#129 – Unschooling: Embracing unstructured learning at home | Dave ten Have & Dr. Casey Means

There are many different approaches to educating your child: public school, private school, and homeschool are three common options. But unschooling is beginning to rise in popularity as well. So what is unschooling? In this episode, Levels Chief Medical Officer Dr. Casey Means chatted with our Lead Software Engineer Dave ten Have about his experience at home with “unschooling” his children, a form of self-directed unstructured learning. They dived into what unschooling means, how it’s different from homeschooling, and the benefits unschooling has offered Dave’s family.

03:33 – What is unschooling?

Unschooling means letting kids’ natural curiosity guide their learning experiences. It encourages kids to learn what they want to learn.

Unschooling really starts from the idea that kids are learning machines. And it’s true. Kids are learning machines. They’re voracious learners and so, instead of putting a formal structure around that learning process, which is what you see in a traditional schooling process, but what you also see in many homeschooling processes, we let the kids determine what they want to learn. And then, we put resources in front of them to encourage that learning. Those resources might be books. Those resources might be Khan Academy programs. They might be YouTube videos. They might be just sending them out to the farm to go and do something. There’s lots and lots of different ways of doing that. The other thing that is important, at least for us, when it comes to unschooling, is that the learning process isn’t a nine to five thing. It happens all through the day. And in many ways, it’s up to us to look for opportunities to teach or opportunities to pass knowledge on. That’s the main driver of the process.

05:35 – What does unschooling curriculum look like?

Dave explained that unschooling curriculum isn’t made up of strict structure. Rather, it’s a scaffolding that you use as a basic guideline.

It’s really us being attuned to what they are interested in a particular day or more likely in a particular week. And then, using that as a scaffolding for not only driving that particular interest, but also wrapping maths concepts around it or writing concepts or those sorts of things. Now, there are cases where we are interested in highlighting certain things. So right now, the eldest is going through a bit of an intensive reading program because she wants to read. I mean, we’ve got snowdrifts of books in this house, so she wants to read. In that case, we’ve brought a third party in who is driving their reading process. It’s a mix of things, but the core is that if they are interested in rocketry, rocketry resources turn up. If they’re interested in chickens, chicken resources turn up.

07:18 – How to teach on subjects you don’t know

If your kids are interested in learning something you aren’t an expert in, it’s a chance for you to work through the process and learn it yourself.

This is one of the other really great things about this process. Because it’s a chance for us to learn stuff. It’s a chance for us to flex muscles in new directions, and it’s just to flex old muscles. Doing long division by hand, I mean, when was the last time that we’ve ever done that? Exactly. Sitting there and working through that process because they want to learn how to do division. So in some cases, it’s us refreshing knowledge that has gone stale. In other cases, it is us finding someone who can teach them or finding a resource that can teach them, so it’s much more active in that respect.

24:00 – The ebbs and flows of unschooling

Having an unstructured school experience gives kids the chance to be loud and big and explore their bodies and abilities.

The unstructured activity thing was something that my wife spent a lot of time looking into. And when kids are small, big gross motor skills and very physical expressions of life are important to them, right? And so that unstructured space with the ability to be able to be loud and be physically big is just super vital for them because it starts to link them to their bodies and starts to link their bodies to the spaces that they’re in without being forced to sit down all the time and be constrained. And that aids learning in our experience. Because if you then look back to the second question, that vegging thing doesn’t really occur so much. If there’s an avenue for burning off that energy, then coming to a peaceful space and just reading books or doing whatever physical, crafting projects that they might want to do, for instance, or building Lego or those sorts of things, in my experience, their focus is much more laser-like, and their focus will go on for an entire day. Both of them have sat at the Makey table for an entire day just doing what they want to do, and so those things work together.

26:29 – The effect on Dave’s life

Dave said unschooling his children has helped him relearn the value of taking time out for himself, not using technology, and doing things he enjoyed as a kid.

As I’ve seen them grow and learn, and as I’ve learned to parent, my wife has been exceedingly good at teaching me how to parent, that has looped back into a whole bunch of things. Taking time out for myself, like not using technology, doing stuff that I enjoyed as a kid, exploring different concepts, reading books, like getting back into the habit of reading books again, all of those sorts of things. But also, I believe it has made me a better manager as well because I’ve had to learn a whole bunch of new skills because I’ve had to help look after these two little creatures and learning how to communicate properly, learning how to communicate clearly, learning how to give people freedom to express themselves, learning how to define things when you need to define things, and not define things otherwise. All of that give-and-take process has definitely made me better at managing than I was prior to it because I’ve had to learn how to do that anyway. If I’m going to be an effective parent, I’ve had to do that now.

33:13 – Getting rid of artificial milestones

Because there are fewer expectations in unschooling, kids aren’t pressured to live up to a certain set of expectations.

We’re not going through this going, “Well, by six you need to read. By seven, you need to have mastered multiplication. By eight, you have to have mastered calculus.” We’re not doing that. We’re saying, “As you grow, as your skills develop, we will feed those skills. There’s no demand for you to meet these artificial milestones.” And I think that’s probably part of it because there’s no requirement for meeting those milestones. There’s no guilt if you don’t meet those milestones. There’s no self-doubt if you meet those milestones. There’s no feeling that you’re falling behind. There’s none of that stuff. For me, that’s one of the problems with standardizing all of this stuff, right? Because they’re not standard. There’s nothing about kids is standard. So if you create a situation where they’re forced to standardize, then you’re going to have positive side effects. There’s no question about it. But you’re going to create negative side effects, and I think the negative side effect starts to drive self-doubt. “I am not smart enough to do mathematics. I am not good enough to read,” or whatever. “You are not at the stage where you can do mathematics or you can start reading, and it’s totally okay.” There’s no, “You’re meant to have hit this milestone.” Yeah. I think that’s a big part of it.

39:44 – Learning is something you do

When you aren’t forced to learn, it becomes a more natural experience. It’s just something you do, not something you’re forced to do.

I think when you focus on the joy of learning and the joy of curiosity, and they are surrounded by people who express as much enjoyment about new knowledge as they do, then learning becomes something that you do, like breathing. It’s something you do. It’s something you love. I mean, they might. Who knows? They’re not teenagers yet. They might get well sick of it, and we might have rolling arguments for the next six years. Who knows? If that happens, that’s probably okay as well. I’m not terribly stressed about that. But I doubt it, like I sincerely doubt it. They are self-motivated, self-driven people.

48:33 – You’ve got to have faith

Dave said there is an element of faith in unschooling, and you have to trust that what you’re doing is right for your kids.

There is a faith component to it. There is faith that they are learning creatures. And that if you feed that curiosity and you feed that desire, you get the right result. Now, it’s intellectual bungee jumping. It’s just like, “Oh, what’s going to happen?” Then, there are these moments where you just go, “Wow. Okay. That’s right. That’s completely right.” In the first lockdown, the eldest designed a robot. She drew out the picture and then she built a robot. And I just looked at that and went, “Man.” I’m going to take that as a parenting win right there. In fact, I was so affected by it. It’s now one of my tattoos. I took that picture and tattooed it on myself because it was just like, “That’s what we’re shooting for. That’s exactly what we’re shooting for.” You have to remind yourself, you have to be aware of those achievements, and you have to go, “That’s fantastic,” and celebrate it. It’s like anything in this world, right? One of the other things that we’re not taught is how to celebrate our wins, how to spot our wins and how to celebrate our wins. Right? And you do this, you have to make sure that you spot the wins and you celebrate the wins because you’ll just go nuts otherwise.

53:19 – Navigating screen time

Dave said his kids don’t get a lot of screen time, but the experiences they do have with technology are rich learning experiences.

While we have ensured that they don’t get a lot of screen time, the screen time that they do get is focused much more on that expression. They’re much more on content creation than content consumption. I think that’s really the balance that we’ve shot for. What do you want? How do you make a pendant? How do you produce a 3D llama? Those sorts of things. So we’ve tried to keep that balance pretty tight. We don’t watch television. We don’t do those sorts of things, but I’ve got one, two, three, four, five screens. I’m not going to pretend that we’re even vaguely Luddites. We’re not. But they see computers as tools, tools of creation, not tools of consumption. They know I’m an engineer. They know I write software. They’re exposed to that day in day out, but we are not driven by this idea that they need to be using computers by the age of two. We’re driven by something very different.

57:01 – Walk away from work

If you’re unschooling, you have to be highly involved in your child’s life. This means that you have to know how to unplug from work.

I’m a workaholic or I have been a workaholic, and I was terrible at it. I was just abysmal at it. I would be working 12, 14-hour days on the regular. I am much better at it now, and I have to be. I’ve got to make sure that I’m delivering results in a particular period of time for work and that I am contributing to running a household at the same time, so that doesn’t force a discipline, but I’ve also got to ensure that I’m stepping away from things as well because one of the very bad habits that I used to have was that I would work. I’d become so engrossed in my work that when I walked away from my work, I was detached from the rest of the family, which is a very… I don’t think it’s an unusual thing, but it’s not a healthy thing. And so, I’ve had to develop the muscles where it’s like I turn off, I explicitly turn off work and I walk away from it, and I go and engage with the family. And so I’ve had to learn how to do that because it’s the only fair thing to do. I can’t be wandering around in my feet 24/7. As much as I might really like to do that, I’ve got other responsibilities that require me to be present, so I need to focus on there.

Dave ten Have (00:00:00):

We’re not going through this going, “Well, by six, you need to read. By seven, you need to have mastered multiplication.” We’re not doing that. We’re saying, “As you grow, as your skills develop, we will feed those skills.” There’s no demand for you to meet these artificial milestones because there’s no requirement for meeting those milestones. There’s no guilt if you don’t meet those milestones. There’s no self-doubt.

Dave ten Have (00:00:31):

For me, that’s one of the problems with standardizing all of the stuff, right? Because they’re not standard. If you create a situation where they’re forced standardized, you’re going to have positive side effects. There’s no question about it. But you’re going to create negative side effects, and I think the negative side effects starts to drive self-doubt. “I am not smart enough to do mathematics. I am not good enough to read.” You are not at the stage where you can do mathematics or start reading, and it’s totally okay.”

Ben Grynol (00:01:04):

I’m Ben Grynol, part of the early startup team here at Levels. We’re building tech that helps people to understand their metabolic health, and this is your front row seat to everything we do. This is A Whole New Level.

Casey Means (00:01:30):

Hello and welcome back to A Whole New Level. This is Casey Means, co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Levels. And I truly could not be more excited about our episode today with Levels team member, Dave ten Have, coming at us from New Zealand. And this episode is about the way of schooling called unschooling, which is a form of self-directed, unstructured learning that is becoming increasingly popular and which Dave is currently doing with his two children who are both under the age of 10.

Casey Means (00:02:04):

Dave is an engineering lead at Levels, and he and his wife and two daughters live on a 40-acre farm in New Zealand, which is stunningly beautiful. We can see some photos of it in our internal communications platform called Threads, and it’s just a joy to see the beautiful relationship they have with the land. And on their farm, they have a goal to replant the area in native forest to encourage the repopulation of the cocka bird. And as part of their conservation efforts, they also have bees and a number of other animals.

Casey Means (00:02:37):

I have personally been increasingly interested in this concept of unschooling, as I think about how school systems could potentially better promote critical thinking and problem-solving and emotional intelligence and health, and how to raise a generation of youth who are less chronically stressed, more engaged in play and more connected to the land. And so I am so excited to pick Dave’s brain today. I have no children yet, but this is something that’s just really piqued my interest over the last couple of years, and so I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to dig into it with Dave.

Casey Means (00:03:17):

I think the best thing to do would be to start with just definitions because some people may have never heard-

Dave ten Have (00:03:26):

Of course.

Casey Means (00:03:26):

… this concept before. So what is unschooling? And how does it differ from homeschooling?

Dave ten Have (00:03:32):

Yeah. Right. Unschooling really starts from the idea that kids are learning machines, right? And it’s true. Kids are learning machines. They’re voracious learners and so, instead of putting a formal structure around that learning process, which is what you see in a traditional schooling process, but what you also see in many homeschooling processes, we let the kids determine what they want to learn.

Dave ten Have (00:04:06):

And then, we put resources in front of them to encourage that learning. Those resources might be books. Those resources might be Khan Academy programs. They might be YouTube videos. They might be just sitting the [inaudible 00:04:23] to the farm to go and do something. There’s lots and lots of different ways of doing that.

Dave ten Have (00:04:29):

The other thing that is important, at least for us, when it comes to unschooling, is that the learning process isn’t a nine to five thing, right? It happens all through the day. And in many ways, it’s up to us to look for opportunities to teach or opportunities to pass knowledge on. That’s the main driver of the process.

Casey Means (00:04:55):

I love that idea that learning can happen anytime, any place. It doesn’t have to be confined to a box. It’s actually a funny thing to think that that’s sort of how we’re trained to learn in this period and then what you don’t learn in the other period. But in fact, I think we all learn as we grow up that some of the most important learning happens outside of-

Dave ten Have (00:05:14):

Outside of the box.

Casey Means (00:05:16):

Exactly. That’s fascinating. And so, from what I’m hearing from you, one of the differences between unschooling and homeschooling is that unschooling is really your children are directing the learning. You’re not so much putting together a specific curriculum, is that right?

Dave ten Have (00:05:32):

Yeah, that’s exactly right. And so it’s really us being attuned to what they are interested in a particular day or more likely in a particular week. And then, using that as a scaffolding for not only driving that particular interest, but also wrapping maths concepts around it or writing concepts or those sorts of things. Now, there are cases where we are interested in highlighting certain things.

Dave ten Have (00:06:04):

So right now, the eldest is going through a bit of an intensive reading program because she wants to read. I mean, we’ve got snowdrifts of books in this house, so she wants to read. In that case, we’ve brought a third party in who is driving their reading process. It’s a mix of things, but the core is that if they are interested in rocketry, rocketry resources turn up. If they’re interested in chickens, chicken resources turn up. I mean, it’s all that sort of thing.

Casey Means (00:06:43):

Really interesting. And so it sounds like this goes in sort of periods, from what I’m hearing, like there might be a chicken period or a rocket period. And we’re in a book period right now, which is really cool. Do you tend to lean into whatever that is and then just sort of take it to whatever degree that the children want to take it? And-

Dave ten Have (00:07:04):

Yeah.

Casey Means (00:07:05):

… I guess a follow-up question to that is what if you know nothing about the topic that they’re really interested? Because I’d be like, “Cool, I’m glad you’re into spaceships. I don’t know anything about spaceships.” What do you do in that situation?

Dave ten Have (00:07:17):

Yeah. This is one of the other really great things about this process, right? Because it’s a chance for us to learn stuff. It’s a chance for us to flex muscles in new directions, and it’s just to flex old muscles. Doing long division by hand, I mean, when was the last time that we’ve ever done that?

Casey Means (00:07:39):

Yeah.

Dave ten Have (00:07:39):

Exactly. Sitting there and working through that process because they want to learn how to do division. So in some cases, it’s us refreshing knowledge that has gone stale. In other cases, it is us finding someone who can teach them or finding a resource that can teach them, so it’s much more active in that respect.

Casey Means (00:08:04):

Totally agree. How fun that you get to learn new things. I mean, because there’s infinite things to learn in this world and sometimes having a little bit of structure and curation around that is helpful. And to have-

Dave ten Have (00:08:16):

[inaudible 00:08:16].

Casey Means (00:08:16):

… that lens of these wonderful, curious minds sounds like-

Dave ten Have (00:08:19):

Exactly.

Casey Means (00:08:19):

… it could be really delightful. But it also sounds like, from what you’re telling me, that it is somewhat of a heavy lift like you are-

Dave ten Have (00:08:27):

A heavy lift.

Casey Means (00:08:28):

… responding in real time and then having to build an ecosystem around what they’re interested. So how much of it is that they’re expected, and this might be age dependent, but how much are they expected to create those resources? Like find the Khan Academy video or figure out what games they want you to purchase for a particular activity and how much of it is you see an interest and then you and your partner go and figure out what you’re going to build around that interest.

Dave ten Have (00:08:58):

It’s more the latter than the former right now because of their age. Both of them are less than 10 years old. And so it’s very much us striving things. Though increasingly, while we don’t let them use the web right now, they do know the websites that we use to find things for them. So there will be requests like, “Can you find this on YouTube for me?” Or “Can you find this at this particular…”

Dave ten Have (00:09:27):

So they are starting to build a mental model of the information space that we live in that we use to educate them. And therefore, they are starting to form requests that are based on that mental model, so it’s starting to shift a little bit. The requests are starting to become a little bit more specific. Whereas previously, they were a lot more general, but it’s still a heavy lift.

Dave ten Have (00:09:57):

And look, I’ve got to be really, really straight up here. It’s my wife doing the lifting. She’s doing an amazing job. She’s passionate about it. There’s no doubt about it. But when it comes to that, like you said, it is a heavy one. Someone has to take responsibility for doing that, and she’s doing an amazing job. She’s doing the work, and so we are fortunate in that we’ve got the resources to allow us to do that work. This is coming from a point of privilege, mainly from the size of the team who help educate our kids, and the time that we’ve got to do it, and all of those sorts of things. And so it is really important to point that out.

Casey Means (00:10:43):

Yeah. Bringing it back to the basics, I’d love to hear how you and your wife decided you were going to do this. What sparked the interest and when? And it’s a big commitment. So what was sort of the journey towards coming to it?

Dave ten Have (00:10:57):

That’s a really good question. It’s a series of things. When you become a parent, at least when I became a parent, I spent a lot of time reflecting on how my parents brought me up because my parents they did a really good job. They brought up three super high-functioning kids, who grew into being really interesting adults. My parents did an exceedingly good job at bringing us up, and so it was kind of like, “Well, how did my parents do it?” And so there was dissecting parts of that process.

Dave ten Have (00:11:34):

The big thing that personally got me over the line on unschooling was the experience that I had when I was running Makey Makey. Makey Makey is a little circuit board that allows you to plug in anything into a computer. We built that business from being a make-up product to being a really dominant STEM and STEM education product in the United States.

Dave ten Have (00:12:01):

Because of the founder, it has lineage to not only the MIT Media Lab and the lifelong kindergarten there but also to unschooling and things like the Not Back to School Camp up in the northeast. I ended up working with people who were unschooled. And one of my very good friends, he was unschooled, and he was just one of the most insightful and articulate and emotionally together people that I’ve ever worked with.

Casey Means (00:12:36):

Wow.

Dave ten Have (00:12:37):

Don’t get me wrong. There’s survivor bias. There’s no question about it, right? But Liam is someone who really inspires me, and it was kind of like, “Well, okay. This unschooling thing is not just crazy heavy bullshit, which is basically what it was in my mind prior to this. There’s something really valuable here. And that if I take my bias out, and my bias is very much from a structured education perspective, I was exceedingly good academically at school, not so much at college but at school, if I take that bias away, I looked at what I was seeing with the people who had that education experience.

Dave ten Have (00:13:24):

And then again, reflecting on my thinking of what my parents had done. And it was like actually there’s something really powerful here. My wife had come it through her own investigation, which was really driven around how we were going to train the little adults that were in training with us for 15 or 16 years.

Dave ten Have (00:13:47):

And what were the things that we wanted them to have? The self-reliance and resilience and curiosity and emotional depth, and the ability to reflect on themselves in a healthy manner, and connection to community and connection to the world around them. It was all of those sorts of things. And they kind of coalesced together.

Dave ten Have (00:14:13):

The eldest had gone to a bilingual preschool. In fact, the youngest did as well. So we were in this crazy situation that we had this six-year-old who, blond, curly hair, could speak fluently in English and Maori. And it was like, “Wow, how do we hold onto that?” That was really powerful. And we went, “Okay, we’ll give unschooling a try for a couple of years on the understanding that if it didn’t work, we would worry that they would be too far behind the standard schooling system.”

Dave ten Have (00:14:50):

And we’ve just stuck with it. It just worked that both of them are growing into beautiful, articulate, curious, frustrated. So check, check, check. No, I mean, the kids of course are frustrating, but they’re emotionally grounded. They are challenging in the way that you want kids to be challenging, right? And there are little nuggets of joy. There are little nuggets of frustration. There are little nuggets of joy that are around the house on a daily basis.

Dave ten Have (00:15:32):

We’re starting to see them explore spaces that we wouldn’t have explored. We’re starting to see their curiosity lead them in new direction. And that, for me, one of the real proofs that we’re doing it right, at least up until now.

Casey Means (00:15:47):

There’s so much I want to dig into on there. The first is just a comment, I think you mentioned that your wife, part of what how she came to it is, she was thinking about, you guys were both thinking about how you have this time of just a handful of years to basically create a little adult that’s going to go out into the world, and it’s almost like if you start at the little adult that you want potentially, but not the specifics around it, but some general principles and work backward from that, how do you get there?

Casey Means (00:16:20):

And if you want, ideally, to instill maybe philosophy around appreciation and love for the land or for community or for independent critical thinking or exploration, if you work backwards from some of those things, our standard school system doesn’t quite have seem like the totally perfect model to do that. It’s very confined. It’s very structured. It’s very static. There’s good things about it too, but I like that paradigm of where are we trying to get? And then, what do we need to do to get there? And then, critically analyzing what the status quo is, which, in a lot of ways, doesn’t.

Casey Means (00:16:57):

And so one question I had to follow up on was how much of this decision that you and your wife made was based in, I don’t know, a critique or a disappointment with what is offered as the status quo with schooling? Was that a big part of it? Or was it more that you just felt you had a much bigger vision for what was possible with education?

Dave ten Have (00:17:18):

It wasn’t based in a critique of the status quo per se. New Zealand has a very good public schooling system. I am a gigantic fan of the social contract. The social contract is a deeply valuable thing. I love paying taxes to enable the social contract to work. These are important things for me, and I still have not rounded the circle on that particular square. Honestly, the biggest reservation that I had about this was opting out of the public school system. It’s something I see as deeply valuable, and I’m still not there on that.

Dave ten Have (00:18:03):

The driver was much more, “We had this opportunity to do this. We have these resources. We have a particular passion to do it.” This is not an opting-out thing. It’s not a, “We believe this system is broken, and we think we can do better,” hashtag disruption, et cetera, et cetera. It’s not that.

Dave ten Have (00:18:27):

It’s, “We’ve got this opportunity to do it,” and so we did. Like I said, I grew up in the New Zealand public school system. It served me exceedingly well. It served all of us exceedingly well. That wasn’t the driver here. It was very much, “Hang on, we’ve got this neat opportunity. I work in a particular way. My wife works in a particular way. We can probably pull this off. Let’s give it a crack.”

Casey Means (00:18:53):

That’s really fascinating to hear because I think there’s a lot of… I’ve been listening to some podcasts around this, and I think in the US, there is a bit more of a community around pushing back against what the standard option is-

Dave ten Have (00:19:08):

Of course.

Casey Means (00:19:09):

… and that’s really actually awesome to hear that it’s less of like, “This is broken.” And so each person, it’s up to themselves to fix it in their own life and more like this was a exciting opportunity for your family that was possible due the confluence of lots of different special factors, so that’s really neat to hear.

Casey Means (00:19:31):

Paint a picture for us of what a day in the life of unschooling looks like. I’m sure there’s no standard format, but maybe just some memories that come to mind of what you guys get up and what happens?

Dave ten Have (00:19:44):

Yeah. Yeah. So I generally start the day very early. I work on Pacific time. And right now, there’s a five-hour gap, so I’m up at about 3:30 to start work. And then, I’ll work through till midday one o’clock. The girls emerge somewhere between… I want to say 7:00 and 9:00. This is the other great thing, right?

Dave ten Have (00:20:11):

We don’t have to worry about getting them down the driveway of the bus every morning because we just know that every other day they’re going to come tracing back up the driveway and go, “We missed the bus.” So we don’t have to do any of that, which is quite good. They’ll emerge between 7:00 and 9:00, and then they’ll be exploring something. There’ll be some sort of topic that they want to work on, or they might not be. They might just spend the entire day on the trampoline or running around the farm.

Dave ten Have (00:20:47):

But if there’s a topic that they’re interested in, generally, we’ve got two tables in the main living area, both the size of large dining tables, one of which is our dining table. And the other of which is our Makey table, our work table. And whatever experiment or whatever project they were working on the day before will still be there. So the workspace is where they left it when they went to bed.

Dave ten Have (00:21:15):

And generally, they’ll be there in their pajamas working on whatever they want to be working on. There will be the usual arguments about putting food into them, getting them dressed, getting them to do other stuff. There’s no difference there. They will sometimes go into town to do something or go to meet friends.

Dave ten Have (00:21:36):

There’s this running joke that homeschooling and unschooling is really car schooling because you spend so much time shuttling between things, and that might happen. Yesterday, they went into town to go to the skate park. Skating and scootering is kind of a really big thing for them right now. Then, they came back by the time I had finished work. There would’ve been about two.

Dave ten Have (00:22:03):

I started cooking for dinner. They then did something with ponies that I didn’t quite rock, but there was some lessons in that about not being entitled little brats. They learned the lesson apparently because they did come back a little bit quiet. We have dinner. Like I said, right now, reading is a big deal, so there’s reading in the evening, and then there’s boardgames. And everyone rolls back to bed again. Yeah. That’s an indicative day. Some days are deeper on particular technical topics. Some days are not.

Casey Means (00:22:42):

It sounds really lovely in a lot of ways, and I just thank you for painting that picture because I felt like I was right there with you, guys, throughout the day. And you said there’s some days where maybe they’ll just be on the trampoline all day or maybe they’ll be roaming around the farm. And I’ve heard this in other unschooling resources that that’s actually part of the process, that some of this unstructured time that we know is so good for the brain, that we really deprive ourselves of in the modern sort of industrialized world, that it’s actually important for children.

Casey Means (00:23:17):

The play is important at the unstructured time and that really with most examples of kids, they do self-motivate to learn and be curious, and it’s not going to be sitting around all summer on a trampoline. So how does that ebb and flow in your experience of how do you think about the value of unstructured time and play as it pertains to childhood development?

Casey Means (00:23:43):

And then, how do the ebbs and flows and cycles go between really wanting to veg and relax versus really be all in on a learning activity and challenging oneself to push, like self-motivate, and push into something.

Dave ten Have (00:23:59):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The unstructured activity thing was something that my wife spent a lot of time looking into. And when kids are small, big gross motor skills and very physical expressions of life are important to them, right? And so that unstructured space with the ability to be able to be loud and be physically big is just super vital for them because it starts to link them to their bodies and starts to link their bodies to the spaces that they’re in without being forced to sit down all the time and be constrained. And that aids learning in our experience.

Dave ten Have (00:24:50):

Because if you then look back to the second question, that vegging thing doesn’t really occur so much. If there’s an avenue for burning off that energy, then coming to a peaceful space and just reading books or doing whatever physical, crafting projects that they might want to do, for instance, or building Lego or those sorts of things, in my experience, their focus is much more laser-like, and their focus will go on for an entire day. Both of them have sat at the Makey table for an entire day just doing what they want to do, and so those things work together.

Casey Means (00:25:41):

It almost makes you wonder about in the sort of more modern way of living, if we’ve almost pulled out the rug from some of these extremes.

Dave ten Have (00:25:50):

[inaudible 00:25:50].

Casey Means (00:25:50):

Yeah. And so, we never really feel fully ready to focus on a book, and we never really feel fully ready to go all in, we’re always feeling pulled in different directions. And it’s fascinating to hear how you’re seeing the balance just emerge because you articulated it perfectly, but I love the essence of what you were saying.

Casey Means (00:26:11):

And I guess, the question I have then for you is, observing this in your children, how has that affected the way you thought about living your own life and how you want to spend your time? Has it made you push back on certain elements of normal adult life?

Dave ten Have (00:26:28):

Oh yeah, for sure. As I’ve seen them grow and learn, and as I’ve learned to parent, my wife has been exceedingly good at teaching me how to parent, that has looped back into a whole bunch of things. Taking time out for myself, like not using technology, doing stuff that I enjoyed as a kid, exploring different concepts, reading books, like getting back into the habit of reading books again, all of those sorts of things.

Dave ten Have (00:27:04):

But also, I believe it has made me a better manager as well because I’ve had to learn a whole bunch of new skills because I’ve had to help look after these two little creatures and learning how to communicate properly, learning how to communicate clearly, learning how to give people freedom to express themselves, learning how to define things when you need to define things, and not define things otherwise. All of that give-and-take process has definitely made me better at managing than I was prior to it because I’ve had to learn how to do that anyway.

Dave ten Have (00:27:50):

If I’m going to be an effective parent, I’ve had to do that now. I hope I don’t come across as a paternal manager. I try very hard not to, but there are skills embedded in that that I find very useful. When I get frustrated, learning how to just take a step back, take a deep breath.

Dave ten Have (00:28:13):

Learning how to apologize when I’m wrong. That was one of the things that my wife, “You go back. You were wrong. They were right. You will apologize.” “Really? Do I have to?” “Yeah, you do.” Learning to be comfortable with being wrong. Not, “Hey, look, I’m the parent, so even if I’m wrong, I’m right.” Those sorts of things are incredibly valuable, and those are all things that I’ve picked up in the last 10 years. I didn’t have those skills before.

Casey Means (00:28:48):

And do you think part of that is because you are on this journey with your children in a sense? You’re all learning together what this new way of learning means, and it’s sort of a family experience. So there’s not so much of that hierarchy of like, “You’re going to do what I say, and I have the right path.” And it’s more of a co-evolution? Or what do you think has brought that about where it sounds like gained some new, emotional avenues that are-

Dave ten Have (00:29:13):

Oh yeah, for sure.

Casey Means (00:29:13):

… available to you.

Dave ten Have (00:29:13):

A hundred percent. It is that process of gaining an emotional literacy. I thought for us to be effective parents, we need to be more literate about our emotional state. We need to be able to understand their emotional state both at a biochemical level and also as an expression of that biochemical activity. Yeah. Those have all come to the full. Those are all things that I’ve had to look. I wasn’t that person prior to that experience.

Dave ten Have (00:29:55):

And so, when one of the kids has a tantrum, the way that my parenting experience was, “You do not tolerate that stuff. That just does not get tolerated.” No, there’s a reason they’re having a tantrum. It’s not irrational. There’s a bunch of mechanisms that have just gone into neutral and that’s why they’re having the tantrum.

Dave ten Have (00:30:18):

So now, it’s like, “Okay. There was a situation last night, someone was sitting in the wrong seat. At the dinner table, someone else is standing there with a plate. And my response is, “It’s okay to have your big feelings, just put the plate down because I don’t want you to throw food around.”

Dave ten Have (00:30:36):

Ten years ago, it’s kind of like, “No, you will sit. I don’t care who’s sitting at the seat. Sit at the table. We are not having this conversation.” Very different. Very different approaches to someone who is under stress for reasons, but they have a little bit of control over and some reasons they don’t. They’re both tired. They spent two days skateboarding and running round and riding ponies, and they were absolutely maxed on the energy side of things.

Dave ten Have (00:31:04):

So come six o’clock dinnertime, very small slight was enough to cause a tantrum to occur for a valid risk. And so, yeah, gaining that emotional literacy for us as adults has been absolutely critical.

Casey Means (00:31:23):

That’s really neat. And I imagine that being together and so ingrained, the learning, you being so much more a part of the learning experience than maybe someone would be in a typical schooling system. Because you’re co-creating this together, there has to be that attunement for it to work and be functional and be healthy because there’s so much engagement.

Casey Means (00:31:47):

I just want to circle back in the beginning, you were describing your friend who had been unschooled and mentioned that he was one of the most emotionally together people you’d met. Very articulate, reflective. These people that you had met in this community were like that.

Casey Means (00:32:02):

And I’m wondering if you have a sense of why doing school this way enhances those type of emotional intelligence-type skills and interpersonal-type skills because, I think, some people actually might think that a big fear of this might be that it’s isolating, which I get the sense that it’s not, but I’d love to hear your take on that.

Dave ten Have (00:32:25):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can only speak from what I’m seeing, right? Which is, instead of ensuring that the girls have done or have achieved X by Y [inaudible 00:32:37], right? So reading is a really great example. One of the girls is hyperliterate. She’s not quite reading, but when she talks with you, daily we’ll go, “Where did that come from?” I mean, “Where did that word come from?”

Dave ten Have (00:32:54):

It’s not just using the word because it sounds right. It’s using the word correctly. The eldest one is, she’s much more physical. She’s an incredibly accomplished sportsperson for her age. So we’re not going through this going, “Well, by six you need to read. By seven, you need to have mastered multiplication. By eight, you have to have mastered calculus. We’re not doing that. We’re saying, “As you grow, as your skills develop, we will feed those skills. There’s no demand for you to meet these artificial milestones.”

Dave ten Have (00:33:35):

And I think that’s probably part of it because there’s no requirement for meeting those milestones. There’s no guilt if you don’t meet those milestones. There’s no self-doubt if you meet those milestones. There’s no feeling that you’re falling behind. There’s none of that stuff. For me, that’s one of the problems with standardizing all of this stuff, right? Because they’re not standard. There’s nothing about kids is standard.

Dave ten Have (00:34:04):

So if you create a situation where they’re forced to standardize, then you’re going to have positive side effects. There’s no question about it. But you’re going to create negative side effects, and I think the negative side effect starts to drive self-doubt. “I am not smart enough to do mathematics. I am not good enough to read,” or whatever. “You are not at the stage where you can do mathematics or you can start reading, and it’s totally okay.” There’s no, “You’re meant to have hit this milestone.” Yeah. I think that’s a big part of it.

Casey Means (00:34:38):

Oh man, that lands so deep because I think what you’re talking about is like putting yourself in a position of what it would be like to be a kid. I mean, I had a very happy childhood, and I felt great, but I was in the normal ecosystem. We felt all those things that you talked about. Shame for not doing well on certain things, guilt for not meeting maybe a certain requirement at the exact right time.

Casey Means (00:35:02):

And of course, the implicit sense of control that’s built into our school system, which is that you’re going to first grade, you’re going to second grade. I mean, even though it’s a positive type of control, still you are being controlled. And even physically in space, you’re being controlled. You sit in this desk, you’re here in this room, and I never thought about it as a feeling of control, but in a sense it is a form of control.

Casey Means (00:35:26):

So to grow up, A, in nature, which I want to get to that a little bit later, but much more in touch with the land and fresh air and the outdoors and movement. But really taking away a lot of the implicit shame, guilt, and control that comes from having to meet certain standards at certain times, it’s hard to imagine what that even would feel like if a lot of that was just removed for a human at a very formative stage.

Casey Means (00:35:52):

And that’s putting a negative spin on the status quo, which as you said, there’s a lot of positives to it, but it’s fascinating to think about-

Dave ten Have (00:36:02):

Yeah. In fact, we actually reversed the control directive. They have control. It is their autonomy that we’re trying to encourage.

Casey Means (00:36:10):

Wow.

Dave ten Have (00:36:11):

It is their physical autonomy that we’re trying to encourage. All of those sorts of things. As a parent, it means that you’ve got to be totally seen with a degree of risk-taking that maybe there are still moments where we go, “Do we need to have a standing booking at the emergency department for broken legs or broken arms?” I’m not saying it’s comfortable, it’s not, but it is very much about reversing that control mechanism. Yeah, very much.

Casey Means (00:36:45):

And I think there’s a lot, I think, in adult maladaptive behaviors that I feel like, and I can see for myself and just observations of this big feelings type of thing. There’s so much shame around having big feelings or being big in some way. And I think a lot of that is engendered and-

Dave ten Have (00:37:02):

Oh, for sure.

Casey Means (00:37:02):

… that’s not okay. It’s cool to think about, “Wow, there’s a world in which that’s all okay.” And what is that self-critique that you end up gets programmed in your hardware, I think, growing up? What does it look like if there’s a little bit less of that? So I haven’t thought about any of this type of the depth of this, but it’s really fascinating to hear what you’ve said about it and what’s emerging in your children.

Dave ten Have (00:37:29):

The eldest had a bit of a meltdown a couple of weeks ago, and she said, “I got angry.” And that was a bit silly. It’s kind of like, “Wow. It took me 40 years to get to that stage of reflection.” That is part of the education process, and it is part of the adults that they deal with and their mother. She’s very good at that, but yeah, it’s fascinating to see that emerge. Fascinating.

Casey Means (00:38:04):

Okay. So a few little practicalities. One question I have is, I guess I have three. The first is just around, what happens if a year goes by and there seems to be no interest in a particular subject? Like no math. Is the feeling like, this is all setting the stage to be able to learn it quickly later or maybe it never has to be learned. Do you ever get nervous? Like, “Okay, I really think they’re not leaning into this particular area,” or is that just part of the process that you accept going into this?

Dave ten Have (00:38:41):

No, there are definitely cases where it’s like, “No, we’re starting to see challenges in learning particular things.” And reading is a great example of that. The eldest has wanted to read for a long, long time, but for whatever reason, it never clicked with her. And so we are now in a more structured reading program to guide her through it, with professionals who focus on teaching kids how to read.

Dave ten Have (00:39:13):

So there is a monitoring thing that goes on just like any system. But I am not convinced a year would go by where nothing happened. If you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would’ve said, “Yeah. Surely, you’ve got years where just nothing happens.” Right? Now, having watched these two people grow, I’m absolutely certain that those kind of periods don’t exist. Absolutely certain about it.

Dave ten Have (00:39:44):

I think when you focus on the joy of learning and the joy of curiosity, and they are surrounded by people who express as much enjoyment about new knowledge as they do, then learning becomes something that you do, like breathing. It’s something you do. It’s something you love. I mean, they might. Who knows? They’re not teenagers yet. They might get well sick of it, and we might have rolling arguments for the next six years. Who knows? If that happens, that’s probably okay as well. I’m not terribly stressed about that. But I doubt it, like I sincerely doubt it. They are self-motivated, self-driven people.

Casey Means (00:40:30):

Learning becoming like breathing. I love that. And I think it’s so true. It’s if you’re around two parents and then a wider community where it is all about the joy of learning like, “Oh, here’s a bug.” “What’s the biology of this bug?” “How many legs does it have?” You could take it from any angle and learn basically every subject. It doesn’t really matter what the topic is-

Dave ten Have (00:40:54):

Exactly.

Casey Means (00:40:56):

… and it’s more of the spirit that you bring to it.

Dave ten Have (00:41:00):

Absolutely. A hundred percent.

Casey Means (00:41:01):

Yeah. Okay. So, other practical question, how does the social network and community building? You mentioned they’re in a car a lot, so I’m assuming they’re going to activities, so how do you build that interaction with other young people into their life?

Dave ten Have (00:41:18):

There’s a reasonably rich community of alternative schooling. People, families in our area, they’re all connected, and they range across the spectrum as to be expected. So they’re all connected. They have friends. Just like kids who go to school, there is this collection of friends that you know about as a parent. They go and hang out with those friends, and parents hang out as well.

Dave ten Have (00:41:46):

I think that’s one of the other things that happens with these sorts of systems where parents form support networks. The kids are part of those support networks. They are very, very social. The big reason we spend a lot of time in the car is we live in a rural community. You need to spend a lot of time in a car just to get anywhere. I mean, so, Yeah.

Casey Means (00:42:10):

And does the learning ever take place with the others? Well, I mean, learning happens all the time, but are there ever days where the kids will come together and spend the day together and explore the farm or…

Dave ten Have (00:42:21):

Yeah. Or go down to the river and paint rocks or-

Casey Means (00:42:24):

Oh.

Dave ten Have (00:42:25):

… do a particular crafting activity or do a particular technical activity or whatever it is. So there are definitely times where there’ll be groups of kids together learning a particular skill or getting access to a particular resource or those sorts of things. So that definitely occurs.

Casey Means (00:42:43):

I’d love to talk a little bit about resourcing. For people who might be listening, who might want to get into this and want to know what the realities of it are. So both, I’d love to hear your thoughts on, A, it sounds like your wife was a big motivator for digging into some of the practicalities of this, but what were some of the resources that were really useful to you, whether it was books or YouTube or talking to people.

Casey Means (00:43:05):

And then, what does it take on a day-to-day basis in terms of bandwidth and human capital to make this work? Is it a full-time parent who doesn’t work? Is it maybe a mix of two parents who both work remotely? Or how does it look?

Dave ten Have (00:43:22):

In our case, it’s a parent. People wise, we’ve got a pretty rich resource base. We’ve got one parent who doesn’t work, and so that’s my wife. She focuses on educating the kids… Well, not focuses on educating the kids, but that’s a big part of her day.

Dave ten Have (00:43:44):

As they get older, it seems to be getting a little less resource intensive because they’re now becoming a lot more self-directed, so there’s a lot less scaffolding of activities required to get them up to speed, though I suspect we’re starting to see a plateau, again, of the type of involvement required or the type of resourcing required.

Dave ten Have (00:44:10):

As to resources that we use to educate ourselves on this, and like I said, there was a combination of research that my wife had done and that was all based on the web largely. There is a lot of stuff on the web for this sort of thing. Alternative schooling, particularly out of the United States, is a pretty rich area of content generation. We use things like Khan Academy a lot, particularly for early reading type experiences and early numerical type experiences.

Dave ten Have (00:44:45):

And then, it was talking to people. That was the other way that we educated ourselves. Like I said, I had personal contacts. I was able to draw on those and have conversations with them and get a feel for what was going on. The area where it was a little bit more complex, where we needed to use external resources a lot more, was with respect to how we interacted with the government education system.

Dave ten Have (00:45:19):

The New Zealand Education System has got avenues for alternative education processes, but you need to go through a government-mandated process to make that happen, so that became a little bit more resource intensive. We had to talk to someone who knew how to drive that process.

Dave ten Have (00:45:38):

And largely, it’s us living our lives really. That’s what it is. Don’t get me wrong. It is resource intensive. There’s no doubt about it, right? We can’t just ferry the kids off down the driveway at eight o’clock in the morning and have them come back at four o’clock in the afternoon and spend our lives doing what normal parents would spend their lives doing. We don’t do that.

Dave ten Have (00:46:05):

My wife does spend a lot of time guiding them, but she likes horse riding. They like horse riding. We’re starting to see intersections in the beam diagram, where we want to do something, and they want to do the same thing. So it’s a bit of an ebb-and-flow give-and-take kind of process.

Casey Means (00:46:25):

And is there a way that you track what’s happened or what is happening? Like a record or a log of what has been covered or is it pretty much a natural evolution of things as they unfold?

Dave ten Have (00:46:40):

It’s more the latter. That’s one of the challenging things about this, right? Because if you aren’t even vaguely self-critical, it’s kind of like, “Oh, shit. Are my kids actually achieving?” It’s kind of, “Oh, am I a bad parent? Is this going wrong?” Because there’s no formal report card, which is a challenge.

Dave ten Have (00:47:05):

And there have been a number of conversations [inaudible 00:47:09]. Are they actually progressing? Well, in this particular week, they may not have, but if you look at the six-month period, “Look, remember when this was happening and it’s not happening anymore?” Or, “This is now happening, and it wasn’t happening back then.” So you do have to remind yourself. That’s a really important part of this exercise.

Casey Means (00:47:31):

It sounds like there also might have to be an element of faith in this of like, “I believe that this is right. I believe that this is good for my kids.” And you’re constantly feeding into that cycle by what you’re observing, and you’re observing beautiful things happening, and so it builds maybe that foundation of trust. But I can imagine if I were going to jump into this and in that, we’re built in this environment where we’re supposed to meet certain, very specific milestones and you’ve chosen to remove yourself from that structure.

Casey Means (00:48:03):

But I think what’s interesting, the immediateness that I have is well, we also have a lot of faith in the system as it is.

Dave ten Have (00:48:10):

Yeah, that’s right.

Casey Means (00:48:12):

That’s a leap of faith to assume that’s the right way for a human to learn or that’s the right way to become the most holistically together person. And so, it’s certainly the easiest course of action to believe that because the majority’s going with it, but it’s like-

Dave ten Have (00:48:32):

You’ve totally nailed it. Yeah. You’ve totally nailed it. There is a faith component to it. There is faith that they are learning creatures. And that if you feed that curiosity and you feed that desire, you get the right result. Now, it’s intellectual bungee jumping. It’s just like, “Oh, what’s going to happen?” Then, there are these moments where you just go, “Wow. Okay. That’s right. That’s completely right.”

Dave ten Have (00:49:01):

In the first lockdown, the eldest designed a robot. She drew out the picture and then she built a robot. And I just looked at that and went, “Man.” I’m going to take that as a parenting win right there. In fact, I was so affected by it. It’s now one of my tattoos. I took that picture and tattooed it on myself because it was just like, “That’s what we’re shooting for. That’s exactly what we’re shooting for.”

Dave ten Have (00:49:35):

You have to remind yourself, you have to be aware of those achievements, and you have to go, “That’s fantastic,” and celebrate it. It’s like anything in this world, right? One of the other things that we’re not taught is how to celebrate our wins, how to spot our wins and how to celebrate our wins. Right? And you do this, you have to make sure that you spot the wins and you celebrate the wins because you’ll just go nuts otherwise.

Casey Means (00:50:03):

Well, yeah, you don’t have the report card to either-

Dave ten Have (00:50:06):

Exactly.

Casey Means (00:50:06):

… get super sad about or celebrate-

Dave ten Have (00:50:09):

Exactly.

Casey Means (00:50:10):

… but it’s like, “What a life skill,” because I think what you realize is that as an adult, you can make yourself really unhappy chasing external-

Dave ten Have (00:50:20):

Hungry ghosts.

Casey Means (00:50:20):

… validation, hungry ghosts, and… Gosh, that’s one thing you start learning in your 20s, it’s like, “Oh, it never actually, it never ends.” It’s just one more thing that you’re trying to get checked. And so you get that internal validation from just celebrating the joy and the experience and the journey, and it sounds like not only are your children learning that early but, as a parent, you’re having to almost re-lean into it, which I can imagine has beautiful effects just on-

Dave ten Have (00:50:50):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that-

Casey Means (00:50:51):

… your whole life.

Dave ten Have (00:50:52):

… as I’ve said a number of times, the things that I have learned as a parent in the past 10 years are invaluable, absolutely invaluable. It’s a two-way. It’s a bidirectional experience. Hundred percent.

Casey Means (00:51:06):

I am curious about you’re an engineer, computers are a big part of your life, of course, and you mentioned your children are not yet on the web but can selectively use resources that you maybe pull up for them. So talk to me about what is your personal philosophy on children and technology, specifically computers and the Internet and how you’re choosing to unfold that into your kids’ life.

Dave ten Have (00:51:35):

We all, in the family, keep the kids away from using computers for a long time because we wanted them to focus on those big gross motor skill things. We wanted them… But this is a really vitally important thing. We didn’t see it as a process of holding them back because we all grew up with eight-bit computers. I am old enough to have had an eight-bit computer, right? So we grew up with you turn the computer on and all you got was a blinking cursor, and you had to work from there.

Dave ten Have (00:52:14):

And I became an engineer off the back of it. So it is like, “Well, if we can become engineers off the back of incredibly primitive technology, the technology base they are starting from is so incredibly more sophisticated than actually turning off computers for 10 years and then introducing them to them is not a big deal because the technology is much, much better.

Dave ten Have (00:52:41):

Having said that, where they have had early exposure to technology is through maker technology, 3D printers, sensory routers, laser cutters, sewing machines, welding, those sorts of things. Our family is funded and helps run the Fab Lab in Masterton. The girls have been exposed to 3D printers at a very early age. They understand that computers are a tool of expression, that computers are a way of getting your ideas into the world as physical objects.

Dave ten Have (00:53:19):

So while we have ensured that they don’t get a lot of screen time, the screen time that they do get is focused much more on that expression. They’re much more on content creation than content consumption. I think that’s really the balance that we’ve shot for. What do you want? How do you make a pendant? How do you produce a 3D llama? Those sorts of things.

Dave ten Have (00:53:45):

So we’ve tried to keep that balance pretty tight. We don’t watch television. We don’t do those sorts of things, but I’ve got one, two, three, four, five screens. I’m not going to pretend that we’re even vaguely Luddites. We’re not. But they see computers as tools, tools of creation, not tools of consumption.

Dave ten Have (00:54:06):

They know I’m an engineer. They know I write software. They’re exposed to that day in day out, but we are not driven by this idea that they need to be using computers by the age of two. We’re driven by something very different.

Casey Means (00:54:21):

I love that whole framework. Starting with the first part that I heard, which is developmentally appropriate introduction, like if motor gross motor skills are a big part of early life and, obviously, computers are super fine motor skills, it’s not really the right match for what needs to develop at that time too that learning to use these things at age 12 or 14 or later, it’s not really going to disadvantage anyone at this point. A kid can learn an iPhone at age two, right? It’s like these things, they’ll figure it out. And then-

Dave ten Have (00:54:56):

That’s it. They’ll figure it out.

Casey Means (00:54:57):

They’ll figure it out. And then, the piece around creation rather than consumption. I mean, I feel like we need to make a T-shirt about that. That’s what would make so many lives better, I think, is if we could understand that there’s two ways we interact with technology and that a really potentially joyful expressive way is going to be a healthier relationship than more of the like, “I’m sucked in. I am the product, I am consuming,” type of thing. And so I love all of that. Really beautiful way of summing that up.

Casey Means (00:55:27):

Just to touch on briefly, how has being at a remote asynchronous company… I’m not actually sure about with your last several companies that you’ve been at, if they were in person or not, but how has this remote work and being able to choose your own hours intersected with unschooling? Has it made it more possible for you?

Dave ten Have (00:55:46):

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Like I said, I start very early in the morning and I’m done by about lunchtime. So I’m able to do other stuff around the house, cook, clean, those sorts of things, to share the load, to help run the household. The last two companies, I’ve always worked on Pacific time. I’m always up very early, and I’m always done very early.

Dave ten Have (00:56:15):

So that then allows me to be freed up as a resource to go and help with other things, not normally education things, but we’ve got a house to run, there’s laundry that needs to be done, there’s dinners that need to be cooked, there’s floors that need to be swept, all of those sorts of things. And so that’s often what I’m doing, and it works exceedingly well.

Casey Means (00:56:42):

As your responsibilities with family and home, and I know you have animals as well, have you had to set more rigid boundaries for yourself or have you always been good at setting? “I’m going to work in this period, and I’m going to be done at this period,” because the stereotypes [inaudible 00:56:59], okay?

Dave ten Have (00:57:01):

No, I’m a workaholic or I have been a workaholic, and I was terrible at it. I was just visible at it. I would be working 12, 14-hour days on the regular. I am much better at it now, and I have to be. I’ve got to make sure that I’m delivering results in a particular period of time for work and that I am contributing to running a household at the same time, so that doesn’t force a discipline, but I’ve also got to ensure that I’m stepping away from things as well because one of the very bad habits that I used to have was that I would work. I’d become so engrossed in my work that when I walked away from my work, I was detached from the rest of the family, which is a very… I don’t think it’s an unusual thing, but it’s not a healthy thing.

Dave ten Have (00:57:51):

And so, I’ve had to develop the muscles where it’s like I turn off, I explicitly turn off work and I walk away from it, and I go and engage with the family. And so I’ve had to learn how to do that because it’s the only fair thing to do. I can’t be wandering around in my feet 24/7. As much as I might really like to do that, I’ve got other responsibilities that require me to be present, so I need to focus on there.

Casey Means (00:58:25):

It sounds like family has been a big part of what’s driven that evolution for you, or are there other things that in your professional life have made you have to say like, “This is not working, this is unsustainable, or this is hurting something else in my life,” or is it mostly the having children and just wanting to be so present for that?

Dave ten Have (00:58:47):

Yeah. A lot of it is option C, a bit of both, the family and work thing. Particularly as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become much more intertwined. There are life experiences that I have missed out on because I worked too hard, and it’s not healthy for me, and it’s not healthy for my family. And so I’ve had to learn not to do that. I’ve had to learn that there is nothing that I do in work that requires me to be consumed a hundred percent of the time. There’s just not.

Dave ten Have (00:59:25):

And that’s something that I try to instill in my team members as well because if I see little reflections of the behavior that I had, I come down on people and tell like, “You need to go on holiday. Why haven’t you gone on holiday? Why are you working at this time?”

Dave ten Have (00:59:44):

And so again, that goes back to living this experience as a parent has made me a much more aware manager because I’ve seen that bad behavior in myself, I’ve experienced, I have missed out on experiencing very important things because of that bad behavior. And I don’t want people to experience them. They shouldn’t have to.

Dave ten Have (01:00:08):

And I know at Levels that there is no expectation, that that is the way people lead their lives. And so if I’m to live to those values, my values, and the values of the company, I need to do that. And I need to do it from an authentic position. Can’t do it as a false thing. I need to do it because I do it, not because I’m told to do it.

Casey Means (01:00:26):

Such words of wisdom. I know that this is going to be such a useful podcast to people at the company, but also just anyone obviously with unschooling, those are really hard-earned words of wisdom. So thank you. You, your family, the farm that you live on, which, as I mentioned in the intro, we’ve seen some photos of, and it’s absolutely like a slice of heaven. It’s spectacular.

Casey Means (01:00:53):

Actually, I want to read a quote from your beautiful Spotlight article, where you said that, “The connection to the land, the understanding that the land hosts you, that it holds you, that it feeds you, that it looks after your family, those are important concepts.” So how did this beautiful sort of philosophy about the connection between the earth, health, and family emerge in you? And how are you seeing that develop in your children through this process of unschooling?

Casey Means (01:01:22):

And just the part of the reason I ask is because something I think about a lot is that I was really fortunate to have early childhood nature experiences that were deeply meaningful to me. And that is, I believe what has turned me into someone who’s such a protector of the earth or tried to be at least in the ways I can. And not everyone, I think, has those early childhood. It’s really a privilege.

Casey Means (01:01:44):

And so, I’d just be curious to see how did that develop in you? And then you ended up on this rural farm, and now you’re really ingraining this in your children. Talk about why that’s important to you and how it’s evolved in your life.

Dave ten Have (01:01:58):

Yeah, yeah. So I always joke that New Zealand is about 40 years ahead of the rest of the world in certain things, and one of those very important things is the relationship that we have with the Maoris, First Nations people of New Zealand. That’s where a lot of it comes from. It’s the lessons, the framing, the knowledge that they have, and they share with people in New Zealand, is incredibly vital.

Dave ten Have (01:02:29):

Increasingly so, as we start to see the effects of climate change, and we start to see the effects of resource limiting and all those sorts of things, there is a very particular way of looking at the world. And a lot of that thinking comes from the custodial relationship with the land, rather than the ownership relationship with the land. The valley that we live in is grazing land. It’s sheep and beef grazing.

Dave ten Have (01:03:01):

So it’s green and verdant, but it is not what it was, which was just amazing forest. And you can see, you can literally see the bones of the forest up on the hill over behind me. The old trunks that they never brought down from the hill. So that, for me, is real evidence that we are connected to that land, and that it is our job to because we don’t own it. We’re custodians of it. It looks after us, and we’ve got to look after it. So that’s where a lot of that thinking comes from.

Dave ten Have (01:03:37):

We’re lucky that we’re of a generation where we have experienced the descendants of Maori in New Zealand as a very potent force for good. And it has insulated us from some very quite negative things, and we are a much better country for it, but that’s the root of that. It comes from having that shared with us and having that insight shared with us.

Dave ten Have (01:04:11):

And New Zealand is very lucky. New Zealand is a long way ahead of the rest of the world. We are the only part of the British empire that forced the Brits to treaty. We have a treaty. The treaty is an enforceable document, legal document. And the emergence of that as a vehicle for changing the way New Zealand is, from what it was when I was born, has been an incredible experience.

Dave ten Have (01:04:41):

So things like reparations and all of those, we’ve been through that. We’ve seen the power of it. We’ve seen what it gives to everyone. And so that’s where that thinking comes from, from that experience.

Casey Means (01:04:56):

Oh my gosh, definitely a follow-up episode could be devoted to that. There is so much more there. Thank you for sharing a taste of it, and I think it’s beautiful that there is that willingness to the country. It sounds like, as a whole, it has a willingness to want to learn from the First Nation people and from the learnings that have been.

Dave ten Have (01:05:22):

It is not a halcyon spot there.

Casey Means (01:05:22):

Yeah.

Dave ten Have (01:05:22):

There’s still a lot of learning going on, but we have crossed so much ground, and we are much better positioned to really start to kick into gear than we were 40 years ago. I worked for a moment for non-white people. New Zealand is a fantastic place. It has some challenges that all colonized lands have, but we are much better off. We’ve crossed a lot more ground as a society than we were 40 years ago.

Casey Means (01:05:54):

Mm-hmm. That [inaudible 01:05:56] wanting to learn a lot more about New Zealand, and I’m grateful. I’m so grateful to you for taking the time away from your family and work to have this conversation.

Dave ten Have (01:06:07):

It’s my absolute-

Casey Means (01:06:08):

I think that it’s just beautiful to hear your experience and how deeply you’ve thought about this and just to have a little peek into this really incredible experience your children are having. You’ve inspired me. I hope a lot of people will listen to this and be inspired as well. And thank you so, so much, Dave.

Dave ten Have (01:06:29):

It’s my absolute pleasure. Thanks, Casey.