Responsibility and Unschooling

On Sandra Dodd's AlwaysLearning list, there was a discussion about how unschooling helps one's kids to be "responsible." I liked how Sandra mentioned that responsibility is tied to trust as that is how I see it also. She wrote, "Maybe thinking of "responsibility" as "trustworthiness" will make it easier to see in an unschooling light."

I believe that the behavior parent's model plays a large part in how children behave.

I believe that experience and a child's individual temperment/personality also play a part in how they behave and think and react.

I believe that we can't make our children come out a certain way so that they will act responsible. By saying you want them to act responsible, you are saying you want them to act the way you think is "responsible," which may have more than one solution. Truly, we can only hope and trust that they will continue to evaluate each situation in their life and then choose what action they take. Only they can determine that. I trust that they will do their best. I trust their decisions will be made just like they are being made now...based on the info they have, based on their life experiences, current health, financial situation, what we have modeled..the same things that we use to make our decisions. By trusting them to do the best they can at the time, just like we do, we realize we don't have to even think of "teaching" them how to be responsible. It will just happen, but may be different than how we would like them to be/act. They will be however they will be. Responsibility is really a judgement.

One of the best things about unschooling is the discussions that take place within families. We talk about why we make certain decisions and discuss various possibilities and possible outcomes of situations. We talk about why we do what we do or why we make the choices we make. We talk about what happens if we make a different choice and how that might affect others or the environment for example. Because we dialog with our kids as part of our normal life and respect our kid's choices as well, our kids communicate with us and we trust each other. It is a nice way to live where everyone is appreciated and different viewpoints are considered and people are accepted, even if we have different values.