I spent a day with UK’s most off-grid parents who brush teeth with liquorice sticks and breastfeed kids until age of six
TWO barefoot girls run around the living room, petting their new puppy and excitedly offering to show off the chickens in the garden, while their brother sleeps in upstairs, way past lunchtime.
This is the Brighton home of controversial couple Adele and Matt Allen, who don’t send their three kids to school, don’t believe in set bedtimes and have never taken them to a doctor.
The couple rose to fame when one-year-old Ostara – now a bright and engaging nine-year-old – peed on the floor of the This Morning studio in 2016.
Since then the pair, who also have son Ulysses, 12, and four-year-old daughter Kai, have courted controversy with their “off-grid” parenting updates on YouTube page and Instagram.
Among the latest posts from Adele – known as Unconventional Parent – are a defence of breastfeeding until a child is “naturally weaned” at the age of seven or eight and videos entitled “Uly taught himself to read” and “Toothbrushing is optional in our house”.
After warmly welcoming me to their three-bed terraced house, Adele, 39 and Matt, 40, explained the theory behind their alternative views on dental health.
“If you start delving into holistic dentistry, you learn how the teeth are connected to the body,” says Adele.
“Just like in reflexology, with the foot, each tooth is connected to a different organ and the corresponding emotion and trauma that can affect them.
“Diet plays a massive part but it’s not just sugar alone. I don’t believe that if you have a decaying tooth and you rip it out, you fix the problem.
“You’ve got to get to the root cause of why that’s happened and you can remineralise teeth slowly once you correct the diet and correct the lifestyle.”
Although toothbrushes are available in the house Adele, who never buys fluoride products, says the kids have always found toothpaste “too strong” a taste.
Instead, the children chew on natural liquorice roots – which look like small wooden sticks – and herbs, including parsley and mint.
“They also chew on seaweeds and algaes, which are filters and cleaners for the ocean anyway,” says Matt. “We use chlorella, a dried seaweed tablet, which helps mineralise their teeth.”
Unschooling
The dental issue is just one of many where the couple – who met over 20 years ago while working in Frankie and Benny’s – differ from other parents and attract criticism on social media and other quarters.
Their decision not to send their children to school is at the heart of much of the debate. In the days before we met, Adele posted about a neighbour who told her their kids should be made to attend school so he could get peace during the day.
But while statistics show that there are now more than 71,515 homeschoolers in the UK – up from 59,559 in 2018 – Adele and Matt take the idea one step further and shun all formal education, described as “Unschooling.”
The children learn when something interests them and Ulysses taught himself to read at 11.
“Uly was into Minecraft and other online games and they were asking him questions, which he couldn’t decipher, so he decided to learn how to read,” says Matt.
“Then I was reading Ostara a book and he started reading the passages.
“He hadn’t told us that he’d picked up this skill. So the idea is, we provide the material they will learn when they want to.”
Ostara is not yet able to read, and doesn’t know her alphabet, but Adele says she can write her own name and Kai’s and is “more into arts and crafts”.
“They’ve got a stash of work books that their Nan buys them and we’re always happy to get them out if they show an interest,” says Adele. “But if they’re not interested, it’s just flogging a dead horse.”
Unlike her older brother, Ostara did express an interest in going to school but it came just before the coronavirus lockdown so, as Matt says, “that was non negotiable. Otherwise, we would have navigated it.”
An outgoing, chatty little girl, she has friends in the schooled and homeschooled communities and hones her social skills at local clubs she attends with other kids.
“I like doing lots of different dance classes,” she tells us. “And mixed sport, where we do a different sport every week. Last week was gymnastics. This week it’s football.”
No bedtime
The family, who until recently were in a one-bedroom flat classed as emergency housing, are now settled in their comfortable house in a residential area of Brighton.
Despite a pledge not to turn on their heating this winter, the toy-strewn living room – dominated by a cage for new Jack Russell cross puppy Snowdrop, is warm and cosy with Matt admitting they gave up on the no heating plan as the mercury dropped.
In their steeply terraced garden, which backs on to woodland, nine chickens are housed in a large henhouse, along with three cockerels that have also raised some complaints from the locals.
While I was there, a large rat was scuttling around the outside of the cage but none of the family batted an eye, with Matt explaining hens are “messy eaters” so the rodent treats the area like a free buffet, but scarpers when the two family dogs are let out.
Ulysses, who has decided he no longer wants to be on camera for his parents’ videos, doesn’t emerge from the bedroom in the few hours we are there.
Adele explains he is probably still asleep, adding the kids have no fixed bedtime with Ostara and Kai usually turning in between 8pm and 11pm.
The one rule I’m really hot on is, when someone’s sleeping in the house, we don’t make noise and wake them up
Adele Allen
“Even as a newborn, Uly would be up until between 11 and 12 in the evening and that’s carried on ever since,” she says. “Now he’s almost a teenager he’s in the reverse cycle where they stay awake a lot of the night and sleep most of the day.”
While there are no rules around bedtime, mealtimes or learning, Adele says there are a few restrictions on the kids.
“The one rule I’m really hot on is, when someone’s sleeping in the house, we don’t make noise and wake them up,” she says.
“I’ve always suffered from chronic fatigue so I need my sleep, and for me it’s important that everyone feels that they can get their rest.
“The main thing is to respect each other and we will ask them to go and take their own space if a row is escalating,” she says.
“And no lying,” chips in Ostara.
Breastfeeding for 12 years
As we chat over a coffee Kai, who is wearing a nappy, climbs onto her mum’s lap to breastfeed.
“I’ve been breastfeeding for 12 years, since Uly was born,” says Adele, whose recent post on the subject cites a bizarre Roman legend of a woman who breastfed her dad in jail, after he was sentenced to death by starvation.
“I breastfed Uly ‘til he was six and Ostara was four, because then Kai came along. She’s four and a half and still breastfeeding, but it naturally reduces at that age.
“It’s a mutually beneficial thing.
“As well as providing comfort and nutrition, it boosts immunity and the immune system becomes fully developed around seven to eight years old. The natural age children wean themselves off the breast is between two to seven years.”
As part of the same belief in natural immunity, the Allens shun vaccination for their kids and their pets.
It’s a view that proved the final straw with some friends and family during the pandemic.
Matt, who takes daily cold water dips in the sea to help control crippling arthritis he’s suffered since his twenties, says he was ostracised by fellow swimmers.
“There was a group of us who have known each other for five years but, because of the vaccination thing, they said ‘That’s enough, Matt. We know your views,’ and they didn’t want to hear my perspective,” he says.
“They told me they were going to set up their stuff on one part of the seafront and said I should go in further down.”
The couple also received online abuse over their anti-vaxx views, with trolls wishing harm to the kids.
“I usually let the abuse wash over me but people were wishing nasty things would happen to the kids, to prove us wrong over vaccination,” he says.
“That overstepped the mark but I’m a big strong believer in freedom of speech so I think they have the right to say it, even if it offends.”
Sacrifices
Although they receive housing benefit, the family are not on Universal Credit and Matt, who once claimed work was not in his “psyche”, makes ends meet with an upcycling business.
Using reclaimed wood and discarded palettes, he makes outdoor furniture and gates when his chronic arthritis allows and has also set up a woodworking class at the local community hub.
In the long term the former health coach, who says he has minimised his own flare ups with cold water swimming, fasting and cutting out alcohol, wants to help people who suffer from chronic illness make similar lifestyle changes for a “a better quality of life.”
Their alternative parenting lifestyle means they get to spend all their time with the children but they admit that means they can’t afford treats that other families enjoy.
“We socialise indoors or go to groups but we don’t do cinemas and bowling alleys and that sort of thing,” says Adele.
“Matt’s mum, who is very supportive, will take the kids on trips to theme parks and other places when she can.”
Matt adds: “We have made social sacrifices but you’re only in this parental game for the blink of an eye.
“Don’t get me wrong, we have nothing against those people who feel they need their time to go to the theatre or out for dinner but we don’t feel that way.
“The reason we keep going is to show people that you don’t have to have money – because we haven’t got any.
“You just have to have a willingness to make sacrifices, adjust and adapt.”
Good life
The eventual dream, to move to a more remote home and become self-sufficient, has been put on hold until the children are older.
In the meantime, they are learning to grow their own fruit and veg on a nearby allotment, as well as rearing chickens for eggs.
“When we visited a self-sufficient home, we realised we don’t have the working knowledge,” says Matt.
“You could probably pick it up once you’re in it but there are risks that you don’t take when you have children.”
While the neighbours may not agree, Adele and Matt believe passionately that the extra time they spend with their children is beneficial to all.
“Our primary goal was not to miss their childhood,” says Adele. “A lot of parents chase a career, they miss their children growing up and regret it later.
“I’ve heard the older generation say ‘I wish I’d been around a lot more, when my kids were young.’
“You can always rebuild money and a career later on, but you can’t get that childhood back.”