Two new views

To get to the kinds of relationships being advocated here, a mom needs to let go of many things, two of which are the image of the person she wanted to be separate from her children, as though she didn't have children at all, and then get rid of the vision of her children as ideal mother-worshipping accessories.

SandraDodd.com/change/growth
photo by Tam King

Competitive efficiency

One problem that comes up is efficiency. The idea of the glory of efficiency can be a problem. Because people get competitive, we’re all keeping track of how quickly we got into university and how soon we got out. Or how many minutes we take to get dinner on the table. “Oh, well, I can do that meal in 30 minutes!” “Well, I can do that meal in 20 minutes!”

Unschooling isn’t like that at all, even in the long term it’s not about the completion of a project at all. It’s about becoming the sort of people who see and appreciate and trust that learning can happen. And who can travel with children, not just drag them along or push them along, but who can travel with children along those interesting paths together not until you get there, but indefinitely.

And for beginning unschoolers that sounds also a little esoteric, a little foofy. And not solid. They want to know what do I do when the kids wake up in the morning? So, the beginning information is very often, “What do I do?” But the information that will get people from the beginning to the intermediate is why. Why do we do this?

SandraDodd.com/parentschange
photo by Colleen Prieto

Depth and breadth

Sink-Like-a-Stone Method:

Instead of skimming the surface of a subject or interest, drop anchor there for a while. If someone is interested in chess, mess with chess. Not just the game, but the structure and history of tournaments. How do chess clocks work? What is the history of the names and shapes of the playing pieces? What other board games are also traditional and which are older than chess? If you're near a games shop or a fancy gift shop, wander by and look at different chess sets on display. It will be like a teeny chess museum. The interest will either increase or burn out—don't push it past the child's interest.

When someone understands the depth and breadth of one subject, he will know that any other subject has breadth and depth.

From "Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers"
SandraDodd.com/checklists
scanner image by Sandra Dodd

Compassion spreads

I didn’t know they would be so compassionate.

Partly they weren’t taught to be cold, by school prejudices.
Partly, they have had a gentle life, and they NOTICE harshness.

Being compassionate about kids' changes can help affect how adults respond to their own and each others' needs and changes.

SandraDodd.com/unforeseen
(notes for a presentation in 2005)
photo by Cally Brown

Angels and chickens

Knowing I wanted to use this photo of Lydia Koltai's daughter and a favorite chicken, I pulled up my site search and put in "angel" and "chicken," partly as a joke—thinking I might get a quote with one of them.

Up came the page on cakes. Well, then! I invite you to go there and read the brief story of how my young boys, during a viewing of Spartacus in 1994, helped me discover one of the coolest things of my whole life—that the candles on birthday cakes, and the cakes themselves, are sacrificial offerings. Also they're sweet, and fun. There's light. There are wishes. There is celebration.

Cherish those things.

SandraDodd.com/cake
photo by Lydia Koltai
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Seeing more paths

Ben Lovejoy wrote:

The difficulty of having so many rules in your life is not that you can’t get things done; it’s that you find it hard to do things truly on your own. If you’re constantly told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, how will you react when the people who’ve always done the telling aren’t around to do so anymore? How will you develop your own decision-making process with someone else’s rules constantly weighing in? People sometimes have a hard enough time trying to figure things out; but adding additional roadblocks only narrows the number of paths that someone can take. Rules become those roadblocks because they’re normally established for the purposes of controlling other people or events.

—Ben Lovejoy

SandraDodd.com/lovejoy/norules
"No Rules-Sir, Yes Sir"
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Ultimately...

If parents want to be unschoolers, they need to figure out how to be better parents, because it's the relationship between the parents and children that ultimately makes unschooling work.

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Roya Dedeaux

As understanding grows

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

From Always Learning; third post down

or at the current groups.io site
photo by Jihong Tang

Learning/problem solving

Don't discount the learning/problem solving that is going on while our kids play video games. I can't think of anything else that he does that engages his mind so thoroughly and completely—that gets it moving and thinking and wondering. And that can only be a good thing.🙂

—Stephanie E.

The rest of Stephanie's account is great; I had a hard time choosing a short quote: SandraDodd.com/game/gamecube
photo by Sarah Peshek

Direction

Be glad to find things in life that can help you choose a good direction.

SandraDodd.com/direction
Photo by Charles Lagacé, in Nunavut.
Marie-France Talbot, the mom, wrote:
"Snow inuksuk (inuktitut for person subtitute) made by my husband and sons. They are usually made of rocks and they indicate direction."__

Learning how

Sara P. wrote:

This is still an ongoing process for me. I had to re-train myself in a lot of ways. I had to learn a new language. I had to learn to SEE again. I had to learn how to communicate. I had to learn patience. I had to learn how to put others first. .....WOW! Sometimes an old thought will creep in. Sometimes I find myself answering a question in *teacher tone*...but it is so few and far between, and I am so quick to catch it that nobody ever notices except me! LOL!

—Sara P.

SandraDodd.com/change/stories
photo by Denaire Nixon

Knowing needs

Anna Black (in Australia, so the cookies and biscuits were same and sweet):

Today we were driving home from the library discussing what we would eat. Usually we go to a cafe after the library, but we are saving money for an aquarium visit on Wednesday so I offered to make milkshakes and cinnamon butter cookies at home, which both kids love. My six year old was enthusiastic, but then said, "I think I'm too hungry for biscuits. I'd like something more filling and not sweet." She ended up having a bowl of tuna and mayonnaise, followed by a milkshake. I am so glad she can listen to what her body needs and choose accordingly.

Sandra, responding to that tuna story:

When kids don't get enough sweets, their bodies need sweets. When sweets are there, but their parents say "no," then their souls need sweets, and love, and attention, and positive regard. When sweets are treated sweetly, then children can choose tuna over sweets.

SandraDodd.com/eating/sweets
photo by Cátia Maciel

How does it balance out?

When children choose their foods, they will choose things you didn't expect!

SandraDodd.com/eating/balance
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Unusual but doable!

If a family is looking for rules and passivity, they can create a lifetime of it. If a family wants joy and learning, the creation is a bit more difficult and unusual but doable!

SandraDodd.com/zombies
photo by Amber Ivey
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Surprise and disbelief

This was written when it happened. Holly Dodd (born in 1991) was twelve years old, and I read her something a mom had written.

If my kids had their way, they'd go barefoot outside of their own yard, run in the street between cars, never take baths, never eat their veggies and instead opt for chocolate cake every meal, mistreat animals, burn down the house playing with matches, never go to bed, never brush their teeth, etc.

I read that to Holly and she was speechless. Seriously mouth-open disbelief. Then she asked "WHY would they burn the house down with matches?"

"The only reason her house is not burned down is because she has a rule against playing with matches."

"So she can't even say 'You can play with matches but only in the front driveway'?"

"Nope."

"So they'll never go to bed because they'll never get tired unless she tells them they're tired?"

She asked me to read it to her again. I did. She looked at it and looked at me and said with more feeling, "Why the hell would they run between cars in the street!?"

SandraDodd.com/strew/ifiletholly has commentary on that.

[other dire things children might do if parents let them]
photo by Kim Jew Photography

Valuing Scooby-Doo

Colleen Prieto was talking to her son Robbie, who was nine, about "Frankenstorm." Below is Colleen's account:

He thought for no more than a second, and then very excitedly told me:

"Mom, Frankenstein is not evil. People just think he's evil but he's not - he's just trying to be good even though he's failing. Even though I haven't read the book or saw the movie if they made one, I know that pretty much from Scooby Doo. So we have nothing to worry about with the hurricane if now it's Frankenstorm because Frankenstein is good. If we were supposed to be scared, then they should have picked a better name!"

Many, many times in my daily life with my son, I am reminded that there is value in so very many things—be those things Scooby Doo or Pokemon or Star Wars or Harry Potter or 1,000 other "easy to criticize" forms of media or entertainment. Life is so much more fun when you look to the happy parts, look for the good, and keep an open mind.

Scooby-Doo, Frankenstein, and a Big Storm
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Making it work well

A mom named Angela wrote a long e-mail to all of her relatives, in 2003, and here is part of it:

My job in the capacity of homeschooling and parenting in general is to provide a loving, rich, nurturing environment and lots of guidance. Lots of exposure to important and interesting things about our world and the past. Setting good examples for reading, researching, and finding out new things every day. Imparting a sense of discovery and fascination about so many things about our existence in this life. Paying a lot of attention and noticing when my kids need something, or want to learn more about something without pushing them into my own agenda. With my tendency to be dramatic about such things, these goals are actually accomplished rather simply and beautifully.

—Angela

SandraDodd.com/relatives/responding
photo by Nicole Kenyon

"It seems miraculous."

Sandra Dodd:

One of my favorite pages, on my site, is my collection of people saying they felt like they were unschooling and then something changed and they "got it." (sandradodd.com/gettingit)

People are saying things like "It seems miraculous" and "It is amazing how far reaching the effect was."

So this is part of why I'm uncompromising in my position about what does and what doesn't help.

When people want to dilute unschooling, I object.

Marta Pires:

I'm glad you're not willing to compromise.

Sandra Dodd:

When people want to devalue, granulate and scatter unschooling, they will keep people from reaching those miraculous-seeming and far-reaching results.

Alex Polikowsky:

And even more important is for those who think just doing nothing is the same as unschooling. I am talking disconnected, somewhat neglectful parents who may be sweet and all but still have not gotten it and that leaves kids without a real present partner they can rely on for support and guidance.

"Getting It" (chat transcript, 2014)
photo by Theresa Larson

Fifteenth Anniversary!

Images and parts of the text are links.

First post, with some nice comments, from 2010:

This would need more candles now, but...



May the richness and riches of this trove of words and photos seep into your soul and give you sweet dreams and good ideas.

---

With this, there are 5,343 posts. A few were deleted in the past for lacking longevity (announcements, temporary info). Some have been repeated for being especially good. They are labelled four ways, to keep it from being one big label/tag, so if you would like to see some "greatest hits," these are clickable, and are called

again (72 of those)

again! (147)

re-run (151)

repeat (136)

For today, then, if those are excluded, there are 4,837 non-repeated posts. Still around 5,000.

Most posts link to an unschooling page or two on my website. Most of those pages link back to this blog (from a little link in the upper right corner).

If you would like to help fund the maintenance of that site (from which most of the quotes come), there is a donation link at SandraDodd.com (which can also be accessed from this image on most of the unschooling pages:


The donation link is halfway down there. It's PayPal, debit or credit.

I can accept checks or Christmas cards to:

Sandra Dodd
8116 Princess Jeanne NE
Albuquerque NM 87110     USA

(If cool foreign money, save it there; consider photo request below!)

Also useful would be photos for the collection from which I try to pull a match for a text. Not all get used and some get used very late, but it's nice to have a variety. Send just a few you love, so I'm not overwhelmed, and tell me how to credit you (full name or truncated how). Those can go by messenger or by e-mail to Sandra@SandraDodd.com (and larger files are fine).

SandraDodd.com
tree art by Bo King
cake photo by Sandra Dodd
photos by many different people at the repeat/again links

P.S. I want the website to last a long time, so if I'm not able to collect funding assistance someday, maybe find Holly Dodd or Vlad Gurdiga and see if they need financial help keeping it going. It's a bit less than $20 a month these days; might go up as things might do. Thanks.

Seeing; doing; being

Jenny Cyphers wrote:

In the newer days years ago, what helped more than anything else was to actually see my kids and what they were actually doing. I would try to see the world from their eyes and see how they lit up and give them more of that. Just being with them and enjoying them for who they were regardless of what they were doing, watching tv, playing dress up, whatever helped keep my energy focused on them, rather than on fear of what they weren't or weren't doing.

—Jenny Cyphers

original writing, at Always Learning
photo by Sadie Bugni