No one is immune to the byproducts of compulsory schooling and standardized testing. And while reform may be a worthy cause for some, it is not enough for countless others still trying to navigate the tyranny of what schooling has always been. Raising Free People argues that we need to build and work within systems designed for any human to learn, grow, socialize, and thrive, regardless of age, ability, background, or access to money.

Low-demand parenting allows you to drop the demands and expectations that are making family life impossible and embrace the joyful freedom of living life with low demands. It can be a particularly effective approach for children with high anxiety levels including neurodivergent children. Parent to neurodivergent children and autistic adult Amanda Diekman outlines a parenting approach that finally lowers the bar for the whole family, enabling the equilibrium of the home to be restored.

In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that our children, if free to pursue their own interests through play, will not only learn all they need to know but will do so with energy and passion. Children come into this world burning to learn, equipped with the curiosity, playfulness, and sociability to direct their own education. Yet we have squelched such instincts in a school model originally developed to indoctrinate, not to promote intellectual growth.

In 2019, there were more than two million children being homeschooled. That number doubled during the pandemic and is now likely to continue increasing as more parents worry that school might not be the best place for their children to learn and grow. Teach Your Own helped launch the homeschooling movement; now, its timeless and revolutionary message of recognizing the ways children come to understand the world has been updated for today’s environment.

Inspired by the spirit of Henry David Thoreau—"All good things are wild and free"—mother of five Ainsley Arment founded Wild + Free. This growing online community of mothers and families want their children to receive a quality education at home by challenging their intellectual abilities and nurturing their sense of curiosity, joy, and awe—the essence of a positive childhood. The homeschool approach of past generations is gone—including the stigma of socially awkward kids, conservative clothes, and a classroom setting replicated in the home.

In a compelling narrative that introduces historical and contemporary research on self-directed education, Unschooled also spotlights how a diverse group of individuals and organizations are evolving an old schooling model of education. These innovators challenge the myth that children need to be taught in order to learn.

Do you know children who get upset when their routines change? They might also struggle to see the big picture, make friends, solve a problem in real time, and read nonverbal communication. Meltdowns, tantrums, and other challenging behaviors might be common. This audiobook was designed to teach you how making small shifts in your language and speaking style that will produce important results.

Thirty years in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine. With over 100,000 copies in print since its original publication in 2002, this book is collection of essays and speeches and includes a describes the wide-spread impact of the book and Gatto's "guerrilla teaching". John Gatto was a teacher in New York City's public schools for over 30 years and was a New York State Teacher of the Year.

If you are considering the unschooling path for your child or know someone who is, this is the best book to get you started; in fact, this book was made specifically for you, the parent who is on the fence regarding this philosophy and method of education.

We trust the school system to prepare our kids for the future. We get excited when they get good grades, or disappointed if they don’t. But we rarely stop to question whether school is teaching our children the right things in the right way.

This enduring classic of educational thought offers teachers and parents deep, original insight into the nature of early learning. John Holt was the first to make clear that, for small children, "learning is as natural as breathing." In this delightful yet profound book, he looks at how we learn to talk, to read, to count, and to reason, and how we can nurture and encourage these natural abilities in our children.

In Raising Human Beings, the renowned child psychologist and New York Times best-selling author of Lost at School and The Explosive Child explains how to cultivate a better parent-child relationship while also nurturing empathy, honesty, resilience, and independence.

Dr. Neufeld and Dr. Maté explore the phenomenon of peer orientation: the troubling tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction—for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behavior. But peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence; it is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On to Your Kids.

Dr. Ross Greene, a distinguished clinician and pioneer in the treatment of kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, has worked with thousands of explosive children, and he has good news: these kids aren't attentionseeking, manipulative, or unmotivated, and their parents aren't passive, permissive disciplinarians. Rather, explosive kids are lacking some crucial skills in the domains of flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving, and they require a different approach.

Over her decades as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Mona Delahooke has routinely counseled distraught parents who struggle to manage their children’s challenging, sometimes oppositional behaviors. These families are understandably focused on correcting or improving a child’s lack of compliance, emotional outbursts, tantrums, and other “out of control” behavior. But, as she has shared with these families, a perspective shift is needed. Behavior, no matter how challenging, is not the problem but a symptom; a clue about what is happening in a child’s unique physiologic makeup.

Blending theory, practical advice and lived experience, clinical psychologist Naomi Fisher introduces the world of self-directed learning and tailoring the learning environment to your child. This comprehensive overview of self-directed learning is packed with ideas on how to implement it at home and includes interviews from parents of neurodivergent children on how you can make learning differently work for you and your child

This down-to-earth guide is for parents who need something different. It's for those who are fighting battles where they didn't know battles could be fought. It's for those who suspect that what they are doing isn't helping - but they don't know what else to do. It's for families who need a better way to live and who want their children (and themselves) to thrive.

Parenting and neuroscience expert Robyn Gobbel is here to reveal how all behavior, no matter how baffling, can be explained and remedied. You just need to look past the behavior and understand what's going on inside. Robyn decodes the latest brain science into easy-to-understand principles and metaphors to help you become an expert in your child's behavior. She reveals simple ways to help you regulate and connect with your child, with brain-, body- and sensory-based strategies to overcome day-to-day challenges.

In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that our children, if free to pursue their own interests through play, will not only learn all they need to know but will do so with energy and passion. Children come into this world burning to learn, equipped with the curiosity, playfulness, and sociability to direct their own education. Yet we have squelched such instincts in a school model originally developed to indoctrinate, not to promote intellectual growth.

Although Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) has been a recognized autistic profile in the UK for some time, awareness is still growing in America. When parents first learn about it they talk about having a lightbulb moment of understanding their child better. Many described how, having found traditional parenting and behavioral techniques made things worse instead of better, they felt judged and alone. Teachers and school administrators also reported struggling to support their PDA students. The children, teens and young adults themselves were often left feeling misunderstood.