Roundtable: Experiences of single-parent unschooling
With Elspeth Hetrick, Aja Rutledge, Holly Lepley & Dipalle Parmar
Unschooling can feel like a big commitment, and even more so if you're flying solo. We'll talk about what this can look like for single parents and how our panellists make it work for their families.
Meet our panellists
Elspeth Hetrick
Elspeth lives in Michigan and is an ADHD/Autistic mother who unschools her two children, who are also Autistic/ADHD, and who cope with additional needs with ARFID, FPIES, PDA, Giftedness, and Dyslexia. She began ‘Neurodivergent Parenting: Think Outside The Box’, on Facebook in 2020, and it now reaches up to eight million readers a month.
Aja Rutledge
Aja has been unschooling her child for nearly a decade, embracing self-directed learning as a path to deeper connection, curiosity, and autonomy. As a trauma-informed practitioner, she brings a unique perspective on how healing and self-alignment intersect with education, helping families create learning environments rooted in trust and intuition.
Holly Burnett
Holly is a former teacher who lives in Wales with her three children. Her family began unschooling four years ago when Holly’s eldest child began to struggle at school.
Dipalle Parmar
Dipalle Parmar, 52 – Artist, poet, folklorist, and polymath is intensely gifted, and dedicated to the Arts as a way of life and learning. She is an unschooling single parent in India. She mentors ‘gifted’ children and adults and is a “Creativity - Way of Living, Learning and Earning” consultant. Her teenage son has been a self-learner for 10 years old and is passionate about drumming, animation, modelling and dog care. They live in Pune, India.
