Jan Hunt

If you haven't read Jan Hunts website, The Natural Child Project, I highly recommend it. I enjoyed reading "22 Alternatatives to Losing it", "Deschooing a Parent" and "What do Children Want"?

I also wanted to share some of Jan Hunt's words that someone posted on an unschooling e-mail list.

"Empathic parenting, to put it simply, is beleiving what we in our hearts to be true. If we follow our hearts, we trust the child in these ways:
*We understand that all children are doing the very best they can at every given moment.
*We trust that though children maybe small in size, they deserve to have their needs taken seriously.
*We know that it is unrealistic to expect a child to behave perfectly at all times.
*We recognize that "bad behavior" is the child's attempt to communicate an important need in the best way she can.
*We learn to look beneath the child's outward behavior to understand what he is thinking and feeling.
*We see that in a very beautiful way, our child teches us what love is."
"The educator John Holt once said that everything he wrote could be summed up in two words: "trust children". This the most precious gift we can give as parents."

If you like what Jan has to say, she has a book that you may want to get. Here's the link:

Related Tags: parenting, Jan Hunt, unschooling