Helping Our Children Practice Confident Autonomy — Alternative Learning Advocates

Lainie Liberti and Miro Siegel are fascinating people. In 2009, the single mother and son duo decided together to take the year of yes concept from a bold idea to an everyday reality. Lainie closed her business, sold most of her belongings, and took then 9-year-old Miro out of his California school.

Their new life design called for them to slow travel the world, following their interests, and engaging in rich social learning and cultural exploration along the way.

Fifteen countries and seven years later, they’ve packaged their experiences as gifts for other like-minded families with teenagers. They are creating communities where social learning through travel is the “curriculum.” Participants experience cultural learning within a group educational experience.

I met Lainie two years ago when a producer for her web-based show, For the Love of Learning, contacted me about being a guest. Like Lainie and Moro, my family traded in compulsory education for school-free, lifelong world-focused learning; we are unschoolers. My life experiences and resulting lessons form an intersectional feminist approach to parenting that calls for their father and for me to to collaborate with our daughters, not decide on their behalf.

‘We embrace an alternative to the traditional adult-to-child learning and living environment of schedules, structures, and schools. Through unschooling (also known as worldschooling or free-range learning) they learn what they want to learn, at their own pace.’ -Excerpt.

Lainie and Miro make decisions together; they prioritize each other’s liberation, and they live that by slow traveling and immersing themselves in aspects of local cultures — and learning happens along the way. The entire planet is their lifelong classroom.

Miro & Lainie (mother 48 and 16 year old son) share their adventures from the Road of Life, discussing issues of humanity, global citizenship, unschooling & worldschooling, slow travel, family travel, volunteering, travel inspiration & living in the moment as they explore the big beautiful planet, they call home. -RaisingMiro.com

And all of us should check in with ourselves, and the children we raise, to see what our options are. And to be more deliberate about whether we go with the flow, or whether we need to take a risk in the direction of the lives we deeply desire.

I’ll be joining Lainie on her show once again, Monday, May 16th from 8pm to 10pm (EST) to talk about raising Black children without school.

What I love most about this show is that it’s formatted like a community conversation, and other liberation-minded mamas will be part of the conversation. Tamika Middleton, Leslie Bray, Kamau Mahakoe, and perhaps a few others, will openly explore our relationships with liberation and motherhood, and how those two intersect to form our parenting styles.

Click the link to watch us live on May 16th.