If parents retain ownership of their children's learning, the children cannot learn on their own. | ![]() |
photo by Sandra Dodd
If parents retain ownership of their children's learning, the children cannot learn on their own. | ![]() |
![]() | Parents get pretty good at noticing when a child is tired, hungry or frustrated. It's important to see those things in yourself. Keep your family safe from your more dangerous moods and states. If you're too hungry or too tired to be kind and safe, ask for help. Or admit you're feeling stressed, and be more careful. Don't use your mood as an excuse to be harsh or dangerous. Learn to do what you need to do to stay in a workable, safe zone. |
"For unschooling to flourish it means taking out our fears and examining them. It means looking at unschooled children to find out what really happens rather than what seems like would happen (from knowledge of schooled, controlled kids). It means shutting off the expert voices that tell parents what they should be seeing and looking at our real kids." —Joyce Fetteroll | ![]() |
Don't click anything. It's Learn Nothing Day. | ![]() |
Amy: Here is Sandra Dodd with a simple definition of unschooling. Sandra Dodd: Creating an environment where natural learning can flourish. Amy: What’s natural learning? Sandra Dodd: Learning from experience, learning from asking questions, following interests, being. | ![]() |
![]() | There is probably not an idea about how to be with kids that you have that we haven't seen and turned over. (Sounds a bit snooty!) What I mean is, that 1000's of people have wandered by us with the ideas they have. We've held them up for examination to see "Is this respectful? How does this help a child? How does this hurt a child? Is there a better way that will nurture him *and* help him?" —Joyce Fetteroll |
Good people make better parents. Better parents make better unschoolers. If some of your transitional energy is spent being a better person, your child's working model of the universe, which only he or she can build, will have a better foundation. It will be built in a better neighborhood, with cleaner air and purer water. | ![]() |
Marta Pires wrote:
I could've easily been one of those moms who thought that saying anything to my child would be limiting her, and who could've been afraid of her daughter's sensitivity. I can see clearly now that they don't learn how to handle these situations simply from seeing us do things one way or another (although it's important, of course), but we need to give them information and find out the best way to do it, having our own child in mind. That's not damaging them or limiting them at all, quite the contrary—I think it's helping them navigate the world and become respectful, considerate, polite adults.
![]() | "Be precise in the words you use to describe those you love, aim to support and care for. Be as generous as you can too. The clearer you see your child, the better you can respond to their needs. The better you learn to listen to them, see them, and be of useful service to them, the more they will have confidence in your ability to have their best interest in mind." —Karen James |
We always have ice cream in the freezer—he rarely eats it, but an apple or watermelon will be gone in no time. A mom named Kris wrote that ten years ago, of a child who is probably grown now. |
![]() | It can be healing for parents to think back to their own sorrows and then to their own children's freedom from those experiences. |
![]() | In an attempt to "be fair," parents can be very UNfair. Children don't all need the same things for the same amount of time. Measuring with rulers and timers and charts is often shortchanging one child or another. What they could use more than that is the opportunity to decide when they're finished for their own reasons. |