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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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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Helping one another grow

Of her birth family, Rippy wrote:

My family used to regularly travel to India to a Sikh ashram where we were encouraged to examine our thoughts and words. The philosophy there was that helping one another grow into more loving, mindful people is one of the greatest acts of service one can do.

—Rippy Dusseldorp Saran

Kinder and More Compassionate

History at your house

You could have a checklist scavenger hunt in your house. Do you have something from each decade of the past hundred years? I nominate this glass, from my stuff, for the 1960's, though it might be '50s.

You could look for things from different continents, at the same time. And things made of different materials—glass, stoneware, tile, wood, particular metals, bamboo or rattan, cardboard (other than a plain cardboard box), rubber (real rubber), vinyl, different types of cloth.

You could photograph them and make a blog post or a little scrapbook.

History in your hand

Normal or exotic?

The good stuff

like pulling a bouquet of flowers out of a wand

photo by Sandra Dodd
and here's the other side of it

Happily and successfully

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Unschooling happily and successfully requires clear thinking.
. . . .Unschooling well requires understanding the underlying philosophy of how children learn, and the principles that guide us in our everyday lives arise from that philosophy. It isn't some new kind of parenting technique that can be observed and applied without understanding.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/understanding
photo by Janine Davies

Some good comparisons

It can be healing for parents to think back to their own sorrows and then to their own children's freedom from those experiences.

SandraDodd.com/freedom/from (What unschooled children will not know)
photo by Sandra Dodd
of a sculpture in Old Town
Albuquerque

The Fabric of Life

When learning is recognized in the fabric of life and encouraged, when families make their decisions based on what leads to more interesting and educational ends, children learn without effort, often without even knowing it, and parents learn along with them.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/allkinds
scanner art by Sandra Dodd; click it for more info
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Dance around; save the world

by Deb Lewis, once upon a time:

I wrote once before about how dish washing has come to be my mental health moment. I light a candle, I make some tea or pour a glass of wine, turn on some music, take off my shoes, and do just the dishes I want to do. I use dish soap that smells great—LOVE that hot water...sigh. I never start out feeling like I *have to* do *all* the dishes. I think how I want to have clean dishes and do however many I feel like doing. I dance around a little. I plan my garden. I save the world. It's never just about doing dishes.

—Deb Lewis

Feeling "taken advantage of"
mostly-unrelated photo by Deb Lewis
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The World as a Museum

Be willing to be surprised where you are, to appreciate the unexpected, and to stop and notice something old or artsy.

What's familiar to you might be brand new to a child.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Avoiding problems

What else can be a problem with unschooling?
Trying to save time and money; skimping on attention.

I've done this, "Not now," or "please not today." But what do you tell yourself about that? If it's "Good, no problem," that's bad, and a problem.

Generosity begets generosity
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Embracing now

Embrace your present moment instead of yearning for what you don't have. I love the saying 'the grass is always greener where you water it.'

—Clare Kirkpatrick

SandraDodd.com/metime
photo by Janine Davies
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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

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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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

Yourself and the world

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

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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

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

Confidence and logic

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

I didn't get to observe radically unschooled kids before coming to the conclusions I did about how children learn. I'm sure it helps build confidence to see grown unschooled kids—that's why my kids and I make ourselves available. But it isn't necessary. For me, it required confidence in my own logical thinking ability. I reasoned things out and did what made sense to me.. . .My willingness to think for myself—to analyze, critique, to be open-minded, and to trust my own conclusions—that was how I came to understand unschooling.

—Pam Sorooshian

Understanding Unschooling
photo by Holly Dodd

Fully to this moment

Caren Knox, writing about meditation:

I came across the concept of "householder yoga", which is different than "monk yoga". I came to allow mothering to be my practice, which benefited both my kids and my meditation. I realized expecting my practice to be like that of someone who sat in a cave for 30 days, or sat with a teacher for hours every day, wasn't beneficial; whatever brings me fully to this moment is.

—Caren Knox

SandraDodd.com/breathing, or In the moment
photo by Megan Valnes
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"I hope you don't mind"

Dylan isn't twelve anymore; Deb Lewis still writes beautifully.

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Yesterday was David's birthday and we had guests. I left dishes in the sink when I went to bed. I got up early with the dogs but then went back to bed. When I got up later Dylan had done the dishes. He said "I know you really like to do the dishes mom, so I hope you don't mind, but I just felt like doing them."

Dylan is twelve.

I *know* living life joyfully makes a difference in the way our kids see us and the way they see the little things that make life better.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/chores/tales
photo by Janine Davies
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A tiny change of course

A different approach to life yields a very different set of results.

You don't have to turn 180 degrees from the way you would have lived before you decided to parent differently. At first it might seem pretty close. But as you move further from the starting point, you will see what a difference a tiny change of course made.