photo by Sandra Dodd
Unschooling seemed to have given them HUGE advantages in college. They were, frankly, shocked at the poor preparation and attitudes of most other students. Other students seemed to them to be "going through the motions," but were not really interested in learning.
It is hard to explain, but all three of my kids and all of their unschooled friends who have gone to college have repeatedly tried to articulate that there seemed to be "something wrong" with so many of the other students and that they seemed actually resistant to learning. The unschooled kids were there because they wanted to be there, first of all. They knew they had a choice and that makes a big difference. A sense of coercion leads to either outright rebellion, passive resistance, or apathy and my kids saw all of those playing out among the majority of their fellow students.
Well there are two such mentions:
If you've turned to this page in random Ouija-Book fashion, welcome! If you arrived here methodically, page-by-page, you won't be surprised at what I'm about to say.and on another page
Or maybe you've turned randomly to this page without reading anything else and you don't know what I'm talking about. This wasn't a good first-random-page. Maybe flip again, and come back to this page later.One of the moms who bought the book that first day said she had randomly turned to one of those pages, and was amused by seeing that note.
Read a little.
Try a little.
Wait a while.
Watch.
If I read a book and glean something from it, it means I myself took something, a little, that wasn't entirely intended for me to get.
Surround your child with text of all kinds and he/she will learn to read. Read to them, read in front of them, help them, don't push them. Children allowed to learn on their own timetable do learn to read at widely divergent times—there is NO right time for all children. Some learn to read at three years old and others at 12 or even older. It doesn't matter. Children who are not yet reading are STILL learning—support their learning in their own way. Pushing children to try to learn to read before they are developmentally ready is probably a major cause of long-term antipathy toward reading, at best, and reading disabilities, at worst.
One surprise is that programs the parents had thought were "stupid" have led to discussion and research on the autobahn, the metric system, classic movies, technology, international sports, geography, segregation, famous speeches, sportsmanship and ethics, live theatre, opera, oil and mining, hygiene, reproduction, Australian food, life cycle of frogs, hurricane formation, trust, cooperation, classical music, Vikings, religion, art, how different animals survive the winter, Galileo, Japanese mythology, cooking, geology… this list could be twice as long without leaving that section of my website.
One trail went from a mummy cartoon to Egypt, to Pharaohs, to slavery, to the Civil War, to Abraham Lincoln, and to other presidents. The Simpsons' parody of Schoolhouse Rock led to a discussion on Thoreau and Walden.
text from page 141 (or 153) of The Big Book of Unschooling
and that page links to SandraDodd.com/t/cheesy and SandraDodd.com/t/learning
cartoon portrait by Gina Trujillo, my niece, based on this self-made photo
It doesn't really do any good to be their partner once a week. If you're mean four times and nice one time, that's not enough.
Conscious, continuous and mindful.
Over the past ten years or so there appears to be a resurgence of romanticizing "primitive" cultures, especially in regards to parenting and diet. While one of my favorite things in the world is to sit in front of a campfire and stare at the flames feeling a connection to the people who've come before me and found the same warmth and entertainment in the dancing flames, I think that cherry picking other cultures for their feel-good bits is not only blatantly ethnocentric but also detrimental to unschooling in the modern world.
You can attend a thousand Zen classes at a University and still not understand it because it is something that is internal. You can have a bunch of nice meditation products and still be angry. You can make a big deal out of living simply and still miss all the beauty around you.
It's not about the accoutrements but the "seeing with new eyes."
Sorta like unschooling.
You can read all the books, you can talk to unschoolers, attend a conference and join some lists. But until you GET IT at the internal level, until there is trust and a willingness to extend that trust to your children, unschooling is just a nice idea or philosophy to discuss...nothing more. For those that decide to learn to trust themselves and their children, they soon find their lives a bubbly, interesting swirl of natural learning.
confidenceBuild your nest with
experience
good examples
food patience
shelter enthusiasm
love curiosity
joy
Then I looked up and there's food to be put away, and the counter was all full of dinner.
At first I felt whiney, "why me?" and kind of "DAMN it, I'm tired."
We have containers to make small meals, and I can mix the sauce (which I made in the morning and slow-simmered most of the afternoon) with spaghetti in several little containers, and someone from my family will be glad to find it at some point this weekend, or maybe Keith will save one to take to work for lunch on Monday.
I'm glad we have a refrigerator, and that people in my family not only are willing to eat leftovers, they're glad to find there's some left of something they liked the first time.
We have a dishwasher. That's really wonderful. If all I have to do is rinse dishes and fill it up, that's not much work at all.
I've been listening to World War Z. Marty says some of his favorite stories aren't in the abridged audio book, but that he's heard the audio and it's good.
So I put World War Z to play on the computer, and cleaned up the kitchen I'm glad to have, for the family I love.
Quicker than training a cat not to get on the table, she trained him not to start any books at all.
I am seven years old. I am sitting comfortably with a convenient, safe place to rest my face. Safe. On my father's lap . . . Knowing it is not only ok, but expected of me, to fall asleep. Right here where I already am. My dad will tuck me in when he is done holding me, and it will hardly be my business.
| Be careful how you define success, lest what is not success become failure. Don't let your goal be so small that the rest of the universe is to be avoided.
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But "better" is unmeasurable. Too much measuring, too much counting.
Better is perceptible.
Better is a relief.
Better is better.
Arguing with "better is better" is saying that better is not better.
Worse is certainly not better.
What makes you feel good? I like a root beer float and a chip butty when I'm feeling particularly low. It doesn't make anything external better, but it does help a lot with my internals. Stock your cupboards with things that bring you pleasure, fix meals that make you happy, play games that you enjoy. Smile, laugh, swing, skip, dance, listen to music and play. Sometimes it may feel contrived, but try not to dwell on that, try and move it forward to not being contrived, like laugh therapy.
When your husband feels bad, bring him something nice, a piece of cake, a hug, a gentle touch, a thank you for something. Don't see his low point as something that you have to compete with for attention. And don't see it as a personal attack. Just see it as an unhappy moment, a point of stress, a need to express something to a safe ear.
It isn't self-sacrifice to work for your team. It's teamwork.
Hold onto each day, know how quickly they pass. Kiss those tiny heads of toddlers and babies; smell their heads, as my friend Sandra says. Before you know it, they'll be playing a game together and you won't even need to explain the rules to them. In fact you'll have a hard time comprehending the game.
