Chapter 161 Cave Explorer
Unschooling was a little harder to commit to than Emily had imagined. She knew that there were plenty of learning opportunities for Mandy at home, but sometimes work demands, or just wanting a bit of time to herself made her reluctant to teach the kid.
It was early September, and the unschooling had been going on for a week. Emily was working on her sketches in her home office while Mandy watched an educational program in the cinema room.
It didn’t seem like too much time had passed, but when Emily looked up from her sketch, the house felt unusually quiet.
She went into the cinema room and saw that Mandy must have finished her program and dutifully turned the screen off. She was an amazingly responsible child in some respects.
“Mandy!” Emily called, “Where are you, Mandikins?”
An eerie silence filled the large house. Emily checked all the rooms, but her daughter was nowhere to be found. Surely she wouldn’t have gone outside all by herself? For a chilling moment, she thought the child was missing.
Then she decided to bring the dogs in from the back yard, where they were frolicking together.
“Find Mandy!” Emily said, letting the dogs sniff one of the shirts the girl had recently worn.
Odin was the smartest of the dogs, and he seemed to know right away what his task was. He trotted straight to the cinema room and barked when he reached the snack bar counter. Emily followed the dog and found Mandy asleep on the floor behind the counter.
“There you are! What are you doing back here?”
Mandy was groggy when the dog’s bark woke her up. “Exploring caves,” she muttered.
“Good boy, Odin!” Emily said. “You found her.”
She picked up the child and carried her to the little bedroom with unicorns painted on the walls, letting her catch up on sleep.
Emily was almost too embarassed to tell Byron about what happened when he got home, but she needed to talk about in order to put her mind at ease.
“It looks like I’m a bad mother,” she said as they sat on the couch, cuddling and trying to choose something to watch.
“I’m sure that’s not the case. What happened?”
“I lost Mandy… She fell asleep behind the counter in the cinema room, ‘exploring caves’ after watching a show about cave exploers. And then I had to use the dogs to track her…”
“Oh, I’m sorry…” Byron hugged her, but she could tell by the subtle shaking of his body that he was quietly laughing.
“It’s not funny,” Emily said.
Then he was full-on laughing. “Using the dogs, that’s actually very clever.”
“Maybe I’m taking on too much with this unschooling thing,” Emily said.
“We could hire more tutors.”
“I definitely need Sylvia’s help… and I’ve been thinking. Maybe what Mandy needs is an unschooling school?”
“Isn’t that a contradiction?” Byron said with a smile.
“It doesn’t have to be. It could be a school building where everybody meets, but each student studies what they’re most interested in, and the teachers are there to help them discuss it, not to lecture. And they could do lots of field trips… I’ve looked up some examples on the internet, and they do exist.”
“I think that would be great! She could get together with kids her own age. And as a bonus, we’re not going to look like elitist snobs.”
“We’re not? But how?” Emily wondered.
“We could set up a charter school. It’ll be free for anyone to attend. I’ve looked into these things too, you know.”
“I love you,” Emily said.
“Because I’m not a totally deadbeat dad?” he asked.
“Because you’re Super Dad!”
Emily had never expected him to be a lackluster dad, but the amount of effort Byron put into raising their daughter was astounding. Although they could afford to hire an army of nannies, Byoron didn’t want to miss his daughter’s early years and always took her out to the playground and spent time with her at home as much as possible.
“I’ll take her to work with me tomorrow,” he volunteered.
“Are you sure that would be okay?” Emily asked.
“Why not? I’m the boss.”
“Are you going to have time to take care of her? She needs so much attention. She basically needs looking after all the time, or else she will find a ‘cave’ to climb into.”
“Don’t worry,” Byron said, “I won’t let her out of my sight.”
The next day, father and daughter returned home in high spirits. Mandy kept saying words like ‘dividend’ and ‘portfolio’ without really knowing what they meant but taking great enjoynment in them.
“Thank you so much for taking her,” Emily said after Mandy went off to her room. “I got so much work done. And I’ve hired a few tutors to help Mandy with math and languages. How about you?”
“Didn’t get as much work done as I’d hoped,” Byron confessed, “but it was a lot of fun.”
“Maybe we can make this work until the school is set up…” Emily said, sighing with relief.
Byron smiled at her reassuringly. “I know we can.”
