Patterns and dots

Find, consider, value connections.

Notice, contemplate, appreciate patterns.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Your child as a person

"Just a reminder: your kids are whole people. They're having experiences even when you're not there. They learn with you and without you."

—Holly Dodd

(I told Holly, "Say something I can quote in Just Add Light.")

SandraDodd.com/holly
photo by Julie D, of Holly and Adam
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Peace and change

When this was first published, November 18, 2014, the intro was:

The story quoted below is from nine years ago and involves a sixteen-year-old.

Marty is twenty-five now and is getting married in a couple of days.

Today, in 2025, I update it:

The story quoted below is from 20 years ago, and involves a sixteen-year-old.

Marty is 36 now, and is moving with his wife and two children to Anchorage, Alaska in six days.

Marty has an orthodonist appointment at 10:30 this morning, and works at noon. He has gone to ortho alone, and has taken Holly before. I asked yesterday if he wanted to go alone or me take him. He wanted me to go. He asked me to wake him up an hour before. He likes at least an hour before, and usually an hour and a half.

I forgot to wake him up, but I heard his alarm go off at 9:31 (and remembered I had forgotten).

He was tired and I offered to put a fifteen or twenty minute timer on and come and get him, but he said no, he wanted to get up.

There is a snapshot moment in the "don't have to" life of a sixteen year old boy.

I'm not saying that every child given leeway will be Marty.
I'm saying that every person who claims that leeway will inevitably cause sloth is proven wrong by Marty.

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Marty, a different morning in those same days

Writing (without writing)

People with younger kids who "are not writing," think again. Are they joking with you and others? When they ask questions, do they think a bit so they can word the question clearly? Are they starting to choose one word over another, for some dramatic or emotional or humorous or feelings-sparing reason? Writers need to do those things.

When they answer questions about a movie they've seen, do they take their audience into consideration? Who wants the short version, and who wants the long one? Who would rather hear about the characters than the action sequence? Writers need to think of those things.

Seeing Writing
SandraDodd.com/writing/seeing
(with samples of unschoolers' writing)
photo by Rosie Moon

Unschooling and other marvels

My Favorite things about Unschooling

• You can do it at home!
• Your kids are there!
• It makes all of life a peaceful learning lab.

Unschooling is a subset of homeschooling. Unschooling is the radical, philosophical end of homeschooling. Unschooling is living a rich life and letting learning drop into your lap and into your ears and mind while you laugh and listen to music and play games. Unschooling is seeing the magic in every day, and the joy in yourself and the people around you. If your children don't go to school, why should you bring school home? Be free! There is nothing in school that isn't also in the real world. (And if there IS, why would you be needing to know it if it doesn't exist outside?) Use primary sources, not textbooks. Look at real nature, not photos of nature in a book.

SandraDodd.com/marvel
"Unschooling and other Marvels"
photo by Laurie Wolfrum

Something very different

"Unschooling seems to be able to move through the teen years that are so difficult for most parents with fewer difficult moments. Unschooling is doing something that is very different from other kinds of parenting."

—Schuyler Waynforth
March 29, 2014
Gold Coast symposium

More by Schuyler
SandraDodd.com/schuylerwaynforth
photo by Sandra Dodd

Slowly and solidly

Unschooling is difficult. It's a luxury. It's not a guarantee, it's not a right, it's not a product anyone can sell you, it's not a religion you can join, it's not a club you can join and then "be one." It's something to learn slowly and solidly and something to create and maintain within a family, within the home.

SandraDodd.com/cautions
photo by Karen James

Reading (parts of) everything

"What unschooling really is" can't easily be defined, because some people use it vaguely, admitting they don't understand.

Parents need to understand their own unschooling clearly enough to defend it. It might take a while, and discussions can help people see it better, but discussions are about information and resources, so read everything you can find, and hold every piece of info up to the light, overlay the ideas on your own family and beliefs, and adopt slowly and carefully, any changes you make.

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What's above was adapted from a recent facebook post. I was referencing that particular discussion, and by "read everything you can find," I meant the links left there, which are mostly from my site and from Joyce Fetteroll's.

Reading everying you can find would work well with Just Add Light and Stir. If you're reading e-mail on a phone, click under "You can read this post online." There will be a randomizer, at the bottom.

Better yet, open the blog from a computer and use the randomizer or the image tags. Tags will let you see many of whatever you've chosen—posts good enough to repeat or re-run; gates; waterfalls; paths; cats doing cool things; kids doing cool things; dads; playgrounds.... The tags are a beautiful and soothing randomizing feature.

My favorite definition of unschooling is:

Unschooling is creating and maintaining an atmosphere in which natural learning can flourish.

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SandraDodd.com/readalittle
photo by Cara Jones

Exploration and fun

Create an environment filled with exploration and fun, so that learning will happen. Parent should learn enough about learning to create a learning life.

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd
Lego figure assembled by Alicia, Emilio and Elisa

Help learning flood in

Find ways to make your lives better, happier, cheerier, if you want learning to flood in.

SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by Jo Isaac

Look directly; just look

Look directly at your child. Practice watching your child without expectations. Try to see what he is really doing, rather than seeing what he’s NOT doing. Just look.

SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
photo by Sarah Peshek

Acceptance

Unschooling and relationships work better when one partner accepts the other's interests, hobbies and ways of being.

SandraDodd.com/acceptance
photo by Karen James
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the Purpose of Cake

A mom once asked a long question, ending with:

The cleaning up of making a cake is just part of the whole process of cake making—isn't it? Am I making any sense?

Joyce Fetteroll responded:

Yes, your question makes perfect sense.

It might help you see it more clearly if you ask yourself what your goal is. Is the goal to have a clean kitchen or the experience of making a cake? If the goal is a clean kitchen, then it's better not to have children! 😉

There was more, and it's good. Sweet and messy.

SandraDodd.com/chores/cake
photo by Sandra Dodd, of little Devyn's cupcake art
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Links and connections

Sarah Anderson-Thimmes wrote:

TV topics are a great conversation link between my kids and schooled kids. They can talk about favorite movies or shows or actors or musicians. These topics are much better than, "What grade are you in?"
. . . .

It connects us generationally. My kids can talk to their grandparents about shows they mutually like and they can watch them together. My grandparents don't go to the skating rinks and sledding hills and zoos with us, but they can watch Mary Poppins with my kids and laugh and bond together.

—Sarah Anderson-Thimmes

from a much longer list of Why I Love TV
at SandraDodd.com/t/learning

image is from The Simpsons,
and is in reference to a Leonardo da Vinci's
Vitruvian Man

Light and kindness

Light can come from you, today, in small ways. If you are gentle and patient when you help a child, that creates peace and comfort. If you smile at a stranger, give someone a seat, or hold a door, you have transformed a moment. The light you add to their day can warm your own soul, too.

Kindness lights up the world.

SandraDodd.com/inspiration
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Australia, in 2014
I wrote at the time "The water was SO GREEN—green like light, like light through green-tinted glass."

Happily and directly, see your children

This is the end of something about a collection of pessimistic statements by parents, about kids:

How many millions of times more than on my puny little collection have parents said those things to and about their kids as though saying it made it true?

But just hearing what we say can change us.

Hearing the negativity and the implied threat and the explicit insults can help us become softer, and more flexible and more thoughtful and original.

Speaking or writing without thinking is a little like driving a car with a blindfold. Others get hurt, we get hurt, the car gets wrecked.

Speaking or writing without thinking is like operating a relationship with a blindfold, with ear plugs, going "LA LA LA LA, I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO MYSELF!!" all the whole time.

How can one see her own child directly without hushing, pulling out the earplugs, and looking at him?

—Sandra, of
SandraDodd.com/ifilet

If I let him, he would never...
If I let him, he would always...
If I let him, he would do nothing but...
photo by Sandra Dodd

Privacy and dignity

This regards the way I helped make peace between kids when they argued:

The reason I used the method of speaking to each child separately, and ME going back and forth, rather than summoning them to where I was is that I was trying to comfort them and help them be safe and to be better people—people they would be glad to be. They don't like it when they're all frustrated. If I could tweak sibling behavior and comfort the aggrieved child, and then go to the other one with comfort and ideas, each was better prepared, in private, without a witness knowing what he was "supposed to do" the next time. That was important to me, to give them some privacy and some dignity, and some time to think without other people looking at them or praising my suggestion, or criticizing them further.

SandraDodd.com/peace/fighting
There's more on the topic on Joyce's site: Siblings Fighting
photo by Sandra Dodd
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The distant future...

If you're looking up at the Sky of Imagined Tomorrow, you're going to stumble on something with your very next step. Look at where you are.

SandraDodd.com/moment
photo by Colleen Prieto
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