Go ahead..
A TODDLER effs and blinds, while his five-year-old brother plays with a spirit burner and wields a pick axe... and yet it’s all okay with mum.
For Gemma Rawnsley, this is all part of the learning curve for her seven children.
None are at school. But they can cut and dye their hair, have tattoos and piercings, eat what they want when they want, curse and set their own bedtimes.
Skye, 13, Finlay, 12, Phoenix, nine, Pearl, eight, Hunter, five, Zephyr, three, and one-year-old Woolf are raised in a household where there are few boundaries.
“People see my son with the pick axe and will think ‘how dangerous’,” says Gemma, 35. “But not if you teach them how to use it, it’s not.
“I make calculated decisions so if something seems dangerous I know it has risk attached, but the benefits are that they learn responsibility.”
Zephyr is not told off for swearing while Hunter is allowed to play with the spirit burner and chemicals to learn about science.
Gemma, who says she was raised in a “violent and loveless” home, adds: “It’s about letting them make decisions, it’s not a feckless attitude where we sit back and let it all happen. It looks like we’re feral, but that’s just one side of us. Feral is left to your own devices, but these kids are brought up to the nth degree.
“I didn’t have a stable upbringing. My mission has been about helping my kids have the most interesting, fun and happy lives in a house filled with the love I never had.”
Mobile hairdresser Gemma and husband Lewis, 31, want the kids to enjoy life at their three-bed home in Hebden Bridge, West Yorks, before facing the challenges of adulthood.