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

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

Quietly home

Response to a mom who expressed concern about the social outgoingness of a young teen:

Consider the value of letting him be the star of his own life, even if it's quieter than you might like.

What if your child is an introvert?
SandraDodd.com/introvert
photo by Ester Siroky

Inside the learner

Nothing on paper is learning.
Nothing recited is learning.
Nothing in a conversation is learning....

Learning is putting information together in one's own head so that it makes new and different sense. It always and only happens inside the learner.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Thoughtfully and respectfully

Cara Potter wrote:

Having the concepts of authenticity and freedom foremost in your mind doesn't help unschooling - they're freighted with political meaning - actually, all sorts of meanings -that have little to do with unschooling. Better to instead think of helping your child make choices - choices that take others into consideration, (which is respect).

What we as unschoolers are doing is helping our children learn to make choices so that they can live and thrive in the world. You can do that without getting tied up in knots about authenticity and freedom.

There'a an Annie Dillard quotes that always makes me think of this process - "How we live our days is how we live our lives."

If you live your days being kind to your family and helping your child make choices that take other's feelings and expectations into consideration you'll be helping him learn how to have live thoughtfully and respectfully in the world.

—Cara Potter

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Colleen Prieto

Clarity and choices

Karen James wrote:

Freedom is a lovely word. It’s a huge concept. It has a very meaningful place in our society. It is important to a lot of people for very honourable and very real reasons.

Freedom is too big a focal point for unschooling though. It’s not that it can’t be celebrated and talked about. I believe it can. But if our aim is to have clarity in unschooling, our focus seems better directed at more succinct and relevant concepts to grasp and implement. Concrete ideas that can carry us forward through all of the stages, through any situation, and into a healthy, productive adulthood.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/choices/
photo of an airplane by Sandra Dodd
(click the image and zoom a bit if you can't see the plane)

Connection and trust

Leah Rose wrote:

Unschooling, deschooling, parenting peacefully, all of it called to me, deeply, but it felt like a huge risk, a giant gamble. But I'm so glad we didn't pull back, that we continued down the path. ...

Learning to parent mindfully, keeping my focus in the present, making choices towards peace, towards help and support, is not, as it turns out, much of a gamble or a risk. It is the surest path to connection and trust.

—Leah Rose

SandraDodd.com/guarantee
photo by Marin Holmes
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Extraordinary doings

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

It helped me think more clearly about unschooling when I realized unschooling isn’t something kids do. Unschooling is something parents do. Unschooling is *parents* creating a learning environment for kids to explore their interests in.

Unschooled kids aren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. They’re merely doing what comes naturally. They’re doing what all animals with lengthy childhoods do. They learn by doing what interests them in an environment that gives them opportunities to explore.

Unschooling is parents doing something extraordinary. It’s deliberately creating an environment where kids are supported in pursuing their interests.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/unschoolingis
photo by Rosie Moon

A kindness and a gift

Rather than tell a child in advance what's about to be seen, it can be wonderful to let them feel they've discovered something on their own. A surprise can be so stimulating that the memories will be more vivid. And the discovery becomes a personal accomplishment.

If the parent is surprised too, that's a bonus, but if you can allow for someone else to be surprised, it can be a kindness and a gift.

SandraDodd.com/surprise/
photo by Lydia Koltai

Surrounded by words

My children learned to read without being taught. If my children were the only children in the history of the world who learned without being taught, it would still be a fact that some children have learned to read without lessons—that a child can learn to read without lessons.

But my children are not the only ones. There are many. There were many even before schools existed, though it was harder without being surrounded by talking video games and movies with subtitles and printed boxes all over the kitchen, and signs on every street and building and shelf.


Always Learning post, Sandra Dodd, 2010
photo by Denaire Nixon

Avoiding frustration

Pam Sorooshian wrote, of soothing a frustrated child:

YOU have to figure this out—you are like a detective in a way, or a psychiatrist, trying to understand what your own child is like based on all the clues/evidence. You come to understand how she is experiencing the world, and then you try to support her in ways that work best for her.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/pam/soothing
photo by Cátia Maciel

Look, learn, and proceed

Karen James wrote:

I think advice of any kind can get in the way of unschooling if it is taken as truth without some reflection. Unschooling is really about learning without school. Radical unschooling includes all learning, not just academic learning. What encourages and supports learning in your child(ren)?
Look at that.
     Learn from that.
          Proceed from that.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/otherideas
photo by Christine Milne

Our own real thoughts

In your head, you have some repeating-loop messages. Some are telling you you're doing a good job, but I bet some of them are not. Some are telling you that you have no choice, but you do.

We can't really think until we think in our own words without the prejudicial labels and without mistaking the voices in our heads for our own real thoughts.

SandraDodd.com/voices

SandraDodd.com/witness
photo by Christine Milne

What peace feels like

If we raise the level of peace our children expect, they will know what peace feels like.

Adults need to know what peace feels like too, though, and some feel it for the first time when they really start to understand unschooling.

SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
photo by Colleen Prieto

The morning sky

Somewhere in the world it is morning every moment. Somewhere, light is dawning. Some people, and I'm one of them, believe that any portal to the universe leads to the whole universe

SandraDodd.com/morning
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Gratitude and abundance

If unschooling parents can move away from hatred and fear, and toward gratitude and abundance, their children's lives are profoundly better. (And the parents' lives are, too.)

SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Colleen Paeff

Toys and tools

There are machines, conveyances, tools, that are so beautiful that people make models of them, or working toys for children. Front-end loaders are that beautiful, to those who need or use or have watched them work.

Tractors can be that, or combines, or just the truck to pull other tools, plows, trailers.

If a child, or an adult, can get excited about a piece of equipment, try to take time to watch those machines in action, if you get a chance. Not too close; from a safe distance, or from inside your car, if you can. When you're out, find people digging, building, repairing—replacing signs with a crane, or going up in a cherry-picker to change streetlight bulbs—do it for your kids or for yourself.

Mom's Interests Enriching Kids' Lives
photo by Holly Dodd

Growing safely

Marta Venturini, in an interview in 2020:

I see deschooling much more than just that process of replacing school with no school. Because to me, radical unschooling is that lifestyle that you were talking about, is that spiritual practice, almost. Because radical unschooling is that to me, deschooling has been so much more. It’s been about personal growth. It’s been about healing.

And so, trying to give Conchinha this safe place, I ended up getting my own safe place, too, in the process.

—Marta

You can hear the recording here: SandraDodd.com/marta
and there is a link to the transcript
photo by Karen James

Seeing, visiting, tasting

Of "experts" renouncing unschooling the first time they hear of it:

I understand that it’s difficult to understand unschooling. Even for those who want to understand it, it takes awhile. I would never speak of something I had never seen, nor write about a country I had never visited, nor review a food I had never tasted.

Debating How Kids Learn
photo by Nancy Machaj, of grafitti in Paris

Sharing the freedom you have

If I "give my children freedom" in a situation, it's because I had some leeway or rights myself. I cannot "give them freedom" that I don't have.

SandraDodd.com/freedom/limits
photo by Sandra Dodd