Stages, and stars

The first stage is all the fear and uncertainty and angst.

Then comes deschooling and noticing how much of one's thoughts might be school-based and how easy it is for adults to belittle and discount children. That will take a year or so.


After school starts to recede it will be like the stars showing on a clear dark night in the country. They were always there, but you couldn’t see them for the glare of the sun or the city lights. So now you'll start to see that they're not all the same, and there are patterns, and a history, and there's science, mythology, art, and then the moon comes out! And then you hear coyotes and owls and water moving somewhere… what water?

It might be like that, or it might be exactly that. But until you stop doing what you were doing before, you will not see those stars.

After a few years of reveling in natural learning and the richness of the universe, if you or your children decide to take a class it will be an entirely different experience than you would have had when school loomed so large in your vision of the world.

That's all of page 37 (or 40) of The Big Book of Unschooling,
which leads to SandraDodd.com/stages
photo by Sandra Dodd
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This is repeated from a July 2012 post, to which someone responded "Beautiful. This is one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing on unschooling."

Doing and being

They don’t live to grow up. They’re living in the present. They don’t relate to questions about what they will do later or be when they’re grown. They’re doing and being now.

SandraDodd.com/sustainable
photo by Colleen Prieto

Let things flow

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

What's your favorite thing to do? Watch movies? Read a book? Garden? Go to Disneyland? Why don't you just do that all the time and nothing else? I mean — if it is your favorite, then doesn't it give you higher utility than anything else? Why do you ever stop doing it?

The answer is that as you do more and more of something, the marginal utility of doing even more of it, goes down. As its marginal utility goes down, other things start to look better and better.

When you restrict an activity, you keep the person at the point where the marginal utility is really high.

—Pam Sorooshian

Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children
(and it's not just about tv)
photo by Sandra Dodd

From the inside

Debbie Regan wrote:

From the outside, unschooling may look like no chores, no bedtimes, no education, no discipline, no structure, no limits, etc. But from the inside, it's about learning, relationships, living with real parameters, partnership, navigating turbulence, making connections, joy, curiosity, focus, enthusiasm, options, following trails, fun, growing understanding, opening doors...

—Debbie Regan

SandraDodd.com/priorities
photo by Ve Lacerda
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Step up

Who you are, no one else can be.

Who you are now is not who you were before. Who you are today is not who you will be tomorrow.

Breathe and smile and step toward your future.

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
Holly in Quebec; photographer unknown

Knots and knotwork

Knot tying can lead to all kinds of history and geography. Hunters, traps, climbing, ships (wrapped bottles, in addition to all kinds of sail rigging and tethering knots), and cowboy stuff, and...


see two great comments on this other one (and links)

The photo isn't of tied knots, but drawn and painted knots, by Keith Dodd. Keith knows lots of knots, with rope, but I don't have photos. What's there looks confusing. It's a three-legged tooled-leather-seated folding stool with a painted shield leaning on it.

Mindset and language

A reader named Eleanor wrote:

I was very grateful to discover your writings on ‘struggle’ and the compilation on your website relating to ‘struggle‘ a few years ago.

I still read it regularly and get so much more from it with each read. It sparked a change in mindset and language which improved our unschooling lives massively.

Lax and relax
photo by Sandra Dodd

Give generously

If you want to measure, measure generously. If you want to give, give generously. If you want to unschool, or be a mindful parent, give, give, give. You'll find after a few years that you still have everything you thought you had given away, and more.

SandraDodd.com/howto/precisely
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Beyond compare

Unschooling is the ultimate individualized learning situation, and comparisons are unnecessary.

SandraDodd.com/pam/reasons
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Limiting Limitations

There are arbitrary limits that parents just make up, or copy from the neighbors. Then there are limits that have to do with laws, rules, courtesy, tact, circumstances, traditions and etiquette.

SandraDodd.com/coaching
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Learning not to teach

For years I have recommended that new unschoolers stop using the word "teach" and replace all statements and thoughts with phrases using the word "learn" instead. I've gotten much flak back from people saying it doesn't matter, or that's "just semantics." What started as a theory with me became belief and then conviction. Unschoolers who cling to the idea of teaching will handicap their own understanding of how learning works.

SandraDodd.com/teaching
photo by Annie Regan
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Doing Nothing, and finding balance

Halfway between the past we can't change and the future we can only imagine, we find ourselves in the present. Not just the present year, but the present day; not just the present day, but the present moment.

From Balancing in the Middle Ground:

[Some families] had stopped doing school, and then stopped making their kids do anything, and now their kids were doing NOTHING.

Aside from the idea of the rich potential of their "nothing," the parents had gone from making their kids do everything, to "making them do nothing." And interestingly, it did make them "do nothing," at first. Or at least the parents couldn't see the new things they were doing.

Rather than moving from one edge of a dichotomy to the other, the goal is to move to a whole new previously unknown middle place.

Holly Dodd, and the false sea onion

photo by Holly Dodd in 2009
original post, 2010

The tapestry of our lives

"Each small way we’re tied to our children adds to the tapestry that our respective lives weave."

—Ben Lovejoy

SandraDodd.com/lovejoy/bonnaroo
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Easy generosity

"If he wants someone to butter his toast for him, buttering the toast is probably the easiest possible thing to do in that instance."

—Sandra Dodd

Quote saved by Christine Macdonald; thanks!
photo by Sandra Dodd

Up, up!

Up seems better than down in many ways—mythologically, linguistically, psychologically. Birds are up. Sun is up. Perk up. Cheer up.

Things are looking up.

A happy spiral upward
photo by Megan Valnes
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More

Alex Polikowsky wrote: Unschooling takes more, more presence, more guidance, more attention, more mindfulness, more connection, more thinking and questioning, more choices and better choices. —Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/misconceptions
photo by Sandra Dodd

Beautiful, fragile thoughts

Let your children make discoveries with their own new eyes. Don't show-and-tell them into a helpless stupor. Be with them, pay attention to what they're seeing for the first time and be poised to explain if they ask, or point out something interesting if they miss it, but try to learn to be patient and open to their first observations and thoughts. Like bubbles, or dandelion puffs, they are beautiful and fragile and if you even blow on it too hard, it will never be there again.

Practice being. Practice waiting. Practice watching.

Let them experience the world with you nearby keeping them safe and supported.

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from page 124 (or 136), "Experiences," in The Big Book of Unschooling

which leads to SandraDodd.com/peace/newview

photo by Sandra Dodd

The heart and mind of the parent

Robin Bentley wrote:

Radical unschooling (and the "radical" means "from the root") is all about mindset and changing beliefs and relationships for the better. Some people approach it from letting go of "academics" first, trying to see learning in everything. But if beliefs about learning and kids and partnership are changed first, then unschooling will proceed more smoothly. The real work is done in the heart and mind of the parent.

—Robin Bentley

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Immeasurable

Our days are full and our learning is unmeasured and immeasurable.

SandraDodd.com/why
photo by Sandra Dodd
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A living, breathing thing

Unschooling lives (is alive; breathes; functions) where the learning is happening. The learning is supported and fed by the relationships between the parents and children.

Not changing (where unschooling is compared to fire)
photo by Ester Siroky