For the Sake of Our Children
by Léandre  Bergeron
translated by Pamela Levac
foreword by John Taylor Gatto

A powerful memoir of a life led respecting and trusting children, from the naturalness of home birth and breastfeeding on demand, through learning by living and working together on a small farm and in a natural food store. The author's passionate ruminations about his strongly-held philosophies of attachment parenting and self-directed education are woven throughout a series of journal entries describing the daily life of a family of three unschooled teens. The result is a wonderfully warm, sometimes funny, always wise potpourri of advice and inspiration about natural parenting and unschooling from a father who writes, "I believe I have broken free from my complicity with other adults. I have chosen to remove myself from this adult world to side with children." This book provides both rationale for and proof of the wisdom of choosing a path that is so little trod upon in our world...the path of freedom, of respect for our children, of trust in them and belief in their ability to regulate and educate themselves.

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"You are about to encounter the amazing tale of Léandre Bergeron and his three born-at-home daughters as they educated themselves on the family farm. If you attend sharply while you read, you will discern under its quiet style a profoundly revolutionary narrative which, if imitated widely, would turn the North American education world (or any other) upside down, with incalculable effects...Bergeron’s commitment to full human rights for the young is so unstinting it challenges many child-rearing conventions that most of the rest of us take for granted. In that very surprising commitment resides much of this book’s power. It inspires reflection, causing the reader to ask as he or she might have done on their own account long ago: 'Why are we doing this?' 'What do we hope to gain?' Bergeron’s text compels such introspection."   ~ John Taylor Gatto - Author, Dumbing Us Down, Weapons of Mass Instruction

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"When I accepted an article entitled 'For the Children’s Sake' by Léandre Bergeron for publication in Natural Life magazine in 1995, I found his writing compelling and his ideas about children and education fully in synch with my own writings and with the way my family had been living since the early 1970s – respecting our daughters as equals, accepting them as full participants in our daily activities and our business, trusting them to make their own decisions about life and about learning. At the time, I didn’t know the details of Léandre’s life that had turned him into a self-described “rebel,” including a parallel experience to mine attempting to earn a living teaching young people who weren’t interested in being taught. We both escaped the schooling battlefield very much wiser about the damages it inflicts, and went on to protect our own children from the institutional mindset…and to inspire and support others to allow children to be born, to live and to learn naturally. I have translator Pamela Levac to thank for reintroducing me to Léandre and his work, as she lovingly translated the French version of this book Comme des invitées de marque, published in 2002 by Éditions Trois-Pistoles. And we all have Léandre Bergeron to thank for this sometimes witty, always wise potpourri of inspiration and advice about respectful parenting sprinkled with a lively description of life on a bucolic small homestead. Enjoy...for the sake of our children." ~ Wendy Priesnitz - Editor, Natural Life Magazine and Life Learning; author, Challenging Assumptions in Education