Find delight in small, everyday things. | ![]() |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Find delight in small, everyday things. | ![]() |
![]() | Let new ideas and experiences astonish you. |
![]() | If you interrupt them while they're playing Rock Band or drawing or spinning on a tire swing, you might be disturbing a profound experience. So interrupt gently, when you must. Treat them with the respect you would treat anyone who might be in the midst of a transcendental moment. |
![]() | Every choice you make should be made consciously, thoughtfully, for real and good reasons. |
For the record, this happened in the stacks by the north wall of what was then called the Wyoming Branch library, behind Hoffmantown Center, in Albuquerque. It was surrounded by rose gardens. Now it has been renamed the Tony Hillerman Library, but in 1987, it wasn't called that.
Focus on your kids. Learn about learning. | ![]() |
![]() | Respect and acceptance are more important than test scores and "performance." Understanding is more important than recitation. |
It has half of its original candy. Reese's and Hershey's miniatures. Everyone here likes that stuff, but it could last a long time more, because nobody here is "needing" that stuff. Not craving it. It's just candy.
Don't aim for 50/50. If 50% is right, then 49% is wrong, and 65% would be something get angry about. If you both aim for more than half, you'll meet around the middle, around half the time. If you want the other person to stick around, "around" is the goal. | ![]() |
"If you are choosing to be a mother, move beyond playing at it, and *be* it." —Pam Laricchia | ![]() |
"The big thing is to remember that you don't need once-and-for-all solutions, just for-now solutions." —Meredith Novak | ![]() |
In response to a question about commitment... My best recommendation is to create and maintain such a rich and joyful unschooling life that the child won't want to go to school. That's the direction "commitment to unschooling" should take. | ![]() |
We recently took Fisher to a Blue Man Group concert—his first real "grown-up" show. Again, I could see all the connections being made—he watched how the instruments were being played, listened to how the sounds and the rhythms came together, jumped and bopped his head and let it all come together inside of him. His knowledge and awareness of music is growing deep and wide—it's not about "the basics," but about a gestalt, a holistic, systemic approach.
When you ask what component you are missing, this is what I keep coming up with. Are you looking in the wrong places? Are you looking for the basics when in fact, your son's knowledge and understanding is deep and wide and whole? What you see as "basic" are just a few Lego pieces that he'll fill in as he goes—but in looking for those, are you missing the incredibly large, whole creation that he's built up?
![]() | Find your child's strengths and joys. |
"I want for my kids to grow up and hear that mommy voice in their head saying positive supportive things—not tearing them down, but encouraging them." —Pam Sorooshian | ![]() |
![]() | "I'm more interested in learning what they think of the world than in telling them about the world." —Linnea King |
![]() | "Being an unschooling parent means finding something you *can* like in what your kids do. It means finding a way to support them, lovingly. It's a shift away from 'eww' to 'ahh!'" —Robin Bentley |
If you can allow yourself to relax into wonder, your children will have a wonderful mom. | ![]() |
"I was looking at the photos on my phone tonight and found this (Jack must have taken it, hence the angle). It is Charlie (3) eating an apple in front of the telly right beside of a full pot of sweets. I thought it was a rather lovely illustration of the choices kids make when they have them, and I thought of you because they never would have had that choice without all your writing." —Sarah Dickinson | ![]() |
It's not like moving to another planet. You'll still have the same house, same car, same phone number, you'll still be sitting in the same chair. It will just be different. And everytime I've ever said that to anyone, they seemed somewhere between totally relieved and shocked. . . . .
They were flipping out. They were really spinning out, off the planet. Like, "Where will we be? What will happen? How will we ever get back?"
Back to where? You're in your own house.