Fairly seamless

"I just never separated what I knew and was doing from what my kids were doing, and that helped. So it was fairly seamless for me. My whole life had been about learning and about education. That's what I always wanted to do from the time I was six— to be a teacher. My other backup plans were to be a missionary or a journalist. Pretty much I cover those three every day."

—Sandra Dodd

SandraDodd.com/video/sandra1
photo by Sadie Bugni
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P.S. Usually if the words are mine I don't credit so overtly, but this is an odd statement and so I figured I'd better own up to it in a more personal way.

Helpful and kind

The idea of doing what is kind to do, whether it's bringing food to someone who is engaged in something interesting, or hanging around a long time just in case help is needed did not get dusty. That's the way our kids think others should be, and it has made countless differences in all directions in our lives.

To read about the idea that DID get dusty, go here:
Radical Unschooling Info post by Sandra Dodd; September 6, 2016
photo by Megan Valnes
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Lucky baby

A rich world for a baby is similar to a rich world for anyone else. A baby is a person. A lucky baby has an adult partner who understands that.

SandraDodd.com/babies/infants
photo by Ve Lacerda
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Babies

What do babies want? They want to learn. They learn by touching and tasting and watching and listening. They learn to be gentle by people being gentle with them...

SandraDodd.com/babies/infants
photo by Sara Vaz
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Food and dinner

We've never made our kids wait for dinner. If they're hungry, they can snack.

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Ideas about Dinner
The image is of a painting by Pierre Mignard in the 1640's
and it's a link.
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Patient, attentive, calm and accepting

"None of us are perfect; we'll all have some regrets. But with my kids 19, 16, and 13, I can now say that I will never say anything like, 'I wish I'd let them fight it out more,' or 'I wish I'd punished them more,' or 'I wish I'd yelled at them more.' I will only ever say that I wish I'd been more patient, more attentive, more calm and accepting of the normal stresses of having young children."

—Pam Sorooshian
whose children are now 29, 26 and 23,
and who became a grandmother day before yesterday

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
I'm guessing Roya or Cyrus might have taken that photo; I don't know.
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What do babies want?

What do babies want? They want to learn. They learn by touching and tasting and watching and listening. They learn to be gentle by people being gentle with them, and showing them how to touch hair nicely, and to touch cats and dogs gently. They want to learn which foods taste good. They want to learn how to walk, but you don't need to teach them. They'll want to know how to go up and down stairs at some point. They will eventually want to know how to get things off shelves and out of boxes. They will want to see what else is in the house, and in the yard, and you can help them do that safely.

A baby doesn't want to look at and touch the very same things day after day after day any more than you would want to watch the same movie every day for a year, or sit in the same place in your house all the time. Sing different songs with him. Play different finger games. Change what he can see in the bedroom sometimes.

A rich world for a baby is similar to a rich world for anyone else. A baby is a person. A lucky baby has an adult partner who understands that.

SandraDodd.com/babies/infants
photo by Anand Hariharan
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No matter how old

For a parent who didn't know about attachment parenting early on, those things can be compensated for by being gentler to older children, and patient, and loving.

For those who were gentle and attentive to babies as people, remember that your child, no matter how old, is still that same person who trusted you the first days and weeks and months.

It's easy to forget, and to be impatient and critical. It happens at my house. It can be ever easier to remember, with practice and focus, to choose quiet and soft, still.

A Quiet Soft Place
photo by Julie D
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Proxy baby

When Kirby was a baby, about ten months old, I was at the library with him. A woman whispered questions to me, in the shelves of books (the stacks). Her daughter had married a foreigner and moved to Denmark. They had a baby she hadn't yet met. She was asking me how old Kirby was and whether he was average size and what size clothes I thought she might send.

She was sad and said by the time she saw her grandson, he would be walking and she was missing all the baby days. We were nice with one another, and said bye, and I walked away.

But after maybe five or six steps, I turned around and hurried back to find her. I said "Do you want to hold him?"

She got tears in her eyes and nodded and she hugged Kirby with her eyes closed and rocked him a little bit, kind of got the feel of him, and the smell of his head, which wouldn't have been as good as her own grandson's, but it was better than nothing.

When she handed him back she seemed much calmer and better. It was therapeutic for her. And I've always been glad that I thought of it before it was too late.

SandraDodd.com/kirby
Keith probably took this photo.

For the record, this happened in the stacks by the north wall of what was then called the Wyoming Branch library, behind Hoffmantown Center, in Albuquerque. It was surrounded by rose gardens. Now it has been renamed the Tony Hillerman Library, but in 1987, it wasn't called that.
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Wholehearted change

The purpose of unschooling is not to change the parents; it's to provide a personalized learning environment for each child. Doing that does change the parents, though, if they do it wholeheartedly.
SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Julie D
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Honoring babies

"Look for ways to connect with them. There are biological ways. Smelling their heads is amazingly connective.... Look at them. Watch them talk or move or bounce or roll or whatever it is they are doing and marvel at the fact that they are."

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/bonding
an honored baby girl, in India, whose parents prefer for me not to identify her here
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A wonder post

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

"I don't think people who are negative, pessimistic, or cynical are going to make great unschooling parents and that if they know themselves to be that way, they owe it to their kids to work on being more positive, optimistic, and especially at not expressing even minimal scorn. They'll do better by choosing to be more child-like themselves, more filled with wonder at even little ordinary aspects of life."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Sarina Gray, of her son learning

Empowering Others

Helping people learn to find their own answers is vastly superior to distributing answers on demand. . . .
Empowerment is a principle, not a rule. Learning to examine one's own life and needs and beliefs is necessary for unschooling to work.

These quotes were about unschoolers helping other unschoolers, but the ideas work with parents and children, too.
SandraDodd.com/rulebound

Younger Keith Dodd and his baby Kirby
photo by Sandra Dodd