Showing posts with label fire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fire. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2022

Parental passion

When someone wrote "With younger kids, there is no opportunity to pursue my own passions," Pam Sorooshian responded:

Make becoming a fantastic mom your passion. Make learning all about those kids of yours, your passion. Make having a peaceful and joyful home your passion.

Then you can pursue that while still being fully present with your kids.
—Pam Sorooshian


some commentary on Facebook
or you could read about "Me Time"
photo by Kinsey Norris

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Staying home in modern times

Below is something I wrote in December 2020.
I'm sharing it because it has been two years since the covid shut-down changed my plans. I was to have stayed with a grandson while his younger sibling was born. That little girl has turned two years old now. Because I have an undiagnosed chronic cough, I fear to become sick, so I stay home, still, usually.



I could be sad at home, or I can be happy. I have years of practice at conjuring and sharing happiness. Keith knows that sometimes I fail. I get scared, or have a bad dream, or feel sorry for myself, but I revive and recover and put out one more “Just Add Light and Stir,” where people can peek into moments in other families, viewpoints of other people, and sightings of birds or lizards on other continents, in other seasons. There are words and ideas people can take in for a moment, or an hour, or to keep. Then I feel better.

I hope next year is easier and sweeter for all of us. If it is, your memories of an expansive world should allow you to jump on and ride it.

SandraDodd.com/2020
photo by Sandra Dodd

Monday, December 20, 2021

Mindset and language

A reader named Eleanor wrote:

I was very grateful to discover your writings on ‘struggle’ and the compilation on your website relating to ‘struggle‘ a few years ago.

I still read it regularly and get so much more from it with each read. It sparked a change in mindset and language which improved our unschooling lives massively.
Lax and relax
photo by Sandra Dodd

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Three or four of them

Whatever you do, make it fun, interesting, comforting, memorable, unusual, familiar, nourishing, productive, or restful. If it can be three or four of those things at the same time, good job!
Precisely How to Unschool
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp (or maybe a Graham-Dusseldorp selfie)

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Loving and patient

In families in which parents have considered themselves partners in their children's rich lives, teens don't have the desperate urge to leave. A natural desire to leave the nest does kick in, as it does for many mammals. It might have kicked in sooner if the culture didn't require parents to take care of their children and be responsible for them until they were 18 years old. I know dozens of teens up close, by name, who are loving and patient with their parents even though the parents are getting old and forgetful. Teens can be helpful and generous with parents and siblings when they themselves have been generously helped up to that point.

from "Saying Yes to Teens" in The Big Book of Unschooling (page 252 or 293)
which links to
SandraDodd.com/yes

photo by Belinda Dutch

Sunday, June 27, 2021

Like fireworks

When Kirby was seven and eight, I used to see others his age who were pulled out of school already knowing how to read and write and think wistfully that maybe that would make everything easier. In the longrun, it didn't. Those kids have issues about that reading and writing that Kirby doesn't have. Their handwriting is prettier, but their spelling isn't always better, and their ideas aren't always better. But Kirby has a poise and a confidence that I think school would have immediately begun to dismantle and scatter. So it did take him longer to read, but in the meantime he was learning like crazy, like fireworks.
Teaching very little, maybe even nothing (last post there)
photo by Erika Davis-Pitre—not of Kirby, but of his daughter
(used once before, with different text)

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Smoke and fire; hobbies and jobs


Some things are more interesting to a child at one age or another, or too dangerous, but the ages vary with different people. Principles are better than rules, for interests and safety.

Physical conditions matter, too. A fire on grass is safer than a fire in a dry desert in autumn, or in the windy Springtime.

Interests that are wonderful and richly full of learning for one child might seem repulsive or as dry as the desert to another child. Good! That's fine! Paying attention to what they like could help you let them know of hobbies, volunteer work, or jobs they might consider, as teens, or as adults, that match their interests and strengths.

The link below goes to a long list of jobs, from various discussions over the past fifteen years. It might be fun, as you read through them to consider jobs that were rare or nonexistent before the past year or two, or jobs that might fade away within a few years.

SandraDodd.com/jobs
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Thursday, April 1, 2021

Critical Thinking Day

Don't believe everything you read or hear today! It's April Fool's day, and people will be trying to trick you or trip you up.

All the rest of the year? Don't believe everything you read or hear then, either.
SandraDodd.com/clarity
photo by Sandra Dodd

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

A good person

Someone wrote:

"I wanted to say that this blog, out of all the blogs in the blogosphere, encourages me the most. It lets me know, that my actually natural inclinations as a parent (to love, to focus on relationship, to care for the inside more than the outside) are what I should be listening to. It is so easy in this world to get mired down in how we *should* do something. I admit to falling for this time and time again. I just wanted you to know this blog to be a true inspiration for how to be not only a 'good' unschooling parent, but just a good person. Thank you."

That comment was left by "unknown," when the blog was three years old, in 2013.

Just Add Light and Stir is ten years old now.

Thank you for reading.


The comment was at Gradually Climb, October 22, 2013.
photo by Sandra Dodd

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Cool! Lucky.

I don't look at the state's requirements. I look at my child's opportunities. And I think the moment that the light is on in his eyes and he CARES about this tiny bit of history he has just put together, that he wants me to say "YES, isn't that cool? I was much older when I figured this out. You're lucky to have great thoughts late at night."


Late-Night Learning Comments
photo by Sandra Dodd

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

A house full of "ok"

Our house is really very peaceful. A house full of "no" can't begin to be this peaceful.

Written in 2006 when my kids were teens and all still home,
and shared again on Always Learning in December 2019
photo by Belinda Dutch, of her warm family

Saturday, September 28, 2019

Improvise!



Be sweetly and courageously creative.


Old and New (creativity)
photo by Lydia Koltai

Monday, September 23, 2019

Action, rethinking and healing

For me, the action/rethinking/healing all work together. I have comforted my "inner child" by comforting my own children. I have felt like a stronger, better person by being a stronger, better mom. Then it's not imagination, it's reality.

Helping them grow up whole helped me feel more full and whole myself.
Changing the present, healing the past, hope for the future
(from a comment I made there)
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

It's all inside


Nothing on paper is learning. Nothing recited is learning. Nothing in a conversation is learning....

Learning is putting information together in one's own head so that it makes new and different sense. It always and only happens inside the learner.

The Problem with Teaching is...
photo by Lydia Koltai
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Saturday, February 23, 2019

Odd traditions

People do things without thinking much about them, sometimes.

We give people fire for their birthdays, but they can't keep it. "Here is your ceremonial fire," and people sing, and applaud, and it is time for that fire to be extinguished in exchange for a wish.

A child helped me learn that. It's good to be willing to learn things that are true without worrying about the source.

SandraDodd.com/cake
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Friday, September 14, 2018

Blessings


May you have peaceful days of abundant love and light.

SandraDodd.com/abundance
photo by Zoya Bharadwaj
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Thursday, November 9, 2017

Heat and light

If I have a big woodpile, I don't have a fire. Even if I have a fireplace and matches and bellows and kindling and firestarters and a fire extinguisher and the chimney was just cleaned and inspected and I have a paper saying "good to go," I don't have a fire. Would wrought-iron fire tools on a cool rack help? What about a stained-glass fireplace screen, so no sparks can get out on the floor? I could subscribe to magazines for fireplace owners. I could join a yahoo group and a facebook page to talk about fires. I could be receiving catalogs with all kinds of fancy flameproof rugs and indoor wood racks and really cool slings for carrying wood in, and Ooh! What about a beautiful mantle?

Still no fire.


Meanwhile, the neighbors might have build a real, operating fire, in a little hole they dug and lined with scrap bricks or rocks, with wood they found in a vacant lot, and kindled it with old receipts and fast-food wrappers they found blown into the alley. Their fire has heat, their fire has light, if they're sitting around it talking and laughing, they have the benefit of the fire.

Some people want to look like they're interested and that they intend to hone their skills, but they don't actually want to do it, if it's going to involve any real combustion or change in them.


A Story of NOT Changing
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a fire in our own back yard,
not in a hole, but quite make-shift, 2012

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Don't be afraid


Some moms are more afraid of the candy than they are of scary ghosts and monsters.

Have a sweet life.

SandraDodd.com/eating/halloween
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Easier, more manageable


Deb Lewis wrote:

The more you're aware of how good things are when they are good, the easier it will be to wade through the times when things are less good. If you're aware of how lucky you are, everyday problems by comparison can seem smaller, and more manageable."
SandraDodd.com/nature
photo by Janine Davies
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Thursday, February 23, 2017

Seeing peace

Words and photo by Belinda Dutch:



My teenagers who don’t always find it easy to ‘hang out’ together, sharing the fire. Dog is just out of shot. Louis is watching an instructional video on a game made by a friend and Olly is watching real people jumping horses. I ealised that this would normally be interpreted grumpily as ‘today’s teenagers always plugged in, should participate in the real world more,’ and instead I relish it as ‘my teenagers peacefully hanging out together and with me, while following their passions and engaging with the world.’

Thank you for helping me see that! And if you ever want to use the pic you are welcome :-) it’s nice and wintery….

Learning to See Differently
photo by Belinda Dutch