{"id":39501,"date":"2023-06-27T11:59:54","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T18:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westriveracademy.com\/?p=39501"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:22:39","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T19:22:39","slug":"deschooling-the-adult-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westriveracademy.com\/en\/deschooling-the-adult-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"A simple way to do unschooling: deschooling the adult brain"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When we start the path of unschooling, it is almost always through our children; for a long time, we think this is for them. The reality is that our children are just the excuse to be able to unschooled ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t

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Unschooling the adult brain<\/strong> is an idea that comes to mind abstractly. It is an intuition and a feeling that we do not say out loud since we do not know how “correct” that phrase is. This feeling is the first indication that you started your journey to freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unschooling as a Philosophy of Life<\/h2>\n

It is typical to feel embarrassed by the idea of \u200b\u200btaking the reins of family education since part of our schooling starts from being ashamed of being free and feeling special and unique. Just thinking about it would be ridiculous and even selfish if we were to feel it. If you thought this way or are feeling this way, I hug you, and today we will take one more step toward that feeling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our children have spent less time in school, and in some cases, they have not been in school, so they are not the ones who have to adapt to their new life<\/strong>. They have to adjust to you, the schooled adult, to adjust to their new life.<\/span><\/p>\n

This article is written so that you can embrace your adaptation as an adult towards unschooling<\/strong>, give yourself permission to go through your process as long as you need it, and not bring your children into your process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once we understand that unschooling is not an educational method, but a family lifestyle<\/strong>, you will see how everything flows at home and have the calm and freedom you were looking for when the idea first entered your brain. It takes time and is uphill after a year or so of trying. It is normal. Furthermore, it is part of the process.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

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Unschooling the adult brain<\/h2>\n

The first thing to know is how the brain learns<\/strong>. It does through external incentives, whatever they may be, and it also has such plasticity that it can adapt to any new motivation, which allows us to learn and unlearn with or without awareness of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The neurons receive the information, make it travel through the synapse, and if this same stimulus is repeated several times, then memories are forged.<\/span><\/p>\n

Memories are not always forged by repetition. The brain needs to be excited to learn<\/strong>, and a strong emotional experience, whether pleasant or not, can fix specific learning in our brain just by feeling it once. Both schooling and unschooling provide and are enriched by this same process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unschooling stages<\/h2>\n

It does not matter if we start unschooling in our children’s adolescence or when they are two years old; our unschooling process is usually activated in the same order.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout our school life, they have imbued us with different levels of fears and requirements to meet according to the stage we live in the school. We will transmit these fears<\/strong> to our children without the need to place them out loud but transform them into exacerbated security and protection.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For this first stage, which is ours… as adults, we will continuously scan our fears<\/strong>. Why continuously? Because the vast majority of our worries linked to school are unconscious and only surface when an action activates them<\/strong>; then there will be many, many fears that you will not be able to work on by only sitting in the living room of your house and with a coffee contemplating the horizon; it is more likely you will do it at the moment in which you interact with other people, mainly with your children.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

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The two levels of guilt and the limits<\/h2>\n

To start unlearning, learning, and relearning to forge our new lifestyle, we must be aware of our beliefs<\/strong> and how they govern us. To eliminate the guilt that unconsciously seeds fear in us.<\/span><\/p>\n

To do this continuously, we have to realize that we took our children out of the educational system because several things did not resonate with us<\/strong>, and one of them is how far the system is from the personal reality of its students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A reality not seen in the educational system is that adults have feelings, emotions and that we are not perfect. In fact, for the traditional educational method, showing our feelings and doubts in front of our children symbolizes weakness.<\/strong> The way to do this exercise is by showing our children that we are exploring this path with as many uncertainties as they are and that sometimes we can feel overwhelmed and do not understand why.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this exercise, we are going to investigate two levels of guilt through these three questions:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n