Children are people already

Question:
How do you plan to prepare her for a future career?

Sandra:
Too much of school and of traditional parenting pretends (and fails) to be preparing children for future careers. Too little of school and of traditional parenting is even attempting to acknowledge that children are people already. They have been whole, thinking, seeing beings since the day they were born. Assisting them to learn and to find their strengths and to explore the world and its possibilities is preparing them for their unseen futures.

from "...Questions on Learning without School and Living Joyfully"
part of an interview by Rashmie, of Mommy Labs
photo by a waiter at Garduño's,
years ago

Be brave; have fun

Be curious. Be open-minded! Beyond this, or behind that, are other things. Peek. A joyful attitude is your best tool.

SandraDodd.com/attitude
photo by Catia Maciel

Help to relax

"What helped me relax was focusing on our relationship with each other and fostering GENUINE interest in each others' interests."

—Tina Bragdon

SandraDodd.com/learningfromourkids
photo by Holly Dodd

Understanding

Joyce Fetteroll wrote, twelve years ago:

Natural learning is easy to understand. It's not so easy to feel confident that natural learning is as good as (let alone better) than institutional learning. Natural learning *shouldn't* test as well as school learning. It isn't geared to passing tests. It's geared to understanding. And understanding is hard to test for!

If natural learning were easy to trust Sandra could have put up on her website:

Create a rich environment. Support and feed their interests. Connect with them.

And none of us would still be sitting here nearly 20 years later, still explaining that it does work. 😉

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/simple
photo by Christine Milne

Open to swirling

Art, culture and ideas can swirl in your life if you let them.

Be open to seeing, appreciating and connecting.

SandraDodd.com/schuyler/tv
photo by Sandra Dodd

Tangents are the good parts

Even two people reading the same book are gleaning different things from it, or maybe one is just looking at the photos. Marty and I pulled down several books with sections about The Black Death of the 14th century. We weren't "reading the books," we were using them as reference materials for details and stories. But as sometimes happens, other interesting parts jumped out at us, just from having the books in our hands and using the index, or flipping through.

The tangents are the good parts.

SandraDodd.com/reallearning
photo by Sandra Dodd

Who needs to know what?

In a discussion about things unschooling parents have learned from their kids, I told a story involving my Uncle Billy Jack, a fun guy I didn't see much:

When I was a kid, 10 or so, my mom's youngest brother (who was probably 24, 25 at the time) asked me "What's the capital of South Dakota?"

I said "I don't know, what is it?"

He said "I don't have to know—I'm not in school."

That moment is branded in my brain.

I went and learned it [Pierre, SD] when I got home, and haven't forgotten, though it will NEVER matter to me in any way whatsoever. It's trivia disguised as "knowledge." But the idea that there were things kids needed to know and adults didn't care anything about stayed with me.

---

Unschoolers see their kids learning all kinds of things joyfully, for fun. I'm definitely NOT opposed to trivia. Trivia means "it won't be on the test." Without tests, everything can be entertaining trivia.

SandraDodd.com/trivia
photo by Alex Polikowsky