Find things she CAN cut

Sometimes parents think unschooling means kids do anything they want anytime, anywhere, to anything and anybody, and the parent doesn’t have the right to an opinion. That makes no sense.

Be your child’s partner. Don’t let your team be a bad team.

Fitted sheets are expensive. Your team cut a sheet. You, the older, smarter, ranking team member, screwed up.

She had scissors around a sheet. Problem.

IF when she cut the sheet you “tried to talk to her about why it was not okay” instead of expressing honest surprise and frustration, you will lost trust by being dishonest.

How will she learn the difference between expensive sheets and clothes, and scrap crap, if the mom uses a sweetie-pop poodle voice both times?

The original is on Always Learning
where I had linked to the page about tone of voice:
SandraDodd.com/tone
photo by Sandra Dodd
(here, on facebook)

I had no photo of a young child cutting things she shouldn't but remembered a photo of a clean fitted sheet.

Changing; healing; hope

Often people have been resistant about the idea that unschooling involves anything more than just letting their kids play. They don't like to think it involves changing themselves.

Gradually, freedom for the children creates a new looseness in the parents, though. And as one increases, the other does too. When a parent hits a hard spot, where they feel jealousy and resentment, it's often a sign that there's a painful childhood memory that hasn't been laid out to dry yet.

When we're tempted to say "no," and we have that little internal conversation about "Why not?" that can be healing. When I'm there, I think of my mom saying no, and then I picture her having been open enough to say yes more, and I picture my childhood self having a thrill of freedom and approval. There was some freedom, and some approval, but I can imagine up a lot more of it, and shower it on my children.

Sometimes I picture my granny telling my imagined young-girl mom "Yes" a lot too, and I think maybe if my mom had had more freedom she would have more to spread around. And I hope my children will not have to think so hard when they say yes to their children.

Others have mentioned feeling lighter and less bound by "have to." It doesn't seem to matter whether they start with "educational" issues or general parenting issues, it all builds together. All the relationships get better.

SandraDodd.com/healing
photo by Janine Davies

One seamless whole

Tina Bragdon wrote:

More and more I am beginning to understand what you say about the power of our words, the semantics of them, and what they reveal about our thoughts deep down. I used to think long ago this was a bit nitpicky, but really can see what you mean when I really stop and think about it.

I think that awareness (for me anyway) is easier to come by with some of our loaded words like "lazy", "she-he always/never.." and such, but most of us weren't homeschooled let alone unschooled and as such don't realize the impact of being graded, sorted, and categorized from the age of 2-3 or so (ie-being regarded as "toddler", preschooler" and so on).

The more I take the word "teach" out of my vocabulary and am conscious of it the better it is for me and the easier it is to see my children's lives as one seamless whole and not divided by subjects.

—Tina Bragdon

The School in my Head

Mindful of Words

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Holly Dodd

Highlight now

Our parents grew up in a different time, with different pressures and realities, and there's no profit in trying to persuade them they should've had the sensibilities you might have now (or that you're developing or would like to have). If you focus on what you want to do with and for your own children and why, the rest of the family can begin to fade in importance.



Customized, thoughtful choices
photo by Sandra Dodd

Imagine that

The richness of that environment of learning, where the parents and the children are exploring what they want to explore and sharing little bits along the way, sliding in and out of each others' hobbies, it is so big, it's so rich, and when the children are old enough to get jobs—mine all got jobs as teens, but in some countries that’s not as legal as it is where I am—and when they decide to move out, it’s so smooth, it’s so normal. It already seems not unusual that a child would move out, would find a cool opportunity and move out, and that the parents would help them willingly, sweetly.

And I’ve seen that now dozens of times, and I assume I will see that hundreds of times before I'm through, and most people have not seen that one time. They can’t imagine it; they don’t believe it. What they see is: when the child turns 18, everything changes.

I’ve talked to kids who said they were so scared and stressed when they were 17, because they knew when they turned 18, their parents were going to start charging them rent, or throw them out, or if they didn’t go to the university, they should go to the military—all this huge pressure to get... to get out. You are done now; we're done.

So people hadn’t considered that they could totally avoid that, that that would be a natural offshoot of radical unschooling.

I was speaking, not writing.
You can hear and read more here:
Family Bonding
photo by Holly Dodd

The easy way

When someone wrote "I may be taking the easy way out by just waiting until my son is older...," I responded (in part):

TAKE THE EASY WAY!!!

Make people’s lives easy. Don’t think there’s virtue in allowing difficulties to continue.

Make his life easier, if you can do it in some simple way.

The world will provide obstacles and difficulties enough. Let it be your duty and joy to provide a haven.

SandraDodd.com/peace
photo by Abby Davis

Choosing fruit

Bernadette Lynn wrote:

My son isn't restricted in what he eats. He came into the kitchen yesterday to ask me if there were any biscuits (cookies), but stopped mid-sentence when he noticed a melon on the counter and asked for that instead. So he ate a whole honeydew melon, instead of biscuits (which we did have). It's the second one he's eaten since I bought them at the weekend.

The melon was sitting next to his uneaten Easter egg, but he ignored that.

—Bernadette Lynn

SandraDodd.com/eating/sweets
photo of Holly Dodd by Trevor Parker,
text added by Holly later