I Was Afraid Of The World My Kids Are Growing Up In Until I Understood This One Thing

It’s this feeling of being unprepared because I don’t know what’s coming.

Everything is changing. And now I need to change to keep up. And I need to find my coffee.

The kids are scattered in their own little worlds. Books and art supplies everywhere. The house humming with real life. Here everything feels safe. Here everything feels at peace, but a strange peace. Like being in the eye of a storm.

I pick up my phone. News feed. Fear. Uncertainty. The hurricane. The dark clouds swirling. The confusion, not knowing what’s AI and what’s truly human. What’s real. What matters?

I look around. Kids immersed in creativity and play. Kids immersed in inventions and arguments. Someone steady me. How can I know they will be ready to thrive in a world that doesn’t exist yet?

My husband walks in with his steaming cup of coffee. He starts telling me about an article he read on X. “We need to raise high agency kids.” I look around at a tribe of homeschoolers who definitely are not homeschooling, and it’s already 10 a.m.

Or maybe they are.

The world is changing fast. Maybe the best thing we can give our kids is the rare ability to learn anything they need, whenever they need it. That, I believe, is agency, and when you start watching for it, you realize agency is not built through pressure. It is built through real learning. And real learning looks a lot like my living room right now.

Those kids arguing about their invention. That’s agency in action.

That kid putting down the art book and picking up the paintbrush. That’s it.

That kid binging on YouTube videos about building go-carts? That’s the kid that matters in the future, come what may.

That kid who is trying to figure out what happened to the dinosaurs and comes to the conclusion that dragons and dinosaurs are the same thing. There’s your thinker.

Real learning has a feel to it. You can see it in a child’s face before you can measure it on paper; it is alive, it is sticky, it lasts. And real learning leads to agency.

Agency is not built through pressure. It is built through real learning.

Over the years, I have developed a homeschool style my kids call Fun-Schooling. And now that I think about it, I realize that the core values of Fun-Schooling are keys to developing high agency kids.

Fun-Schooling begins with curiosity, that spark that says: what is that? why does it do that? how does it work?

Curiosity is the beginning of one’s quest for learning, and it is the beginning of attention, because when a child is curious, you do not have to manage them or bribe them. Their mind is already set to learn. They are not trying to finish school; they are trying to understand something that matters.

From curiosity comes a quest for answers, and this is where learning turns into motion. A child is no longer only noticing; they are hunting. They gather clues, ask better questions, test ideas, look it up, try it, compare it, build it, measure it, ask someone who would know. This is the moment a child stops being a passive recipient of information and becomes a researcher of their own life. It also happens to be the moment homeschooling shines, because you can follow the trail wherever it leads: the kitchen, the backyard, the library, the workshop, a local farm, a conversation with a neighbor.

Then, if you let the quest breathe long enough, comes the ah-ha moment. Something that was confusing becomes clear, and it usually carries emotion with it: relief, excitement, wonder, even laughter. That emotion matters because it is the glue of memory. When a child experiences that click, the learning anchors itself far deeper than a worksheet can force, because it becomes theirs. Their confidence expands, not because they received a grade, but because they gained understanding.

What often follows is one of my favorite signs that real learning happened: the spontaneous urge to share it. Kids who truly discover something want an audience. They want to tell you, show a sibling, explain it at dinner, teach it, demonstrate it, act it out. Sharing is not a performance; it is ownership. When a child can share a discovery, they are practicing narration, communication, persuasion, storytelling, and teaching. These are the skills that make a person powerful in any age.

A curious child with the confidence to pursue answers will never be stuck waiting for someone else to hand them a life.

Finally comes the step that turns knowledge into agency: application through creativity. This is where learning becomes invention. Your child takes what they learned and uses it in a new situation, for the joy of it, or to solve a problem, or to crack a mystery. They do not just learn about pulleys; they build one. They do not just read about animals; they design the perfect habitat. They do not just memorize a concept; they use it to make something: a story, a recipe, a plan, a tool, a game, a business idea, a solution. This is where education stops being school and becomes life.

When you put these five keys together, curiosity, a quest for answers, an emotional ah-ha moment, the desire to share, and creative application, you get the kind of learning that lasts. You get a home where questions are welcome, where discovery is celebrated, where mistakes are part of the search, and where the goal is not to complete pages but to raise children who can learn, adapt, and build. In a world that keeps changing, wonder plus agency is a steady foundation. A curious child with the confidence to pursue answers will never be stuck waiting for someone else to hand them a life.

Now, I’m going to give up on finding that half-cold cup of coffee.

I’m brewing a fresh pot.

And by the way, that argument about the invention turned into collaborative demolition. They ripped the whole thing apart, and now they are training the cat.