 | Many people have said when they moved their focus from their own concerns and feelings onto their children's comfort and joy, there was enough comfort and joy for the whole family and some to spread around. In a mother-focussed home, unschooling won't work very well. |
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Send a thank-you note to someone who has helped you this year, or maybe deliver one by hand to the nicest person at your grocery store, or a neighbor who smiles and waves. Maybe someone has been nice to you online, and you could send an e-mail or a facebook message. |  |
 | I'm sure there are things on my roof that would be interesting to someone else, but I don't go up there, and I don't look. When I've visted other places, though rooflines seem exotic, and the chimneys and birds and all are not what I'm used to and I get excited. |
 | awe |
Text and title repeated from December 2010, with a new photo
 | One of the highest points of any life is seeing, touching, and considering something new and different. When considering what to do, where to go, what to bring into your home, think of things your children can experience directly, thoughtfully. Don't ask them to report, past conversational exchange. They might want to think about it privately and come to some of their own conclusions. They might think about it for the rest of their lives, if you let it be sweet, and their own. |
| Something people need for Christmas is patience, sweetness and a little more attention than you think you have time for. Slow down just enough to look more closely at each person in your house, or in your video feed, or who sent you a card or note. If you can't give them more of yourself directly, think kindly of them. Maybe do something helpful for someone else, in their honor. Many people are not where they would like to be this week, and those who see each other might not hug and kiss. If you can make things better and not worse, that is a profound gift. |  |
 It's glorious that his mom got a photo of it. I'm grateful that she let me share it here with all of you. 🎵And glory shone around.🎵 |
| I've said before that people shouldn't live with one foot in the school (with a curriculum, or trying to keep up with school), nor even in the shadow of the school. It means to live as though school didn't exist. It means live outside of, far from, without thought of school. Learn in ways that work naturally and holistically, where the learning has to do with life, and is living, and being. —Sandra Dodd, 2011 |  |
| 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. |  |
 | Babies and young children can see the same old world as a whole new place, because from their perspective, bubbles, Christmas lights, fountains, sand, rainbows, and chickens are phenomenal new experiences—exciting and glorious. Next year, next time, they might have forgotten, and it can be new again. |
 | "On the snow days that are entirely too cold for the children to go outside,
or even when it is too dark outside we bring buckets of snow inside. We put
the snow into the bathtub and allow the children to sit on the outside.
Reaching into the tub they can use their action figures, trucks, barbies,or
other misc. toys to play in the snow. When they are finished playing the
snow runs down the drain and leaves very little clean up. (We have also
allowed the children to make and throw a couple of snowballs at the shower
wall.)" —Laurie C, 2005 |
See learning as your priority, and you will begin to see it more and more.
 | Someone had written, of unschooling: "It sounds like it takes an enormous amount of trust in everything to allow this process to happen." I responded: "It takes a little trust, and desire, and willingness, to take one step. It gets easier as you go. No one can take all of the steps at once." No one can, or should, have trust in everything. Try things out. Think carefully, and observe directly. Practice! |
| "Gorging on what was forbidden or limited is very common. Once they're confident that they truly can have as much as they want for the rest of their lives, then they will slow down and be able to walk away, confident that if they return, they'll still be able to have some." —Joyce Fetteroll |  |
Arbitrary rules and limits have the characteristic that they entice
kids to think about how they can get around them
Coercion creates resistance and reduces learning. —Pam Sorooshian
(in an obscure discussion from 2004) |
 | A thing doesn't need to be big or fancy to be right and good. Same with people. |
| Soft, hard, lasting, fleeting, solemn or sweet— the nature of "real life" can be shifty. Be soft, and lasting, and sweet as well and as often as you can be. |  |
Get witnesses.That's one reason people join support groups and confess to their friends what they're doing, because you've told somebody what your intention is.
You've told them what your problem is and what your intention is and now you have witnesses and for some people that helps. Sometimes it needs to be an imaginary witness, sometimes it needs to be a real witness. But maybe, if it will help you, imagine that the friend that you most want to impress is there and would you do it if they were there.
| For a single person to dedicate himself or herself to "a cause" is all well and good, but for a parent to take one moment from his child's peaceful life to try to make theoretical peace 10,000 miles away is bad.
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| Seasons change, and creatures look for a place to be, near something to eat. If you're providing food and shelter for your children, good job! If you can look cool while doing it, with a bit of style and pizzazz, bonus for everyone. Fill your shelter with peace and patience. |  |
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| I've seen hands-off, hands-up parents use various justifications for not helping a child do better. I've seen them blame other things, other people. I don't like to see it recommended in discussions I've organized and invited people to. What I intend to continue to do for people who want to be unschoolers in the way it's discussed here, is to encourage them to be each child's partner, to help him live peacefully and joyfully, and to learn in his own way as happily and as richly as they can arrange for it to happen. |  |
| How will they learn to read? In school or out, every child learns to read in his own way, as he figures it out. Different people read different ways. Some are more visual, and some are sounding out letters, and some are reading groups of words.
Reading is complex, but teaching rarely helps. Until a child's brain and body are mature in various mysterious ways so that he can process the visual information and connect it to the language inside him in a manner that completes the puzzle for him, he cannot read, whether he's in school or not. Some children are three, some are thirteen, but shame and pressure never help. |
| Emotional health and emotional well-being are as important, if not more so, as physical health. —Jenny Cyphers |  |
| Look for patterns and unique expressions, all around you. There will be packing materials, automobiles, tea mugs, hats and toys to serve as sculpture and utilitarian design, even if you're stuck at home. Look out your window. Look AT your window. |  |
| "Watch and listen to you kids. Let yourself get caught up in what they find wonderful and in the process rediscover wonder itself." |  |
| When unschooling is working really well, learning will be happening, for kids and parents, without effort. |  |
 | People DO think of next week. They think of last week. But they're doing their thinking from inside their present selves. Balance depends on the fulcrum. Be solid. Be grounded. Be whole, and be here. |
 | Move from long-term worries to present peace. Leave your kids alone to play, to sleep, to watch videos, to draw, or whatever they want to do. Feed them. Water them. Love them. Wait. |
Unschooling advice—or deschooling oneself—does not change just because the kids get older: *Get closer to your child.*
Eliminate those degrees of separation that have started to grow fearful roots in you! When that happens, *you* actually start to *create* that divisiveness and separation in your relationship, by listening to your fear over the needs and interests of your kid. Do not let that monster in! Shine the light on the scary cobwebs and dark stuff.
 | The more you do for children, the less needy they will be. (When your choice is "more or less," go with more.) |
Even within one breed, there are personalities. Even within one family, some kids are very "with It" about interpersonal realities, and others a little more clue-free.
Still It seems kind and respectful to assume the best when possible, and people can be pleasantly surprised.
If we treat all dogs (and children) as "bad dogs," they will probably respond In that way, too.
| The fewer things you say or do to make things worse, the better things will be. |  |
| Windows and doors keep things in and let things out. Some of the most beautiful parts of everyday life, and of exotic or glorious architecture, involve those openings and their closures. This blog is about half tagged. Newer posts, and 2010-2014 are finished. I'm still working on those middle years, so these links will lead to more images as time passes. Enjoy peeking in, and out, or wondering about other people's doors and windows. |  |
| If you're able to run for fun, you should find more reasons to do it! Sometimes people get too old, or they're hurt, or it's too cold, or other factors keep running from happening. If you can run, run some for the rest of us! |  |
Every day he's away from school, negative effects will fade.
 | When my family started unschooling, my partner and I felt the spirituality of it immediately... . . . . It's grounded, realistic, accessible enlightenment. —Janine |
