Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Allred.
Hi Emily, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
A native Atlantan and alumna of Agnes Scott College, I started a career in marketing graphic design during the Global Financial Crisis. Working for companies in Decatur and Buckhead, I followed this career path for nearly a decade before deciding to start a family and re-evaluate my future path. I became a SAHM while accepting freelance graphic design work on the side and maintaining my lifelong loves of reading and gardening.
With the advent of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, I tried different ways to create community and provide my child with an expansive and loving community of children and adults while maintaining a level of safety I could be comfortable with. Always the researcher at heart, I read books on parenting, child development, education, sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, etc. Through these experiences, I found that, especially through the lens of the ongoing pandemic, my understanding and values were expanding and changing, along with my ideas about what is best for my family and my young child.
In 2020, excited that the pandemic had led to a resurging interest in plants and gardening, I started a gardening Instagram account to get some feeling of community during quarantine and share my experience expanding my garden and trying new varieties and techniques.
In 2021, I founded Playschool with my best friend of more than 20 years. We are a play-based, nature-forward cooperative homeschool group that provides community for children and their caregivers. We organize COVID-conscious, face-to-face play and learning opportunities year-round and are committed to building a community that fosters lifelong child-peer, adult-peer, and alloparent relationships.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely has not! First there were the hormonal upheavals of the postpartum period that many mothers can relate to. Then there were the array of changes to my identity that may also sound familiar to other parents: my new roles as mother, primary caregiver, educator, self-employed person. The loss (however voluntary) of a professional identity that is widely perceived as more valuable in exchange for an identity with roles that are commonly undervalued and even mocked. And let’s not forget the seemingly requisite reconfiguring of one’s social network that occurs alongside any major life change: some people no longer “get” you, or you lose the common ground you once shared with them.
Additionally, many people with undiagnosed conditions (such as women with ADHD) may have had enough compensating behaviors to get by without detection or a formal diagnosis until the additional work and stress of a major life change – such as becoming a parent – brings their challenges to the forefront. And that was me, too. I sought answers for what I was experiencing and was diagnosed with ADHD last year. I am still working on using the resources and understanding that come along with diagnosis to improve my relationships and executive function.
I’ve had to go through a lot of emotional processing and work on reframing these many and varied shifts through the lens of my own knowledge and values rather than others’. To hold space for myself. It’s an ongoing process.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Playschool?
Playschool is a play-based, nature-forward cooperative homeschool group that provides community for children and their caregivers. We organize COVID-conscious, face-to-face play and learning opportunities year-round and are committed to building a community that fosters lifelong child-peer, adult-peer, and alloparent relationships.
Together we take nature walks, play sports, make art, set and respect boundaries, garden, roller skate, visit an extensive roster of area playgrounds, pick berries, play card- and board-games, build empathy skills, read books, do science projects, play babies, talk about our feelings, run, climb, jump, and – of course – engage in lots of imaginative play.
We have launched a website and are talking with a local developer (and mom!) about an app to help facilitate additional Playschool meet-ups beyond what the founders can facilitate in person. We are excited to try to grow what we have started, knowing that Our Code of Conduct and COVID Safety Agreement will provide common ground and help our community maintain standards.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I think my natural inquisitiveness combined with my ADHD-fueled abilities to make cross-disciplinary connections and perform focused research.
Contact Info:
- Email: emily@halfwiseacre.com
- Website: playschool.halfwiseacre.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/halfwiseacre/
- Other: halfwiseacre.com
