Instead of schoolish ideas...

Rebeccas Justus, when she was new to unschooling, created an inspired and inspiring list of the differences between schoolishness and unschooling. There are two dozen sets. Here are a few to make your day lighter:

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instead of "Instill knowledge" :

Trust that learning is natural; trust that children are interested in life

instead of "Follow a schedule" :

Flow with the moment, with the inspiration

instead of "Memorize facts" :

Understand stories

SandraDodd.com/unschool/difference
photo by Jo Isaac

Checking and comparing

Someone asked:

Do you still look at standards for certain grade levels only so that the state leave you alone or do you just wait until they say something and show them what your kid can do?

Sandra:

I used to look from time to time at APS (Albuquerque Public Schools) Expected Competencies, or the World Book list or something similar, but now I look maybe every two years.

In New Mexico they're not going to ask you to show what your child can do. And when you're with your child in busy learning-situations every day, you'll see the learning just take off!

That was my 2002 answer, when my youngest was 10. I quit checking "should be" lists at some point. We were fortunate to live where that was a good option.

SandraDodd.com/questions
photo by Gail Higgins

Many small adjustments

Renee Cabatic wrote, years ago:

I place toothpaste on Xander's toothbrush at night. One night he said it was too much toothpaste so the next night I put much less on. He then told me it was too little toothpaste.

Exasperated, I said, "I can't win for losing."

He said, "You can win. With many small adjustments!"

Do not be overwhelmed.

YOU can unschool with many small adjustments!

—Renee Cabatic

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Xander is grown now. Because of him and his mom, MANY people learned to consider making small adjustments toward more peaceful living and learning.

Clarity, by Renee Cabatic
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

Home

Some days it's fine to stay in, eat food, and look out the window.

One day I looked out to see finches, and snowy mountains.

Don't feel bad about staying home, and seeing what you see, sometimes.

Cocoon
photo by Sandra Dodd

More peace

The more local and personal peace there is, the more peace there will be in the world.

SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
photo by Denaire Nixon

Take a step thoughtfully

People can ruin their lives with unschooling if they don't know where they're going. If they just intend to make a bunch of wild decisions and mill around, it won't work. Their kids will end up needing to go back to school, and being clueless kids in school. So it's almost that big a project. You will have to take hundreds of thousands of steps. And so it's better to take a step thoughtfully, knowing what direction you're going, than to thunder around yelling, "I'm an unschooler! I'm an unschooler!"

Extras with Sandra Dodd
I was speaking, not writing. You can listen (at 15:27), or read the transcript.
photo by Brie Jontry

Thinking more clearly

This picks up in the midst of something, but endure the first two sentences and it will make sense.

'How do "we"' is a problem. The person is asking (I think) whether WE will support HER limiting her child. Each of us acts after consideration of what we know and believe, what our priorities are, what other factors (partners, grandparents, home-owner/landlord, religion, local laws)... But I acted with and toward my children as a partner in the way, in each moment, that seemed sensible and helpful to me, as much as was in my power in that moment. If I didn't do great, I would plan to do better in future moments. If I was happy with my actions, I'd try to remember what I was thinking so I could do that again in the future. But there wasn't a "we" except me and the child I was dealing with.

SandraDodd.com/radiation
photo by Colleen Prieto

Gratitude and respect

Being a good parent makes a person more attractive to the other parent, and makes the other parent grateful and respectful. Gratitude and respect make it easier to have compassion and patience.

page 270 (or 311) of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Brie Jontry

What peace is not

To have more peace, it helps to know what is NOT peace, so those harsh states can be avoided.

Outrage is not healthy for unschooling parents.

It's not healthy for anyone, for very long, but it works against unschooling.

Outrage is BIG, visceral, adrenaline-filled RAGE. If your "outrage" is any smaller, use a different word.

SandraDodd.com/outrage has a Donald-Duck demonstration.
photo by Marta Venturini, of her peaceful husband

Peace

Unschooling shouldn't involve battling, struggling or fighting.

Negative Approaches to Peace
photo by Diane Marcengill

Be kind to your children

You have helped me be more kind to my children. The best thing anyone could have done for them and me. Thank you!

—Anonymous
(I didn't save the name.)

Feedback, Just Add Light and Stir
photo by Gail Higgins

Parenting reflects back

It's a gift to have children to help us have an excuse to have a sort of do-over on behalf of our moms.

For me, it seems like a gift to me and my mom both, if I can do better than she did. She would have liked to have done better, too, so I can do it for her.

I get some healing benefit either way.

SandraDodd.com/healing
photo by Ester Siroky

What's different?

Don't scoot through your day without using your senses. What is happening around you? What is new and different? How could you easily make others safer and more comfortable?

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Gail Higgins

(quote is from page 203-236 of The Big Book of Unschooling)

Live Lightly

Lighten up.

Live Lightly.

Real Learning
photo by Sandra Dodd

See also:
Light on light; Sources of light; and Sun, or Moon, or Fire

Fly when ready

The words are mine (Sandra Dodd's), but I was speaking rather than writing.

I’ve talked to kids who said they were so scared and stressed when they were 17, because they knew when they turned 18, their parents were going to start charging them rent, or throw them out, or if they didn’t go to the university, they should go to the military—all this huge pressure to get... to get out. You are done now; we're done.

So people hadn’t considered that they could totally avoid that, that that would be a natural offshoot of radical unschooling.

Keith and I did think, early on, we said what we are doing is inoculating our kids against the trait of some, or the fact of some kids leaving with the first person who says “Hey baby, you wanna live with me?” or “Oh, let’s go get a house”, or, you know, that sort of energy of young people luring other young people out and away, to other states, to other places, to dangerous neighborhoods. We said "It’s going to have to be a pretty good offer to beat what they have at home."

And so that becomes a safety factor too. If the children know that they can stay at home, then someone who comes and says, "Hey do you want come do something with me? Do you want to come live with me?"—it better be a good offer.

Recording and transcript: SandraDodd.com/familybonding
photo by Karen James

Consider ideas

Consider ideas. If something makes sense, good. Use the idea. Remember where you got it. Be honest.

Live your life in such a way that you're not ashamed if someone quotes what you said, or tells something you did.

Growth is good
photo by Gail Higgins

Inspired and inspiring

About writing, like dancing, there's technically proficient and then there's inspired and inspiring, and they're not always both in the same place in the same time.

There's more about real writing at SandraDodd.com/realwriting
photo by Karen James
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Just being

There's little so sweet and grounding to me as being loved for who I am and appreciated for all I choose to spend my time doing. If we want our children to really know what that feels like too, we should stop standing on the sidelines, and start joining in.

It's a simple gift we can all give to our children that will have the potential to last a lifetime.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/karenjames/beingwith ("A Simple Gift")
photo by Cass Kotrba

Forgotten roofs of the world

I'm sure there are things on my roof that would be interesting to someone else, but I don't go up there, and I don't look. When I've visted other places, though rooflines seem exotic, and the chimneys and birds and all are not what I'm used to and I get excited.

More often,
       perhaps,
              look up.
It can help in more ways than one.

Uplift
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Chichester, in England

Learning curves aren't smooth

Learning curves aren't smooth

There's a learning curve that I see with unschooled kids and that is that they seem to be ahead [of their peers in school] for the first few years and then there's a period of time, roughly from about nine to 12 years of age, when they can seem behind. And then after they are 12 or 13, zoom! They look ahead! They seem to be ahead again.

If families can make it through that rough hump of "Oh, my kid doesn't know anything. He doesn't have cursive, he doesn't know the times tables and he's 12 and starting to get whiskers,"... Because it's just before a lot of the kids in school are saying, "This is crazy. Why am I doing this?"

Learning Curve
photo by Amber Ivey
The quotes above are the beginning and end of something longer that's here:
The Learning Curve of Unschoolers