photo by Janine Davies
Showing posts with label again!. Show all posts
Showing posts with label again!. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Do more
photo by Janine Davies
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Thinking and choosing

If you think of two things and choose the better one, then you've made a choice.
If you act without thinking first, you have acted thoughtlessly.
photo by Sandra Dodd
and it's upside-down, as they were hanging
in a gift shop in Kuranda
Thursday, August 7, 2025
Let your child be your cause
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Doing enough?
SandraDodd.com/mha (an obscure page)
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp
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Thursday, June 26, 2025
A good contagion
Negativity is contagious. Joy can be contagious, unless one is wielding the sword of negativity, protected by the shield of cynicism.
Don't defend your negativity.
Allow yourself to be infected with other people's joy.
photo by Sandra Dodd, of flowers growing on drainpipes and ledges in Staines, in Surrey, in 2012
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Saturday, June 21, 2025
Pleasantly surprised
I was asked:
Did your kids have rules like bedtimes, no candy before dinner ... that sort of thing?
I wrote:
We didn't have those rules, but our kids went to bed every night and didn't eat candy before dinner. It seems crazy to people who believe that the only options are rules or chaos, but our children slept when they were sleepy, and ate when they were hungry (or when something smelled really good, or others were eating), and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they were able to know what their bodies needed. I grew up by the clock, up at 6:30, eat quickly, bus stop, school, wait until lunch, eat, wait until dinner, go to bed. I had no idea that sleep and food could be separated from a schedule like that, but they can be.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Sunday, May 25, 2025
Look in a new way
There's more to unschooling than just not doing school. To make it flourish we need to look at ourselves, our relationship, the way we look at the world in a new way to clear out the thinking that's holding us back.
—Joyce Fetteroll
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Sunday, May 18, 2025
Plain and good
Without free choice, how can a person choose what is plain and good?
photo by Sandra Dodd
(I painted the stripey glaze;
Holly did the spots in the same colors,
when she was four or five.)
Thursday, May 8, 2025
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.
photo by Destiny Dodd, of sunlight coming in the top of a cavern
(repeat from 2018)
Friday, April 18, 2025
A Respected Child
I really believe unschooling works best when parents trust a child's personhood, his intelligence, his instincts, his potential to be mature and calm. Take any of that away, and the child becomes smaller and powerless to some degree.
Give them power and respect, and they become respected and powerful.
photo by Sandra Dodd
Sunday, April 6, 2025
New and better

Lean, one choice at a time, one conscious thought at a time, until your choices and thoughts are solidly in the range where you want to be, and you no longer lean that other way so much.
Your new range of balance will involve better choices and options than your first attempts did.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Snakes and wild berries

When a science-minded kid loves to take the dog down by the river and look for wild berries and snakes, some parents say, "My kid just wants to play. He's not interested in learning. He'll never learn science just playing."
Each little experience, every idea, is helping your child build his internal model of the universe. He will not have the government-recommended blueprint for the internal model of the universe, which can look surprisingly like a school, and a political science class, a small flat map of the huge spherical world, a job with increasing vacations leading to retirement, and not a lot more.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Patterns and dots
Notice, contemplate, appreciate patterns.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Saturday, March 8, 2025
Acceptance
photo by Karen James
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Saturday, March 1, 2025
The distant future...
photo by Colleen Prieto
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Sunday, February 16, 2025
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."
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.
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."
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Doing and being
photo by Colleen Prieto
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Let things flow
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
(and it's not just about tv)
photo by Sandra Dodd
Saturday, February 8, 2025
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
photo by Ve Lacerda
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Sunday, February 2, 2025
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.
Holly in Quebec; photographer unknown
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