Cindy Gaddis is a stay-at-home mother of seven children (son/25, daughter/22/married, son/21, son/19, son/17, son/13, son/11), five by birth and two by adoption. They've been a home educating family since 1992, so all her children have learned at home from the beginning. She has a book out, The Right Side of Normal, and her website is here.
I’ve had a theory for a while now that I believe most people who end up unschooling do so because the parent choosing to unschool is a right-brained learner, or the child in question is a right-brained learner. In my case, my first-born son is a strong right-brained learner, and he would end up teaching me how he best learned, which led straight to unschooling.
Basically, the reason I see this to be true is that right-brained learners tend to be mirror/opposites of left-brained learners. Their developmental learning process has a completely different order. Since school, and thus, most school-at-home approaches teaches in a left-brained manner, a right-brained child has to carve out a different path in order to achieve their optimal learning path. This causes a gravitational pull toward unschooling or eclectic homeschooling that allows, or even encourages, these differences to exist.
The foundation of an unschooling environment is honoring the interests of the child. The foundation for a right-brained learner is pursuing one of the creative outlet interests (building/electronics, art/ photography, computers/video games, fashion/sewing, cooking/gardening, math/numbers, puzzles/mazes, theater/ showmanship, music/dance). Looking over this list, one doesn’t find these interests or gifts in the younger years of elementary school. Frankly, you rarely find these interests and gifts to any relevance in compulsory school at any age. In this way, the foundational unschooling philosophy welcomes diverse interests and gifts to be pursued and honored.
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