How to Raise Wild and Free Children

“she was life itself. wild and free. wonderfully chaotic. a perfectly put together mess.” -unknown

How to Raise Wild and Free Children

I’d love to tell you there’s a magic formula to raise wild and free children. Like feed them, water them, and they will grow, beyond your wildest imagination.

If only parenting was that simple!

However, unfortunately (or fortunately, really) there’s no secret formula to raising cool kids. Or smart, independent, kind ones.

BUT… and this is HUGE … there are things you can do, whether your child is a homeschooler or not, that will well position your child for a life of beautiful and strong wildness.

There are things you can do to help stave off the chance that your child will turn out as an brat who sucks life out of the world and others.

What Does Wild and Free Mean

There’s a lot of talk on social media about wild and free. Like to the point that you’ll find millions of hashtags on point. Examples:

#wildandfree – 2.3 MILLION posts

#wildandfreechildren – 1.1 MILLION posts

Thats’s a lot of wildness and freeness. 🙂

Generally speaking, wild and free is a reference to domestication. Things, or people in the context of raising children, are free when they aren’t domesticated – sort of like feral animals.

Domestication of children is the opposite of wildness. It’s exposure and coerced indoctrination into mandatory public/private school education, arbitrary rules, or societal expectations.

Admittedly, some seem to think of wildness as no rules or no boundaries. And you can probably imagine a kid or two in your mind that you’ve encountered who has absolutely no respect or understanding of boundaries.

And before you think, oh, she must be talking about those radical unschool types. NOPE. I’m actually a mega proponent of radical unschooling and unschooling in its various forms.

Does Wild and Free Mean No Rules?

Raising wild and free kids doesn’t necessarily mean they are raised with no rules.

But raising healthy kids who are wild and free usually means they appreciate limits and have a healthy dose of respect for themselves and others.

To me, raising wild and free kids means giving them space to figure out how the world works, and part of how the world works is realizing it has rules, limits, and boundaries.

And that it’s essential to respect people and their boundaries. That children, like adults, are equally deserving of respect and appreciation of their own limits, boundaries, and comfort zones.

So, does raising a wild and free child mean you don’t step in if the child seeks to destroy someone’s AirBNB rental. No, not at all. Because part of being wild and free is respecting other people—and by extension their stuff.

More to say on this later… thanks for hanging around the blog.

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