History, music and enthusiasm

This was written about the Dodd kids and their questions about U.S. Presidents, in 2003. Click the link at the bottom for what came before and after this passage:

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Holly (11) got the book to see if it could be a simple truth that some presidents had only been half-page presidents.

"FDR. Is he the guy in Annie?"

"Yes." (Holly's favorite historical period is the Great Depression. She likes the music, the clothes, and the stories of hardship and social change.)

"This guy looks like he's from Texas."

"Lyndon Johnson was the only one really from Texas," I said, and then muttered a bit about George Bush Sr. and trailed off saying I guess maybe George W. might be an actual Texan. Holly wasn't listening anymore. She was looking at a cartoon illustration of Theodore Roosevelt. He's the one she had thought looked like a Texan, from the picture. I checked the fine print for her.

"Oh! Born in New York City, but he was into horses and such."

... and it continues at SandraDodd.com/day/presidents
(standard publicity still from 1982 "Annie")

Plain and good

Plain milk tastes WAY better if it's your choice than it does when it's plain because someone else wouldn't let you put chocolate in it.

Without free choice, how can a person choose what is plain and good?

SandraDodd.com/respect/dodd
photo by Sandra Dodd
(I painted the stripey glaze;
Holly did the spots in the same colors,
when she was four or five.)

Changing sensibilities

Common sense among unschoolers is (and should be, needs to be) more particular and rarified than everyday "common sense."

Does it seem like common sense, after a few years of unschooling, that it's good to let people sleep if they don't need to be anywhere? And that the nicer you are to them, the nicer they're likely to be to you and to others? It seems like common sense to me that learning is learning regardless of the source, and that what's engaging and fun has value.

SandraDodd.com/change (though these words aren't there)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Neither parrot nor reactionary be

When people come here and their messages are like parroted little recordings of things their teachers said, that their grandparents and in-laws say, that they read in an anti-TV book, it seems they need to peel off all the layers of recitation and people-pleasing and try to feel what they feel and decide what's freeing and joyful instead of what will shush their internal voices.

That's not easy.

Voices in your Head
SandraDodd.com/voices
photo by Sandra Dodd

The world is hers.

I think Holly takes the world for granted. And why not? The world is hers.

The world wasn't mine when I was little. It belonged to grownups, and I was told how to sit, what to say, what to eat and how to hold the spoon. I was told where to play, who with, and how long. If I got dirty or tore my clothes I was in trouble. I was told what was good and what was bad.

Holly takes the world for granted, and I'm thrilled about that.

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Holly was seven years old in this photo, and ten when the article was written on 2002.
SandraDodd.com/fullofyourself
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Naturally clearer thinking

I (Sandra) wrote:

Try not to go against nature, when you're aiming to "be natural."

[Later in that same discussion] Sandra responding to "I try to model healthy eating."

Healthy eating for an adult woman isn't the same as for a teenaged boy or an eight year old girl or a two year old or an infant.

SandraDodd.com/eating/sugar
photo by Cátia Maciel, in Morocco
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Repeating favorites

A lot of parents have come to discussions and asked, is it okay? My kid is watching this movie over and over. Or my kid only wants to watch the same TV show all the time. And then my general first rhetorical question to them was what's your favorite album? Who’re your favorite musical artists? What's your favorite song?

And by the time they think about that, they know that there's something they've listened to 16 or 100 times, and it calms them down. But I think it's learning. It's part of learning. And it's also comfort.

SandraDodd.com/repetition
photo by Ravi Bharadwaj, of a break between songs in an epic Beatles-Rock-Band game in 2009, at my house

Raghu and Marty, same day, same game, same photographer:

Being objective yourself

Any website has a point of view, a reason for existing, and something to promote or spotlight or sell. Every map ever made was made for some particular reason, and so looking for "objective" information shouldn't be the goal so much as being aware, when you find information, that there will be other ways to describe or portray that. Don't depend on any one site, but look around with an open mind for your whole life, gathering information and comparing and knowing that things change.

When information is good, well-presented, profound or entertaining, be grateful!

SandraDodd.com/geography/nations
image by Aaron Williams

A learning world

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Unschooling is not leaving kids to their own devices until they show an interest in learning a given subject.

Unschoolers do not expect interests to arise out of nothing.

As an unschooling parent I offer ideas, information, activities, starting points, and material to my children as opportune moments arise, not out of nothing, but out of the experiences that are created by mindful living in the world—walking in the woods, visiting museums, watching movies, reading books, going to the theater, swimming in the ocean. Every moment in life offers opportunities for learning and investigation.

. . . .
Unschooling families live in a learning world—no division of life into school time and not-school time.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/pam/learningworld
photo by Karen James

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
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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.

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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. 🙂

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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
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