Soft traditions

Traditional seasonal art, knitted and put on a postbox, by a volunteer.

There are many soft traditions, with pillows, blankets, soft toys, pajamas, hugs and kisses.

SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully
photo by Kelly Drewery

Be there; have time; avoid stress

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

I make lots of food. I like cooking. I like baking. And Simon and Linnaea mostly prefer my food to store food. But, for a long time, Simon preferred store bought bread to home made. Linnaea has never liked home made macaroni and cheese. And, honestly, my baking was always a time commitment. I have much more time now that they are 15 and 12 than I had when they were little.

When they were little, getting food in easy forms that they enjoyed that were quick for when David wasn't around to tag me, that was important. That was more important than any fear I may have had about what they were eating. Being there for them. Having the time for them.

Meredith wrote, and I want to underscore:

"Don't make it stressful - because what we know about nutrition has changed and changed and will change again, but stress is bad. We know that. Don't make life one bit more stressful."

—Schuyler Waynforth
quoting Meredith Novak

What problems can come?
(a long, rough, wonderful discussion from 2013)
photo by Sandra Dodd, embellished by Holly Dodd

Exploring, playing, remembering

Exploring different media and tools, playing with art and ideas, and making nice memories.

Life as Show-and-Tell
photo by Sandra; scratch-art by younger Devyn Dodd

Humans learn

Deb Lewis wrote:

Learning is so easy, even cavemen did it. 🙂

• Shell beads found in Algeria and Israel have been dated to 100,000 years ago, well before there were jewelry-making schools. 🙂
  
  
• The stunning Chauvet drawings were created between 29,700 and 32,400 years ago long before there were art schools. 🙂
  
  
• Signs carved in tortoise shell, found in China were written down in the Stone age or Neolithic age, predating the previous earliest writings by two thousand years, well before there were writing schools.🙂

HEY! This is fun!

• Archeologists have found pottery dating back 13,000 years, many, many years before there were pottery schools.
  
  
• The first known sewing needle, found in France, is about 25,000 years old, some considerable time before there were sewing schools.
  
  
• There is some evidence that people had discovered a way to weave cloth and baskets as early as 27,000 years ago, before there were weaving studios or, well, looms. 🙂

There seems to be no shortage of evidence that humans learn.

— Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis/cavemen
photo by Ester Siroky

School learning vs. real learning

School learning is like being told how to assemble the dragon piece of the jigsaw, which pieces to put where and in what order. And then the cat. And then the book. And then the bird. And you must do it in that order the way they tell you because they're teaching you how to assemble jigsaw puzzles and that can't be left to chance. Unfortunately by the time you're done with the process you're so sick of jigsaw puzzles you have no interest in doing them yourself and never see how the dragon and cat connect and don't even care.

Real learning is doing that billion piece jigsaw puzzles however you please. Or running off to watch TV. Or chase the dog. 🙂

—Joyce Fetteroll

A million-piece puzzle
photo by Gail Higgins
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Interests and activities

Joyce Fetteroll, part of a response about kids missing out on friendships and other kids:

Homeschooled kids get the opportunity to form friendships with people of all ages based on interests rather than birthyears. There's homeschooling support groups, scouts, art and dance and martial arts classes, 4H, church groups, neighborhood kids and so on. It can be more difficult depending on the town's services and the parent's willingness to take advantage of opportunities, but some homeschooling parents end up finding their kids social lives *too* active!

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/friends
photo by Cátia Maciel

How much and when

"Gauge how much to do and when by your child’s reactions. Let her say no thanks. Let her choose. Let her interest set the pace. If it takes years, let it take years. If it lasts an hour, let it last an hour."

—Joyce Fetteroll

Five Steps to Unschooling
photo by Cátia Maciel

Exuberant learning

Karen James wrote:

When Ethan was around three. I left the room very briefly to answer the phone. We had been drawing. As I was talking I heard, "Circles. Circles." I came out to see what he was doing to find him drawing big circles on a freshly painted wall. His circles I could paint over at any time. I still had lots of that colour of paint. That pride at drawing big beautiful shapes I could never recapture at any cost if I had have chosen to scold him. He turned to me all smiles. He had discovered circles. I had rediscovered what exuberant learning looked like.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/art/stories
photo by Karen James
with different circle; the story of that art is also at the art/stories page

Thought, power and freedom!

"Self control" is all tied up with being bad, and with failure. Choices, though, are wrapped in thought, power and freedom!

SandraDodd.com/self-regulation
photo by teenaged Holly Dodd,
of some of her shrinky-dink art
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Replacing a canvas

Dawn, in Nova Scotia, wrote:

Ok, I think I'll share my newly-thought-of philosophy of housework here. It started when my sister was over and chasing the kids around. I was straightening up the livingroom and had just finished piling up blocks (big cardboard ones; we have, in all, ten or eleven different kinds of wood, plastic and cardboard blocks. I feel so wealthy. 🙂) when my son (2) ran into the room, saw the blocks and immediately tore down the pile. I smiled and shook my head. My sister, who'd arrived in time to see this, sternly said, "Harry! Your mother just finished putting those away!" When she said that I felt offended. Didn't she know I only pile those blocks so that Harry can knock them down? And there was the Aha! I looked around the room at the clean living room and realized that was why I did any cleaning.

We don't clean up messes to have a clean house. We clean up messes so there is room for more mess!

Now I think of cleaning up after my kids as replacing a canvas. I do it with the thought that by giving them room again and a bare floor and organized toys to pick from, I'm handing them the tools to write another mess onto our house. It's meant that at the end of a day, or sometimes a few days in a row, I just let the mess stay, because really, it's a work of art or a story. Maybe it isn't finished. Maybe it's too interesting to be gotten rid of so soon. It also clears up my feelings of resentment about doing the bulk of it. I like being the one to reset the house so that we all can live another, different mess the next day.

Anyway, thought I'd share since it's really helped me bring more joy into the housework!

—Dawn (in NS)

SandraDodd.com/chores/intro
photo by Sarah S.

Awareness of options

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Lots of people go through their whole lives never feeling like they had choices in many many areas of their lives in which they really did. Just like it is useful for unschoolers to drop school language (not use the terms teaching or lessons or curriculum to refer to the natural learning that happens in their families) it is useful to drop the use of "have to's" and replace it with an awareness of choices and options.

How we think—the language we use to think—about what we're doing, matters.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Paths and choices

"Your role isn't to set up a path for them to follow but to set up the environment for them to explore."

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

Working at playing

Usually it looks like we're just playing around. When it doesn't look like we're playing, I work on it. Unschooling works best when we're playing around.

Jubilation and Triangulation,
about "The Pirates of Penzance," sci-fi space shows, video games about triangles, and the word "hypotenuse" coming up over and over.

photo by Holly Dodd

Enthusiasm for happenstance

A researcher wrote:

Sandra's theory of "strewing" highlights the role of the parent, both in the support they provide children and how they reproduce enthusiasm for happenstance.

I really like the buildup to "happenstance," and the use of that word, but as picky as I am, I want to clarify that we didn't "reproduce enthusiasm." We HAD enthusiasm.


Vanessa Bertozzi, from her MIT Master's thesis on unschoolers and media,
2009, page 80

SandraDodd.com/strewing describes strewing better.
photo by Gail Higgins

"When Jayn Reads"

Robyn Coburn wrote:

There is no doubt that one day, in the fullness of time and at the right time, Jayn will become a reader. I have no doubt that she will slide into reading with the relatively effortless grace that so many other Unschoolers report of their children as they gain literacy with their parents’ support in their text-filled environments.
. . . . Without any pushing, independence will come at the right time for Jayn’s needs. Without any pushing, her only struggles will be with her own impatience—not any of mine. At the right time Jayn will launch herself into the world of independent discovery through solitary reading, and I will see less of her. I will have to wait to be invited into her private world that presently is a place that is always open to me. And I will treasure the memory of when I was as essential to her understanding as I hope to always be to her heart.

She will be a reader. But I’m in no hurry.

—Robyn Coburn

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When Jayn was seven, her mom wrote that (and more, and it's beautiful: When Jayn Reads). Jayn is 24 now, and earned a university degree with honors. For the follow-up about Jayn's reading, you can listen to (or watch) this interview of Robyn, by Cecilie and Jesper Conrad: Robyn Coburn | From Doubt to Devotion - The Unschooling Transformation

SandraDodd.com/robyncoburn
photo by Jayn Coburn

Different needs at different ages

A mom determined to limit her child's access to sweets wrote "I try to model healthy eating."

I responded:

Healthy eating for an adult woman isn't the same as for a teenaged boy or an eight year old girl or a two year old or an infant.

SandraDodd.com/sugar
photo by Sarah S, of Minecraft-themed food

Thinking in your own words

If people can come to understand why it matters whether they use "teach" or "learn," they can start to get other subtleties and REALLY start thinking their own thoughts, consciously and mindfully.

Saying what one means rather than using phrases without thinking is very, very important.

Hearing what I say as a mom is crucial to mindfulness.

If I don't notice what I say, if I don't even hear myself, how can I expect my kids to hear me?

If I say things without having carefully chosen each word, am I really communicating?

Mindful of Words
photo by Marta Venturini
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Work or play?

The best moments are when an activity might look like work, but it feels like play.

It can happen to anyone.

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Cátia Maciel

When I grew up

When I was in first grade I decided I wanted to be a teacher.

All through school I paid attention to what teachers did and how, and why (when I could figure that out, which was pretty often). And I asked the other kids what they liked about teachers and what they didn’t. So I learned LOTS and lots about how learning works and what factors work for different kinds of people.

When I was older, 13/14 or so, I wanted to become a missionary (still teaching-related), or to work at a magazine. And it seems all those rolled together are what I’ve become. I write, and I help people have happier more peaceful lives, and it’s all about learning. So in a natural-learning way I’ve been working up to this always.

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I wrote the above in an online exchange for Mothering Magazine in 2007.

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Recently, I remembered another writing-related profession I had seriously considered for a short while in my late 20's. I had read that the Hallmark Cards company was hiring writers, in Kansas City. I thought I could do that! I knew nothing about Kansas City, and decided I didn't want to move, but while I thought about applying, writing mushy or funny or inspiring words to go with an image sounded easy and fun.

When this blog was already ten years old, I remembered the greeting-card thoughts, and saw that Just Add Light and Stir is much like a greeting-card collection. Some are funny, or mushy, and many are inspiring. Some are seasonal, and some are about babies. With over 4,680 posts, I guess I have inadvertently written some greeting cards.

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The top section was originally published in 2021, with a video. The permission to use that video was forgotten about and the organizer said no, when I reminded her. That post said "...with over 4,000 posts" but today there are 4,687. Thank you for reading.

Just Add Light and Stir on my site
The snowglobe image above was by an artist at Fiverr in 2017.

Don't be schooly or schoolish.

Paul McCartney was doing okay musically without knowing musical notation.

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I would hate to even start to imagine how many potential musicians just turned away from the idea of singing or playing instruments because they were pressed to learn music theory and notation at a young age.

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They can just learn. That’s what unschooling is about.

Take away the school, the school language and practices and expectations.

And all that’s left is the learning.

Don’t be schooly or schoolish.

Be UN schoolish.

Chat with Sandra Dodd on Mommy Chats, 4/25/07
photo by Marty Dodd, of a jack-o-lantern he started, and let squirrels finish