Holly Dodd wrote a warm memory:
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photo by Holly Dodd
Holly Dodd wrote a warm memory:
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Older moms say "Appreciate your kids. They'll be grown before you know it." Younger moms think it's rude, and wrong, and can hardly endure the endless days of damp, stinky babies and toddlers, and messy, destructive, needy three and four year olds, and... Life is made of stages that can seem long. I've had young children and felt sticky and crowded and exhausted. I've had teens I started to miss before they were gone. Wherever you are, breathe and be patient and loving. | ![]() |
![]() | Artistry and creativity can be practiced and expressed in sweet, homey, temporary ways. Unfamiliar combinations of familiar things are the basis of much art, science, and humor. |
![]() | I can breathe and be still and not be knocked down by thoughts. Thoughts can lift me up. I can turn down the volume. I can switch channels. |
![]() | When a child has come up from infancy with choices, she won't be desperately grasping for evidence of personal power and autonomy when she's older. |
"Remember that unschooling is not just not taking the kids to school. It is building a good relationship with them, a healthy relationship with them, and creating a nice environment for them, different from school. So that is part of our responsibilities as unschooling parents—to heal ourselves." —Alicia Gonzalez-Lopez |
Be grateful for opportunities to be kind to your children. | ![]() |
What is local and "everyday" can seem boring, dusty, even embarrassing maybe. "Those old buildings," with their uneven floors, dusty corners, antique windows, are gloriously exotic to people from two thousand miles away, or ten thousand miles away. |
There's a difference between playing a game and playing with a game. Yet another thing is to play with game pieces or parts. Find value in all of those things. Sometimes adults want a child to "do it right," but if the goal is learning, and thinking, the child is probably better at it than the parent! | ![]() |
![]() | Some people are better than others at waiting, quietly, for another to make the next move. If quiet doesn't come naturally to you, a starting place is to take one slow breath before you respond, or before asking a question that doesn't really need to be asked. From inside you it might seem like a long time, but from the outside it will not. During that breath, consider whether two breaths would help even more. |
![]() | Remember that things seem different different times to different people. My perspective when I'm stressed or sad will be colored by that. Things shift and change. Live lightly. |
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![]() | The second you have a positive attitude, even fleetingly, your life is better, right then. |
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![]() | Except in the few obvious ways, I don't treat my children in a lesser way than I treat my husband. It has been crucial to our interactions as an unschooling family that the kids were people first, and kids only incidentally and temporarily. |
![]() | Unschooling can help relationships in all kinds of ways. Broken relationships can harm unschooling in all kinds of ways. |
![]() | It's a Very Bad Idea to "start unschooling" before you know what you're doing. The more rules a family had, the more gradually and sensibly they need to move toward saying yes. |
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There is personal growth in quietly providing what is needed. The world is made better by those who notice and attend to needs. | ![]() |
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Connections are the best part of learning, in unschooling, in life, for fun. But if it’s too noisy too often, a quiet moonrise over a lake will get all sound-polluted. And one person’s thoughts of beauty might be overrun by someone else’s free associations. | ![]() |