About

I'm Kaitlin, she/her. I'm a white cis woman, unschooling parent, podcaster, social media admin, and former academic.

My work explores unschooling with a critical feminist eye, meaning that when I talk about learning from life and trusting my children, I also talk about gender, class, race, neurodiversity, the environment, culture, and labor. 

 I believe that childism is at the heart of abuses of power and toxic personal and systemic relationships. Refusing childism means seeing my children as autonomous. This includes seeing neurodivergent people, children and adults, as autonomous and wonderful in their diversity--not problems or errors that need fixing. The support group I help run, Unschooling Every Family, aims to hold space for neurodivergent and disabled lived experiences while also meeting parents where they are at in this ableist, schoolish world.

When I started unraveling these threads--all the "shoulds" and biases that unschooling forced me to question--my life changed dramatically. I explore people's stories about this kind of change on my podcast, Untangling Ourselves. The podcast has mini-memoirs about big changes people have made in their own lives (whether it's deschooling, deprogramming, finding their joy) or changes they make in the world (shifting culture, working toward a more just and kind world). 

I called this blog Seedling Song because even though these growing children are so new, they’ve shown me their voices and their amazing, unexpected ways of being in the world. I learn new songs every day and try to write them down. 

 Another focus of this blog is my passion: books. (Update: My book reviews can now be found on Book Wyrm, the fediverse alternative to good reads or amazon reviews). Especially non-coercive, beautiful, and inspiring children’s books. Why books that save your life? I’ve had so many friends and family experience life-threatening depression, anxiety, and addiction. I believe that the reflection, beauty, and joy that books offer can help grown ups see their children and themselves. And I think we need books and movies to see where we stand, how others see the world, what injustices we enable, and how our suffering is systemic and not our fault.

 I have a PhD in English, but have turned away from the entrenched hierarchies of academia and towards the abundance and exploration of unschooling. Everyday I’m learning about myself and my family, seeking peace and generosity in part via critique of coercive and damaging cultural norms.

 What is unschooling?

"Unschooling is “delight-driven, inquiry-based, self-directed life learning.” 
—Idzie Desmarais

 Sounds pleasant, but the implications of that statment are mind blowing. 

I also like Sue Patterson’s explanation on Unschooling Mom2Mom:

"Unschooling is trusting yourself and trusting your child; and that takes a good amount of nerve. When a parent sends a child to a school or even decides to go with a particular curriculum, they are handing over their trust and their child to the school/curriculum. A “leaving it to them!” mentality sets in and for many families, this is a relief. Unschooling families don’t want to go that route. They are willing to shoulder the responsibility for the education of their child, because they have faith that learning is something that humans naturally want to do – and their children are no exception to this rule."
--Sue Patterson