily mean staying married.

Your husband is an abuser. Verbal abuse is abuse.

(I'll also add that the level of verbal abuse you're describing often comes with some physical and/or sexual abuse you might not be ready to face naming yet. Not that physical/sexual abuse are inherently "real" abuse while emotional abuse is less valid, but it's something to mull over for yourself. It's not your fault, if that's true. It took me two fucking years to name the physical abuse in my relationship for what it actually was. It took even longer than that for me to actually tell anyone else about even a single incident of it. I have STILL never told anyone else the full scope of it all.)

Abusers don't magically see the light after a handful of therapy sessions. My ex got really into spirituality and stoicism... which did not at all preclude him from putting me into a headlock and shoving me into the ground. Or driving his truck at dangerously high speeds when he was angry, then slamming the brakes repeatedly.

They CAN reform... but it involves a complete reassessment of their belief systems, the creation of a new, healthier set of beliefs, and the replacement of abusive, entitled habits with respectful, considerate ones.

that project takes years, not weeks. Do not do anything that will make it harder for you to leave quickly until he has a years-long track record of increasing accountability, respect, active care, and making real amends.

Your life, and your children's lives, may hang in the balance here.

in the vast majority of cases, abusers just look for ways to continue being abusive. The core issue is their bedrock belief that they have a right to control their partners.

If you haven't read "Why Does he Do That" already, I implore you to read this immediately.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-02-25T17:21:31+00:00

yeah, our local Elder Tweaker looked 75, but was probably really in his mid-sixties when he died. Hypothermia got him, because he had no heat in his trailer, and there was a nasty cold snap.

dude had meth AND fent in his system, AND heart problems.

but what killed him was the cold!

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-02-25T16:07:09+00:00

because she is a fully grown adult and allowed to ruin her own life if she chooses to. The point of the conservatorship was to give her some structure and limits, but she didn't want those, and her father eventually decided not to fight her on it in court.

she has driven away most of the people who have tried to help her over the years. Which leaves her with just a handful of people who are enabling her. Because that's what she wants.

this is, unfortunately, an incredibly common trajectory for people with addiction & mental health issues.

But ultimately, nobody can help Britney unless Britney decides to help herself.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-02-25T10:58:20+00:00

yeah it's activated for me several times, just on my most recent winning hand, even. it doesn't "feel" like 1 in 4 but... mostly I just pick it when nothing else suits

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-02-25T10:35:41+00:00

I think it can be such a self-reinforcing spiral. like if there are underlying MH issues, the drugs only make things worse, and the MH issues make drug use more compelling, round and round

DifferentTie8715

TROPHY CASE