We are pleased to have our first ever guest blog post! Bex Tobin Fine is a home educating parent and also a Canadian children’s author. Her beautiful picture book, You are Home, will be available in April 2025. Enjoy a taste her of her ponderings about “home.” You can read more about Bex and her work at Books by Bex.
Home could be a place. A house, an apartment, an RV, a boat, a trailer, you name it. But home could also be thought of as a state of mind. When I think of being “at home,” I think of being comfortable wherever I am and at ease in my own skin.
[Note: The current state of the world means that many people are without a place to live. Homelessness is too big and important a topic for me to discuss here. I couldn’t possibly do it justice or show the true gravity of it. So, for this post, I will be focusing on those of us lucky enough to have a place to live.]
This feeling of being “at home” can be surprisingly elusive. It’s difficult finding our place in the world and feeling comfortable in it. This is the case for many adults, but it is particularly true for children. They haven’t been in the world long enough to yet know how they fit into the greater scheme of things. And they are just beginning to understand themselves. We, as homeschooling and unschooling parents are in the very special situation of spending more time around our children on a day-to-day basis to personally guide them through all these difficult stages of growth.
This means that we have the opportunity to observe and participate in more of our children’s activities each and every day—things that range from the mundane (eating multiple meals and snacks together) to the exciting (spur-of-the-moment Tuesday morning trip to the zoo, anyone?). When we get to spend so much time with our children in these many and varied situations, we learn the nuances of their behaviours and reactions, feelings and preferences. And this is particularly true for the unschooling community, because we can allow our children to lead the way, directly showing us what they want and prefer. The more we are able to know our children’s deepest desires and interests, the more we can sculpt our lives in directions that will help them feel at home in the world and in themselves.
Let me, of course, point out that I cannot speak for every homeschooler or unschooler. We all have our own unique ways of being with our children, and each of our schooling experiences will be vastly different even if we use the same general terms. My way of schooling my child is very much a combination that includes self-directed learning, free time, some online arts clubs, activities and outings chosen by myself and my husband or our child depending on the day, modeling through doing, and sometimes old-fashioned teaching (mostly when it comes to math). So when I say “homeschooling” or “unschooling,” I can only speak from my own perspective and experiences.
I know that my child is more comfortable in certain situations as opposed to others—as is true of pretty much every person. I’m also aware of exactly which environments she prefers. This doesn’t mean, however, that we entirely avoid the activities or places where my daughter is less at ease. Certainly, we enter into them less often, but I feel it’s part of my duty to help her gain a sense of comfort even in those situations. Because she will not always be able to avoid going places and doing things that make her uncomfortable. That’s simply a part of life. And shielding her entirely from those would be doing her a disservice. The important distinction between blindly dragging her here, there, and everywhere without thought or care, is being conscious of what I, as a parent, am doing. So when we go somewhere my daughter may not prefer, we monitor the situation and try to stay aware of how she’s feeling. We check in with her, and we do our best to offer guidance and support. And, when necessary, we leave and move on to something and someplace else. But slowly, little by little, we are able to expand my daughter’s comfort zone, thus making more of the world her home.
As homeschoolers, I really do believe we’re in a very special position to be able to support our children as they strive to feel comfortable in themselves and in the world. We, as adults who have experienced more of life and love our children unequivocally, are perfectly situated to understand our children’s feelings and guide them towards their own internalized sense of home. It is easier for us to notice what makes our children comfortable, and we can also help scaffold their sense of home in situations where they are not naturally at ease. By providing a safe space even in uncomfortable places, we can extend our children’s feelings of comfort bit by bit until, hopefully, the world is their home.
In my new debut picture book, You Are Home, created with the talented illustrator Andrés Landazábal, we show that home as a place to live can look many different ways. And that a sense of home can be found not only in one location but in many places and activities, including the pages of a book, the creation of art, and the joy of the natural world. Home can also be found in family and friends when we reach out to each other and share our true hopes and dreams. And, eventually, as kids grow into themselves, perhaps one of the most elusive but beautiful experiences of home is within oneself. You Are Home is about finding home anywhere in the world (perfect for unschoolers and world schoolers!). And it is also about appreciating that you are your own home: You Are Home. Wherever we go, the one constant is ourselves, and when our sense of home comes from within, we will feel at home wherever we are, whatever we are doing. We, as homeschooling parents, are uniquely positioned to help our children accomplish this. And that is what I wish for my daughter and all children out there: for them to know that They Are Home.
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