Breaking the Cycle of Authoritarian Behaviour Modification with guest Dayna Martin | Episode 23

Dayna Martin is an advocate, speaker, educator, and author of three books about parenting and homeschooling. Dayna been featured on The Dr. Phil Show, CNN, Nightline, The Jeff Probst Show, ABC’s hit show, Wife Swap, Fox News, 60 Minutes and the Bethenny Show.She was used as an informational resource for Homeschooling stories on the Discovery Channel, The Today Show and Our America on the OWN Network and the Oprah Winfrey Show. She travels the world helping families change their lives by changing their parenting paradigm to bring more peace and connection to their lives with their children. Dayna and is a featured speaker at the major parenting and education conferences worldwide. Dayna has been inspiring parents for almost two decades by sharing her experience through natural birth, attachment parenting and Unschooling. She loves travelling world over helping families change their lives by changing their parenting paradigm and bringing more peace and connection to their lives with their children.

In this thought-provoking episode, Dayna Martin shares her journey of advocating for unschooling. She highlights the importance of listening to her children over societal norms.

Through exploring the unschooling philosophy, she distinguishes between authoritarian parenting, which models power rules, and partnership parenting, where everyone's needs matter. Dayna believes that partnership parenting is the model for a peaceful world. She also sheds light on how traditional schooling was created and how parents were forced at gunpoint to attend compulsory education in America. This leads to an insightful discussion on what an unschooling day looks like and the role of technology in unschooling. Dayna makes a compelling argument that controlling technology is what causes negative behavior, not the technology itself and why we need to connect with our children through their interests without control or limits?

Finally, we learn about the conditioning – learning to trust children and to start trusting yourself again. Dayna's son became a blacksmith because he was allowed to play with fire, highlighting the power of unschooling in allowing children to follow their passions and discover their own path in life.

We explore questions such as whether we have given up our right to spend time with our children due to the public school system, and why you’re considered a radical and rebel for trusting your kids. Through discussing the pandemic's impact on unschooled children and the benefits of deschooling, we discover how unschooling is not just an educational approach but a way of life that facilitates a child-led learning experience. Other topics tackled in this episode include obstacles parents face when leaning into unschooling, the unhealthy relationships created by the current schooling system, and whether working mothers can create a safe space for unschooling. Ultimately, we are left with the question of whether we are raising our children to be who they truly are or who we want them to be.

Show notes

4.40 – Why do we listen to society instead of our own children?

6:20 – How advocating for unschooling lead to a shift from ridicule to acceptance, and what can we learn from Dayna’s experience?

9.07 – The impact of introducing unschooling on a mainstream TV show like ‘Dr Phil and 'Wife Swap'

14:11 – The underlying philosophy of unschooling and how it differs from traditional schooling

15:10 – Is authoritarian parenting a lazy form of parenting? How can partnership parenting be a model for world peace?

17:20 – What does unschooling actually entail, and how does it differ from un-educating or forced learning?

19:33 – Why were schools created in the first place, and what do critics of unschooling often overlook?

20:00 – How have parents historically resisted compulsory education, and why were they sometimes forced to attend at gunpoint?"

21:35 – A glimpse into a typical day of unschooling

26:30 – The role technology plays in unschooling, and how can we connect with our children through their interests without control or limits?

30:40 – Learning to trust our children and ourselves when it comes to unschooling, and how can we overcome conditioning that tells us otherwise.

34:00 – What can we learn from Dayna's son, who became a blacksmith simply because he was allowed to play with fire and follow his passion

35:50 – Public school permissions: Have we given up our right to spend time with our children?

37:45 - Parents who homeschool their kids in China are deemed criminals

39:15 – Why you’re considered a radical and rebel for trusting your kids?

40:00 - When the pandemic hit, unschooled kids were seemingly invincible. Why?

48:00 - Are you stuck on seeing things only through a "schooly" lens?

48:40 - Who benefits the most from deschooling? The children or the parents?