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  • EU418: When Teachers Become Unschoolers

    EU418: When Teachers Become Unschoolers
    2026/09/24
    Pam and Anna interviewed three former teachers who are all unschooling parents and members of the Living Joyfully Network. Erika Ellis, Jen Hollis, and Michelle Kren shared their experiences becoming teachers as well as their thought processes as they chose unschooling for their own families. They talked about their changing views of education and how their roles as teachers helped shape their ideas of parenting. It was a fascinating window into a very common phenomenon – teachers becoming unschoolers! We hope the conversation sparks some insights for you. Watch the video on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello everyone, I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and today I’m joined by my co-hosts Erika Ellis and Anna Brown, as well as our guests Michelle Kren and Jen Hollis. Hello to you all. So, today’s episode is a panel style featuring teachers who became unschoolers. And Erika is joining Michelle and Jen as we explore aspects of their journey and reflect on this very interesting perspective. So, I’m very much looking forward to our conversation. Anna, would you like to get us started? ANNA: I would. So, first, thanks for joining us. I’m kind of excited about this one. I think it’ll be an interesting conversation because it is actually really wild how many teachers turned unschoolers I’ve met over the course of these last 25 years. And it makes sense, right? Because teachers deeply know what’s happening in education. They’re passionate about it. It’s something that’s important to them. So, it really makes sense. But I can’t wait to hear about each of your unique journeys. So, this first question will just be, tell us briefly about your journey to becoming a teacher. What drew you to the field? How did it unfold for you? What did that part look like? And I’m going to start, Erika, with you and then we’ll kind of move around to the rest. ERIKA: I’m excited about this too. It’s something that honestly at this point I don’t think about that often, but I also have met a lot of teachers. And so, yeah, it’s just very curious. I was only a teacher in public school for two years before I had children. When I left school, I was planning to be in film production, which I did for several years. But that field out in LA is mostly project by project. And when we were thinking about having children, it seemed a little bit risky for both me and my husband to be finding job by job what we were going to do next. And so, I was looking for things that I could do that would be more steady and just know what I was going to get paid for the year, basically. And so, that was kind of where I started. But many years before that, as a kid, I wanted to be a teacher because I loved school. I loved being a student. I loved curriculum. I loved tests. I just loved everything about it. And so, it wasn’t far from my mind as a possibility of something that I could do. But then, of course, as we grow, we learn and change our minds about things. And so, I hadn’t thought about it until I was really just looking for some more stability. And the way my mind works is like I’m a scanner. I am interested in many, many things. And so, there were always things I could pull from, like I was in film production, but my undergrad was in biopsychology. So, I was like, I can teach science. I could do different options. And so, when I was thinking about a stable job, something I would be able to do in the area where I was, I thought about getting a teaching credential and teaching high school science. And that whole process was actually really easy for me. It seemed like a good fit as far as the pay is pretty good. The union in LA for teachers is really great. And so, I got good benefits. And it just drew me in that this would be good for our family financially. And I just, I love learning. I love science. I love kids. There were lots of things that I was like, this is gonna be great. But I never knew how long I would stick with it because I also envisioned myself being a stay-at-home mom. I really wanted to devote myself to really focusing on connection with my kids. And so, since we knew we were planning on starting our family, I didn’t know what the whole journey would look like. And so, I ...
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    1 時間 15 分
  • EU417: On the Journey with Julia Triman

    EU417: On the Journey with Julia Triman
    2026/09/10
    We’re back with another On the Journey episode! Pam, Anna, and Erika had fun connecting with Living Joyfully Network member Julia Triman. Julia was on the podcast with Pam back in 2021, when she talked about her unschooling stories. It was really cool to hear how things have changed and how they’ve stayed the same in her family of four. Julia shared about her family’s latest passions and what has surprised her the most about her unschooling journey. She also talked about her interest in quilting, how she followed the threads of her new interest, how it grew into a business, and how it all ties into the paradigm shifts she’s made through unschooling. It was a really inspiring conversation and we hope it resonates with you! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE EU264: Unschooling Stories with Julia Triman We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I am Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully. And I’m joined by my co hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia, as well as our special guest today, Julia Triman. Hello to you all. I’m very excited that we get to talk with Julia today. I met her right when I joined the Living Joyfully Network in 2020. And I’ve had so much fun connecting with her over the years. Julia was also on the podcast back in February 2021, when her kids were just three and five. I encourage everyone to check out episode 264 if you would like to hear more about her unschooling journey. And we can’t wait to hear an update five and a half years later. So to get us started, Julia, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everyone’s interested in right now? JULIA: Definitely. And I’m so excited to be back. This is really fun. So, we are similar to what we were five years ago. We still live in Frederick, Maryland in the US. We’re not terribly far from Washington, DC. And we’re still a family of four humans and two cats. Our cats are getting a little older. They’re aging a bit, but they’re still very much part of the family every day. So as far as what we’re interested in, I’m going in the same order I went the last time. Starting with Dan. Dan and I have been together for many years. And he loves being outside, trail running, open water swimming and biking. He is a triathlete and he also does each of those activities by themselves. He absolutely loves to read in his spare time. One of the things I love is he’ll just go, so I’m a library person. When I go I want this very specific book and I get the hold for that specific book. Dan is a browser. So he’ll go to the library and he will come home with a backpack completely full of books. But for me, it’s a thrill because then I get to see each book and see all the things that he found, all these little treasures that he’s interested in. And the last important thing to note is Dan absolutely loves good food. He likes cooking and also eating and finding delicious tasty foods to eat. Going to our farmer’s market is another personal hobby of his. Cody, which is kind of amazing to even say this out loud. But Cody is 11 now. And he right now I would say is very into animation, both watching different animated shows and also making his own animation. He’s also still very into music. And the biggest game he’s playing right now is called Terraria. And he and a friend have been working through that quite a bit in the last couple weeks and really enjoying that game. And Nora is eight. So she’s eight at the time that we’re recording this, but she is very soon gonna be nine. So by the time it comes out, she will be nine. Her absolute biggest thing she’s into now is connecting and playing with her friends 100%. She also loves and she has for her whole life, like creating and making things. And right now that’s investing a lot of time in beading and also very recently bedazzling. That’s the newest most exciting thing that’s happening on our porch these days. But she also combines those things. She likes making things to gift to her friends. That is probably her top occupation the last week or two or three is just using these things that she loves to create and gifting them to friends. It’s just a big thing for her right now. And then the last thing I wanted to say ...
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    46 分
  • EU416: A Field Guide: Accepting the Value of All Experiences

    EU416: A Field Guide: Accepting the Value of All Experiences
    2026/08/27
    We’re back with the fourth episode in our series in which we’re working our way through Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. Today, we’re continuing our exploration of the deschooling phase of the journey with stage eight: Accepting the Value of All Experiences. We’ve questioned our beliefs about learning and about parenting. Now we’re moving beyond judgement. As our understanding of this new world of unschooling grows, we are drawn to digging deeper. Using the lens of unschooling, we’re exploring what it means to be a human being living fully in the world, with all of the ups and downs. We had a great time diving in. We hope you find this episode helpful on your unschooling journey! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE Learn more about Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello, everyone. I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully. And I am joined today by my co-hosts Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. ANNA, ERIKA: Hello. PAM: And we are back with another episode in our A Field Guide series. We are working our way through my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide, which is framed around the hero’s journey and is a weave of myths, contemporary stories and tales from my own journey. We are now deep in the deschooling phase. In the last episode of this series, episode 413, we dug into some of the popular conventional paradigms about parenting, and we found more truths buried there. And as we continue our journey on the road of trials, we’re exploring the idea of accepting the value of all experiences. If you’re newer to unschooling, and this is your first time exploring these truths, you’re likely dancing with these ideas intellectually to understand what they mean and some of their further reaching implications. If you’ve been unschooling for a while and feel like you already intellectually embrace these ideas and have been bringing them into your family’s lives, now’s the time to peel back some more layers to build more connections and context around them, strengthening your web of understanding with your personal experiences, building your wisdom as you move towards believing them in your bones as your own truth. Now we are well into the deschooling phase. In the last two stages, we challenged those conventional pieces of wisdom around learning, like embracing curiosity rather than following curriculum, and parenting, replacing control with connection as our relationship dynamic with our kids. These stages often have lots of twists and turns as we bring these ideas into life, life into our family, and see how things unfold, right? Again, not about right or wrong. We’re gaining experience, we’re seeing how things happen. So this episode, which is stage eight of the journey, we’re exploring the idea of accepting the value of all experiences. In other words, we’re moving beyond judgment. Now here we go. As our understanding of this new world of unschooling grows, we are drawn to digging deeper. Using the lens of unschooling, we’re exploring what it means to be a human being living fully in the world. So Joseph Campbell calls this stage the meeting with the goddess. So in myths and stories, the hero must be spiritually prepared to meet this revered goddess, the universal mother, who represents the whole cycle of life. To meet her in her true form is to rise to her challenge and be able to contemplate the entire birth death cycle that she presents with equanimity with calmness and composure, the ups and the downs, the good and the bad, cosmic creation and destruction, to be able to hold both of these seemingly opposing ideas, opposites in your mind with comparable appreciation. So in the book, I shared that Kali from Hindu mythology is a great example of the kind of goddess you might meet in this stage. As a goddess of time, creation and destruction, she represents both the benevolence of a caring, comforting mother, and the fury of an aggressive punishing one, as well as the expanse of time that contains them both. So, when we look at Kali’s right side, we see good and on the left, we see bad. That’s what she represents. And when we are ready to grasp the truth that lies at the heart of ...
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    38 分
  • EU415: Growing Up Unschooling with Halie Barrick

    EU415: Growing Up Unschooling with Halie Barrick
    2026/08/13
    For this new Growing Up Unschooling episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika were joined by 26-year-old Halie Barrick, who has always been unschooled. Halie shared about her experiences growing up, her journey through college and grad school, the business she created with her mom, and her advice to newer unschooling parents. She also reflected on the connections between what interested her as a child and what she’s passionate about today. It was a beautiful conversation with so many deep insights. We hope that you enjoy listening to Halie’s thoughts as much as we did! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. QUESTIONS FOR HALIE Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What were some of your interests growing up and how did you pursue them? You decided to pursue a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. Can you tell us about that experience? You have started a business called Growing Edge Equine*imity. What made you decide to start a business? Can you tell us about your vision for it? As a grown unschooler, what piece of advice would you like to share with unschooling parents who are just starting out on this journey? THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ANNA: Hello everyone, I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and today I’m joined by my co-hosts Erika Ellis and Pam Laricchia, as well as our special guest today, Halie Barrick. Hello to you all. Pam and I have known Halie since she was quite small. She grew up and was involved in a group that started online, but then began meeting in person a couple times a year, and that went on for many years. We all have a lot of really fond memories of it. And honestly, it’s a testament to the kind of lifelong friendships and connections that can be made through online communities. It’s how Pam and I met, and some years later how Erika and I met, online first too. And all that grew from those early years is one of the reasons we started the Living Joyfully Network, so please check that out in the show notes, or go to livingjoyfully.ca and click on the network to join us. But we are so excited to reconnect and see what Halie’s been up to, and so Pam, do you want to get us started today? PAM: Absolutely, absolutely. Hi, Halie, and it is so lovely to see you again. I was hoping, could you share a little bit about you and your family, just to introduce everyone else? HALIE: Sure, so I’m Halie. It’s great to see Pam and Anna again and meet Erika. So, I am 26 now. I’ve always been a radical unschooler, never set foot in a classroom a day in my life. My mom and I traveled a lot when I was younger, lots of cross-country road trips to visit friends and family. We’d have wonderful, rich, deep discussions on those road trips and cover so many topics. It was so much fun learning about people and visiting local bookstores and shops on our travels. When I was seven, we moved to Vermont, my mom and I, to be closer to my grandparents. So, I’ve mostly grown up in northern Vermont, although I lived in North Carolina and Utah when I was little. My grandparents have been super supportive of unschooling. They were a little skeptical at first, but we took them to the Live and Learn conference in 2005, and they got to hear from grown unschoolers, and that really helped them understand what this whole crazy thing was. I’ve just been super close with my mom and my grandparents and living in the woods in northern Vermont, tucked into a little family cabin in the woods. We have the same driveway as my grandparents. And I’ve got horses and miniature donkeys on the property, so it’s just been a lot of fun getting to follow my interests and grow up in nature. ANNA: I love that. ERIKA: That’s beautiful. So, I’m curious, what were your interests when you were growing up, and how did you end up pursuing them? HALIE: Well, two of the biggest passions I’ve had that have lasted the longest have been reading and horses. When I was young, I had a huge collection of toy horses, a very particular brand that was very realistic. That was important to me. And my cousin and I would spend hours and hours, months on end, with these imaginative, in-depth games. All those toy horses had personalities and magic powers and complex relationships, and we processed a lot of ...
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    38 分
  • EU414: When Unschooling Kids Choose School

    EU414: When Unschooling Kids Choose School
    2026/07/30
    We invited a panel of three unschooling parents to join us to talk about what happens when unschooling kids choose school. Ari, Terri, and Kinsey are all members of the Living Joyfully Network and they all have children who have chosen to try school. They shared about what led to the decision, how the expectations of school affected them and their families, what they and their kids learned from their experiences, and how their foundation of unschooling helped them along the way. It was really interesting to hear about their unique paths and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ERIKA: Hello, everyone. I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia, as well as our special guests today, Ari, Terri, and Kinsey. Hi, everyone. So, I am really excited for this conversation. We invited Ari, Terri, and Kinsey, who are all Living Joyfully Network members, to join us today to talk about what happens when unschooling kids choose to go to school. There are lots of reasons why kids might be interested in trying school. And if they do, it can be a different experience than we might expect, because they’re making that choice themselves. But since people are different, and so are schools, we’ve seen a really wide range of experiences. And so thank you all for joining us to share a bit about your family’s experience. To get us started, can you briefly introduce yourself and share just a bit about your family? And maybe we could start with Ari. ARI: Sure. Hi, I’m Ari. I have three daughters. They are 10, 5, and 7. And we live in Portland, Oregon. We’ve been unschooling for about four years now. And this past year, my 10-year-old decided to go to school. She attended our local public school for fourth grade. ERIKA: Okay. And Terri? TERRI: We live in Swan River, Manitoba, quite a small town. There are four of us, me and my husband, and our two kids, a boy and a girl, Felix and Stella. And Stella decided to go into school this last year, into grade four as well. We live out in the country. It’s nice and quiet out here. And we have various interests that we have going on. ERIKA: Thank you. And Kinsey? KINSEY: Awesome. Hey, yes, I’m Kinsey. I live in Lubbock, Texas. And I have two children, Riley, who’s 15, and Emmy, who’s 12. Emmy chose to try school in 2024, and was there for a little while. So yeah, we had some experience there at our local public school. PAM: Nice. That’s very awesome. Okay, so now let’s get into a little bit more of the details. We’re very excited to hear everyone’s stories. We would love to know how did your child’s choice to go to school come about? And then how did it play out for your family? Certainly like at the beginning, as you guys were adjusting and getting this kind of settled. And would you like to start, Terri? TERRI: Sure, sure. I’m guessing like maybe two years ago, it was coming up to when we could have enrolled her for grade three. And Stella had started asking about school, saying she really wanted to go. And we were, I guess at that point, we homeschooled from when she was young, from the very beginning, and then slowly relaxed into unschooling. So we’d maybe be unschooling for about a year at that point. It felt like we had made this choice to not do school, me and my husband anyway, to not do school. So, it was very tough to wrap our heads around, could she go to school? My husband was very against it. He doesn’t mind me saying he’s like, I said no, he said outright no to her. Outright no to me. He said, we’ve chosen this lifestyle. And this just goes against everything we believe in about the school system. And so that was fair. That was his perspective. And I had that thought as well. But I was kind of keeping it to myself, because I could also see with my child that she’s very, when she knows something or wants something, she knows it through and through, no one will shake her, right? And she’s very strong that way. And I could see that if we held with that no, and held with what we believed was right over what she wanted, that it would be really, really bad for our ...
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    1 時間 5 分
  • EU413: A Field Guide: Shifting from Control to Connection

    EU413: A Field Guide: Shifting from Control to Connection
    2026/07/16
    We’re back with the third episode in our series on the podcast in which we’re working our way through Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. Today, we’re continuing our exploration of the deschooling phase of the journey with stage seven: Shifting From Control to Connection. Last time, we questioned our beliefs about learning and now, we’re questioning our beliefs about parenting. We talked about how parenting doesn’t have to be adults vs children, that children are capable of making their own choices, that equal doesn’t mean fair, how quitting is not a failure, and how strong relationships are the key. We also remembered to allow ourselves the time and space to grow and change. Exploring these parenting mindset shifts was so much fun! We hope you find this episode helpful! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE Learn more about Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello everyone, I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and I’m joined today by my co-hosts Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hello to you both. And we are back with another episode in our “A Field Guide” series. We are working our way through my book, “The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide”, which is framed around the hero’s journey and is a weave of myths, contemporary stories, and tales from my own journey. And we are deep in the de-schooling phase of our journey right now. In the last episode of the series, which was episode 408, we dug into some of the popular conventional paradigms about learning and found new truths buried in there. And as we continue our journey on the road of trials, in this stage, which is stage seven, we are exploring some unconventional truths about parenting. If you’re newer to unschooling and this is your first time exploring these truths, you’re likely dancing with these ideas more intellectually to just understand what they mean, what are we talking about, and maybe some of the further reaching implications that come along with it. And if you’ve been unschooling for a while and feel like you already intellectually embraced these ideas and have been bringing them into your family’s lives, now’s the time to peel back some more layers to build more connections and contacts around them. Strengthening your web of understanding with your own experiences, building your wisdom around this. And this is where you move towards, what feels to me anyway, believing these truths in your bones, you own them. These are your truths. So, the first truth that we’re going to explore is that parenting is not adults versus children. And right off with that phrase, there are so many aspects to that one truth. Does the conventional approach of pitting adults against children really make sense for us? What assumptions are we making if we believe that to be true? Does it mesh with our experiences with our own children and with the families that we see around us? The presumption of parental power over children is definitely widespread in our culture. We are meant to assume good parenting means power struggles will happen, a battle of wills over whatever the issue at hand happens to be. Yet many of us see right in front of us that it’s a draining and stressful way to live. And that so many adults who grew up in that environment continue to have strained relationships with their parents. That’s always been a curious one for me. So what if, let’s play with what if we choose to drop the assumption that the one right way to successfully parent is to exert power over your child to ensure that they do the right thing at the right moment? It can be challenging when we have little idea of what else to do. Because shifting away from power and control doesn’t mean doing nothing. So to that end, I personally found it really helpful on my journey to focus on connecting with my child rather than directing them. That’s what I could do instead. That helped me shift my energy in the moment to be open to seeing more of what was actually happening rather than that tunnel vision that comes with trying to control something to go one particular way and my way. And to instead get curious about how they were seeing the moment too, recognizing ...
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    52 分
  • EU412: Foundations: Recognizing Our Biases

    EU412: Foundations: Recognizing Our Biases
    2026/07/02
    For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Recognizing Our Biases. Let’s talk about cognitive biases. Commitment bias, confirmation bias, and negativity bias are common thinking patterns that can lead to errors in judgment as well as conflict in our relationships. Anna and Pam dive into how they show up in our everyday lives and how becoming aware of our brain’s tendencies can allow us to be more open and curious and to find more joy and connection in our relationships. We hope today’s episode sparks some fun insights for you! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE QUESTIONS Examine your thoughts around quitting, sunk costs, and commitments. Are those thoughts serving you? Do you and your partner see them in the same way? Describe a time when confirmation bias stopped you from seeing someone else’s point of view. Do the Joy Writing exercise for your partner or another loved one. Reflect on how it felt and how it changes your energy when you read it. TRANSCRIPT ANNA: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We’re 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. We started with some foundational relationship ideas and really have enjoyed how they’re kind of playing off each other and building on one another. And if you’ve already been enjoying the podcast, we’d love it if you could leave a rating and review. That definitely helps new people find us. In today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about a few common cognitive biases that trip us up as we navigate our relationships. Cognitive biases are basically mental shortcuts that our brains will take as they try to quickly process the vast amounts of information in our very complex world. So, let’s start with commitment bias and the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy is associated with the commitment bias, where we continue to support our past decisions despite new evidence suggesting that it isn’t really the best course of action. We fail to take into account that whatever time, effort, or money that we’ve already expended will not be recovered. And this could be something as simple as finishing a meal or a movie one of you isn’t enjoying, because you’ve already paid for it, or something bigger, like finishing a college program even though, at this point, you’re pretty sure you don’t want to work in that field at all, but you stay because you’ve committed to it. This can cause friction in our relationships when we have different ideas about money, commitment, and what those things mean. Very often, the idea to stick it out at all costs was pretty much ingrained in us as children. Somehow we’re a failure if we quit or we would be wasting the money, so we have to stick with it to make these expenditures worthwhile. It’s really worth examining those beliefs if you see them coming into play in your relationships. Understanding sunk costs helps us see that the money is spent, period. The choice then becomes whether I want to take what I’ve learned about myself and move on to something else I can enjoy or stay with something that I don’t. Take the money out of the equation because it’s already gone, but what can I get out of that situation? What I get out of is up to me. Just learning that we don’t like something has value. Letting go of judging ourselves or our partners as failing when we decide to quit something goes a long way to learning more about each other. And providing unconditional support as we figure out what we want to do with our time. The conversation is so much more valuable when we’re looking at the nuances of the situation. And this also comes into play big time with children, doesn’t it? PAM: Oh, it definitely does. We think we’re teaching our children something positive by insisting they stick it out and follow through on their commitments when we sign them up for a rec class or they join a team. But the message they’re often absorbing is, don’t try new things unless you’re really sure...
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    19 分
  • EU411: On the Journey with Sam

    EU411: On the Journey with Sam
    2026/06/18
    We’re back with another On the Journey episode! Pam, Anna, and Erika had a powerful conversation with Living Joyfully Network member and unschooling dad Sam. Sam shared deeply about his journey with his daughter through autistic burnout. We talked about Sam’s experiences in both PDA and unschooling parent communities, the depth of the inner work that this journey involves, and some of the major paradigm shifts that Sam has made along the way. It was a really meaningful conversation and we hope it resonates with you! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ANNA: Hello, everyone. I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully and today I’m joined by my co-hosts Erika Ellis and Pam Laricchia, as well as our special guest today, Sam. Hello to you all. I really appreciate Sam joining us today. He’s a member of the Living Joyfully Network and it’s been really nice getting to know his story and watch how things have unfolded. He brings that thoughtful, intentional energy that I love about the Network. That energy helps fuel my own personal growth and create a beautiful, supportive environment where we can dig deeper and question the prevailing narratives. So, Sam, to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everybody’s interested in right now? SAM: Sure, yeah. Well, I live in Minneapolis with my wife Kate and my daughter. I recently retired from work early. I did the early retirement thing. I had been working part time for the year previous to that. And so, I guess I can start a little bit with what my daughter’s into. I mentioned to her that this was going to be one of the questions and she said interior design and interior decorating and games. And then I would add a few things to that, too. Right now, she’s super into making slime, large amounts of slime in many different permutations. There’s lots of experimentation happening with different ingredients and add-ins and colors and that kind of thing. So, that’s kind of fun and messy. She has a wide doll collection and she’s been really into making her own rooms. She calls them mini rooms and they’re essentially like dollhouse rooms, like a kitchen or a bedroom. She makes one room at a time and adds them on to each other and buys these little, tiny little Mini Brand versions of real life products that she stocks in the doll refrigerator really intricately. And I guess that ties into her interior design interest, as well. She’s super creative. She really likes to do drawing. She makes videos and she actually, I’m kind of amazed at some of the videos that she makes because she’s, I don’t even think I said she’s nine. And so she uses her iPad to make videos and she has her own YouTube channel. She has two YouTube channels, which are not updated too frequently. It’s something she’ll get really into and then completely abandon and then six months later be really into it again. And so, that’s fun. And then she likes building forts. She likes playing with our dog Lucy, and various other things. And she watches videos. She loves YouTube and learning. She’s really into watching videos about Minecraft and Toca Boca World, which is the other game that she’s really into at the moment. She watches videos about all kinds of things like science and history. It’s interesting. She’ll frequently tell me very random facts that she’s learned by watching videos and I, being skeptical, when I look at the videos she’s watching then I’ll Google it and be like is that really true? And it’s interesting because it almost always is accurate and so that’s been an interesting learning for me because I’m the kind of somebody who’s avoided YouTube and never wanted to have anything to do with it for many years. And now I watch quite a bit of it just to keep up with what she’s doing. So that’s kind of fun. And my wife Kate, she works in public policy. She’s an environmental climate scientist, and she works on making and contributing to the creation of policy to help us in the state of Minnesota adapt to climate change. And she is super engaged and super smart. And she also likes to compete in triathlons a couple of times a year. She and I are very ...
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    59 分