Loie explains how leaving school and starting at RLC has helped her find a better life:

I started not liking school in around 6th grade. It wasn’t one thing in particular. It was a whole slew of things. I felt like I was being taught things that I didn’t need to even know, and that I definitely wasn’t interested in. I hated the fact that every night I’d be an anxious mess and be dreading going to school the next morning. Finally I stopped going altogether midway through 8th grade. For the rest of the year, I studied and learned on my own. I listened to tons of podcasts, watched documentaries, and started making my art. 

In 9th grade, I decided to go to RLC. I started taking classes that I was actually interested in while still having free time to continue my personal interests. Now I have a group of close friends, and go to classes I love while still studying subjects on my own (religion, spirituality, podcasts, art, and philosophy). Now I don’t feel dread about going to school anymore, and in the morning I’m actually excited to go. 

–Loie, 2023

Loie’s mom talks about her feelings and concerns around Loie leaving school:

As parents, in order to accept Loie wanting to leave school, we had a lot of soul searching to do. We had both gone to conventional school and we were inclined to tell her to just “buck up!” We found ourselves thinking (and sometimes saying) things like, “Everyone goes to school. It’s just what you do.”  

But more than that, we had to let go of a lot of things. She was in eighth grade, and we would say to her that she would miss out on graduation and the eighth grade dance.We had fond memories of school life. But of course none of those things mattered all that much to her. They mattered to us. We would be sad if she didn’t go to the dance or didn’t go to graduation. We also had to deal with the shame that we’d feel around the other parents. It’s pretty easy to think that something is wrong with your child if they don’t want to go to school. Even if you hated school, it can be hard to imagine your child not going. 

We eventually just had to accept that she is her own person and that the best thing is for her to take control of her life. To do that we had to give up control. It really has been the best decision. At the beginning of ninth grade, she started at RLC, knowing that it would give her a relaxed social environment where she has control over her day and how she spends her time. She is now able to take classes she is interested in and she has made some close friends. She spends her time outside of classes listening to podcasts, studying spirituality and religion, and making art. She is currently planning a trip to Thailand to do volunteer work. She gets lots of practice making decisions for herself. Sometimes she doesn’t make the “right” one (ones that she doesn’t think are right). She now figures out what she wants, what she likes, and how she wants to live her life.

–Chris, Loie’s mom