photo by Sandra Dodd
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Whole and healthy and strong and free
photo by Sandra Dodd
Friday, June 29, 2012
Live in joy.
photo by Sandra Dodd (click to enlarge)
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Free-form experimentation and analysis
Unschooling looks nothing like school. It looks like play. Play—which is actually free-form experimentation and analysis—is how we—humans and really all mammals—are designed to make sense of the world around us. We build up an understanding of how the universe works by trying things out and seeing what happens. Then taking that new understanding to try more stuff out. Written that way it sounds formal and directed. In actual practice it is free ranging and chaotic. But it works wonderfully well because it's what we're designed to do. —Joyce Fetteroll | ![]() |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Magical music
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a little bird feeder,
or something, in Yvoire, France
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Decide, don't slide.
Better choices make things better. Decide. Don't slide. | ![]() |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Monday, June 25, 2012
Cowtrails
![]() | "Flexibility to pursue tangents and cowtrails, and continuing to see the wonder in everyday things will lead to learning experiences without prior planning." |
photo by Sandra Dodd
A "cowtrail" isn't a cattle trail. It's a little path worn by cattle walking single file in the same place, for years, between water and some favorite shade or gathering place. Sometimes they're called "cow paths." Sometimes little kids can follow them better than adults can, because the cattle might have gone under branches, tunnel-like.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
"The easy way out"
Photo by Sandra Dodd
Click the image (or here) for more information about that tree.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Solutions, not obstacles
"It helps to think of the solutions instead of the obstacles." | ![]() |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Friday, June 22, 2012
Different eyes
![]() | You and your children see the world through different eyes. Be kind, and expect them to see things you can't see. Be reasonable and understand that they can't be you and won't become you. They were born in a different time, and are living in a different way. |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Contagious good parenting
Being a good parent makes a person more attractive to the other parent, and makes the other parent grateful and respectful. Gratitude and respect make it easier to have compassion and patience. | ![]() |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
A fair clip
![]() | paper clip |
How do parents learn to play?
Learn by doing.
Play with words, thoughts, ideas.
scanner image by Sandra Dodd
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Which hat?
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Recently Just Add Light had a quote and link to something by Pam Sorooshian about whether one should be a child's friend, or parent. Pam knows one should be both, and explained that elegantly.
I was with a group of home ed families in France, some unschoolers, others in the various stages of consideration of unschooling, and someone asked to to tell how I am as a woman. Bea Mantovani was the translator, and said the question didn't really translate. The questioner tried to clarify. She said I had spoken of my husband, and of being a mother, but how was I as a woman, separate from that?
I remember my confusion better than my response. One thing I said was that I AM a mother.
I suspected, and it was later confirmed, that it was a socio-political question, a feminist concept about identity above and beyond motherhood. But the question sets motherhood in a low position, if only the brightest and the best exist apart from and outside of that, and if to have no answer made me unaware or less whole.
For one thing, though, I was in France speaking to people because I had been invited to do so. I've written thousands of thousands of words about parenting and how children can exist in a peaceful world of easy growth in all directions.
I'm a changing-the-world woman. But even that didn't answer the question, because it still was an extension of mothering, which I had explained had involved sharing and modeling since I nursed babies at La Leche League meetings.
I would most like to be known as a woman of integrity, and for that to be true, I can't deny or reject any aspect of my being. I can't divide myself into parts and still be one integral whole. Any hat I might put on is still on my own head.
Affection and Esteem (from this blog, June 6, 2012)
photo by Sandra Dodd
Monday, June 18, 2012
Photos don't have to be upright
I'm sorry for the glitch with today's post, and it's not yet fixed. I've written to Photobucket. For a while I was making errors because of Blogger changing, and now there's a Photobucket problem.
There was one photo by Holly that was sideways on purpose so the words would be the readable direction.

I know my writing is always about peace and goodness and living lightly and being open to what happens. I know my photos are often of trees or trucks, the view through a hole in a wall, or doorways, or fires or flowers. I like rooflines, and plants growing in odd places. I like light coming through glass—refracting, reflecting and projecting its shadows and colors. I like round things.













(The cake photo is by Cathy Koetsier, and Holly Dodd took one or two of them.)
Thank you for reading. You don't have to read these, so thanks for choosing to do so. I don't have to make them and send them out, but I like to.
__
Other solutions
"If you're trapped by have to's then there are no other solutions. If you recognize that there are other solutions then you can free up your thinking to allow them to come." —Joyce Fetteroll |
"There are just things we have to do" (on Joyce's site)
photo by Sandra Dodd
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Progress toward joy
| ![]() |
photo by Holly Dodd
Friday, June 15, 2012
Counting and measuring
![]() | Measuring, weighing and counting can be fun! Try not to measure, weigh or count relationships or learning, though. Learn not to keep count in the areas of knowledge or effort or interest. |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Thursday, June 14, 2012
As big as the world
If you look at school and curriculum objectively rather than the fonts of knowledge they're touted to be, it's easier to see how hugely limiting they are.
![]() | Kids are stuck inside memorizing facts about life and the world from someone predigested facts about it. Unschooled kids are out in the world learning as humans are designed to learn: by gathering in what they observe and pulling understanding from it. —Joyce Fetteroll |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Safe place
![]() | If your relationship with your child is about you leading him along with you instead of pushing him away, you will be his safe place. Make yourself his safe place. |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Monday, June 11, 2012
Play with words
photo by Sandra Dodd, in a park in Bangalore
Sunday, June 10, 2012
What makes things wonderful
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The deeper meaning of the word is what makes things wonderful. Full of wonder. Some adults are afraid of "wonder," though, because it involves relaxing into not understanding. It requires acceptance that one does not know. At its core, it is acceptance of and admiration for the mysterious and the hidden. It is taking joy in the revelation of simple things for which there are no words.
Similar page, SandraDodd.com/wonder
(though the quote is from page 279 (or 322) of The Big Book of Unschooling)
photo by Sandra Dodd
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Real writing
Writing to real people for real purposes improves writing in real ways. | ![]() |
but here's a link to go with it: SandraDodd.com/writing
photo by Sandra Dodd
Friday, June 8, 2012
For now
![]() | Some things I've said: "This is working for now. If it stops working, we'll do something else." "Thanks. I'll think about that." (Or you could say "We thought about that," or "I think about that all the time.") Mostly people want to know you heard what they said, and that you have thought about what they're suggesting. It doesn't hurt to say that you have, or that you will. |
SandraDodd.com/school/say
photo by Sandra Dodd of one of the Diamond Jubilee beacons
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Affection and esteem
Something that has rattled around in my head for years is the line, "You're the parent, not their friend."
I was just reading a news article and someone was quoted as saying: "Your kids don’t need a 40-year-old friend. They need a parent."
What a tragic dichotomy that one little line sets up!
Every single time that line has ever entered my head, it was leading me in the wrong direction. Every time.
1. a friend: one attached to another by affection or esteem
Knowing what I know now, with my kids grown, I strongly feel that that that one line, which permeates parental consciousnesses, should be quickly and actively contradicted and rooted out like a pernicious weed every single time it sprouts up.
Instead of "You're the parent, not their friend," substitute, "Be the very very best friend to them you can possibly be."
photo by Sandra Dodd
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Anniversaries and memories
Two days ago, I watched BBC 1's live coverage of a flotilla of a thousand boats on the Thames, while I was sitting in the Daniels' living room with them and Addi. The Queen and Prince Phillip were on a boat in the flotilla, which was docked partway through so they could view the rest of the parade. They stood (never sat) through the entire thing, until the last boat passed, waving to all of them. While we got up for food and water and the bathroom, they seemed not to (though the Queen did go below briefly, and came back with a carefully draped shawl). It was cold, and sometimes raining. Because they stood, everyone else on the boat stood, too. Hours, and hours.
I was warm, inside. I was sitting.
Here comes my point. There are things to remember and times to remember them. The birth of a child, the decision to let him stay home instead of go to school, the time one decided to live a life of learning as an unschooling parent—these things are large in our lives. Take pride in your accomplishment even though there might not be people cheering you or waving flags.
You might feel you're doing a lot of work, under harsh conditions, while your children play. Think of the larger picture when you feel jealous or resentful. You had a choice. You have choices. All that needs to happen for years to pass peacefully is for a series of moments to pass peacefully. All you need to do to have anniversaries accrue is to continue to behave as conscientiously as you can, and to make choices in generous and selfless ways
SandraDodd.com/milestones/
photo by Sandra Dodd, who first became an unschooler 22 years ago
but who remembers having been an unschooling mom less than a year
and for a whole year, and then five, and later ten...
Monday, June 4, 2012
Whose home, whose responsibility?
Funny how parents say 'It's your home too and your responsibility,' when it comes to chores, but 'It's my home,' when it comes to setting standards or how money is spent or how to decorate it or ... —Joyce Fetteroll | ![]() |
photo by Sandra Dodd
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Bigger and Better
"When we can we should always do more, offer more, think more, and make our bit of the world as big and full as we can for our kids. Our kid's lives get bigger and better when our thinking gets bigger and better." —Deb Lewis | ![]() |
photo by Sandra Dodd, at Explora in Albuquerque
Saturday, June 2, 2012
"They loved hearing stories..."
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"The family lived peacefully together, enjoying their lives of travel, friends, and the pleasures from living life so simply. They encouraged one another’s passions and shared many as a family as well as having some of their very own. They loved hearing stories borne out of those passions and frequently wove tales that created interest, laughter, and joy from telling and hearing them. . . ."
photo by Marty Dodd
Friday, June 1, 2012
Food and its purpose
[When my children were little...] I always put the kids' needs ahead of dinner. Dinner happened after or around nursing babies and such.
You might have to do away with the idea of a peaceful mealtime for a few years. Maybe re-thinking meals would be the way to go. I think it helps rather than to live by the idealized traditional model of dinner at 6:00, all at their seats, dinner conversation that could be reported to the media as an ideal mix of news of the day and philosophy, etc, to think of food and its purpose. People need to be nourished physically and it's uncomfortable to go to sleep hungry. THAT is the purpose of evening food, not the appearance of a well-organized dinner. |
photo by Sandra Dodd, of one of the former Dodd babies