#109 Helping teenagers find their path beyond school, with Dr Naomi Fisher, UK

Well, a couple of things that I'm thinking of.

First of all, I'm reminded of when my children were probably

nine, ten.

Well, yeah, ten, nine and five.

and my probably then nine-year-old sitting on the sofa saying i think this is the university i'll go to and showing me it and me thinking god

how's that how is that

going to happen and having this terrible moment of panic of like okay yeah brilliant you

know okay this is very clear and he's off to university in september and every now and again i think

oh thank goodness it's

Can I just give you a point with that? You can come back to yours in a bit.

I remember one conversation I had with another mother when my children were a similar age.

And we were both unschooling the children at that point.

And there was very little academic going on.

And I remember saying to her, have we chosen a path for our children that can't include academic excellence? Have we kind of excluded, have we made that choice for them without meaning to make that choice for them? Interesting.

And I didn't actually know at the time whether we had or not.

Yeah, I think that was my fear.

Yeah.

You know, it was sort of, have I chosen freedom at the expense of academics?

Yeah.

Which they then might turn around and say, I always wanted to go to university, for example, and you haven't prepared me for it.

Anyway, carry on.

Yeah,

that was definitely my fear.

And I think that both you and I have been through the experience where we've absolutely seen that that is not the case.

If anything, it really works.