There's been a big hoopla on the internet about unschooling in the past week, fueled primarily by a deceptively edited and obviously biased piece on unschooling on "Good Morning America." Like most of the coverage served up on shows like this, the details of their take on this form of "extreme parenting" will soon be forgotten, but the lingering misunderstandings will remain. We unschool our daughter, Z, who will be turning 6 this summer, and since we've found it to be a wonderful, joyous experience - albeit one with its pros and cons, like any real-world, not-so-shocking parenting choice - we thought it might be helpful for those curious about homeschooling, and unschooling, to tell you a bit more about it. You might even decide that this lifestyle would work for your family!

What do we mean by unschooling?

In some ways, unschooling is one version of what most parents of public/private schoolchildren think of when they say "homeschooling." But for those who consider themselves unschoolers, it is also different from "homeschooling" in fundamental ways.

Most parents who choose to educate their children at home find structure and direction in recreating school practices in their home. They use textbooks, lesson plans, and course designs modeled after school experiences and segment learning in scheduled classes. The extent of these practices vary widely, in part because homeschoolers do benefit from the ability to tailor their "school day" to meet the needs of their children - tackling the most challenging subject areas in the morning, for example, when a child is fresh; organizing schooling around other activities or availability of parents (tag-teaming with another parent or rearranging class times to allow for special visitors or "field trips"); or allotting extra time for subjects a child finds more challenging.

Homeschoolers are driven by the knowledge that they are providing a specialized educational experience tailored to their beliefs or worldview that places their child at the center of learning and allows them to focus much more personal attention on helping their child learn than any teacher could provide. The social world of the "homeschool" is quite small - it often depends on how many siblings are also learning at home - but it can be more emotionally supportive as well as more supportive of learning than the public school classroom.

These are generalizations, and for every homeschooling parent who prides him- or herself on a tight academic schedule or an award-winning curriculum, there is one (or at least a fraction of one) who takes a more casual approach. But here's where unschoolers peel off from their homeschooling bretheren. While homeschoolers typically (again, generalizations) attempt to recreate an ideal version of a schoolroom within their own home and under their direct governance, unschoolers see most aspects of the typical school experience as symptoms of the institutional framework - the teacher holding forth in front of the students, the set sequence of subjects and timelines for mastery, and even the emphasis of breadth over depth in learning - that children who can be offered the opportunity to learn on their own should not be saddled with.

By now you are probably aware of which way we lean in our home education. We knew we wanted to "homeschool" before we knew whether it would be possible, but it wasn't long after figuring out that we could actually do this - through some personal and professional sacrifices and some much-appreciated family participation - before we realized that we were not interested in playing school at home. For us, it was a fast and fun slide into home educating radicalism, and we enthusiastically embraced (and wholeheartedly support) the broad aims and philosophy of unschooling, although every pedagogical method (like every lifestyle) has its pros and cons. (More on that in a bit.)

For us, unschooling means following Z's lead on what she wants to learn. The result is that sometimes we will spend days or weeks focusing on a single topic and sometimes we have a Q&A session where Z fires questions as quickly as she can, we answer them and our answer triggers her to ask a question related or unrelated (in our minds) to the answer. For instance, one night during a two-hour drive, Z wanted to know who "invented" electricity; we answered and offered a little about the topic and after an hour of questions were answering queries about human biology (the role of electricity in biomechanical processes and brain functioning) and death. For us, the goal has always been to answer her questions honestly, confess to any gaps in our knowledge, and let her take the lead on how in-depth she wants to go. We routinely identify things we need to look up in books or on the Internet or identify people we know who could answer various questions, and we do our best to follow up.

What is our role as unschooling parents?

We see our job as that of learning faciliators and, particularly at this stage of her life, as key introducers of new ideas. Z regularly brings us project ideas that she wants to work on and things that she wants to "investigate." In fact, she brings us so many of these ideas to create and investigate that we have no way to complete them all! Sometimes we try to guide her impulses in a thematic direction and make sure to link ideas together. Sometimes we just roll with her passions.


We spend a lot of time with books, from kid-friendly reference books to single-topic books to adult reference materials, and use a few worksheets when we find topics she really likes to drill on. We do a lot of "investigating" on the internet (YouTube is great for videos of how anything is made, and there are great materials online aimed specifically at kids to explain a lot of science topics). We also go through stacks of library books and videos and do as much hands-on learning as we can make happen. (What better way to learn about plants than to have a garden?) A five-year-old is at a stage where the sensory world is still of primary importance but descriptive and categorizing skills are becoming more important and serving as a foundation for critical thinking, so we do a lot of that. (Incidentally, we don't know these things about her stage of development because a chart or guide tells us that this is what a five-year-old "should" be doing; we know this because we spend so much time learning with our daughter that we know what motivates her and what path she's on.) We have taste tests where we explore the differences in say, a variety of apples or water from different places (learning about food diversity, using descriptive words, becoming aware of the palate, experimentation, ranking varieties and parsing out flavors. We take field trips - we go to art openings, zoos, museums, she travels with us for business, we visit relatives in other states, we go to big cities and to working history farms.

As she gets older, some of these endeavors will doubtless change shape. Some will become more serious studies of things she seems to have an ongoing interest in or to have a natural facility for. Some will require that we seek out more outside opportunities for her, such as mentoring, cooperative activities in our community, or independent investigations. A lot of things will change when she is a fluent reader and can do more topical exploration on her own, with less guidance from us.

But won't your child grow up without an understanding of rules and limits on their behavior?

We don't have an awful lot of rules in our home. The main one we try to live by and want to pass on to our daughter is the Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." We've had several conversations about it, and love this book about the Golden Rule. It's the rule that rules our house.

We have a chore chart but it's used infrequently, doesn't hold a lot of ongoing interest, and has no rewards associated with its completion. We ask Z for help when we need it and she does the same with us. These too are often learning experiences.

We do have a loose bedtime for Z but there are nights when she isn't tired right away and on those nights she goes to her room to lay in bed or read quietly until she's ready for sleep. When I say we have a bedtime, I mean that we have a time that Jeremiah and I aim to have Z to sleep - we have a before bed routine that we've established over the years that includes teeth brushing, silent reading, time with dad and time with mom alone.

If we start the routine more or less around 7:30, she's usually drifted off to sleep by 8:45 or 9:00. But because she doesn't have to operate at any specific level in the morning, we feel more free to facilitate her transition from play to bed just as we facilitate her other activities. We do limit her TV time and her viewing choices at this point but we've considered changing that as she gets older. The only other main thing that we limit at this point is candy, although we've had some struggles with that and are considering an unlimited sweets system.

So clearly, we are comfortable living in an environment with few strict limits on behavior. This is part of why unschooling suits us fairly well. To paraphrase one unschooling advocate, whose name escapes me at the moment, unschooling is providing for a child's education with as little structure as the parent is comfortable with. To us, this means allowing her to steer her own education in directions she is most inerested in. Passion translates very well into rapid and meaningful learning, and means that she may advance faster in some topics than curriculum-driven children, and more slowly in others, based on her interests and drives.

How can an unschooled child learn discipline?

Our philosophy is that at some point Z will find something that she is passionate about enough that she will be disciplined enough to work through any issues or difficulties she might have. Actually, she's already taught herself how to ride a bike without training wheels (when she fell, she got back up on that bike and rode it!) and she practices violin on a near-daily basis, most of the time with gusto. I do not, as an adult, generally force myself to eat things I don't care for (I do try to taste a bite) or to "push through" and just do something because I feel like I have to. I don't particularly enjoy exercise but I do it anyway because I want to be healthy - but that's my motivation - I'm not doing it because someone told me I have to. I can't think of anything I do that I'm forced to do - I pay my taxes and I'm not thrilled about that but choose to pay them so I don't go to jail; I choose to work so I have money to live the way I want to live. Unschoolers believe that children should be permitted to find natural sources of motivation just as adults do.

If we didn't have rules and let our kids pick what they wanted to do, they'd spend all day doing x, y, and z!

Kids accustomed to rules and requirements about how they spend their day who are suddenly given freedom do tend to go a little nuts (see college freshmen) but for kids who have grown up with few rules and the freedom to choose tend to make pretty good choices. If you take a child out of school and experiment with unschooling, you've got to give that child some time to "deschool" - to get all those rules and restrictions out of his brain and body. Face it, if you were suddenly given time off work and told to do whatever you wanted would you do all the things you've been waiting to do but haven't had time to do it or would you wake up bright and early the next day and get straight to work? Yep, that's what I thought.

When we arrived home on a recent evening, Z asked to go out and work in the garden, so we did: I weeded while she and Jeremiah harvested greens (wild and cultivated) for a salad (her idea to make one) which she then came in and made for our family for dinner. Yesterday she asked if we could work on an atlas project (a long-term project we've been working on) that has been shelved for several months. Yes, there are days she just wants to watch TV, but most days it never even comes up.

But if you don't teach them, how will they be prepared for a career in x, y, z or what if they want to go into a science/math field?

What we are teaching Z is how to learn. We are teaching her how to access resources, how to do research, how to find information she wants, how to address her curiosity in a constructive way, and how to attain skills that she's interested in learning. In high school I was required to take a geometry class - I countered that I knew I would never need to know geometry - and guess what? The only time I needed geometry since high school (which, trust me, was many, many years ago) was a month or so ago. Did I moan and groan that I wish I'd paid better attention in geometry? (My geometry teacher, by the way, slept through most of our classes.) I did not. I went to the internet, Googled it, and learned how to do what I needed to do in about 10 minutes. I still regret that I wasted all that time in a subject I had no interest or desire to learn.

Saying that unschooled children won't be prepared to study in a math or science field is basically saying that either 1) there's no way to learn math or science without a teacher or 2) that children are not inherently drawn to math or science. If you break it down that way, it's clear that both of those ideas are ridiculous - it's just as easy to learn math or science as it is to learn how to read or to learn how to write or draw - you just need the motivation to do so. Gone are the days when you made a career choice in high school and stayed in that career - or even maybe the same company - for your working life. Now you make a choice - maybe in college, maybe before and you figure out the path you need to take to attain that career goal. So what does an adult do when they want to change careers mid-life? They do the same thing - they figure out the path that need to take to attain that career goal. They don't just say, well, it's too bad I didn't study art or music or math in high school, guess I can't be an artist, musician or mathematician. No, they say, well, I need to do X to get there and then they do it. And ultimately, that's how unschooled kids achieve career goals too.

Of course, just as the world of information, life skills, and so on changed from our parents' generation to ours, it may change again by the time our children are grown up. But from our perspective, we're preparing a child who will be ready for just about anything she wants to do.

What about socialization?

Like most unschoolers and homeschoolers, Z socializes with a wide variety of people. Since she's not in school all day encouraged to only interact with children her own age, she has opportunities to interact with all ages of people every day, and does. Sometimes we go to homeschool "park days" where kids of all ages meet up and play. Sometimes we go to a store where she chats up the cashiers (and just about anyone else who will listen). Sometimes we visit with a friend with a younger child and Z is more than happy to show the younger child the ropes. She's also learning violin, which while is an individual lesson, gives her the opportunity to perform with children younger and older than her and even with adult music students. Since the majority of people that she interacts with on a day to day basis are adults, she is quite comfortable talking with adults and can hold a conversation better than some adults that I know. In fact, one of our pet peeves is when Z asks a direct question of an adult and the adult directs their answer back to me instead of to her or ignores her completely. Many adults she encounters seem so ill-equipped to interact with a child as a sentient person that they simply do not hear her when she talks to them.

Give me some examples of your unschooling.

Our days vary a lot. I work part-time and Jeremiah works full time out of the home so Z spends at least a little time most every week day with her grandmother. (Yes, it was hard to convince my mother about unschooling too but she seems to have come around to the idea.)

In the past month we've covered:

Math: Sorting, graphing, adding, subtracting, and counting M&Ms, dividing fresh from the garden strawberries for the family to share, dividing allowance into three different jars (spend, save, give), counting money, budgeting money, saving money, time telling, experimenting with a spirograph, and estimating

Language Arts: She reads to us most nights, we read to her every night and sometimes during the day as well, writing her own books, writing a list of all the words in a single word family that she knows, oral storytelling, retelling stories or events of the day, writing letters to family.

Science: Planting and maintaining a garden, learning about periennal and annual plants, weeding, hatching spiders, keeping snails in a habitat, talking about conservation of resources, snakes, lizards, collecting shells and investigating them.

Health: Watching Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" and discussing healthy food choices, cooking, personal hygiene, etc.

Art Drawing on a near daily basis, drawing in storytelling, diagramming and mapping out things, painting, looking at art, talking about art.

Music: Near daily violin practice, sight note reading, how to write notes, music composition (she is very interested in making up melodies right now).

Phys. Ed: Bike riding, dance.

Community Service and Citizenship: Picking up trash in the neighborhood, listening to NPR on the radio (seriously, her favorite show is "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!"), learning about the ethical treatment of animals.

This doesn't count a recent trip to the beach with her grandparents where she learned independence (her first three-day trip away from home), explored the ocean, and built on her extended family relationships or a visit from an out-of-state grandmother and out-of-town cousins, both younger than her, to whom she was a gracious host.

Why not just send Z to school?

Jeremiah and I have known we wanted to homeschool since before we were even married. We both felt that the hours that we spent in school were not worth the return on our investment if we had to do it over again. We also wanted to be able to travel at any time without having to worry about unexcused absences or taking busywork to complete on a trip (I'll never forget the time my parents wrote me a sick note when I went to Disneyworld with my dad; he's in the construction business which means that summers are swamped for him and the only time he could take a real vacation was in the winter. The school said that wasn't an excused absence and I'd get zeros for any work I missed while I was out. Both of my parents - divorced by then - thought that was ridiculous, so they just wrote me a sick note.)

We also dislike many of the decisions that the Texas State Board of Education makes, so that weighed heavily in our decision as well. When I first thought about the idea of homeschooling, I imagined playing teacher at home - a nice little chalkboard with one of those cool chalk covers that the teachers always got to use so their fingers didn't get dirty, a little room where I could hang up my own teacher posters and I'd teach and my children (oh yes, I wanted six of them at that point) would sit quietly and listen. (Ha!)

But then, in the many, many hours that I had to do nothing while Z was nursing I started reading books about homeschooling. Somehow (I don't remember how at this point), someone put John Holt's book Teach Your Own in my hands and my life (and my ideas about homeschooling) changed radically. From Holt, I went to Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason. It isn't technically about unschooling but it is about systems of reward and punishment, which drives a lot of schooling. From there I went on to read Mary Griffith's The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World as Your Child's Handbook and from there to Lawrence Cohn's Playful Parenting. It all seemed to just mesh together at the right time with our other child-rearing philosophies, and unschooling became our new path to take.

Why not use a curriculum?

Once I read the books mentioned above, all of my former ideas about how to homeschool went out the window. Add to this that Z is often resistant to do worksheets or activity books (she'll go on an occasional binge where she'll do workbook type activities but usually resists them) and unschooling presented itself again as the path to take. We do occasionally look at sample curricula on-line - sometimes we gather ideas from them of books to read or activities to do or projects to toss out to Z as bait. Sometimes Z wants to do a workbook or use a computer program (we like Kumon books and Mia Kutoka's software) so we have a few of these around, but again, they are used when Z wants to use them.


We are not opposed to curricular materials per se, but to their use in governing what is learned when. We have made great use of Hooked on Phonics materials and they have been instrumental in Z's learning to read. But we have found that she has a very particular way of going about it, and this usually involves very intensive and enthusiastic work on reading over the course of a day - sometimes she will want to work on reading four, six, or eight hours solid, with breaks for meals and short play sessions but really working through some reading challenges - and then won't want to try to read anything for two weeks straight. It's weird, but she makes so much progress during those cram sessions, it just works. She is learning to read fairly quickly, and we make sure she understands just what kind of freedom that will offer her. Given the environment she has been educated in so far, she finds this freedom highly motivating and takes a great deal of pride in her reading abilities.

What are the biggest challenges of unschooling? The biggest drawbacks?

Sometimes the lack of structure can be unsettling. Sometimes you might wonder what your child is learning, if they are "keeping up" with other kids. Sometimes topics seem to get picked up and then abandoned before you can do much with them - either because the child loses interest or, more often, because the parent lacks the time or the organizational resources to keep the topic alive. Sometimes you can drive interest out of a topic by providing too much or too little input.

We could probably do better at making sure that ideas Z is interested in learning about are explored as far as her interest will take her; it is hard to tell at this point if we should play a larger role in helping identify learning themes and keeping track of ideas for her so she can continually explore them in greater depth. She is at an age where she still looks to us for a lot of ideas and entertainment and we might make better use of that than we do. Sometimes we feel pressed for time or too harried and half-finished projects are abandoned or worse, never started. Doing things on more of a schedule might counteract some of these problems, and we do try to schedule a bit. Sometimes our other obligations intrude and push those learning projects to the side.

Z has many friends, but few her age that she sees regularly, and none as regularly as children who are in school do. Socialization in public schools is not necessarily all good - many children are very poorly socialized by the public school system - but regular time with friends you choose to spend time with is one of the benefits of a school setting. Again, this is something that we could probably do a bit better about, rather than a shortcoming of homeschooling or unschooling itself.

We generally don't think of these problems as signs that we have chosen an educational method that "doesn't work," any more than the downsides of a job indicate that you are in the wrong career field or any more than having a cheese sandwich is "wrong" because you aren't having a PB&J. Every path has its pros and cons. Some of the challenges we face as unschoolers are ones public school parents might face as well, now or later. Others are unique to our path, but allow us to avoid some big disadvantages of other educational models. Such is life.

We also do have some outlets for our desire for guidance and structure, ways that we moderate and adapt the unschooling journey to our own personalities. We maintain lists of the learning standards used in public schools in Texas so we have a sense of what those kids are covering each year, and challenge ourselves to make sure (although in ways that are largely driven by Z's interest) that she is being exposed to the variety of skills and concepts that are covered in public schools. But one of the key freedoms of unschooling (practiced to a lesser degree by many homeschoolers) is the realization that the sequence and benchmarks of many learning milestones are somewhat arbitrary. It is not that children should not need to learn many of these things; they should. It is not that many of them are not best mastered within a general age range; they are. But a child's interests, if followed, will inevitably mean that your kids are far "ahead" of other kids in some areas and far "behind" them in others, based on their interests.

What are the key advantages that make unschooling the right choice for you?

Our lives are very flexible. We feel that we are active participants in her education and that we are all learning all the time. We experience wonder with her on a regular basis. We get to explain things in fun ways and explore topics with her. We spend a lot of time outside, have a lot of interesting conversations, and are confident that she will not have the desire to learn drummed out of her by mismanaged schooling. We are able to allow her to focus on things she is very interested in and seems to have a natural affinity for, and develop herself deeply in those areas. Peer pressure and conformity are not really issues in her life. We have an intimate knowledge of the things that interest her, and find it interesting to find connections between these things, and to extrapolate from them what kind of person she is and is becoming, in a way that parents less directly involved in their children's education probably aren't. She has no idea that there is even such a thing as a person who thinks (or thinks they think) learning is boring.

The key to unschooling is recognizing that learning happens all the time if we let it, and that children are fantastically enthusiastic about this happening, if it is not drilled out of them by forcing them to "study" things they are not interested in. There are opportunities to learn and to teach at any given moment. When we take a road trip, Z will look at the traveling blue dot on our iPhone's google maps and she's familiarizing herself with map reading, with geography, and with the use of technology. When we go to an art show, Z is learning how to look at art, how to talk about art, how to act in social situations. When she got her ears pierced, Z learned about hygiene, making safe choices, and confronting her fears. We do not sit at home all day each of us doing our own thing. We are out and about and in the world - she is socializing and interacting with people of all ages - from babies to adults and it is natural to her.

Her learning, much like our own learning as adults, ebbs and flows - some days she wants to play with her dollhouse all day but even then, as parents, we must recognize that as valuable time for her to process interpersonal relationships (she is often acting out events that happened in the past through her dolls) and for her to hone her storytelling skills (she talks her way through her play narrating the characters movements and words). We must trust that she will lead us to her interests - that we may throw ideas or subjects into her path and she will pick them up and study them or discard them. Unschoolers trust that their children are interested in learning about the world around them, and see themselves as guides to help children make the most of that innate drive to learn.

Zella had been asking about piercing her ears for about a year now, and we figured it was time to give in, but we were committed to the idea of having it done with a needle at a piercing studio rather than with a piercing gun. We've made our case for professional ear piercing over on Z Recommends, and encourage you to check it out. But what I'd like to talk about here is the experience we had of getting Zella's ears pierced. This is a story of how a five-year-old confronted and overcame her instinctive fear of real and immediate pain, and of our role as parents in helping her to do so.

I have done my best to describe this experience in terms that are true to the emotional journey it entailed for its protagonist. What may look like melodrama to the jaded initiate is, for those at the threshold, simply drama. The ability to willingly withstand pain is the most profound threshold of fear a young child can overcome.

The challenge

When Z was still an infant, Jenni and I had a long discussion about ear piercings, and eventually worked out that we'd allow her to get her ears pierced when she asked for it, and then only after a careful and detailed explanation of what was involved both in the piercing and in aftercare (piercings should be cleaned twice a day for six to eight weeks to prevent infection). We never suggested the idea of piercing her ears to her, or asked her when she was going to do such a thing; to my knowledge, no one else did either.

The first time Z asked, she was four. We explained the process (mark spot, pierce with needle, insert jewelry) and she declared that she would wait until she was six. We said that was fine and didn't bring it up again.

A couple of months ago, she asked again, and again we explained the procedure. This time she said she was ready and that she wasn't going to cry. Cry or not, we could tell that this was a meaningful challenge she was ready to take on.

The setting

Needle piercing means a tattoo parlor and body piercing shop. The only piercing shop in our town refused to pierce the ears of any child under 12, so we did some research and found a piercing studio in Houston that would do it with a consent form. Jenni had a photography conference in Houston last month, so we timed the an appointment for 7:30 on a Thursday evening as we rolled into town for the five-day conference. Zella would get her ears pierced before we even checked into our hotel.

It worked out well but made for a late night. Zella was very excited to have her ears pierced, and of course we had given her all of the information we could to make sure she was making a five-year-old's version of an informed decision. She was very cavalier about the idea of it hurting, but cavalier is how she does brave, so we accepted it as her way of getting through it.

At the studio we met the piercer, a very nice young woman with pierced ears and a row of barbell piercings through the skin at the back of her neck. We picked out a pair of stainless-steel studs to be Zella's starter earrings, which she'd wear for six to eight weeks without taking them out. The earrings themselves are costly - stainless steel, with the back screwing into the post, they start at $25 each for the smallest ones, and go up to $30, $40 and more for those with larger stones. We went for the smallest ones.

The first ear

Zella and Jenni went into a little room with windows with the piercer while I stood outside of it. Zella excitedly chatted up the piercer as she prepared her instruments, charmed everyone, and asked loads of questions. The piercer had an instrument tray, wore gloves, sanitized everything, and had things in sanitized packages for one-time use, like prepping for surgery.


Zella seemed to get a little nervous when the piercer swabbed her ear.


I was petrified, and flashed Jenni comically frightened looks when I knew Zella wasn't looking my way.

Then the woman stuck the needle through one of Zella's ears and into a cork at the other side, then left it hanging there for a minute.


Zella didn't even know she'd been pierced, and asked what the thing hanging from her ear was. But when the piercer took out the needle and put in the earring, Zella flipped out; it probably hurt a little and she finally understood what had happened. She screamed and cried and we had to coax her to calm down enough to let the piercer put the front jewel on the post (stainless steel, with screw threads). But at that moment she announced with complete certitude that she would not be piercing the other ear.

We said that was OK, and that she could have just one pierced ear if she wanted to, but that we would not be coming back for a long time, because if we left without finishing the job we wouldn't think she'd be ready to for a year or more. Which was true. It also costs a lot of money to do this, and I had no interest in coming back to pay once more for not getting the job done. She agreed to think about it while Jenni had her lip ring changed (she has worn a stud for a while and wanted to have a ring put in again, and those are designed to be put in with tools), so she watched and got comfort and attention from myself and the heavily tattooed manager on duty. He offered her gum, which I wish we'd thought of earlier, because that is something we routinely deny her (don't want to start the habit) and she feels it is a very adult thing and a big treat.

Confronting the self

Zella and I went outside for a bit, sat on the steps, and talked about pain, fear, and meeting challenges in our lives. We discussed times when something was hard to do but necessary to achieve a desired outcome, and what it feels like to do something that is hard and even scary to get to that place we want to be.

Every parent who has had to take their child to get a flu shot knows that willfully subjecting yourself to pain or discomfort of any kind is totally alien to a young child, but having the end goal be something Zella had chosen and really wanted for herself helped clarify the issue for everyone and established this as a personal milestone she could (just barely) wrap her mind around. I told her I was proud of her whether she got her second ear pierced or not, and we talked about how much she wanted this.

This from a self-admitted pain wuss. But let's ignore my personal threshold for self-inflicted pain and consider instead something more universal: A father's instinct to protect his daughter from pain and fear. I have that too, and at that point in the evening, sitting on those steps with my anxious, self-searching daughter, it took everything I had to suppress that instinct and encourage her to face the challenge she had set for herself.

I have struggled in the past to explain how our children can force us to grow not just in terms of parenting skills and tactics but as human beings. I don't anymore.

The second ear

By the time Jenni had finished her lip ring change, Zella was once again adamant that she wanted to get the second ear pierced. I tested her resolve, pressing the issue because I didn't want her to get in there and use up more of the piercer's time if she was going to back down. I talked her through the idea that it would hurt as much as the other one had, but she now knew exactly how it would feel and for how long, and what the outcome would be, so she wasn't dealing with unknowns anymore. She was insistent that she was prepared to go through with it.

Zella steeled herself with two more pieces of gum, went back into the little room, this time requesting me as her chaperone, and proceeded to bawl, cower, scream, etc. at every approach by the piercer. At that point we wanted to do our best to help make it happen so she would succeed rather than fail at this personal challenge, so we coaxed and talked her through it. Between plying her with gum, helping her visualize showing off her new earrings and bragging about her bravery, and a desperate offer of a new Zhu Zhu Pet, courage won the day.

Slaying the dragon

I had been wary of letting Zella get her ears pierced. I knew it would make her look even more like a "big girl" than she already does, and it is hard to jump through some of those hoops when you see your child's early childhood slipping by so quickly already. I also wondered about infection and care and was concerned about the pain and whether she was ready for it. I had at one time advocated for making her wait much longer than we even did, as I know some parents do.

But seeing what that experience she chose made her grapple with, how she processed it, and the fact that she triumphed over it, all felt important and meaningful, disturbing and scary in the way that all real growth can be disturbing and scary. It reminds me of tribal rituals that use pain or fear to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood, the details of which would make most Westerners recoil. It also makes me grateful for this sanitized version of such rituals (if you'll forgive the pun) and for having the luxury to expose our children to fear at measured doses and self-selected intervals in a world that is so hard on so many children.

From where I stand now, I couldn't be happier about letting her go through with this, or more proud that she did. As for that "big girl" status, it couldn't have come at a better time. She earned it.

If you're interested in learning why we chose to use a professional piercing studio to have Zella's ears pierced, click that link.

Therapist Terry McNichols' biweekly Thursday column about marriage and family relationships, ZRecs Family, will appear tomorrow.

As we head into a new year, full of unexpected joys and challenges, I would like to suggest that we focus our thoughts on what it means to be “good enough parents.”

I don't claim to have all the answers about parenting, or about relationships, but you will find in my posts a strong bent towards what I like to call Good Enough Parenting. I will continue to explore different opinions about what works and what doesn't work in both parenting and relationships, as they are very connected, and will cite studies relating to many different topics, but we are on a journey of discovery and the answers are seldom clear cut.

I have a lot of sympathy for today's parents. The plethora of advice books on how to parent has always been good birth control for any who might read them in advance, but with the Internet added to your source list,0 the sheer amount of consultation available on how to parent is mind-boggling. On top of this, the news of the kind of world your child will live in, although probably not that much worse than what your parents and grandparents feared, is constantly streamed into your living rooms via television and the Internet. Even when I Google "good enough parenting," the 46 million plus hits give us some idea on the controversy surrounding that definition. Everyone has advice on what you will have to do - how hard you will have to work - how much you will have to know - just to be "good enough."

I would like to give you, as parents, the benefit of the doubt. Judith Viorst, in one of my favorite books, Necessary Losses, quotes a letter from a mother to a child psychologist:

"Not one of us willingly would do anything to cripple our children spiritually, morally or emotionally and yet we do just that. I cry often inside for things I have done and said thoughtlessly and I pray not to repeat these transgressions. Maybe they aren't repeated but something else just as bad is substituted, until I am frantic for fear that I have injured my child for life."

Viorst goes on to say that "It is the fear that almost all mothers" - and I would add fathers - "share: that our flaws as a person and parent will do permanent harm to our children and that even our best intentions will not protect them."

I do not believe that even the worst of parents truly mean to bring their children to harm. And the fact that you are reading and engaging in discussions on topics like Body Talk, "I" statements, and how to work with difficult grandparents gives me hope for your family in 2010. Maya Angelou made a statement that I reference often: "I did then what I knew then, and when I knew better, I did better."

My goal in writing here is to help you move beyond what you know into the areas where you can improve, but my hope is that you will also give yourself the benefit of the doubt and congratulate yourself for being a "good enough parent." Happy New Year!