Casually more attentive

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

You can casually be more attentive without forcing yourself on him. Do it in a thousand different ways by thinking of him throughout the day and doing some little thing for him. I just went to my daughter's room and got a pillow off her bed and put it under her head (she's on the couch nearby). She smiled sleepily at me and said, "I love you, Mommy." She's 18.

Maybe just take him a soda into his room - or a monkey platter of little things he likes. Show him by your little actions throughout the day that you love him.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Cátia Maciel

What is liked and appreciated

A child is older every moment, and moments cannot be reclaimed and polished up and made happy later.

Don't be apathetic. Don't be negative. See what your kids like and appreciate that you have live, curious, able children. Many people would like to, but don't. Many people would like another opportunity to be gentle, supportive parents, but the chance was wasted long ago.

SandraDodd.com/look
photo by Cátia Maciel

See your child

Seeing a child where he is, and as he is, leads to love.

Seeing a child in comparison to an ideal, imaginary child can lead to heartbreak all the way around.

SandraDodd.com/look
photo by Tara Joe Farrell

The panoply of wonder

Robyn Coburn, when Jayn was little:

Jayn certainly finds learning inescapable. Educational is an irrelevant label to her, neither endorsed nor discarded. Her first issue continues to be whether the item looks like fun or is simply beautiful enough to warrant a place in the panoply of wonder that already inhabits her imagination.

Truly I believe that her greatest cognitive leaps have come from the most frivolous seeming of her pursuits. Her most profound discoveries have come from her interactions with the least overtly educational of her tools&mddash;her play toys and her animated movies. It is not work masquerading as play to make it palatable; it truly is that all her most valuable work is play.

—Robyn Coburn

SandraDodd.com/robyn/label
photo by Robyn Coburn

Kids first, positively

In a social group, if a mom gets comfortable, she can spend years just chatting with those other moms without paying much attention to her own children other than keeping them fed, clothed and safe. If they're in school, that's not so bad.

If they're unschooled, though, the bulk of her time and energy should be with, on, about THEM, and the family, and the relationships. Unschooling should be better than school; if it's not, the kids would be better off in school.

Any unschooler who wants to do just the bare minimum of what she "has to do" to be considered (by whom!?) an unschooler is NOT unschooling well or right. It needs energy, activity, interactivity, flow, sparkle, joy.

People who come [to a discussion group] with ANY amount of Eeyore attitude, and those who defend that, are dragging people under and I don't want to condone that or provide a forum for anyone to drag potentially joyful people into a hole, justifying complaints, collecting negativity.

---

Please don't try to turn your unschooling into social groups. Don't look for "a tribe." Don't put your loyalty toward an unschooling group, or a conference. When that group becomes complacent, or negative, then you will, too.

Find a way to unschool confidently, even if all your other friends buy a curriculum or put their kids in school.

SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by Annie Regan

(source, on facebook)

Respect makes sense

Joyce wrote::

When kids feel respected, when they've experienced a life time of their desires being respected and supported to find safe, respectful, doable ways to get what they want, kids won't push the envelope into craziness. That behavior just doesn't make sense to them.

Kids who've been controlled focus on pushing against that control, sometimes focus on the hurt of not being accepted for who they are, and do things just because they're not supposed to.

— Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Caren Knox

They will do it

Q: How will you know if they can read?

How did you know they could ride a bike?
How do parents know when a baby can walk? Talk?

MANY families' reading stories,
and gathered stats by Jo Isaac, PhD

Quote from SandraDodd.com/faq
photo by Michelle Tovaas Huelle

Keep it clean

Unschooling works best in a peaceful nest.

from a page on how much, if any, political angst/indignation a parent should collect and share—part of my response to a question, but there are others there:

If the parent can't solve the problem, it doesn't seem productive to me for "the problem" to be brought into the unschooling nest, as it were. Because negative emotions (fear, guilt, sorrow, helplessness) can prevent or hamper learning. Unschooling works best in an atmosphere of contentment and hopefulness.

There are thousands of sad stories and unfair situations, and botched court cases, and accidental deaths, and suicides and thefts and dognappings in the world every year. How many should you share with your children? I vote zero.

SandraDodd.com/politics
photo by Mary Lewis

Unique and interesting

Learning to respect that people are different makes us better people.

Assuming a child will (if you don't screw him all up) grow into a unique and interesting person with a lifetime of connections is a cornerstone of really successful unschooling.

Focus, Hobbies, Obsessions (chat transcript)
https://sandradodd.com/chats/bigbook/page186-191_focusHobbie.html

photo by Roya Dedeaux

"I told him already."

Not lately, but once upon a time...

...When the triangles come up on Math Arena, I have to think "isosceles" and then look for one (or "right" or "equilateral" or "obtuse" or whatever). Holly doesn't have to.

So my strewing plan was this: The next morning I would wake up early, make tea, and get out the geoboards. We have three. I would set up three basic triangles. When Holly got up and noticed these out, I would point at the hypotenuse on the right triangle. Either she would say "huh!" and "Would you make Malt-o-Meal?" and it would be over, or she might ask "And what are these other two?" Maybe it would be a couple of days of playing with triangles and maybe it will be one little "huh!"

That was my whole plan. I was going to be fine with however minor or glorious it was, because I knew she would have something to tie it to in her head, another dot to connect, and all that internal triangulation would be more valuable than any vocabulary study and formulaic recitation we could do.

But what happened was that I forgot to check back on my geo-board kid-trap. When I remembered in the early afternoon, Marty and Holly were working on fancy designs with colored rubber bands, and making "how many triangles?" puzzles for each other to count triangles within triangles. I came over and said, "That is a hypotenuse," and I pointed right at a green rubber hypotenuse. Holly said, "I know, I told him already." Not only had I missed my big chance to review it with her, she (at twelve) had already explained it to her brother (the fifteen year old).

SandraDodd.com/dot/hypotenuse
photo by Julie Daniel, of Adam, also not recent
(I couldn't find a geoboard photo)

The more we said yes...

Sandra/me, in 2003:

Sometimes one will say "I'm really not feeling good," as Holly did yesterday, and her need for juice, a blanket and some mom-comfort were real. She has a cold. So that was suddenly more important than her helping me get firewood, or whatever it was. I really don't remember anymore.

Nobody's ever said, "NO, I'm playing a video game, do it yourself." But they have said "When I get to a saving point."

The more we said yes to our children, the more willing they were to say yes to us. It worked like please and thank you did!

...on family life
photo by Kinsey Norris

Sensible, good and generous

FIRST read and understand and have a realistic grasp of the principles and start saying yes to your children for sensible and good and generous reasons you understand.
SandraDodd.com/yes

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SandraDodd.com/gradualchange
photo by Sarah S.

What could be better?

Being the sort of parent you wish you had had, and providing an environment you would like to have had as a child, is probably the easiest and most direct way to move toward being a good unschooler.

Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
photo by Karen James

Curiosity and flow

In early 2008, sharing some interesting connections that had happened at our house, I wrote:

That all 'just happened,' but it happened because we've been building up to it with our whole lives and our whole style of communicating and living together in a constant state of open curiosity.
. . . . Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

SandraDodd.com/connections/example
Photo by Cátia Maciel

Figuring out what helps

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Think about how you feel when you are "out of sorts." What will help you? What do you want from your family? I doubt it would help you for your husband to threaten, "If you behave badly again I'm going to take away your cell phone." You WANT to feel better, happier, nicer, right? What you need is support for doing what you, deep down, want for yourself.

Same with your kids. Lots of times that means to help them have the chance to be alone to recenter themselves.... Your kids don't KNOW yet what helps them—your role is to help them figure it out.

—Pam Sorooshian

Attentive parenting
photo by Julie Daniel

Rational perspective (cool!)

Deb Lewis wrote:

My mom was a kind person, but she was a negative person. Something was always wrong, something was always going to bring about the next big war, the end of the world, the destruction of human kind. As she saw it, we were all about to be thrown into chaos every day I can remember from my childhood. It wasn't good for me. I can tell you that it hurt my relationship with my mom, and made me resent, and mistrust her. Don't do that.

Even though you know there are worrying things in the world, even if you're sure you're right, every time you laser focus your attention on whatever those problems are, you're super heating your worry, and chances are you're losing rational perspective in all that steam.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/indignation
photo by Sandra Dodd

Ordinary moments

Karen James wrote:

Look for moments in the day that are good—especially the ordinary moments. Pause and appreciate them when you see them. Let them set the mood for how you move forward. Listen for pleasing sounds. A giggle. A child's breath. Your own heartbeat. Some music. Close your eyes, notice and appreciate those sounds. Find the ones that make you smile. Let your smile soften your mood.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/badmoment

longer version at Always Learning, November 26, 2015
photo by Alex Polikowsky

A Day of Wonder

Paula L. wrote, years ago:

I wondered if I should pick up the puzzle pieces from the carpet, since the puzzle was mostly ignored. Maybe it was too hard for my 3-year-old.

He started messing around with the pieces and excitedly fitting them together. He asked for my help and we had a blast finishing it.

As the day went on, Paula wondered many more things. It's beautiful writing.

I wondered if the day could have been more magical.

And I knew the answer was no.

—Paula L.

This beautiful, lyrical account...
SandraDodd.com/day/paulawonder
photo by Julie D.

Where do you look?

How do you apportion your patience, attention, courtesy, time, money, material help, respect?

Those sorts of decisions make you who you are.


SandraDodd.com/eyecontact
photo by Sandra Dodd

Calmly and peacefully

What I...do, is to help people live calmly and peacefully. It always interests me when people want me to stop doing that, to take it back, to say that indignation and fear are as good as joy and a feeling of abundance.

And it's not just my opinion, that anger and stress are unhealthy for people biologically, and socially. And it's not escapism or irresponsibility for me to say that when people feel grateful for things in their lives (food, running water, safety, roofs that don't leak) that they will have a happier moment, hour, day, sleep. I didn't make that up. It's self-evident AND backed up by even the slightest knowledge of biology and psychology.

SandraDodd.com/news
photo by Cátia Maciel