My Educational Philosophy

What I'm about to write is an attempt to boil down my educational philosophy into something concise that shows I'm not going about our homeschooling/unschooling adventures willy-nilly. I do not expect that anyone else should conduct their family's education the same way we do, or that it would work for larger-scale schools, or even that the majority of people reading this will agree with me. Instead, I just want to show that I have come to this practice after much reading, research, and knowing of my child. Also, that the philosophy does not exist in a vacuum. There are plenty of "experts" (psychologists, homeschool parents, "graduated" homeschool students, public figures) who have either lived out experiences backing this up or who have conducted research in the field and have come to some conclusions with which I agree, many of which feel intuitive.

Anything I might say about why the larger-scale educational system doesn't work for me is not an indictment of that system. If you or your children are in it, and it is working for you, I think that's awesome. I am a product of the same system (as much as one can be when it changes as much as it is wont to do), and I don't think I'm stupid or poorly-educated or that I missed out on anything. I don't think that about anyone else's kids. I am a huge advocate of parental choice when it comes to education, and that's not just lip service (as in, "Oh, parents SHOULD get to choose... *quietly* but the ones who really love their kids and want the best for them will do ABC...").

I am writing this for my own benefit. I need to clear out the cobwebs and be able to offer up some clearly-articulated ideas, goals, and methods to show why I think what we're doing is what works best for the one kid whose education is currently in my hands. Because it appears that, at some point in the future, I might have to defend it. And I can.

The term "unschooling" has a spectrum of connotations, even among people who identify as unschoolers. To some educators and more traditional homeschoolers, unschooling means that the parents don't do anything at all and just let the kids do whatever they want. Actually, some unschoolers agree with this. Some unschoolers equate true educational autonomy with unparenting, and this is not even close to where I fall on the spectrum.

First of all, I'm the parent. There are times when I do just know better, and it's still my responsibility to help my child become the best person she can be, so that she's equipped to be a compassionate, well-rounded, content, and competent person by the time she leaves the house. While I do feel that it's important to start granting independence to her in certain areas sooner rather than later, I'm still here to guide her, to help her get back on track when she messes up, and to help her prevent major catastrophes that would do more harm than good (as opposed to mistakes that are awesome, if painful, learning experiences).

I do not agree with the philosophy that says "anything you force your kids to do that they don't want to do squashes their creativity and embitters them." Ehh. I don't particularly want to vacuum every day, but I do because it's necessary. There are things I make my child do because we live in a household where everyone pitches in to take responsibility for its functionality. This extends to my frequently having her do "school work" and out-of-the-house activities she'd rather avoid. I certainly pick my battles, but there are times she just has to do things she doesn't want to do, because that's life.

Some unschoolers think this means I'm not qualified to call myself an unschooler... in the same way that when homeschoolers ask what curriculum we use and I say we don't, or ask what grade Daphne's in and I say that's not relevant to her education, they don't consider what I'm doing "homeschooling enough." Whatever. I'm not particularly interested in labels.

There used to be a show on television called "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?" The premise was to pit adults against 5th grade students to see who could successfully answer more grade-appropriate questions. Inevitably, the kids were better equipped to provide the correct information; the sort of fun take-away, as evidenced by the show's title, was that 10-year-olds are brighter than grown-ups.

But that's not how I saw it.

When I watched the show, I was overwhelmed by one idea: We "learn" a lot of stuff in school that we don't use in life, and therefore forget. I couldn't name the author of "Black Beauty" without looking it up, whereas a 5th grader probably could. But if you get a flat on the side of the highway during rush hour, I have enough practice that might be more useful to you in the situation.

I am certain that I "learned" which Indian tribe originally signed a treaty with the pilgrims, but I couldn't tell you today. When I was in 10th grade, I had a leaf collection assignment that took up most of the first 9 weeks of school. We had to procure and identify something like 200 different leaves, and I got good at it. I could narrow down tree type by leaf shape, veins, points, etc. Today? No way. I think I can tell the difference in a sycamore and a maple tree but that's about as good as it's going to get.

Have I gotten more stupid?

Please, don't answer that. I will. I like to hope that I have not gotten dumber, but that I haven't needed to access the "tree-identifying" information I acquired in order to pass a biology class in the last 25 years. If I were a park ranger or a tracker or had pursued a different vocation or avocation, things might be different.

Since I think this happens to everyone, the question at the bottom of everything might be: Is it valuable to learn something for learning's sake if it is not going to benefit you in the long run?

The answer to that, I believe, is a solid, "It depends." People don't like answers like that. People want to hear, "Learning is always important, even if just for learning's sake." Or, "No. It isn't." And it's not that simple.

Beyond the "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" principle, one of the ways I personally came to my educational philosophy was my experience as a 2nd grader in a 1st/2nd grade split.

When I was in elementary school, we had too many 2nd graders for one class, but not enough for two. Consequently, half a dozen of us were picked to be in a split classroom, comprised mostly of 1st graders.

The way it worked is that we would be given all of our work for the day the first thing in the morning. The teacher would briefly walk us through it, and tell us to help each other then come ask her if we got stuck. Typically, we'd blow through the mandatory work and be finished by first recess. We'd spend the rest of the day writing stories and notes to each other. We had search-a-word races, which lead to our creating our own puzzles. We would find manipulatives in the classroom and play with those.

I learned a few things about education from this: 1) Even state-mandated work doesn't have to take an entire school day to accomplish. 2) Cooperative learning is fun and effective. 3) Left to their own devices, kids will come up with accidentally "educational" activities to fill their time.

The other 2nd graders, the ones in the legitimate class, were doing the exact same work we were doing, and it took them all day. Plus, they'd get in trouble for communicating with each other too much (a couple of times, we joined them for a special speaker or event, and once I ended up in the hall for talking). They never got to choose what to do with their time during the day, and I'll bet my friends and I enjoyed our school year a lot more than they did.

When Daphne was a baby, her father and I worked at Boys Town for a few months and realized, caring for six kids who were in the public middle and high school programs, several in honors classes, that the education they were receiving was not something we wanted for our child. We explored private schools, but those were largely richie-rich factories and we weren't down with a lot of the fund-raising and pomposity involved in those, either.

We ended up moving to a different state with much smaller schools before my daughter was old enough to start her "formal" education, and then by the time she was old enough for kindergarten, she was already reading and it seemed like a waste of time (for her and for a teacher) to send her to learn her numbers and colors and letters.

By this point, I'd already experienced student-lead learning, because I can tell you right now that I did not teach my child how to read. I don't have any idea how to impart that skill to another person. I did read to Daphne from an early age (although, according to Peter Gray, that has no bearing on whether you end up with a "precocious reader" or not; it's all about how the kid is wired). She had access to lots of books, and a desire to read them herself, I suppose. I also spent a lot of time with her as she clicked through Starfall. We watched a lot of "Between the Lions" and its PBS website. We had a couple of "read-along" games. Daphne wasn't able to use the computer alone at this time, so we enjoyed hanging out "exploring" the worlds in these digital books.

The thing is, I didn't "make" her learn to read. I didn't require that she sit for 30 minutes a day in my lap and do this. She wanted to.

When she was little, she wanted to do "workbooks" so we had some preschool curricula that she completed. She also wanted to do Harry Potter Science, so we did that one summer. We went to story time at the library. She participated in the summer reading program. We joined a homeschool co-op and I let her pick her own classes.

When she was in early elementary, I provided for my daughter a range of subjects: science, social studies, spelling, math, and Bible. Daphne took Texas History (twice) in enrichment classes, as well as some art and project-based stuff that I appreciated since I didn't have to buy a bunch of supplies.

As she started getting older and developing her interests more, the way we did school started to change. I started feeling more confident with the process and dropping things that felt like a waste of time and effort.

For instance, writing prompts and assigned essays were a stress on both of us. Daphne's main question was always, "How many sentences do I have to write?" The "work" I got out of her wasn't stellar, and she was discouraged. This is the same girl who has written short stories, twice completed all 30,000 words for National Novel Writing Month, and who role plays online for hours at a time in one chat room where the format is "paragraphs" instead of just exchanging lines of dialogue. She writes. But she writes what she wants when she wants.

"But sometimes you have to write things you don't want to write!" one might argue. Ehh, sort of. You have to write for classes, if you choose to take (and continue) those classes. You have to write for some tests, if you choose to take the tests. You have to write for some jobs, assuming you want to keep the job... but that's the deal: you get to choose.

Another thing I realized over time was that Daphne was not "remembering" things that were irrelevant to her. We'd study American history and then go back and review it and she'd have no recollection of it. Same with some science. And these were things that were difficult to muddle through (we tried a BUNCH of different history curricula and even the "best" ones just didn't click with her), so it was disheartening that the result wasn't true learning, anyway.

What did stick was when we'd be preparing to go somewhere like San Antonio and read about the history of the Alamo, beginning with the story of a resident cat and then once we had some anecdotal familiarity with the Alamo as a structure, why it was important. Once we visited, to see a proctor use the giant scale model to explain the standoff made it come to life. Those things, she remembers.

At that point, I decided that we'd study history and social studies as it was relevant. Since we've lived in Austin, we've gone to a Constitution Day rally and studied civil liberties. When I was particularly moved by the warm reception the crowd gave to a bunch of Vietnam Veterans at a parade, we studied that conflict and the politics of then anti-war movement here in the US at the time. When we visit the LBJ Presidential Library, we talk about his good intentions and whether or not all of the government "help" he enacted was a good idea.

Can Daphne draw a timeline and lay out all of the events in our country's history? No. But neither can I. If you can, that's awesome. Can you make fondant from scratch without a recipe? I don't necessarily think either of those is more important than the other. We just have different interests and different strengths. And one of the benefits I have in having only one student is that I have learned her strengths and am able to play to those, while also shoring up some weak spots.

Many years ago, I was listening to (or reading something by) Dr. James Dobson. He said, in effect, that if a kid brings home a report card that is all As except for a C in biology, what do parents do? They will buckle down on the biology. They will get tutors, make the student study harder, and focus all of their time and attention on bringing the grade up. Why? he asks. Why not recognize that the student is performing solidly in all of the subjects, that biology isn't the child's strength, and instead channel time and resources to the kid's areas of passion and expertise?

Not all kids need to achieve an "A" in biology. Not all kids will. It's not a value judgment that one person excels and another doesn't. We're not identically gifted and talented.

And that brings me to standardized testing.

"Have you had her tested?" No. "Then how do you know where she stands educationally?" I am with her every single day and I see what she can and can't do. "No, I mean, how do you know how she compares with other kids her age?" That is a loaded question, because the actual issue is that I'm not particularly interested in how my child "compares" with other kids her age. I've seen kids younger than my daughter on "Junior Next Top Chef" and don't feel like either of us is failing that Daphne has just recently taken an interest in preparing macaroni and cheese. (In fact, those kids have superior kitchen chops to me.) I've seen kids many years older than my daughter who can't write two sentences without making overt spelling and grammatical errors that she wouldn't make. It's not a competition. Daphne does not need to be ranked among her age peers. It doesn't mean anything.

Also, standardized testing doesn't test what a person actually knows. It tests whether the person taking the test can answer the questions that are on the test. My daughter is an artist. She's incredible at it. She studies and researches and works hard, and a standardized test can't measure that. It can't tell that she can spot a red herring a mile away. It can't infer whether she knows how to discern solid information from propaganda, or whether or not she's creative, or if she's likely to get a job she loves some day.

When my sister and I were younger, I was a "better student" in all of the measurable ways. I made better grades. I had an easier time testing. I was in a higher percentile among my age group. I didn't struggle with studying as much. These together could have given the false impression that I was smarter or better educated. The fact is, I was just good at taking tests and they made me feel superior, which I liked. Peter Gray, a psychologist who writes a lot about learning, points out that testing tends to bring out the best in those who are confident and the worst in those who are less secure. That was likely the case with my sister and me.

When I went to college, I breezed through everything, loading as many classes as I could take at once, because I wanted to finish and get on with my "real life." When my sister went, at first she didn't take it seriously, not showing up for classes, failing some and barely squeaking by in others. However, once she got to concentrate on her chosen major, services for the Deaf, including a heavy load of American Sign Language and Deaf Culture, she thrived. She excelled. She became fluent and a short while after graduating became nationally certified as an interpreter.

Although I consistently out-performed my sister in school, if we were both to start from scratch and see how much money we could make working as much as we could for one week (disqualifying illegal activity or any aspect of the sex trade), she would earn exponentially more than I'd be able to rake in.

Which brings us to another question: What is the final outcome of a "successful" education? Is it earning potential? Is that really the end-all/be-all of what we're doing when we set out on an educational path?

My sister finally got to a point where she was able to study what she wanted to study, and what she loved. When it mattered, she was able to learn and grow and develop and excel, even if you wouldn't have thought she had that potential based on her school grades and test scores.

Actually, before my sister went away to college, she was working in the mall at a cookie kiosk. She was offered a management position, and declined it because she knew what she wanted to do, and she did it. In truth, that could have been an ideal career for me.

Instead, I got a degree in theater and never worked in the theater because jobs are hard to come by, I wasn't talented or motivated enough to get a job on Broadway, and I had (and have) no desire to teach theater or to run a community theater.

But you know what? During my adult life, I've gotten Real Estate and Insurance licenses. How did I get them? By studying things I needed to know at the time that I had never learned as a youth, in order to pass a test. I did both successfully my first time around... and. honestly, would likely be unable to pass either again today.

So what's the point of all of this, and where does it leave my daughter's education?

Daphne is almost 13. She is mature enough to learn to start managing her time. Every morning when she wakes up, there is a list on the board of what she needs to do for the day. It lists chores, "school" stuff, and tasks (like calling someone or making a list she needs). Sometimes, she'll negotiate for tasks she'd prefer to do and if I've put in a "time filler" because I'm concerned her "must dos" won't take very long and she'll spend too much of the day screwing around, then I often let her choose to do something else.

The only thing I push on her nearly every day is math. Math, like reading, is one of those skills on which one builds, and it's consistently relevant to daily life. If I did not make Daphne keep up math practice, she would not do it and she would likely lose those skills. She just finished a 6th-8th grade algebra book and we've started on Danica McKellar's "Girls Get Curves" for an entertaining introduction to geometry.

I don't have to "insist" that Daphne keeps up with reading or writing, because those two things and art are the things with which she's almost continually occupied (although sometimes she'll go on a Minecraft or MiniClips tear and play for hours... but we all do that sometimes, don't we?).

Recently, to try to reintroduce some science, I purchased another set of Harry Potter labs like we'd done before. Daphne just wasn't interested this time. I could force her to do the activities, to "learn" what the labs mean... but I don't believe it would benefit her in any way, and instead would teach her that "education" or "school" equals "tiring, useless crap forced on me in which I have no interest." As it is, I watch her research things with vigorous interest. Why is what I might want to assign her to learn more important than that which she actually wishes to learn?

Although it is my intuition that allowing Daphne to pursue her passions while I help her learn life lessons will ultimately benefit her, and help make her independent in a couple of years instead of when she's 26, it's nice to know that people are actually studying this and finding it to be true. I've mentioned Peter Gray a couple of times. He has a blog on Psychology Today called "Freedom to Learn" (also the name of his book). He has researched and writes a lot about the importance of play in education, about the results of unschooling, about the decision to quit, and about whether or not you can actually objectively measure someone's "education."

Mike Rowe has also written a lot about formal, "standard" (of course you're going to college after high school; that's what people DO) educational routes versus the value of just working your butt off at whatever it is with which you are occupied, and whether one leads to a genuine feeling of contentment and "success" over the other.

Another blog that has a lot of content I enjoy reading is "I'm Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write," written by a young adult chronicling others' and her experiences with and her thoughts on unschooling. I particularly like her take on how it still seems like homeschoolers (and within that group, unschoolers in particular) have to "prove" that what they're doing is legitimate by succeeding in these big ways. Homeschool family with 9 kids, 6 of whom are in college before the age of 16? Well, that's some good homechooling! Homeschool family with 2 kids, one of whom is a mechanic and the other is in community college? Ehh. Why is that? What is "successful enough"? What is "education"? Why does it have to look certain ways to be considered valid?

I think we actually limit our kids (and ourselves) when we narrowly define "education." Can true "education" can only be done in age-defined groups, led by an "expert," and meticulously managed? Sometimes, I'll hear stories about young people who are offered amazing jobs as professional musicians or on sports teams or acting or whatever, and they (or their parents) put those opportunities off until after they've completed their "education." What?! WHY?? Is there nothing to be learned from work? Certainly if you can successfully navigate both learning AND earning an income, why would you wait? If you want a college degree, there's not a time limit on that. They let 30-year-olds in! I've even heard that they let octogenarians in!

With all of this in mind, and with my daughter approaching her teen years, I believe that there is nothing better I can do for her (nor could any school) than to start preparing her to be independent. She will be able to start work in a year, and between now and then, she needs to learn to manage the checking account she has (right now, that involves primarily scanning and uploading deposits, as she tends to hoard money), to navigate the area where we live on her own (when we walk and she asks, "How much further?" we turn it into a lesson. "We're on 23rd and *this street,*" then she has to calculate blocks in both directions and find her own answer. This really irritates her; she just wants me to tell her.), and to narrow down her interests to find a good part time job.

I could be wrong, but I'm thinking a good start for her would be the art store across the street. When she's there, she'll continue her math in a retail environment. She'll also have access to people who "art" for a living as teachers, sculptors, illustrators, etc. and can talk to them about career options. She will learn organization and people skills and collaboration. She will use those things throughout her life, even more than she'd use trigonometry, if I kept her home or put her in school and made her take it.

When Daphne was younger, if you'd asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, she'd say, "Be a veterinarian." A guidance counselor might then have set her on a track heavy with math and science like one would for someone interested in pre-med. However, because I knew her so well, I was able to discern that she didn't actually want to treat animals medically. She wanted to be around animals. She wanted to be the person you'd call if you could hear kittens trapped in a storm drain but you couldn't see them. She would not need the same extensive (expensive) education to fulfill that dream.

One way she could pursue this if it's still something that interests her in a few years is by applying for an internship at Turpentine Creek, where she would work with cats (and a few other animals) in exchange for room and board and a stipend for food. It could help her narrow down what precise interest she has in animals, and maybe inspire her to go on to vet school... but she'd also have a lot of experience going in. Then at that point, she'd have her internal motivation for boning up on her science.

The fact is, as an adult, I don't want to have to spend time and mental energy on something that isn't relevant to me. If someone forced me to take an AutoCAD course, I'd probably resent it a lot. I'm not sure why we treat young people like that, though. "I don't care whether you want to learn this. Take the class, anyway. It will be good for you."

I'm not anti-education. I'd love to take a cake decorating class, or learn how to use Adobe PremierPro for Windows (which so far has me banging my head against the desk and fully indoctrinated to the "Mac is so much better for this kind of stuff" side of things). As I mentioned, I've taken a real estate course and studied insurance stuff on my own. That involved a lot of things I found uninteresting and didn't love studying, but because it was relevant to the life I had at the time and the goals I was pursuing, there was a motivation to learn.

If I could go back and do my education over again, I would probably elect either not to go to college, or to pursue my interest in the theater on a community level rather than paying for the privilege and instead study something I couldn't have learned except in the college environment. Or I would have gone back to my hometown and asked for that management position at the cookie store.

Although I made straight As, aced most every test I took, and have a college degree, I've had the same mishmash of unrelated jobs that most people have had, working when and where I needed to to get by.

In contrast, my husband, who went to college for one semester (majoring in classical guitar performance), has taught himself a bunch of computer languages and has no problem finding full time work with great pay and benefits. He seriously reads coding books for fun. He pursues his own education in an area about which he is passionate, and the fact that he didn't jump through proscribed institutional hoops has not mattered one iota. (Even for those jobs that say that they require a college degree; at this point, his experience more than makes up for that.)

Before my daughter leaves the house, I want for her to be able to research and learn what she wants to, to be able to weed out what is good information and what is garbage and/or propaganda. I want her to have a work ethic that drives her to do and to do well, even if the particular task at hand isn't her favorite (and while that might seem antithetical to not having her study a lot of things she doesn't want to study, I'm purposefully saving those battles for things like chores, helping other people move, visiting old people in nursing homes, etc.). I want her to understand managing personal finances, and how to stay out of debt, and how important that is.

Honestly, if Daphne had to go live on her own today, I don't think she'd be any worse off than most high school graduates, except for the ones who've already held jobs. At this point, she needs exposure to the "real" world to start efficiently down a path toward what it is her life will become. There is a great interview with psychologist Robert Epstein about infantilizing teens here. I am ready to see what mine can do when given the opportunity! I have been with her almost every single day since she was born, and I see that she's ready.

As a final note, I want to address my child's "socialization." I've been asked recently what opportunities she has to meet people, and it's been suggested (not by her mental health care provider, but others) that it'd probably be good for her to get out and around more people.

Here, again, it's a matter of my being her mom and seeing who and where she is, and knowing that the same prescription doesn't work for everyone.

Daphne is an introvert. She is quiet, but not socially awkward. She will talk to strangers if she wants to. A lot of times, she doesn't want to. She was involved in the same gym for six years and got along well with a couple of girls during that time, but didn't ever make a "best" friend. That was at four hours a day, four days a week for quite a while. When we were in homeschool enrichment classes, she made a couple of close friends, but most of the people she hung out with she did so because I'd contacted their mothers when we'd first moved to town, and we started getting together when the kids were still preschool aged.

She's now way past the point where I can pick her friends.

Actually, there is one friend that I make sure she connects with and hangs out with every so often. Not because she doesn't like her, but because Daphne would almost always rather just stay home.

Daphne made a very fast friend in BSF last year, but then she and her mom moved to the East Coast unexpectedly. Also, when D is in small-format venues like robotics camp or art camp, she'll usually end up with the phone number or Skype contact of some guy with whom she really hit it off.

But if we go to large-format get-togethers like the Austin Area Homeschoolers' not-back-to-school swimming party or a dance? She won't talk to anyone. It's overwhelming. Heck, it's overwhelming to me and I'm a borderline extrovert.

D will be starting Hill Country Academy on Mondays this fall, and I'm sure she'll make some new friends in those classes... especially since one of them has a final cosplay project.

What bothers me is the knee-jerk assumption that because I have a 12-year-old who really likes to be home alone, something is "wrong" with her: either the homeschooling is making her weird, or she's troubled in some way because of life issues, etc.

"Unlike the general population, the majority of gifted children are introverts who need to pull back in order to refuel. Gifted children who need to be alone to recharge may be misinterpreted as excessively self-preoccupied (narcissistic), timid, or socially backward."

There's also a great blog post about this from the standpoint of a mom with a much younger child at whom the off-hand diagnosis of "autism" was thrown (apparently that happens frequently).

My husband and I are both products of a "typical" public school experience. He is extremely introverted, to the point that we don't schedule activities on Sundays because he needs that day to recharge in order to go back to work and be around a lot of people on Monday. He is also outgoing, pleasantly social when the situation calls for it, empathetic to the point of being sacrificial, and very well-adjusted.

There's long been a stereotype that when a kid messes up or gets kicked out of a public school, the parents put that kid into a private school. Unless the problem genuinely is the school itself or the specific peers in that place, does anyone believe that simply changing an educational venue alone is going to "fix" something that a kid has going on? I think in this situation, people would say, "No." But the knee-jerk to a quiet homeschooled kid is "they're not socialized enough. They don't know how."

Trust me, my daughter knows how to socialize. She can talk. She can be bossy. She can have an attitude. She can be extremely protective of friends. She loves to know she made someone who was sad laugh. She just does it in her own way, and her own way will follow her wherever she goes. It's not a problem to be fixed. It is her personality... and even though it's completely different than mine, I'm learning to appreciate it (having an introvert as my husband and her stepdad has probably bridged a lot of this between us) and to work with it. I sometimes make her go do things she doesn't want to do. I sometimes let her bring distractions into which she can disappear; I sometimes make her leave them at home. It's a balance, and I'm working to find it. I think she is, too.

To summarize: There is a reason I'm doing what I'm doing with regards to my daughter's education. It's not because I'm wanting to keep her away from anything bad (and, in fact, would be pleased like crazy if she'd go to the Clearview Sudbury School a few miles from here), or as any particular demonstration "against" anything. It just seems to make the most sense in getting a smart, talented kid from where she is now to somewhere she can be happy in the long term. I don't operate in a vacuum; there are plenty of studies and professionals who would agree with me (and, I believe, there will be some sweeping if slow changes in mass education over the next few years as the pendulum swings in a different direction). I don't mistake my child's foreign-to-me disposition as a liability or something to be fixed.

I'm doing what all of us parents are doing. Trying to provide opportunities so that she can realize and fulfill her potential. And I'm certain that each of us parents knows our kids well enough to help make that decision with them rather than having the decision made by someone outside of our situation, even if they're professional and well-meaning. They can't know our kids. And the exact same path can't be the best for every single person.