CarriesUnschoolers Campout 2014 Photos

If you have good neighbors and at least an acre of land with online connections to other Unschoolers, I highly recommend hosting a week long camp out event!

I am really late getting this up as it was  the first week in September we held it but it was unbelievably the best time EVER!

It was truly an incredible experience getting to connect with other unschooling families that I had made deep connections online with for the past year and a half.

4 families and one friend of a family all showed up for a total of 18 people here including my family for the course of the week. 

They pitched their tents in the yard and the teens spent a lot of time in doors playing video games and baking brownies, periodically coming out to visit around the camp fire with us. 

Since everyone who came were unschoolers, the meshing of similar philosophies and parenting styles provided a rich and safe environment for all the kids to be themselves in total freedom of being themselves in a very laid back comfortable environment.

My husband who does not do anything on the computer was able to connect with other adults on his 9 days he had taken off work and totally appreciated the interaction with some of the most kindest, down to earth, fun loving people you had ever met.

This was right after a liver sectioning biopsy surgery I had and this was the fun week we desperately needed at the time.

The intellectual conversations, teens speaking their views, campfire games and so much laughter your sides hurt  with amazing food and company was the most amazing experience we have had in a very long time!

We had three 3 year olds and 5 kids aged 12 , 13, 14, 16 and 19.........so a perfect crowd!

It was truly AMAZING!

I can NOT WAIT to  host another one!

The Picky Eater and Food Freedom: Part 2

In my last post The Picky Eater and Food Freedom: Part 1, we talked about the harms of using food with punishments, threatening or forced and coerced. In this post, I promised to offer a few tips that could make households with picky eaters a more enjoyable time, since food is meant to be enjoyed! Also by honoring each persons food freedom, it helps celebrate and trust that our bodies know what they need. While my tips may not work in every family, I am simply sharing what has worked in my own home, not only with my own picky eater but with other picky eaters that have visited too.

Remember a whole lot goes into what makes food seem appetizing from color, to smell to texture to visual appeal!

So here are the tips with no further ado!

1.) Kids do not generally like complicated meals, especially young kids! They want child friendly meals like mac and cheese, bananas, pizza, cheese burgers and fries, so first tip is keep it simple and child friendly.

2.) Even if you are on a tight budget always try to buy one thing new that you and your family have never tried before. By trying new foods, you may just find more and more your child likes. For example I learned my picky eater happens to like okra, Lima beans, clam chowder and frog legs! Also a new food you have no idea what it is can lead to all sorts of fun learning, where did it come from, how is it usually cooked?

3.) Along with trying the new food theme, calmly but firmly request that they try the new food ( any time something new is offered on their plate)  Assure them that if they don't like it they don't have to eat it but they need to at least try it. Let them try it on their terms such as touching their tongue to it, a tiny bite, however they feel comfortable trying it, do not demand they have to have a certain size bite, chew it and swallow it. The simple request is to just try it, stay calm and do not give any sign of reactions. If they try it and eat it great, if they try it and say they don't like it, fine just calmly say "Well you tried it and that is all we ask, you never know if you like something or not unless you try it!" and then drop it.  They may resist trying in the beginning, but once they gain trust that you will not make them eat it, it will become natural for them to try the new foods to decide if they like them or not.

4.) Make a list of what your family members like, if they are like mine, my 2 guys like many of the same things while I will eat anything and my picky eater daughter has a completely different taste from any other member with the exception of Pizza and Country Fried Chicken.  At the same time I cook many different things that I have never made before but I try to offer meals rotating who may like it. So I will cook my new meal, a meal the whole family likes, a meal the guys like, a dinner my daughter will eat. In this manner I know I am at least cooking twice a week a meal the picky eater will eat for sure. Plan your menu accordingly to include each members personal tastes.

5.) The Buffet Style Meals- this is one of my favorite solutions to the picky eater dilemma! While we do not go out often, when we do we always made sure we went to buffet style restaurants.  I knew then my picky eater could choose her own foods and we would not be wasting money on a meal ordered and then tossed because it was not what she thought.   I also apply the Buffet style dinner at home when ever possible, you may want to include it in your menu a few times a week. A buffet style meal 3 times a week plus individual likes taken into consideration well that almost gets you through a whole week of meals that a picky eater will eat!  Instead of mixing a salad together, put everything into individual bowls for a salad bar, you may even include soup for a soup and salad bar  but you can include things like bowls of shredded cheese, sunflower seeds, craisins, shredded lettuce, tomato wedges, sliced mushrooms, Diced apples and perhaps croutons. Let them then, fix their own plates, picking what foods they actually want to eat or try.

The Buffet style dinner can include all sorts of meals like taco night ( again have all food prepared and served in individual bowls)  build your own sandwiches ( variety of lunch meats, cheeses, tomato slices and fresh fruits offered for on the side)  Fajitas ( steak, chicken or pork cooked and then individual bowls of lettuce, cheese, sauteed onions , sauteed green peppers, sauteed mixed veggies, sauteed mushrooms whatever and have tortilla shells to put it all in!)

Even the pickiest of eater will usually eat quite well for buffet style dinners, if you offer a variety of veggies, fruits, cheeses, boiled eggs and meats, all separate and them having full control of the foods they want to include on their plate. A Buffet served meal also works for all 3 meals of the day!

The Picky Eater and Food Freedom Part: 1

For many, the thought of giving children food freedom, is one of the hardest things to let go of next to perhaps the video game and electronic devices. Sometimes it is just so drilled into our heads that a child must eat what is put before them, without other choices given simply because that is how we were raised as children.

Fears range from "I will create a picky eater or make my picky eater even pickier " to " We are on a very tight food budget, we can not afford to give choices or let them eat what they want, when they want!" to " Oh gosh, my child would eat only junk food if they were allowed!" "A child must eat what I cook and that is it, it would be wasteful to do otherwise or This is NOT a restaurant!"

Peaceful parenting and radical unschooling is about building connections with a child in a healthy balanced way. It is respecting the child enough, to treat them as a human being and realize everyone is an individual with different likes and tastes. It is about trusting the human body knows what it needs ( the reason behind cravings, such as consuming large amounts of orange juice in the winter months or when having a common cold.)

Threatening a child that if they do not eat what is put before them, they will not get anything else the rest of the day, or no dessert, or have to go to bed early does a number of harmful things. For one, it upsets the child and when one is tense and upset their body can not digest food properly. It also can do the very thing a parent is trying to avoid and actually deepen food aversions and create a life long dislike for certain foods!

Think about it, do you like everything you eat? When do you eat, by a clock or when your body tells you are hungry?

Many things go into why we like what we do, and sometimes in children this is magnified. There are many reasons why they may be picky or not want to eat what you cook for them.  They may not like the smell, sometimes it is texture and some can be very sensitive to textures! They may not like the color as certain colors can be unappetizing! They simply may not be hungry when the parent says it is time to eat! They may not like their food touching other types of food on their plate.

As far as money being a concern, is it more frugal to make a plate for a child who does not want to eat what you created and will sit there until it is cold and thrown out anyway, or crying the whole time they are eating it ( I don't know about you but I can not eat when I am crying!) or would it be cheaper to actually let them make a peanut butter sandwich or mac and cheese or any other number of .50 cent alternatives that they WILL eat?  I found for my family it was far cheaper to let our picky eater have the cheap alternatives.

Food is meant to be nourishing and enjoyable, when a power struggle takes place, this is lost and the chance to make good connections , happy connections with our children is also lost. Here is another thing to consider, most families in the USA are eating a S.A.D diet (Standard American Diet) and this is really quite an unhealthy diet. Essentially then, your food choices that are being forced or coerced for your child to eat, is no healthier than perhaps what the child wants to eat! If they are not hungry, by pushing them to eat, you are perhaps encouraging over eating that can lead to the obesity problems that is such a huge problem in the United States.

By allowing the child choices of what to eat and when to eat, he is being allowed to listen to his own body which knows best. The parent can not tell if the child is hungry or not, but the child sure knows! By allowing them to choose the foods they like, you are acknowledging they are individuals.

Dinner does not have to be full of power struggles, fights, yelling and crying, it just doesn't , why would one choose to make meal time miserable for their child? There is no reason to guilt, shame or threaten a child simply cause they don't want what you cooked. This came from an era where you ate everything on your plate because it was the Great Depression! Now I almost gaurantee is is stemming more from a "I cooked it, you eat it" mentality and if the child does not want it, the cook and perhaps the spouse too, take it all too personally and there fore use their size from a place of resentment to bully a child into eating.

Many perents are not aware this is essentially what they are doing, they are simply using the tools that was taught to them. It is time to question where and why we use the tools of our parents. Sometimes this means changing the tools we know, learning new methods, perhaps better methods.

Making your children happy, is not spoiling them! It is building connections, learning to understand them and celebrate them for who they are, not what we want them to be. It is helping your child listen to their own bodies and trusting that the human body knows what it needs and when it is hungry.

While I am addressing the issue here of the harms of forcing children to eat, my next post will offer tips on ways to make meal time enjoyable and dealing with the picky eater.

In the meantime, don't just take my word for it, here is some further reading for you!

What Forced Eating Looks Like 20 Years Later

Forced Eating Leads to Eating Disorders

Pushing kids to eat may cause Obesity later

Mealtime Atmosphere and Eating Behavior

Freedom Series: Honoring Food Choices

Whole Life Unschooling extends the philosophy into all the other areas of living, beyond simply how one learns. This means a democracy and equality reside in the household as every member is honored and respected as an individual with same freedoms adults are granted so long as it is not infringing upon someone else's freedoms or causing harm.

Food Freedom falls into this area where food is not restricted, and one is free to choose what to eat and when, based on when their own body says it is hungry and what it desires to satisfy it's hunger. As adults, we have cravings and if paying attention to our body, give into those cravings as a body has a way of knowing what it needs, whether it is sweets , oranges or other fruit, veggies, or whatever. We know when we are hungry, so we eat, this also goes for children as it is the way our bodies are designed so why as adults do we restrict what and when they eat? Many are afraid if a child is allowed to eat with the same freedoms as adults, all they will eat is junk food and candy, yet this would only be the case, if that is all that is offered in a household.


Many times in our house it was a matter of financial circumstance, we had a very small food budget and the only way to get us through the month was if I did the shopping for our family and watched how much we all ate. We had $250 a month for food for a family of 5. We still made snacks and such but our diets were restricted as a whole to a tiny budget and I tried to choose a little of something that each member would like as a dinner or snacks like smoothies.

This has changes recently, now we are a family of 4 with a grocery budget of $429 to $570 a month so this has opened the door for total freedom in many ways along with simplifying my days!

For May each member will be allowed $100 to buy their own food, leaving me $170 to fill in the gaps and to cook weekend family dinners.

We have broken this up into 2 shopping trips of $50 where they shop for meals for 2 weeks at a time with me mentoring and helping when needed. Believe it or not it was hubby freaking out over how to shop in a frugal manner and get enough meals!

There are a few guidelines where the $50 goes to get what they want including snacks but to bear in mind the 3 meals a day for 2 weeks.  What they buy they prepare, I will only cook family meals on the weekends. They can eat their own food, when they are hungry without having to ask.  They can not take another persons food, they do not have to share their own food, but bartering and trading are perfectly acceptable!

When it came to the first shopping trip it was my daughter, hubby and myself that went, our 15 year old son decided he did not want to go. To respect his desire to stay home, I picked out his food on the $50 based on foods I know he loves and could fix himself.

My daughter has been going through her food kind of fast and I have gently reminded her a couple times that her food has to last until she gets more money to shop in 2 weeks, she is not very good at self regulating!

Yesterday as she had it in her head she has to wait a month ( that is how I normally shop, is for a month at a time with just having hubby pick up a few things here and there throughout the month when he gets out of work and is already uptown.)  She came to me and asked....

"Mom, how long can a person survive without food? A Month?" I was like you know I am not sure but I don't think so, we would have to google it to be sure..... her response a very dramatic "OMG I knew it I am going to STARVE TO DEATH!" Ha ha poor baby!

All in all though it has been a great experience and seeing how different everyone food choices were. And seeing how everyone in the family has self control over their food, all but our soon to be 12 year old daughter anyways ha ha.

I will do another post showing those choices and what was purchased.

I am also LOVING not to have to worry about what to cook for dinner 5 nights a week! Awesome!

4 Exhausting Fun Filled Days

My friend informed me she was coming down with my adult daughter, a 9 hour one way drive for them so they would spend 2 overnights and one full day of visiting!

The same day they were to arrive, I was asked if I wanted my adult sons kids, my grand kids to  come for 4 nights and days! Well yes I did! So I called  my sister to see if she could drive my mom  up, to see her great grand kids for a little bit! YES they could! We got a hold of my son who is in the area and let him know so  he could see his kids as well, it is not always easy getting a hold of him!

So I frantically cleaned  for several hours before everyone got here as I am really behind after being too ill to clean much for a couple months. Deep cleaning and clutter control anyways.

For 2 out of 4 nights we had a total of 9 people sleeping in our 2 bedroom 14 x 70 trailer! YIKES packed but so so so so so so fun!

This time was well spent where my 2 who are now close to 15 and 12, spent their time entertaining and caring for their 7 and 6 year old niece and nephew!

They fixed breakfast and lunches for them, played with them, baked cookies with them, flew kites, re-invented board games to make them age level appropriate and fun.

Outdoor playing, of cooking, herding chickens on "Grandpa and Grandma's Farm LOL) ( 7  chickens and a country lot makes us a farm ha ha)

Cuddling, sleeping with to make them feel safe in the dark, wildlife viewing ( cute skunk huh?)

Answering non stop questions..............

Setting up buffet style meals for picky eaters who are not so picky when given choices of what they want on their plates from a buffet..........

Picking up after the flurry of active small kids.............

Playing grocery store with a set my sis brought for them............with cash register, food items etc.

Patiently playing video games with them..........

The list goes on, it was a very fun filled but exhausting 4 days!

Freedom on My Mind

A fellow blogger is celebrating what her family has deemed " Freedom Day" writing up a wonderful post about it at http://www.carriesayer.com/2011/10/tgif-freedom-day.html  She has no idea how timely and inspirational this post was for me at this time.

It has been a really difficult past 2 years for my family to the point I felt myself "shutting down" losing all my passion for writing or anything for that matter. Before I took down my other blogs, I use to write on them almost daily and wrote many articles- I LOVED to write, while not always the best, it was something I truly enjoyed and most days felt I had something to say. 2 years ago hubby was making good money while we lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, yet he was gone so much he was never really a part of the family, it was rare we could find time to do much together.as a family. Because of the stress of his job and his horrible fast food diet, he had 2 heart attacks at age 38 that let us know we needed a drastic change. So I took it upon myself to create that drastic change and being inspired from reading a book called UNJOBBING- we packed up a small trailer and moved our family down to North Carolina at a time the economy was crashing all around us.

In North Carolina we dealt with culture shock and immense heat, a true change from 30 feet of snow a year! We dealt with more poisonous snakes, spiders and critters that still make me shudder and of course being worse than Michigan we found NO JOBS yet we did not let that deter us. We lived a whole year off of Scrap Metaling and odd jobs, rough but we did it and loved all the time we had together as a family. We raised almost all of our food and while money was in small portions, we made it yet the kids HATED living in North Carolina. So we sold everything we owned and moved back to Michigan and I mean we sold EVERYTHING. We only brought what we could fit into the trunk of our car and while we did not go back to the Upper Peninsula area, we came back to Mid-Michigan where much of our family lives sort of close by ( 50 to 80 miles at least)

Hubby did find work the first day we got here, a sad day it was for all of us for him to return back to a 9-5 world. With the economy, his line of work which usually is in the fast foods, had changed and he is looking at minimum wage and struggling to be able to get 40 hours a week, some weeks he only gets around 28 hours in! He also wound up at a place where there are no raises at all really, only 10 cents an hour a year IF the store makes all their goals which NEVER happens.

I found myself facing a thousand times MORE criticism over our lifestyle choices than ever before, simply by moving back to Mid-Michigan and woman that became backstabbing and quite hurtful in the local homeschool group I was working on putting together. While I will not go into details of the events, it was ill timed and at a point our car had broken down  and hubby and I found ourselves biking 5 miles to town on a daily basis for almost 3 months for work, groceries and getting laundry done.

I Crashed, I shut down, filled with defeat and lost my ZEST, my passions that have always led me and served me well in the past. My blogs were removed, I quit writing articles, I quit allowing myself to dream and accepted the deep worry that comes from living on less than $15,000 a year for a family of 5. While I put up the blog here, I found it hard for me to write much on a regular basis, I just felt there was not much to say. I found it hard to be inspired when daily I worry about getting propane to heat my home, will there be enough gas in the car to get hubby back and forth to work for the week, will there be enough for food this week and it has always been my responsibility to "Make it Work" regardless of the income and bill ratio.

I am a firm believer in the Law of Attraction, that like attracts like and your thoughts manifest your reality so much to the point it has had me called an "Idealist, a Dreamer, My head in the clouds and more" Yet I have been struggling with even this as I have let worry take over this year and saying over and over "it is NOT working!"

I have been called resilient as my determination to keep food on the table gave me the strength to bike to town in 100 degree heat and load my bike with 80 pounds of groceries ( 3 days worth of food for my family of 5)  or going on a 12 mile bike ride for harvesting extra food such as pears, apples and whatever else I could find. Yes resilient was a good word, a strength I can accredit my mother and grandmother for!

I have also felt the pressure of setting an early retirement date for hubby for 4 years from now and everyday worrying "HOW THE HELL IS THIS SUPPOSE TO HAPPEN?" "How can I make this work?" "How are we gonna come up with the money to go on our horseback trip across America to celebrate this event?  "Am I crazy? Am I simply a dreamer where the dreams will never happen? Is my head simply in the clouds and I need to accept poverty for all my days here on  earth?

I have also noticed with my crashing my darling hubby has become GRUMPY, SHORT TEMPERED, ANGRY and easily AGITATED ALL THE TIME NOW.

Then I realized something this morning as I read Carrie Sayers Post about Freedom Day at http://www.carriesayer.com/2011/10/tgif-freedom-day.html

That all that has been happening is due to our LOSS of FREEDOM- we have settled for LESS, we have ACCEPTED our struggles as our lot in life. That NOTHING has to do  with outside influences at all but has everything to do with FREEDOM.

We had freedom for a year, we proved it could be done, we were doing it and living in perfect vibration for our life we wanted so much to create. We lost our way and let LIFE take over again and it is becoming painfully aware that NONE of us are happy with it. We feel caged, we are once again slaves in the mainstream line of thinking again. We are not using time wisely nor in our best interest. We are out of sync with the rhythms of our desires.

"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend" this quote that is displayed at the top of my blog here keeps going through my mind. Yes, time IS the most valuable thing a man can spend and it is well known that time is not on your side when you work the 9-5. You are exchanging your time for money and the man that works a 9-5 is wasting a lot of time working harder for less money rather than having money work hard for you to free up your time to do the things you really want to do. 

This makes me realize, I AM NOT OKAY with a retirement goal 4 years down the road, it needs to happen much sooner although the horseback trip across America will remain at a 4 year goal simply because our youngest daughter will then be of an age I am comfortable with  such a trip as that.

One of the first things Law of Attraction teaches us, is that we are not suppose to worry about the "HOWS" of what we want to manifest. Nor are we suppose to use up our valuable energy worrying about food, bills, heat and all the what nots. I KNOW THIS but for this year I AM GUILTY AS CHARGED. Yet when it boils down to it, our needs have always been met! We have always had a roof over our heads and 3 meals a day on the table. We have never frozen to death in a winter and we have always had something we could wear on our bodies.

I think over the past few years rather than raising the bar, we have been lowering it, yet again sabotaging our life's with old tapes with outdated beliefs. This needs to stop.

Freedom is the key that truly holds our hearts and the  loss of it has underlying built up resentments happening. I mean really how can one free themselves from the 9-5 world and then go back and NOT harbor any resentments? Especially since it is a low paying dead end job that you KNOW will never go anywhere?

So I  think it is due time I pull my head out of the sand, dust myself off, raise the bar and let inspiration fill me once more as we work towards that freedom we all seem to strive for. It is also time to quit wasting my good energy on worrying which places way too much focus on the problems rather than the solutions. It is also time to quit being so wishy washy on what is it that we really want, and truly define what we want and work towards manifesting it into our lives.

There is no reason we can not have that life we really want with freedom reigning in every aspect of our daily lives.....