Consent-Based Everything

I chat to Sari and Becka about the nuts and bolts of deschooling: what it is, what it looks like, the places we get stuck and the ways we get ourselves out of them. I absolutely love how real they are about their own struggles and process, and how nuanced their understanding of deschooling is.

Must-listen for anyone in the weeds of deschooling (and isn't that every single one of us?!).

A bit about Sari & Becka:

Sari González and Becka Koritz are unschooling moms, youth liberation advocates, podcasters, parent coaches, facilitator trainers, consultants & founders of Radical Learning™️. Together they have 35+ years of experience supporting kids, adults & educational projects. They provide support at the intersection of unschooling, parenting, relationship & community building - empowering adults to support kids’ self-directed learning, autonomy and freedom. They also run Explora ALC, a pop-up Agile Learning Community in Puerto Escondido, Mexico, advocating for children’s rights & freedom. They see unschooling and parenting as collective liberation work where we develop practices centered in not just youth rights, but also human rights, social justice and building trusting & equitable relationships. They believe that by honoring the dignity of every individual, we can create more authentic relationships and strengthen the fabric of our world.

Fran chats to Deena Barselah about our relationships with food and how to parent in ways that connect us and our children to the food we eat, as well as diet culture, anti-fat bias, whether food is really neutral and how do we partner with our children around food.

Deena Barselah is a Holistic and Integrative Health Coach who guides mothers and families all over the world to remove the chore from food and cultivate a more joyful, connected, easier, and confident relationship with food.  She's supported her own disordered eating, autoimmune conditions, and chronic digestive distress with gentle shifts in diet, habits, nervous system healing, and truly learning how to trust her body.  Deena believes there's no one-size-fits-all to food and that by cultivating a system that works well for your unique body and family, you can let go of the "shoulds" that weigh you down.  She lives in Encinitas, CA with her husband and son.  Previously, Deena worked in the corporate world in areas of Organizational Psychology and People Development.  

I chat to Sophie Christophy about all things consent-based-ness: living in partnership with our children, practicing consent at home, in a setting, and out in the world; and creating cultures where consent thrives.

I chat to Amanda Diekman, parent coach and autistic mother of neurodivergent children, about Low-Demand Parenting, her journey to celebrating her family's Neurodiversity, and her new book! It's a beautiful chat and we talk about radical acceptance, permissiveness, inner work and so much more.

I chat to Blimie Heller, parenting coach and educator at Unconditional Parenting, about the ways we often frame gentle parenting, ideas of trust and partnership, our never-ending journey as parents and boundaries (and why the way we manage them is unhelpful in many ways!).

Fran chats to Iris Chen, author of the book Untigering, writer, and unschooled. They chat about building consent-based relationships with our children and our family members, creating a family culture, and cultural expectations and how we navigate them. They also speak about doing the inner work of parenting our children without coercion and domination, about unschooling and how to break free from dogma, and how you don't have to be the perfect parenting or excel at unschooling! (in fact both of those things comes from schoolishness!).

A bit about Iris:

Fran chats to Nikolai about centering literacy in our homes and taking back the tools to support our children with learning to read and write. We talk about perceptions around literacy in both unschooling and schooling spaces, and Nikolai speaks to literacy as a tool for liberation. We also talk about the importance of relationship and trust, of non-coercion, and of decentering school as a movement for all families (unschooled, homeschooled and schooled!).

More about Nikolai:

For over 10 years, Nikolai Pizarro, has worked to empower predominantly Black and Brown parents and caregivers, particularly segments further marginalized by socioeconomic factors, with science based frameworks of early brain development, literacy instruction, non-violent discipline, and self-directed education. Her book, Ring the Alarm, has been used by programs sponsored by Brooklyn Kindergarten Society and the Department of Health. She has facilitated workshops at hundreds of preschools and private early childhood centers, including over 300 Early Start and Head Start Centers. 

Over the past 8 years, as her own unschooling journey with her son has unfolded, her work has increasingly included private and small group coaching and collaboration with families looking to transition from conventional schooling to self-directed models and just as importantly, a commitment to reconnect with our assignment to children rather than the school system. "Open source, self-directed, and intersectional education is not just a model for our children. It is the model. But this is bigger than schooling models. This work is in defense of childhood and our divine assignment. " she shares. 

As a response to COVID19, she has started the facebook group BIPOC-led pandemic pods and microschools, for BIPOC families and non-white book co-conspirators committed to Black and Brown liberation with now over 2,600 members, launched an early literacy system, and has initated a project to turn her own home into a self-directed, forest school and permaculture, mixed age coop

Fran chats to John Wall about giving children the vote! We discuss barriers and preconceptions about children's suffrage, how it's actually not such a scary idea, and the sorts of repercussions it might have. We touch upon the potential shifts in politics and political engagement that expanding the suffrage to children might bring, and how it might all work in practice. We talk about children's rights, childism, adult bias and adult fears and worries around giving children the vote, and more!

John Wall is a professor of philosophy, religion, and childhood studies at Rutgers University Camden in the United States. He is author or editor of nine books in political philosophy and children’s rights, including most recently Give Children the Vote: On Democratizing Democracy. He founded and directs the Childism Institute, an international research and activist organization dedicated to making societies responsive to children’s lives, as well as the Children’s Voting Colloquium, a group working to eliminate all voting ages worldwide.

Fran chats to Dr. Sophia Graham about all things Self-consent: what it is, why it matters and how do we even do it? We talk about all the various aspects of being in a consent-based relationship with ourselves, including interoception (what on earth is that? find out here!), sociocratic decision-making, healthy self-trust and healthy self-doubt, and so much more!

A bit about Sophia:

Dr Sophia Graham is a recovering academic who has become a coach after completing therapy training in the UK. Self Consent is her passion project – and the work she finds most personally challenging, too. A wise friend once told her “your mess is your message” and she is living proof of concept (thanks Meg John Barker). She is a settled, white, queer, disabled, consensually non monogamous, survivor presently living on unceded Massachusett land. Most of her work revolves around teaching and learning about DBT skills, gender and sexual diversity, consensual non-monogamy, consent, sex work and neurodiversity.

Links:

Fran chats to Sara about all things living and learning without school, including the ways we see children, how we respect consent when things need to get done, "non-negotiable", building community and of course the every-present question of: how will they learn if we don't force them? ;)

Sara is a Mum of four girls from Brisbane, Australia. Her children have never been to school and instead live an unschooling life where they live and learn naturally from the world around them, with her help and support. Sara started sharing her family's experience with unschooling, as well as other thoughts on parenting and children's rights, 8 years ago on her blog, 'Happiness is Here'. Her goal was to spread the word about this alternative lifestyle and show people it was an awesome way to educate children, and that there are more cohesive and respectful ways to live with children. Happiness is Here continues to gain many new readers daily, and is now the largest unschooling blog in the world.

Fran chats to Rosalia Rivera about talking to children about consent as a way to educate them about their bodies and their right to safety and bodily autonomy. They chat about what this might look like, how it's a gradual process, how to chat to other adults in our lives about consent-based parenting and why creating a culture that is anti-abuse matters. They also talk about creating consent cultures within schools and other institutions, online safety, and changes that are happening on a wider scale.

About Rosalia:

Rosalia Rivera ia a passionate consent educator, child sexual abuse prevention expert, sexual literacy advocate, TEDx speaker, change agent, and survivor turned thriver. She's also the host of AboutCONSENT™ Podcast, the founder of CONSENTparenting™ and creatrix of CONSENTwear™.

Fran chats to Eloise Rickman about parenting rooted in children's rights and why research around children's rights and education can be so gatekeepy and obscure. They also talk about writing about adultism and how it shows up, about the way we see children, and what child liberation is and can look like!

More about Eloise:

Fran talks to Sherene Cauley about gentle parenting and how we can reframe it, about the role of presence in our lives and our relationships with our children and others, and why boundary work is not really what we think it is! 

Sherene Cauley is a Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, the founder of The Nurtured Life, and the Associate Director of The Whole Health Center Bar Harbor. She provides wellness coaching services for clients across the country and hosts numerous programs on attuning to our inner and outer realities to build supportive, sustainable lifestyles. Sherene’s writing and programs, such as SOUNDheart and Respecting Organic Boundaries, aim to support us with moral fortitude and emotional integrity to confront the conflicts of our times and cultivate a culture of wellbeing. Sherene combines her knowledge in health coaching, peace studies, and wisdom traditions to offer coaching around barriers to peace, equity, and social justice. Sherene is a Doctoral student working towards her Doctor of Ministry with a focus on social transformation from Untied Theological Seminary, Twin Cities.

Sherene is a mother and step-mother of four children ages 26-10. She lives on the coast of Maine with her husband, mother, and several of her children. You can read her full bio here:

In this episode Fran chats to Nadia Erlendson about creating and running a self-directed, consent-based community of young people in Pai, Thailand. They talk about how consent-based decisions are made, gathering as a group, respecting autonomy in our young people, the ways relationships can control and empower, and much more.

Nadia is an International School Educator turned Unschooling parent and Self Directed Education facilitator. After years of exploring humanistic approaches to teaching and learning in the classroom, Nadia left the school system to explore how she could contribute to community as an educator outside of schools. While in search of an unschooled community for own children, her and her partner decided to open their own mixed age, consent-based, self directed learning community in the mountains of Pai, Thailand.