Laundry is love

Summer MacDonald wrote:

Laundry is love. I love each person whose pants I am washing and folding. I love each meal I have shared with my family, that needed cloths and towels to wipe up the spills afterwards.

I love seeing my daughters choose their clothes each day and the combinations of colors and patterns they choose to express themselves and their body confidence. When I wash those combinations, I remember the joy they felt that day and I smile.

I love watching "special shows" with my eldest daughter on the night of laundry day (that are too mature for her sisters) while I fold pants, shirts, towels and match the socks. We talk about deeper topics and laugh about deeper jokes.

Laundry is the little thing in my week that represents the bigger beauty of my life that is found in the simplest things.

—Summer MacDonald

Can laundry be fun?
photo by Sandra Dodd

Slowly, then...

Someone said one time that she counts to ten and then she's still mad so what should she do, and a couple of people said "Count slower."

Angrily holding one's breath and counting to ten in a hostile fashion isn't the "count to ten" that's recommended. Breathing to ten is way better.

Breathing can be done in an overt, hostile "I'm breathing so I won't hurt you" passive-aggressive way, too. That cancels it right out.

The quote is from an online chat, but a good link is SandraDodd.com/breathing.
photo by Destiny Dodd, of sunlight coming in the top of a cavern
(repeat from 2018)

Flexible uses

Creativity and intelligence are seen in the ability to use a tool or an object for something other than its intended purpose. If you see your child (or your cat) doing something "wrong," set rules aside long enough to consider principles.

Sleep is important. Curiosity leads to discovery and to new connections. Shade can come from things other than trees or roofs.

Let your mind leap and frolic.

CONNECTIONS: How Learning Works
photo by Belinda Dutch
___

An individual (listening)

a mom wrote:

I like how you wrote that I need to be my child's partner not the program's partner. I will listen to my child and my heart each step of the way.

—mom of a Down Syndrome child
(original, at SandraDodd.com/special/program)

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Cátia Maciel

Real people, real purposes

All the writing students do for teachers is pretend, practice writing. Every report written in school is a practice report, not a real report. Kids are writing about something that's already known, for people who don't really want to know. . . . . If you write about what you have done at your house, and what you thought about it, that's reporting about family relationships, child development, the results of different methods and ideas put into practice. . . . . Writing to real people for real purposes improves writing in real ways.

SandraDodd.com/realwriting
photo by Sandra Dodd
(my handwriting, but not my writing)

Learning through experience

Katherine Anderson wrote:

If you wait to do unschooling *after* you understand it, it's unlikely you'll ever understand it. Learning itself works through experience. Unschooling is the same way. It's largely grasped by experiencing it.

—Katherine Anderson

SandraDodd.com/readalittle
photo by Karen James

Count one. One. One.

If every day you help a child gently, generously, directly, personally, that's hundreds of times a year.

By the time that child is fifteen, then you will have helped him, or her, thousands of times.

---

Sandra Dodd, from a talk given in Minnesota in 2013 and Gold Coast 2014.
photo by Robbie Prieto
of an anhinga, a large water bird

Sorting through examples

An online friend, in response to a photo of my family, when I was a teen (me in the middle with stripes):

I'm looking at that pretty young girl and thinking "does she have any idea just how many lives she is going to touch for the better?"

I responded:

There are people in that photo who said and did things, before that, and after that, that became part of my motivation and direction. There were bad examples, and good examples. And not just them, but other relatives, friends, friends' parents, teachers, strangers, authors.

Everyone can, should, sort through the bad examples and good examples around them and move choice by choice toward whatever their own images of "better" might be.

That's all. 🙂

---

On Facebook, for those with access, with explanations and commentary from ten years back, 2014

For those without facebook: SandraDodd.com/better

I don't know who took the photo; sorry.
We were in Roby, Texas, probably 1968.

Support

Supporting someone or something requires strength and confidence.

Support is holding something up.
Support is upholding something.

Support your child. Lift him up above you.

New words, relating to older ideas:
SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Observe, recognize and know

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Be very observant of what your child is really doing - don't view him/her in a shallow superficial way. Recognize that there is a reason for a child's actions, that a child is "born to learn" and is always learning. Get to know your child's own special favored ways of learning

—Pam Sorooshian

#10 of a list of 11 pointers by Pam Sorooshian
from What is the role of the unschooling parent?
photo by Belinda Dutch

Science: incidental and everywhere

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

[A relative once said] that he thought science was one of those things that must be taught in school. He felt it needed to be taught by those people who have been trained to teach it, that it requires chemistry sets and microscopes and formulae and hypotheses and paper and pencils and workbooks and textbooks. To him science doesn’t seem to be something incidental. But science is incidental; it is everywhere. And it is less about the tools available and more about your approach, your ability to question and explore the workings of the world in which you live.

School is exceptional at taking science away from the individual and placing it, carefully, in a locked box and putting it up on a pedestal with the label: a systematically derived body of knowledge. Among the many problems with such treatment is that science isn’t a body of knowledge. It is a body of systematically derived theories and hypotheses that are tested and testable and changeable....

—Schuyler Waynforth

School Blinded Me to Science
(there's more there!)

photo by Annie Regan
Click it for more detail!

Exciting, or same old home

Some of your days should be all new and exciting and novel, and some should be same old, same old comfortable home.

SandraDodd.com/repetition
photo by Janine Davies

You can't imagine.

Being a child's partner in exploring the world is valuable in more ways than people can imagine, if they haven't done it.

SandraDodd.com/adelaide
photo by Karen James
__

Changing, building, and understanding

JoyfullyRejoycing

SandraDodd.com/unschooling

Those sites exist so that people can explore unschooling, but reading those pages doesn't make anyone an unschooler. Only changing one's own thoughts and beliefs and actions and reactions, and building a relationship with one's children based on those understandings can make unschooling work in a family.

There is a "there there" tradition among women. I've referred to it as "teaparty" talk in the past, and then made a page to illustrate what I was talking about. It *sounds* like support, but it's really more like "let's all avoid real thought together!" Unschooling takes real thought, and a desire to change. Any desire to be supported in staying the same will be a problem.

SandraDodd.com/support

Less entertaining, but easier to read from a phone:
"Support" messages all in one list
photo by Jo Isaac

Understanding it, not acting it

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

It usually takes a long time before people new to unschooling stop looking for new rules to replace old ones. The more people are discouraged from skimming a surface understanding of unschooling, discouraged from relying on meaningless reassurances that going through the motions of unschooling with crossed fingers and assurances everything will be fine, the better for their kids.

Unschooling is a paradigm shift for most everyone. That shift doesn't happen by acting like other unschoolers. It comes slowly, bit by bit, as understanding of what unschooling is grows.

—Joyce Fetteroll
(original)

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Karen James

Optimistic happy people

Alex Polikowsky wrote:

Surround yourself with optimistic happy people. Do not engage in conversation when people are complaining about their children or husbands. If a friend comes to complain about her kids I try to turn around and point out to them how that characteristic could be good or some other great thing about their children. Or I change the subject.

Look at what you have, not what you do not have. If all you focus is in negative things that is all you will see. If you always look for the positive slowly you will, more and more, see the positive and the beauty around you and that will become who you are.

—Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Seasons

Calm yourself with the awareness of what's important.

Being Home
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Reflections and shadows

This is a photo of a concrete pad at our house, between a wall and a car. It won't look like that now, but one day it did, from reflections and shadows, from lights and surfaces interacting.

The effects of different factors on lives and situations can change appearances and perceptions. Life keeps moving, and we can miss things by not looking, not noticing.

Days and moments can flow too quickly, too loudly, exhaustingly, for parents, and for growing kids. Try to appreciate the lights and shadows and patterns.

SandraDodd.com/wonderor SandraDodd.com/factors
photo by Sandra Dodd
The swirls are reflections from the car windows. Stripes are light through a slat gate. Row of spots is sun through the decorative top row of the cinderblock wall.

People, writing, improvement (really)

Writing to real people for real purposes improves writing in real ways.

There are some people who haven’t been born yet who will, someday, read things Jo Isaac wrote, and other people here. It might be hard for them to find it, or it might not be. But good ideas, written well, can outlive the writers.

SandraDodd.com/realwriting
photo by Karen James

Gather and glean

I've always felt strongly that unschooling should be about the ideas and not about the individuals. No one book, website, speaker or conference should try to be (nor be expected to be) everything for anyone, but unschooling parents should gather and glean what they can from all the real world around them. We don't need to all agree, or all be on the same list or at the same conference for families to learn and grow with unschooling.

SandraDodd.com/speakingLnL
photo by Karen James

Extraordinary doings

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

It helped me think more clearly about unschooling when I realized unschooling isn’t something kids do. Unschooling is something parents do. Unschooling is *parents* creating a learning environment for kids to explore their interests in.

Unschooled kids aren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. They’re merely doing what comes naturally. They’re doing what all animals with lengthy childhoods do. They learn by doing what interests them in an environment that gives them opportunities to explore.

Unschooling is parents doing something extraordinary. It’s deliberately creating an environment where kids are supported in pursuing their interests.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/unschoolingis
photo by Rosie Moon

A Respected Child

I really believe unschooling works best when parents trust a child's personhood, his intelligence, his instincts, his potential to be mature and calm. Take any of that away, and the child becomes smaller and powerless to some degree.

Give them power and respect, and they become respected and powerful.


This is a good one to read in context: How to Raise a Respected Child
photo by Sandra Dodd

How to help

About how to help kids follow their interests:

Sometimes help is just encouragement or acknowledgment, but sometimes it might need to be transportation or procurement or something physical.

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Megan Valnes (of Holly Dodd)

All fun and games

An angsty mom wrote:

I know in the nitty gritty of my heart, I'm not okay with a life philosophy that centers on "if it's fun I'm here, and if it's not, I'm gone."

Joyce Fetteroll responded:

Don't think of what we're talking about as fun, then. Think of it as joy. Or fulfilling. Or satisfying.

Even the most joyful life isn't all peaches and cream. Sometimes it rains when we wanted it sunny. Sometimes a friend cancels when we wanted to do something together. Sometimes accomplishing something means working through a period of frustration.

Life will naturally throw lemons at us fairly regularly. But what we don't need is to squirt life with artificial lemon juice to prepare us.

—Joyce Fetteroll

There's more: Life can't be all fun and games
photo by Karen James

Learning by watching

Problem:
My son spends a lot of his time playing video games. I have accepted that this is his passion... and maybe very well play a part in his career path. but lately he's also been watching videos of other people playing video games on YouTube! Please help me see a reason that this is not just a waste of time... I know you'll have a good way to look at this latest passion.

An idea:
Musicians watch videos of other musicians. Athletes watch videos of other athletes. Chess players have even been known to watch other people play chess with something approaching awe and rapture. Woodworkers watch woodworking shows. Cooks watch cooking shows. Dancers watch better dancers and learn like crazy!

[and there was more, ending with...]
Don't worry about what kids choose to do. Make sure they have lots of choices, and don't discriminate between what you think might be career path and what might "only" be joyful activity and self-expression, or what might seem to be nothing more than relaxation or escapism. Let them choose and be and do.

SandraDodd.com/mha
photo by Sandra Dodd

More joyful ways to live

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

The first step is finding something that's better than what you have.

The second step is wanting to change.

The third step is figuring out how to change.

So, as you read along, you may wonder why I suggest that parents basically make life more difficult for themselves. The reason is because I believe it leads to a much better place. And that better place is a more joyful life for our children and our families.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Children and media discussion
photo by Janine Davies

A grid over which to lay other things

If someone knew almost nothing in the world but trivia relating to popular music for the past 100 years, that would make a HELL of a good grid over which to lay other things. And I don't think a thorough knowledge of pop music (in any culture or language) over this particular past hundred years, which saw the proliferation of recorded music available in homes, the advent of radio broadcasts, movies with music, television variety shows, transistor radios, cassette players in cars, CDs, iPods and cell phones that store a ton of music could help but create a timeline of the culture. Wouldn't songs from Marx Brothers or Fred Astaire movies remind people of The Great Depression? Can anyone hear big-band swing music and not also think of the hairdos and costumes? Does "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy" not remind anyone of WWII? Knowing some of the context of Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers brings up LOTS of stories about where those songs were first heard.

The lyrics of some of the songs make specific mention of historical events, and that could help dating things, too, if a person were trying to figure out what came first.

Any hobby delved into deeply becomes another portal to the whole world—real and imagined; past, present and future.

"Trivial" connections are real
video from Young Frankenstein, 1974
Directed by Mel Brooks
Written (in part) by, and starring, Gene Wilder

What do trees, cats, and people need?

What does a tree need for its leaves and twigs to develop more?
What does a cat need for its brain to develop more?

They need a lack of abuse. They need water and food, sunshine. The cats can use things or people to play with, and people or other cats to groom them, pet them, lie down next to them sometimes. The tree might need to be less in the shade of other trees for optimal growth, or might need not to be where the wind is banging their branches against a cliff or building or fence or something.

If you think of people as the natural, biological beings they are, rather than as school kids who either are or are not in school, things become much clearer.

Synapses & Brain Development

Longer version here, with some Pam Sorooshian commentary

photo by Jo Isaac

How unschooling works

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Schooling works by pouring expertly selected bits of the world into a child. (Or trying to, anyway!)

Unschooling works by the child pulling in what he wants and needs. It works best by noticing what the child is asking for and helping him get it. It works best by running the world through their lives so they know what it's possible to be interested in. . . . .

Real learning travels the child's path of interest, from one bit of information that interests them to the next. Real learning is self testing by how well it works in the situation the child needs it for. Real learning is about understanding enough to make something work.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/how
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Persuasion and explanations

A person can only "refuse" what is demanded, maybe, the same way a child can only rebel against something that is required arbitrarily. Because if the mom can explain persuasively why she thinks something should be a certain way, the others might understand, and choose that for the reasons stated, not because the mom said so.

SandraDodd.com/rebellion
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Choices yes; "freedom," maybe not

If I "give my children freedom" in a situation, it's because I had some leeway or rights myself. I cannot "give them freedom" that I don't have.

Some unschoolers become confused on that, and they begin to frolic in the "freedom" that they are pretty sure some stranger online granted them, and that unschoolers have inalienably from God, bypassing all forms of government and the limitations of wallboard. And so if an unschooling family is up at 3:00 a.m. playing Guitar Hero, they seem mystified that the neighbors have called the landlord.

I'm exaggerating. I hope I'm exaggerating.

SandraDodd.com/freedom/limits
(where there's more of that)
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Conversations and insights

Shan Burton wrote:

If he had a bedtime, we would have missed our 2:00 am chat about My Little Pony, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Shakespeare, cellular peptide cake with mint icing, the two Queen Elizabeths, the nature of cats in general and ours in specific, word play, fan fiction, Lord of the Flies, specism (like racism and ageism), Harry Potter, and Heinlein.

It's something I would never have known I was missing out on, and I love these conversations and insights, and how they change as he grows.

—Shan Burton

SandraDodd.com/latenightlearningcomment
image by mudpuppycomics (dot com)

School Days

One wonderful thing in unschooling is realizing you don't know whether it's a school day or not. It is evidence of deschooling.

Don't forget school days completely, though, because you can plan outings when the museums and playgrounds are empty. There won't be a crowd at the cinema.

Old information has new purposes.

SandraDodd.com/unexpected
photo by Cátia Maciel
___

New and better

Lean, one choice at a time, one conscious thought at a time, until your choices and thoughts are solidly in the range where you want to be, and you no longer lean that other way so much.

Your new range of balance will involve better choices and options than your first attempts did.

Sandra, from a talk on being partners
photo by Sandra Dodd
___

Soothing touch and gaze

Once someone wrote that babies had no experience and no way to communicate except "frustrated cries, screams and babbling."

I responded:

There is touch. There is gaze. Have you never just looked into the eyes of your child, communicating? Have you not touched them soothingly, and felt them touch you back sometimes? They can tell the difference between an angry look and a gentle look.

SandraDodd.com/babytalk
photo by Destiny Dodd, I think

Will they learn...

QUESTION: But I wonder how we are preparing them for adulthood then?

Joyce Fetteroll's
ANSWER: How did you prepare your newborn to be a toddler? How did you prepare your toddler to be a 6 yo?

They learn what they need now. The nows just naturally keep coming along and the kids end up where they are today already knowing what they needed last year and acquiring what they need for today.

---

I love Joyce's answers. My own to such questions has usually been "Does high school prepare people for adulthood? Does a university degree teach them everything they need to know?"

Will they learn all they need to know?
photo by Karen James
(of water on an artichoke)

As kids deschool...

Kids who haven't been to school are different, but here is
Joyce Fetteroll's advice for helping kids deschool when needed:

The best thing you can do while they're deschooling is let them play. And help them play. Make play dates. Make sure they have things they enjoy playing with. *Be* with them. Find out why they enjoy something so much. When they feel free—rule of thumb is one month for each year they've been in school, starting from the time when you last pressured them to learn something—be more active about running things through their lives: movies, TV shows, books, places to go: ethnic restaurants, museums, monster truck pulls, walks in the woods, funky stores ....

Look for the delight in life and it will infect your kids. 😊 As long as it's *honest* interest and delight! If it's fake interest to get them to pay attention to something you think would be good for them, they're going to notice and avoid it. It's the tactic they've been awash in since kindergarten: "Learning is Fun!"

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/deschooling
photo by Cátia Maciel

Live, see and think

Unschooling isn't another version of a curriculum, that will take four hours a day. Unschooling is a different way to live and to see and to think.

SandraDodd.com/seeingitcomments
photo by Julie T

Easier lives for children

I would like to discuss unschooling in ways that it can apply to anyone and everyone.

I'm concerned only with what makes children's lives easier, not what makes their mothers feel more important or martyrly or special. SandraDodd.com/martyr

---

Nothing has ever made me feel better about me than the feeling that I was being a good mom. SandraDodd.com/peace/mama

photo by Roya Dedeaux

Yourself and the world

People don't become really good at unschooling without changing the way they see themselves and the world.

---

To hear it: SandraDodd.com/radio

To read it: Living Unschooling

If you have the book Natural Born Learners, turn to page 199 for a longer version.

photo by Erika Ellis

Emulation

The people I respect most have become little voices in my head, and I "consult" them when I'm making decisions in their specialty areas. I have friends who are more patient than I am, more generous with time, and I think of them clearly and try to emulate them when I am making choices in those areas. Some cook better and are more organized, and I think back to things they have said, or to things I have seen them do, or I try to induce in myself the presence and mood they have when they're cooking or straightening. I don't want to be them, but I want to be more like them in the ways they have that earned my respect.

—Sandra Dodd
from longer writing here

Future Grandparents
and/or
SandraDodd.com/voices
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Fitting dinner into the day

It's not uncommon (historically) for children to eat first, and separately, and food kids like, and then for the adults and teens and guests to eat a little later, at leisure, and not have to worry about whether their food is something the kids would like.

I have more energy in the morning but I don't always want to use it thinking about dinner. When I do, I do better. 🙂 If I start bread and put something out to thaw, or better yet mix up a casserole or put something in the crock pot—at least a sauce or something easy like ground beef or chicken in barbecue sauce—then dinner is easy and if plans change, the thing that was started earlier can go in the fridge. . . . .
We've never made our kids wait for dinner. If they're hungry, they can snack.

—Sandra, when kids were still home

SandraDodd.com/eating/dinner
photo by Sandra Dodd

Not the same choices

Happy, supported, trusted kids don't make the same choices as unhappy, controlled kids.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/eating/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd

Mixtures, swirls and solutions

"Yesterday" in 2004:

I still see "subject areas" everywhere, but I haven't taught those categories and prejudices to my children. Science has much more to do with history than geology has to do with microbiology, but in school geology, biology, astronomy and physics are all "the same thing," and history is different altogether. Yet the best parts of history involve the knowledge cultures had and how they put it to use, whether in shipbuilding or iron tool use, medicine or communications.

Holly asked yesterday about when people discovered the world wasn't flat. I told her there was no one date or century because people discovered different things at different times, and some were shushed up when they said the world was round, or that the sun didn't orbit around the earth. I also told her, "Ask your dad, because he's really interested in the history of science."

I noticed when I said it that I had "named subject areas," but I didn't feel too bad. She's twelve, and reading, and after all "the history of science" was never part of my schooling. A science teacher wasn't certified to teach me history, and vice versa. Only outside of school did I figure out that scientific discoveries were history, and that music was science, and that art was history.

SandraDodd.com/schoolinmyhead
photo by Kelly Halldorson

Snakes and wild berries

When a science-minded kid loves to take the dog down by the river and look for wild berries and snakes, some parents say, "My kid just wants to play. He's not interested in learning. He'll never learn science just playing."

Each little experience, every idea, is helping your child build his internal model of the universe. He will not have the government-recommended blueprint for the internal model of the universe, which can look surprisingly like a school, and a political science class, a small flat map of the huge spherical world, a job with increasing vacations leading to retirement, and not a lot more.

SandraDodd.com/seeingit
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Confident and at peace

"jbantau" wrote:

For the first time, in what seems like my entire life, I am not terrified. Up until now, I have been wielding my alarm and anxiety like a sword and shield battling against the world. I thought that's what I was supposed to do. Isn't that what a good parent does? I thought that fear was a parenting tool that told you how to keep your children safe. I felt that letting go of that fear meant that I was a bad parent. My paranoia had spilled into every part of our lives.

—jbantau

SandraDodd.com/fears
(quoted with a link to the full original there)
photo by Colleen Prieto

Sweet, special moments

Joanne Lopers wrote:

There is something oh so sweet about a child doing something without being asked.

Vega who is 8, cleaned out our fridge one day because he saw it needed it. Dutch 6, came over on his own to help bring in plates from outside. He hated helping out when I used to make a big deal out of it. These small instances happen more and more often and are very special moments for me.

—Joanne Lopers

Kids Helping Voluntarily
SandraDodd.com/chores/tales
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Another casual part of life

To call some food "junk" is an artificial division. When food is given the status of a religion (the place where sacrifices are made to ensure a positive outcome and long/eternal life), then there IS the necessity of a devil/Satan/"the dark side."

When food is just another casual part of life, kids will choose melons over biscuits/cookies and chocolate eggs sometimes.

When a child is loudly, ceremoniously and with a big happy-face NOT ALLOWED to be in the presence of the devil/sweets, then if and when he is lured by that satanic force, he will either resist out of fright instilled by his loving mother, or he will succumb, indulge, and be one giant step away from his mother—morally, emotionally and dietarily.

SandraDodd.com/eating/junk
photo by Tammy
___

Curiosity and flow

In early 2008, sharing some interesting connections that had happened at our house, I wrote:

That all 'just happened,' but it happened because we've been building up to it with our whole lives and our whole style of communicating and living together in a constant state of open curiosity.
. . . . Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

SandraDodd.com/connections/example
Photo by Cátia Maciel
__

What is not a clock?

I do love clocks and calendars and the history of time measurement, but it is good to remember that we are not clocks, and our children are not clocks.


The clock is not hungry
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a sundial in Chichester
___

Patterns and dots

Find, consider, value connections.

Notice, contemplate, appreciate patterns.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd
___