It's not about the labels ... it's about loving, living and learning!

Just discovered Eli Gerzon's blog yesterday via his post that begins "Columbus helped inspire me to leave school and start unschooling."  (on that note Milva posted some great resources for learning the whole story of Christopher Columbus.  I read from The Younger Person's Guide to United States History by Howard Zinn to the children yesterday.)

This morning I spent some time reading through a few of Eli's posts and discovered this comment.  It was so good that I want to pull the first paragraph out to repost here. 

Eli is correct on all accounts and has a well rounded flexible take on the Unschooling concept. I have but this to add. Unschooling is only a label. It is neither this or that. The words definition is your experience with it. it is guided by your child for your child. Do not get caught up in whether your a homeschooler, unschooler, world schooler, not back to schooler, the point is that your child is happy, enriched, informed, empowered and excited. Frankly if school is the antithesis of what we are doing, the word should not even be part of the terminology that we use to define ourselves. Glean all of the insights that you can from others, couple it with what you feel comfortable with and start there. It will evolve as both your child and yourself will.

This is beautiful advice and bears repeating over and over.  Let go of the labels; they don't matter that much. 

Recently my daughter, Katie, wrote a post, I love my Family and said,

We don't follow any of the rules (but in a good kind of way) Mommi and Daddy always taught us to ask questions, why do we do things the way we do? is it just because everyone says we should? Follow your heart, do what you love... it isn't about money or "the American Dream" it is about loving people and living a full life. We have as many friends my parents age as we do our own... we are definitely NOT socially ackward. maybe a little slow... but that is just because we soak everything in.

I love that she targeted our first two values so clearly  ...loving and living.  We rarely talk about learning because it is such an intrinsic part of our lives, so integrated that we don't separate at something we do.  We are just learners.

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