At peace, at home

Today is different.

Well every day is different, but this week the world is trying to figure out how to pause and wait. This affects us all. Some people got quiet. Some ran around.


Two important jobs have fallen on parents. Distract children who might be afraid, or sick or restless. Needy children.


Find and share beauty and joy in familiar things—in things you can touch, hear, see, smell, taste, drink from, eat from, sit on, sleep on, tell stories about.

The links below go to previous posts that might help you be at peace, at home.

Live lightly with patience
Arts and sciences
History at your house

photos by Sandra Dodd

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(Note added in January 2022: The post above was written as the Covid-19 pandemic was being announced, in many places, and lockdowns were beginning.)

Lovable and respectable

Try to be lovable and respectable, whether or not you have a partner or an audience, because it makes you a better person. Try to be trustworthy and dependable.

Being a better person will make you a better parent.

Unconditional Love (was Love and Respect)
Better is better.
photo by Cally Brown
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Always?

When people ask me "are you always going to homeschool them?" I say (very truthfully) "I don't know. It depends on them. I'm willing to, but if they decide they would rather go to school, that's fine."

The only people who have ever been unhappy with that response are those who are rigidly, defiantly homeschooling with a vengeance.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Cathy Koetsier

The words are something I wrote in January 1993,
that popped up this week, 26 years later.

Passion and optimism

"What it takes to build a rich life is you ... your time, energy, imagination, openness, passion, and optimism." —Claire Horsley

The quote is from elsewhere, but this is a match:
How to Be a Good Unschooler
photo by Sandra Dodd
(not in New Mexico)

Looking, reading and logic

To say peace doesn't need quiet doesn't mean that all noise is peace. Quite a bit of understanding unschooling is looking at all your thoughts, and the things you read, with as much logic as you can gather up.

SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
photo by Janine Davies

Blending in

I noticed, because it was exotic. I was far from home.

Birds where I live, I can easily ignore.

People want to blend in, not to be seen as different. That's why sometimes unschoolers would like to be around other unschoolers, so they're not noticed so much. It's understandable.

Sometimes, if you have the energy, even though it might be more work, be willing to be noticeably exotic.

Learn and be an example
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Avebury

Part of being present!

Solve problems before they become problems. Notice the direction things are heading and change things. Don't let them get hungry, tired, testy to the point where they're hitting or destroying things. Food. Naps. Go home. Put on a video. Draw one away to do something totally different.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/being/healing
photo by Chrissy Florence

Ideas about unschooling

Writing about my writing: I’m trying to pick ideas up and turn them over and see if they work, how they work, how they might be tweaked to work better.

SandraDodd.com/feedback/rippy
photo by Sandra Dodd

Into her world

Karen James wrote: Helping facilitate a good experience is different for each person. It depends on what they are interested in and why. It depends on how they want to explore whatever it is. Bring some of her interests into her world, not by suggestion, but by learning enough about her interests to be able to converse about whatever-it-is. Maybe even try it yourself. Find places or folks to visit where those interests are practiced, where she might have a dabble too. Maybe she'll want to dive deeper. Maybe not. —Karen James

Being your child's PARTNER, not his adversary
photo by Amber Ivey
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Shame free

I didn’t expect unschooling to create a shameless life, but one day I said to Holly, joking, “Aren’t you ashamed?”

She didn’t know what “ashamed” meant. She was twelve; maybe thirteen already.


People used to say “you should be ashamed” lots, to and around me, when I was young. And I was, I just hadn’t found the reason for it yet. Shame is like an indwelling virus that surfaces when we’re weak, in those who caught it.

I didn’t know people could grow up without having a wad of shame inside them, waiting to surface.

SandraDodd.com/unexpected
photo by Gail Higgins

Socializing

When I was in elementary school, the lowest marks I got were C's (average) in conduct, or deportment. I talked too much. Way more than once I was shushed in class with the admonition, "You're not here to socialize."

SandraDodd.com/faq
photo by Gail Higgins
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Living better in the world

Unschoolers live in the same world as other people. If you plan ahead, you can live in that world even better than most people do. If you stubbornly cling to frustration or fantasy, you can find yourselves isolated, and angry about it as though the isolation was imposed on you from the outside.

Don't pine for "unschool-world."

The problem of "Unschool World"
photo by Megan Valnes

Colorful Colours

Natural colors, accidental designs, artist-chosen combinations. However you spell it, find and name some coloured colorations that you might have missed otherwise.

Learning to see Differently
photo by Joyce Fetteroll

Progress

It's not about "success," it's about progress, and living in the moment as well as possible.

SandraDodd.com/proof
photo by Sabine Mellinger
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The beautiful side

"Being there unconditionally for our children nurtures the beautiful side of the human spirit that resides in each one of us. It cleans it. Reveals it. Keeps it fresh." —Karen James

SandraDodd.com/growth
photo by Karen James

Thinking and wondering

"Sometimes people just want to wonder, rather than *know*. Or maybe they will want to know in the future, but right now they're just thinking on it and wondering." —Tam Palmer

SandraDodd.com/exploration
Laughing and wondering might help, too.
photo by Colleen Prieto
"Barn Swallow fledglings — Rye, NH"

Embracing now

Embrace your present moment instead of yearning for what you don't have. I love the saying 'the grass is always greener where you water it.'

—Clare Kirkpatrick

SandraDodd.com/metime
photo by Janine
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Learning about learning

For the parents, deschooling is learning about learning.

SandraDodd.com/hsc/radical
photo by Colleen Prieto

Lovely things

Ren Allen wrote:

Plato said: "The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things."

While I agree wholeheartedly, I think he should have said "The most effective kind of education is that PEOPLE should play amongst lovely things." Learning is for always. Playing amongst lovely things has the power to heal lives, heal families and liberate people. That's really what unschooling is in a nutshell—playing with lovely things, ideas, people and places. We say "living is learning" but "playing is learning" too.

—Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/rentalk


photo by Janine

Thirty, twenty-seven, twenty-five

All three of my children were here for Christmas. The youngest is twenty-five.

Twenty-five years ago this summer, we did not register our five year old for kindergarten; we registered him as a homeschooler. That's a long time.

I've been explaining unschooling to a growing number of people over all those years. No wonder I'm tired!


The quote is partly lifted from Twenty-five and twenty
photo by Sandra Dodd; window snowflake by Irene Adams (my sister)