Be prepared

Planning for snacks and having them handy can seem like patience.

Planning for clothing and having extra with you can seem like patience.

Having a map and directions and having the phone charged up and a flashlight and an umbrella can seem like patience.

Impatience is often the beacon of unpreparedness and the resulting embarrassment. Be prepared!

The quote is from the section called "Patience" in The Big Book of Unschooling
but this link has some other ideas: SandraDodd.com/patience
photo by Sandra Dodd,
of a jack-o-lantern designed by Devyn Dodd
(and cut mostly by me, when she was little)

Sun, or moon, or fire

Sometimes light is from an Aha!! lightbulb moment.
Sometimes light is more information, or seeing from a new angle, "in a new light."
Sometimes light is from the sun, or the moon, or a fire.
Sometimes light comes from just lightening up. (Not "lightning up," or "lighting up," so spelling will make a big difference, in those lights.)

Live lightly.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sandra Dodd

Parents exploring (deschooling)

Deschooling is not just the child recovering from school damage. It's also the parents exploring their own school and childhood damage and proactively changing their thinking until the paradigm shift happens.

—Robyn Coburn

How Deschooling Works
photo by Irene Adams

An Atmosphere of Learning

I'm an unschooler. Lessons are never over. On the other hand, lessons never really begin. Children's questions are answered and an atmosphere of learning is created so that questions are constant and answers are never far away.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/allkinds
photo by Sandra Dodd

Time, attention, focus

Schuyler Waynforth said in March 2014:

When I stumbled across unschooling I grabbed hold. I read and I tried things and I moved further away from the childhood I had known to the parenthood I wanted to know.

And the more I read and the more I experienced and the more I tried, the more that I could see a framework. It was my engagement that made a difference. It was my time and my attention and my focus that kept things moving better and more smoothly than it could ever have done without me.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/nest
Younger Schuyler and younger kids,
photo probably by David W.

Play with your food

jencookies43 wrote:

We have an annual get together with friends. It's called "Play with Your Food Day". Every family brings a variety of foods (fruit, candies, veggies) and a box of toothpicks. The kids take the food and build whatever with it using the toothpicks to hold it all together. Super fun munching and building.

—jencookies43

original
photo by Karen James

Wholeness and health

Someone asked:

Why does it have to be so hard to let go and just let our kids make their own decisions and be who and how they want to be!!

I responded:

It doesn't have to be hard.
SandraDodd.com/haveto

If your priority is to keep the peace with friends or relatives who are harsh with and about kids, then it will be difficult.

If your priority becomes the relationship with your child, it will become easier to choose toward the wholeness and health of your child.

Sandra Dodd, 2012

original, on Always Learning
photo by Christine Milne