Find ideas you like

Find ideas you like, but remember that all parenting happens at your house, not online, not in groups, but within the parent. Your relationship with your child doesn't need to be approved by strangers. It needs to be the best you can do with your child, yourself, at your house. If you need ideas, the world is overflowing with good ones, and bad ones.

SandraDodd.com/nest
(Thanks to Robin Bentley, for quoting me on May 22, 2013.)
photo by Sandra Dodd

When to whine

If you notice you're angry or complaining, back away a bit, physically or mentally or emotionally, and see how big the problem really is, from a different perspective.

There is a cloud...
photo by Sandra Dodd

Peace is all about choices

If you want to live peacefully make the most peaceful choices. Peace is all about choices. Choose to breathe consciously. Choose understanding over ignorance. Choose to make choices. Choose awareness over oblivion. And make choices based on the principles you live by.

SandraDodd.com/choices
(Thanks to Heather Newman for quoting me, May 22, 2011.)
photo by Sylvia Woodman

Nature and construction

Nature, culture, ancient engineering, curiosity, a moment of still wonder... People love bridges. Think back to bridges from your childhood, the oldest bridges you've seen, the simplest, the most elegant. Think of memories, or images, of people and of bridges. Beauty and wondrous crossings, over water, over canyons, over little streams and ditches. I think this must be one of the most iconic motifs in human history.

a bit about bridges
photo by Annie Regan

Shame free

I didn’t expect unschooling to create a shameless life, but one day I said to Holly, joking, “Aren’t you ashamed?”

She didn’t know what “ashamed” meant. She was twelve; maybe thirteen already.


People used to say “you should be ashamed” lots, to and around me, when I was young. And I was, I just hadn’t found the reason for it yet. Shame is like an indwelling virus that surfaces when we’re weak, in those who caught it.

I didn’t know people could grow up without having a wad of shame inside them, waiting to surface.

SandraDodd.com/unexpected
photo by Gail Higgins

Quiet focus

Moments of quiet focus, and photo evidence of those, are both a bit magical.

SandraDodd.com/peace
photo by Ester Siroky
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Janine Davies, photos and some words

Janine's photos and a bit of text.