We're back with another episode in our Parenting series, in which we explore our relationships with our children. In today's episode, we're talking about embracing all kinds of learning. Most of us grew up hearing that school is where learning happens and that the things that are taught in a school curriculum are the important things to learn. Honoring all the many ways that we can learn and the many unique interests that each person has is another way to deepen our connection with the people in our lives.

We hope today's episode sparks some fun insights for you and we invite you to dive deeper with our Episode Questions. Join us on Instagram or YouTube to continue the conversation and share your reflections.

Let’s dig deep, challenge paradigms, choose connection, and live joyfully!

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EPISODE QUESTIONS

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1. What are some ways you see your child learning outside the classroom? What about outside the teacher-student dynamic?

2. What does your child like to do at home? What interest(s) are they expressing through that activity? Can you think of more ways you can bring that interest into their days?

3. Can you think of some ways to cultivate your child’s burgeoning self-awareness? Recognizing they are a different person than you (check out episode 3), how can you help them learn more about how they tick? Can you give them some more space to explore that?

4. How are you feeling about embracing and valuing the many kinds of learning that happen outside a classroom?

TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast! We are happy you're here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world.

If you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes, particularly the first 14 in our foundations series, because we continue to reference these fundamental relationship ideas and tools pretty often in our conversations. And if you've already been enjoying the podcast, we'd love it if you could leave a rating and review wherever you listen. That definitely helps new people find us.

So, today's episode is part of our Parenting series. The first episode in this series, episode 16, was about how we don't need to bring school home. Life is bigger than school, and a child is more than their grades. School can be school. In the next parenting episode, number 19, we talked about celebrating the child in front. That shift in perspective from trying to shape our child into our vision of the "perfect child" to discovering, supporting, and celebrating the unique child in front of us makes all the difference in cultivating strong and connected lifelong relationships with our kids.

So, now we're going to bring both of these pieces together to explore and hopefully soon embrace not just school-based learning, but all kinds of learning. There are lots of ways of learning that don't look like a classroom, that don't require a hierarchical teacher-student dynamic. There are more informal environments like groups who gather around their interests in person or online. And people of any age can learn things on their own through watching videos online, reading books or websites, or hands on play and tinkering.

Just because these activities don't look like a more formal classroom, doesn't mean the learning that's happening is any less real or valuable. Kids can learn things both in and out of the classroom. And if the classroom environment isn't a great match for their learning style, their learning accomplishments and environments outside the classroom can really help them feel accomplished and capable.

ANNA: I think it's so helpful to think about learning outside of the school context. It's helpful for us as adults and then we can apply that to children, too. I think an a-ha moment can happen when we look at how we learn as adults. We tend to use a variety of methods, seeking out mentors, finding like-minded groups, reading books, researching, hands on, just digging in and doing it.

We dive into our interests as they come up, and this could be deciding to keep chickens, building a shed, becoming a yoga instructor, an arborist. Each interest creates an opportunity for us to dive into that interest in a way that works for our brain.

So, for me, I tend to like to read about something. I like to make some lists. I like to write down some ideas and then often talk to others who are doing the thing that I want to try. And then I want to start walking in that direction. I have other people in my family who are the dive in head first, start tinkering, touch it, do it, think about it. And then they want to seek some outside resources. And we're all just so different that way.

But when we start to examine what that organic learning looks like for us as adults, not in a school environment, we can start to see that it's the same for kids. Then we can be more open to creating the conditions for them to pursue the things that they're interested in, in ways that suit who they are. It's back to being open and curious, right?

There isn't just one way to learn, and that is especially true if one is thinking the only way to learn is from a teacher and a school. That can have its place. Great. And there can be room for all the varied ways in which humans learn things.

PAM: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think not only is it helpful to embrace the all kinds of learning piece, it's helpful to embrace all kinds of interests. So, if the thing they love to do right now isn't directly related to a school subject or a prestigious career, it's still valuable. It's really fascinating to watch a kid in action when they're doing something they really enjoy. They learn so much, and it's almost as if it's by osmosis. They're just soaking it all in. That sponge metaphor is always around. And if they love it, it connects with them as a person. It has meaning for them, even if they or we can't yet explain what that is, but for now, it's coloring in a new area of the map of who they are as a person.

And the thing is, when we look back, often we can see the threads through their interests. So, how their love of wrestling with you on the couch became an interest in karate, which became an interest in parkour, which became an interest in stunt acting. But it can be really hard to see those threads in the moment, and even more so to try to predict them into the future, right?

But with the freedom to follow their interests, there's a good chance we'll be able to see those threads looking back. There is just so much value in embracing the things our children are interested in, and not just in the act of learning about the interest, but also in the development of a strong and connected parent-child relationship.

And if embracing your child's interests is something that you find challenging, I do invite you to check out Roya Dedeaux's book, Connect with Courage, practical Ways to Release Fear and Find Joy in the Places Your Children Take You. So, Roya is a licensed marriage and family therapist, and she has spent the bulk of her academic and professional career learning how recreation, play, leisure, hobbies, interests and passions, impact, and are impacted by mental health. She digs into why wholeheartedly supporting your children's pursuit of their interests and passions is so important, and she shares some excellent tools to help us navigate that when it just feels a little off. It can be a new way to look at things.

ANNA: It is really fun to find ways to support our kids and ourselves in digging into our interest areas, because like you said, there's so often a trail of interest that leads to so much learning and then get synthesized into the next pursuits. Looking back, we can see how those trails led to the broader interest or even a passion area, but we don't often see it in the moment. So, trusting that something is popping up for our kids for a reason, a reason we may not see now, is part of trusting them as a person.

We can use it as a way to connect and to get to know our kids. What do they love? What brings a sparkle to their eye? What things do they choose to do with their time? Especially for kids in school these days, they have very little free time. So, if they're using that time towards an interest, it's important to them. And us supporting and facilitating that helps them feel heard and valued. And we just learn more about what makes them tick. And I think we all really want to know our children at that deep level. And they definitely want to be seen and known by us. You and I have both worked with plenty of adults who weren't seen or understood as kids, and it really leaves a mark.

PAM: Oh yes. Yes. It really does. And I feel like that can come when the parents' focus is fixed on bringing the school home such that their highest priorities are doing the homework, studying for the test, so that you can excel at school, and then rounding out their childhood with extracurricular activities. There is just so little time and space left for kids to discover who they are and how they tick.

And I would also argue that a solid level of this kind of self-awareness is as valuable as knowing a general set of facts and skills as they move into adulthood. It's how we find our unique place in the world. Understanding how we tick, how we can care for ourselves, and how we want to engage with the people around us is such valuable knowledge to have at hand as we navigate our lives. So many of us need to figure all this stuff out as adults, precisely because our parents thought excelling at school

was the answer to everything.

So, embracing all kinds of learning for our kids will go a long way to helping them navigate their lives with just a bit more grace and compassion for themselves and for others.

ANNA: So much! I know for me, so I did well in school and it really wasn't a bad experience for me, but I still had a lot of unpacking to do as an adult to figure out what I wanted out of life, what things were interests of mine, not through the lens of cultural or the expectations of the adults around me. And while I know this is a parenting episode, I just want to say it goes a really long way to support the interests of our partners and our friends, too. Trusting that something is pulling them towards an interest, even if it doesn't make sense to us on the surface, it means so much for the people to be supported in the things that they want to do. It really is a critical part of every relationship.

PAM: Oh, exactly. Because in the bigger sense, absolutely, it applies to all people. All kinds of environments and all kinds of interests can lead to all kinds of learning at any age. And when we embrace all kinds of learning, our world is richer and more fun. Life is more interesting.

We're not just all trying to get on that same path. Building our unique selves and learning how we tick and the things that we love to do and how we love to do them. Our kids just learn so much about themselves that they will find useful their whole lives. That was my experience, too.

So, whether or not you had a good school experience or a more negative one, either way, it took up time and it took us down, or was trying to take us down a path that was more generalized as society thought was successful. And I had to do a lot of picking apart for many years to try and figure out who I was beyond that.

Because then all of a sudden you're dumped into the adult world and it's like, okay, go do these things. And oh my gosh, to figure out. Do I like to do that? What do I like to do? How do I like to do it? To recognize that life didn't need to be a big ball of stress all the time. That was a big part of it.

Okay, so here are some questions to ponder this week. Number one, what are some ways you see your child learning outside the classroom? And what about outside the teacher-student dynamic? Because, so often, that dynamic can also be replicated in places, just because it's conventionally seen as the way to learn. But yeah, just bring a new lens to it. How is your child learning? Think about what do they love to do? Regardless of whether or not you like it or whatever, when they're doing it, when they're doing something that lights them up, look for the learning, see the learning that's happening.

ANNA: Yeah, it's there.

PAM: It's there. It's there. So, what does your child like to do at home? Now, let's take that in a little bit of a different direction. What interests are they expressing through that activity? So, we're going to look a little bit deeper at it. Can you think of more ways that you can bring that interest into their days.

So, maybe it's a show or a game or whatever it is that they like, if you can start to see what it is about that thing that they like. Is it the story they love? Is it the music they love? Is it the challenge? Whatever it is. And then think about more ways that you might be able to bring things into your lives that also meet that underlying interest.

ANNA: Yeah, I love that.

PAM: Number three. Can you think of some ways to cultivate your child's burgeoning self-awareness? Recognizing that they are a different person than you? And if you want to talk about that more, check out episode three. How can you help them learn more about how they tick? Can you give them some more space to explore that instead of always popping in to tell them the right way to feel the right way to do something, all those pieces? A little bit more space so that they can start making some choices and you can both start learning about how they would approach things, how they tick, what feels good to them.

And our last question, how are you feeling about embracing and valuing the many kinds of learning that happen outside of a classroom?

ANNA: Yeah, I think I want to say about this one, because I think most of us, as adults, have been through this very long school system and we kind of were sold that that's the way to learn. So, I feel like it was a process for me to start recognizing there were different ways to learn and what that looks like. And so, I do think it's really important to just think about your own journey with that and how it's playing out for you as an adult and how you've branched off in different directions or have you? So, I think it's interesting.

PAM: Yeah, I think it's so fascinating to see, not just put that on a pedestal as the one right way to learn, that it's cool and it has its place and they're learning things there. But also it's just as value to be valuable to be learning all sorts of other things that make up them as a whole person rather than just what the curriculum says.

Anyway, I think this is going to be a lot of fun for people to start exploring. I'm excited that we shared this, and I thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next time. Bye!

ANNA: Take care.