Sunday, May 26 2:00 pm-3:00 pm
Fort Vancouver Ballroom

Unschooling families come in all shapes and sizes, and caregivers contribute in their own unique ways. For families that have one employed caregiver and one who primarily supports the kids' unschooling journey, there may be both spoken and unspoken challenges about the balance of responsibilities.

In this talk, I'll share some reflections about my own experience as a full-time employed unschooling parent. We'll get into some deep thorny topics:

- the feelings of pressure as a "breadwinner"
- the sometimes-agonizing feeling of telling the kids "I have to work" (which seems to directly contradict the unschooling philosophy!)
- the feelings of "not enoughness" that partners sometimes experience when they are not bringing home a paycheck themselves
- ...and the inversely-proportional "not enoughness" that employed caregivers may feel if they do not have as much time to spend with the kids

I don't claim to have it all figured out, but I'll share some strategies that have been helpful to me and my family. We'll explore how we set intentions to fill each others' "love buckets", and how to find the right amount of schedule and structure to support that. We'll break down the concept of "work" and how we can validate each others' contributions to the family in all forms.

Finally, I'll introduce a silly but powerful concept we call "the feather for your bear trap” that can give children a window into our professional identities, and turn otherwise "boring work stuff" into meaningful connections and opportunities for shared learning.*

* You can get a sneak peak of this concept by checking out a video of a tech conference talk that two of our kids co-presented with me in 2019: https://vimeo.com/341142428