In a mother-focussed home, unschooling won't work very well.
photo by Kinsey Norris
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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
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 |
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! |
Coercion creates resistance and reduces learning.
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.
I know the argument, that there is no peace until all have peace, but that is a big old fallacy and foolishness. There never has been universal peace and never, ever could be.