The Long Game

sometimes allowing children to be children is wildly uncomfortable (for me)

Many years ago, I heard a seasoned unschooling parent claim that self-directed learning was about playing ‘the long game.’ She went on to explain that her son’s main focus for many years was play, and that he didn’t become interested in more conventional academics until he was 11 or 12. My children were 2 and 4-years-old at the time, ages where non-stop play was still ‘allowed’ by society’s standards. I couldn’t imagine a time when I would begin to worry about whether or not my children were reaching academic benchmarks, so I didn’t really understand this idea of ‘the long game’ in this context - but I had an inkling that what she said was important, so I tucked it into the back of my mind, knowing it would most likely make better sense to me at some point in the future.

‘The long game’ wasn’t a new phrase for me; when I was teaching, it’s how those of us who prioritized social/emotional learning (as well as academic instruction) justified what we were doing in our classrooms, especially during the first weeks of school. While some teachers immediately jumped into lessons, assessments, and rubrics, we spent the first month building a cohesive classroom community. We used that time to lay the groundwork onto which we would build our year together: playing games, discovering activities we enjoyed, and getting to know each other as people. We named our Hopes and Dreams for the school year, co-created our rules, and practiced methods of repair. Thinking about the ‘long game’, especially when it came to our classroom community, meant taking the time to build a foundation of belonging, joy, and safety. 

I’m not going to lie - I allowed my eyes to wander during the early months of the school year. I saw what other classrooms were ‘producing’, what lessons they were covering, and how much more ‘advanced’ they appeared than my students. They were flying through the curriculum, while the bulk of our time was spent deepening our relationships to one another and fostering an environment of trust and bravery. We worked to have a classroom of people who knew and supported one another, and who had the opportunity to delve deeply and meaningfully into different academic subjects. Because we moved at our own pace, the academic component of our classroom didn’t usually look like those who were plowing through lessons and units of study. Many of the students in those classrooms had little-to-no investment in what they were learning - even if, on the outside, it looked like they were accomplishing a great deal.

I remember being questioned through the years: Why is your class spending so much time talking and playing games? Why do you make time for Morning Meetings and Closing Circles? Why do you schedule extra play time? How can you give your students so much choice - won’t they fall ‘behind’? It’s funny - when I look back to my teaching years - we did get to the required curricula, we just did it in our own way and in our own time. Did we score as high on state and city assessments? I don’t know (and don’t care). I would argue that we learned as much about ourselves and each other as we did the subjects we tackled - something not valued by coercive institutions, but highly valued by me. I was told, year after year, how joyful and invested our students were in their learning. Also, how adept they were at resolving conflicts, naming their emotions, and voicing their opinions - skills I believe were worth taking the time to practice.

Fast forward a few years and I’m now a mama to six-and-(almost) nine-year-old unschoolers. They are not drawn to most conventional academics at this point in their lives. They move at their own pace. Z and K’s days are centered around play - with Lego, technology, clay, and other children for hours at a time. This is not the norm for children their age. Schooled children are spending their days improving the skills deemed important by society - becoming skilled at reading, writing, and mathematics from an early age. It can be wildly uncomfortable to see how other children are quickly obtaining academic skills while my children are experimenting with food and attempting to rescue Zelda. I mean, I’m human; I see what schooled children can do and what my children can not (yet) do. Sometimes it can feel demoralizing to know that my children are seen as ‘less than’ by people who measure intelligence by schoolish standards. I will admit that, even five years into this unschooling journey, I still sometimes wonder whether we should ditch this unconventional lifestyle and join the rest of society. But here’s the thing - instead of jumping to ‘fix’ it, I am allowing myself to be uncomfortable. Like, the sitting-in-the-muck-and-comparing-and-feeling-envy-and-wondering-if-this-is-a-horrible-mistake kind of uncomfortable. And, usually - I am able to get to a place where I can breathe and remember: we entered into this lifestyle with a desire for our children to understand themselves, to follow their curiosities, and to develop our family’s relationship to each other outside of conventional structures. 

In school, you know if you are ‘succeeding’ - there are grades and report cards and tests (I don’t agree with any of these as a measure of a person, but alas…). An unschooling life is murkier. You can’t quantify what’s happening within a young unschooler who spends their days immersed in play and conversation. But every once and a while I see glimpses of how our practices - centering relationships and dismantling coercive practices - manifest in my children’s lives. Z and K have an understanding of their own minds and bodies, they advocate for themselves and others, they work to repair after causing harm, and they luxuriate in their chosen activities. In addition to play, we converse about everything - what we love, what we find challenging, what we dream about. I know this is important, integral work and yet - I’ve had to check myself more than a few times over the course of my deschooling journey when I’ve allowed my eyes to wander away from my own children in order to compare them to those on a completely different path.

When I am able to be a witness to the full lives my children are living now, I have little-to-no desire to compare them to young people who spend their days very differently. The choice we are making to live life outside of convention is intentional; the rush to acquire academic skills is not as important to us at this point in time. Can our children do everything schooled kids do on the same schedule? Absolutely not. Will they have the exact knowledge base of someone who has gone through the school system? Nope. Is this a bad thing? I suppose it’s up for debate, but my experience and intuition says no. Schoolishness will convince us that there is a certain curriculum and a finite amount of time to learn academic skills. I’ve spent many years interrogating that indoctrination, and have come to the conclusion that we’ve been deceived. What has been sold to us as ‘necessary’ knowledge (especially at specific ages), is untrue. There is plenty of time. There are different pathways. 

“The long game” does make a lot more sense to me now that my children are older and we are constantly bumping up against conventional beliefs. My only issue with the phrase is that it implies we have the same end goal as those who send their children to school, and that may not be true. My intention is to partner with my young people on their unique path, regardless of the outcome. In order to do this, I am working to strengthen my patience and trust work: fewer ‘shoulds’ and more ‘ahas’. I’m continuing to trust: that my children will learn what they need to know when they need to know it; that taking time to savor what is happening right now is beneficial in ways that might not be visible to the outside eye, that success means a lot more than high grades, honor rolls, and accolades, and that a life outside of convention does not need to be compared to a life inside of convention.

I’m learning that it’s all part of the journey - drowning out the noise and focusing on my children as unique and sovereign beings, moving at their own pace, comparable to no one.