A problem with chess...

Some people play chess well,
     but it's not for everyone.

In 2006, a mom wrote:

I still can't play chess or behave well.

My response:

Hey!
I don't like chess because there's no storyline, no characters. 🙂 And when in the ancient days I was in school, my worst grades were always in conduct. I failed to make the Honor Society in high school not for grade average, but for... conduct. 🙂

I wouldn't have changed it. They rewarded dullness and conformity. They honored meekness.

— Sandra

SandraDodd.com/lists/excision
scanned image by Sandra Dodd
Scanner Art

Part of being human

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

Unschooling is at its core an understanding that learning is a part of being human. It is a recognition that school undermines that by saying that learning needs to be organised, structured and handed down. School argues that certain things are so hard to learn that they must be taught. If you unschool partway you are mixing up your messages. If you unschool math and science and reading but structure nutrition and media studies you are arguing that while a rich and engaging life may make the three "r"s obvious they won't help you to deal with the difficult studies of food and televisions and video games and computers.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/unschool/marginal
photo by Sarah S.

Help to relax

"What helped me relax was focusing on our relationship with each other and fostering GENUINE interest in each others' interests."

—Tina Bragdon

SandraDodd.com/learningfromourkids
photo by Holly Dodd

Tangents are the good parts

Even two people reading the same book are gleaning different things from it, or maybe one is just looking at the photos. Marty and I pulled down several books with sections about The Black Death of the 14th century. We weren't "reading the books," we were using them as reference materials for details and stories. But as sometimes happens, other interesting parts jumped out at us, just from having the books in our hands and using the index, or flipping through.

The tangents are the good parts.

SandraDodd.com/reallearning
photo by Sandra Dodd

Mix it up

From some ideas for proving unschooling gradually to an unknowing spouse:

Go "interdisciplinary" as much as you can so you can checklist two or three things at once. Songs about history. Recipes from other countries. Science that requires measurement (size/weight/temperature, whatever) and double-dip on your listings so that your daughter will NOT separate the subjects into separate categories as schooled kids tend to do. Don't use the "science/history" terms with her when you don't have to. Just on the paper your husband sees. . . . . Put your frustrated energy into a burst of mixing it up.

SandraDodd.com/reluctance
photo by Cátia Maciel

Easy because...

Teresa/Treesock wrote:

I thought, wow, what a perfect expression of humanity in this day and age unschooling is! We can get our hands on so much information, we can get to so many places, we can access so many people because of this very cool moment in history of the Internet, fairly easy transportation, and enough leisure time (versus time spent focused on surviving) to explore ideas and try skills and make friends and connections.

People have a lot of resources these days, and they are mostly very accessible; of course it makes sense that some of them would seek to use what's available to them when they want it, not just what the schools offer between 8 and 3. It possibly has never been easier to learn about as many different things from so many different sources as it is right now.

—Teresa/Treesock

SandraDodd.com/context
photo by Cátia Maciel

Beware discouragement

This just makes me shudder: "Come on people, we are all doing the best that we can."

It means "Stop trying. Trying to do better would be stupid."

Sometimes parents encourage other parents NOT to do better. Beware those 'friends.'

SandraDodd.com/better
photo by Lydia Koltai

Simple and very difficult

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

An unschooling parent needs to be fully present with their kids, sensitive to their kids' needs, and extremely respectful of their kids' interests. This is simple and very difficult, at the same time. It is so simple, it really asks so little of us, as parents, to pay attention to what "is" right in front of us. But it is very very difficult to do, sometimes, especially when what our kids are presenting to us appears to us to be negative or dull or unproductive.

—Pam Sorooshian
(more, with examples)

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Jihong Tang

Seeing what learning is

When a newcomer was very confused, Meredith Novak wrote:

The basis of unschooling comes from seeing learning as a substantial human drive and seeing that learning depends absolutely on the perceptions of the learner. The second part is what makes everything tricky - you can't control what someone else learns. At best you can work on seeing the world from another person's perspective and try to create an environment which helps that person learn.

It can help a lot to think about how people learn via their hobbies. In a way, that's what real life unschooling looks like: people learning through hobbies. It usually involves a lot of playing around - and the playing around parts are just as important to learning as the parts where you need to go look something up, or network with another hobbyist, or take a class or workshop to improve a skill.

One of the common parenting/educational myths is that it's possible to imbue children with "good habits" by making them do certain things over and over. It Seems like it Should work... but when you look at adults there's no evidence it does. The results are pretty random. It's not a strategy that helps people learn about the world.

—Meredith Meredith
July 2012

SandraDodd.com/meredithnovak
photo by Carolyn Vandenbusch Neves

Manipulation vs. persuasion

In a 2005 discussion, someone asked:

Where is the line drawn? (Because of the inherent power difference between parents and children, when is a parent persuading instead of manipulating?)

I responded:

It's different every time in each dyad. Some parents manipulate all the time. It is neither ideal nor illegal. Some parents never manipulate nor even learn to persuade, to the point that they are what is called "walked on" and marginalized by even their own family.

In the middle is a balance point and that will be different in different circumstances.

If I see one of my boys getting emotionally involved with a girl who seems desperately needy to have a baby to get away from her family, that would call for more commentary and discouragement than if he's liking a girl who seems calm and thoughtful and balanced. To declare in advance a rule about how I will be in future unseen circumstances would be to turn off my own freedom and judgment.

Living by principles and not by rules, as I try to do, having a rule about what is and what isn't violates my principles.

Sandra

literal meaning of "manipulation"
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Focus on others

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Wanting your family to be happy, joyful and learning seems a perfectly fine goal! But you won't get there by focusing on what you want. You'll get there by focusing on what they want.

What are your kids interested in? What do they want? How can you support that?

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/deschooling has a bit more of that, near the bottom
photo by Sandra Dodd

We really like it.

Paula L, in a brainstorming discussion about jobs:

And the list didn't mention cleaning and organizing businesses! My husband and I started our business, Simple Solutions, 16 months ago. You can do very well financially if you want to push the hours and even maybe hire employees. Right now we work a combined total of 40 hours a week—we take turns working so one of us is with Andy. We have no desire to make this a big venture. It's just the two of us. We will be raising our rate soon. We are not rich, but we are getting by just fine, better than ever before. And we have virtually NO overhead expenses, which is awesome. We're even getting a pretty good tax return.

Best of all, we really like it. 🙂

—Paula L

Stories about Jobs
photo by Karen James, of her workspace,
new wallpaint, her own organization

Simple fun

We just had our 33rd wedding anniversary last week. Someone wished me well on my page and said she hoped we did something fun. I said we had transplanted mint and pulled some weeds (or something), and she said (nicely, joking) she meant MORE fun. But maybe the way to stay happily married for many years is to have fun transplanting mint...

—Sandra Dodd
(married over 41 years now
and that mint is still happy)

SandraDodd.com/laundry
photo by Sandra Dodd
of some of that mint, off season

It's fall, today. In early summer, that mint is thick and happy. We planted it around three or four rocks. Over the years Keith has added more cool rocks.

Tricked by "knowledge"

Meredith Novak wrote:

A great deal of parenting "wisdom" is made up of things "everyone knows" because everyone repeats them back and forth, over and over. Like "you have to go to school to learn" and "children need rules". Some of the things "everyone knows" are completely wrong, but because "everyone knows" them, it's very, very difficult for people to change their attitudes even in the presence of evidence to the contrary.

It was really shocking for me to discover just how much of what I "knew" was a result of that repetition. I accounted myself an intelligent, thoughtful person, with strong "alternative" viewpoints, but most of what I thought I knew about parenting was based in a kind of cultural conditioning. The ideas in my head weren't my own. That's humbling.

—Meredith

SandraDodd.com/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd

How (and why) to help kids

I would help my kids with anything they needed help with, if I had the time and patience. When I didn't do so, I wasn't being the best mom I knew I could be.

I read video game directions to them just as I read books to them or song lyrics or cereal boxes or menus. I assisted them in the world until they chose to function without me. They still do ask for help sometimes, of other sorts, because they trust me to help, so it was an unforeseen investment in the future of our relationships.

Holly played a game called Harvest Moon quite a bit before she could read. I made her some charts to help, and I would come and read, and from printouts of internet hints and details, I made her a booklet so she could decide which crops to plant, and printed out a calendar of the Harvest Moon year, because there are seasons and festivals that factor in to decisions sometimes.

SandraDodd.com/panel
Unschooling Panel Follow-Up (HSC 2007)

photo by Sandra Dodd
of my kids' actual things

Depth and breadth

Sink-Like-a-Stone Method:

Instead of skimming the surface of a subject or interest, drop anchor there for a while. If someone is interested in chess, mess with chess. Not just the game, but the structure and history of tournaments. How do chess clocks work? What is the history of the names and shapes of the playing pieces? What other board games are also traditional and which are older than chess? If you're near a games shop or a fancy gift shop, wander by and look at different chess sets on display. It will be like a teeny chess museum. The interest will either increase or burn out—don't push it past the child's interest.

When someone understands the depth and breadth of one subject, he will know that any other subject has breadth and depth.

From "Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers"
SandraDodd.com/checklists
scanner image by Sandra Dodd

How does it balance out?

When children choose their foods, they will choose things you didn't expect!

SandraDodd.com/eating/balance
photo by Sandra Dodd

Gently untangling "kind and gentle"

Part of something longer (linked below):

If your childhood abuse and neglect have left a lot of closed-off areas inside you, it would help to get therapy—even light help, to get you started on looking, a bit at a time, at what happened, and looking with a compassionate eye—compassion for the child you were, compassion for the adults who might have done better if they could have, if they knew more, if they had support for being kind and gentle. Then that would help you spread "kind and gentle" into the present, while you were gently untangling the snarls of your childhood memories.

The clearer your mind is of trauma and fear, the more easily your thoughts can flow, and connections can be made.

SandraDodd.com/awareness
photo by Sandra Dodd

Laundry is love

Summer MacDonald wrote:

Laundry is love. I love each person whose pants I am washing and folding. I love each meal I have shared with my family, that needed cloths and towels to wipe up the spills afterwards.

I love seeing my daughters choose their clothes each day and the combinations of colors and patterns they choose to express themselves and their body confidence. When I wash those combinations, I remember the joy they felt that day and I smile.

I love watching "special shows" with my eldest daughter on the night of laundry day (that are too mature for her sisters) while I fold pants, shirts, towels and match the socks. We talk about deeper topics and laugh about deeper jokes.

Laundry is the little thing in my week that represents the bigger beauty of my life that is found in the simplest things.

—Summer MacDonald

Can laundry be fun?
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sorting through examples

An online friend, in response to a photo of my family, when I was a teen (me in the middle with stripes):

I'm looking at that pretty young girl and thinking "does she have any idea just how many lives she is going to touch for the better?"

I responded:

There are people in that photo who said and did things, before that, and after that, that became part of my motivation and direction. There were bad examples, and good examples. And not just them, but other relatives, friends, friends' parents, teachers, strangers, authors.

Everyone can, should, sort through the bad examples and good examples around them and move choice by choice toward whatever their own images of "better" might be.

That's all. 🙂

---

On Facebook, for those with access, with explanations and commentary from ten years back, 2014

For those without facebook: SandraDodd.com/better

I don't know who took the photo; sorry.
We were in Roby, Texas, probably 1968.