Affecting emotions

Connecting and learning

Kelly Schultz, at the end of a longer account of learning from Barbie

Everywhere we go, we meet women who have loved their Barbies, young babysitting-age girls, grandmas with collector editions, women at the toy store commenting how they still love to get their Barbies out. Barbie-lovers are everywhere! Who knows when this shared interest will help them connect with someone down the road?

Who would have imagined - design, construction, dramatic narrative, social skills, a little bit of history mixed in - it's really a wonderful learning experience!

—Kelly Shultz

SandraDodd.com/barbielearning
photo by Karen James
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More peaceful and fun

Debbie Harper wrote:

When the environment is contributing to a child's anxiety, improve the environment, rather than seeking to improve the child.

If you make your home-life more peaceful and fun, anxiety will lessen without any need to venture away from unschooling into the land of rewards and punishments.

. . . .
Working to make the home more peaceful and happy has helped lots of families heal, and flourish with unschooling.

—Debbie Harper

SandraDodd.com/anxiety
photo by Roya Dedeaux

A good grasp of unschooling

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

How we lived was completely unrelated to school and no longer in reaction to school, once I'd gotten a good grasp of unschooling.

—Pam Sorooshian

original
or
at Always Learning
extended Sorooshians, years after that writing;
photographer unidentified

Thought, emotion and awareness

When someone recommends turning full on toward the child, that means don't keep reading your newspaper or your computer screen. Pause the video. Put down the gardening tools. It doesn't mean stare at the child until he finishes his story. It means to be WITH him, with him in thought, and with him in emotion if needed, and with him in awareness.

SandraDodd.com/eyecontact
photo by Lydia Koltai

Realizing you have a choice

I accidentally deleted a post, and am replacing it. I also fixed a typo. It might go out by e-mail again, and I'm sorry! At least you have a photo of me dressed as a tree, and I hope that will make you feel better. —Sandra

A mom named Cat wrote:

There seem to be some people in the world who do not believe that they have choices—instead feeling that there are some number of things that they *have* to do. (And that their children will *have* to do).

The same people seem to me to tend not to think of "joy" as a sufficient goal, either—maybe the two attitudes are related?

Maybe until people realize that they CAN choose, they are already constrained and stopped—without even the benefit of having made the conscious choice to stop. I am coming to think that realizing that *one has a choice* a necessary prerequisite to ever "getting it" about radical unschooling.

—Cat

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by photo by Ravi B., of Hema and Sandra

Detours and side trips

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Unschooling is sort of "messy" in that there isn't a "plan" and kids can often go in one direction for a while and then seem to come to a dead end and turn around and go off in another direction. It isn't like a kid who studies certain high school subjects—a couple of years of science, four years of English, a year of American History, and so on—and then goes on to sort of do that same thing in college—follow a predetermined path. Unschooled kids often "meander" in their lives. They proceed in fits and starts. They detour. But those side trips can turn into their main life's journey when you least expect it. 🙂 And they all add up to make the child into the person they are becoming.

—Pam Sorooshian

Games...Rich Life
photo by Sarah S.

Doing and thinking

Learning to see learning is a process. It's part of deschooling, for the parents.

When learning starts to show, in its natural state, you will see that children are processing what they do and what they think about what they've done. They'll be making connections to everything else in their history and surroundings, to other experiences and imaginings.

When unschooling begins to really flow, the process of learning is the processing of experiences and connections.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Nina Haley

Cycles

Yesterday I posted about how I got my kids into grocery stores, from parking lots, safely.

While seeing whether the quote had been used before, I found a similar report, with this comment, from me:

Sometimes I would say "Hold on to something! I'm going to hold on to Marty!" so that it wasn't just a thing 'kids had to do,' but was a safety condition of crowdedness.

Now that I'm older, I still sometimes want to hold on to one of my kids when we're out, but now it's because I'm safer if they help me. Holly has held my hand crossing streets just this year, and she's 21. Marty and Kirby have helped me down stairs and off of steep curbs.

It's not just for children.

I need even more help now, nine years later. Sometimes I help a grandchild or two.
Hold on to something (third comment)
photo by Brie Jontry, 2016, before a Halloween party
She and Holly were irritating maids, and I was a scraggly cat.

Honest and true

If you offer service with the hope of reward or praise or indebtedness, it will create resentment in you and in those who received the service. If you offer service without sending the bill, anything others say or do will be an honest expression of gratitude, not the last-minute submission of the bare minimum payment for services rendered.

A "thank you" that's scripted is just noise. A "thank you" you didn't expect is true communication.

Serving Others as a Gift
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp (or someone with her camera)

Swirling and wonderful

Pam Sorooshian described what she called "a very basic tenet of unschooling":

Surround the child with a swirling, wonderful, exciting, stimulating and rich environment and the child is naturally capable of learning from it.

—Pam Sorooshian

The quote is from my page on "Talking to Babies," but a better next read is the list of Principles of Unschooling by Pam Sorooshian
photo by Sandra Dodd, of unschooled siblings in Queensland
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Peace might not be so quiet

In English there's a phrase, an idiom, a lump of words: "peace and quiet." People speak wistfully of "peace and quiet" as though one requires the other, but I haven't found that to be true in practice.

Is quiet always peace? I can think of lots of times I held my breath to be quiet, out of fear. I've seen families where people passed through the house quietly, out of nervous avoidance. Sometimes "Quiet!" can be very scary and dangerous. Some families live in fear and quiet, not peace and quiet. Quiet anxiety is not peace at all!

A Loud Peaceful Home
photo by Alex Polikowsky
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Wait; think; choose

Here's an idea that will work with just about every aspect of life:

Every time you make a decision, wait until you've thought of two choices and choose the better one.

It seems simple, but I was surprised, when I thought of that way to ratchet the quality of life up, to find how many times I was acting without really thinking.

SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
photo by Holly Dodd
The text of this post has been used three times before, starting in 2011. It might be the best advice ever, though, and could be read every day. This, or one of those other three, might be worth printing out and sticking on a fridge or mirror. (The link will show all four, or someday maybe five.)

If you give a sheep a cookie...

This photo is from another year.

I'm glad the sheep had a cookie.                    It's glorious that his mom got a photo of it.                             I'm grateful that she let me share it here with all of you.                                              🎵And glory shone around.🎵

---

photo by Christa McCowan

Learn Nothing Day starts at midnight

Learn Nothing Day begins circling the world soon, from one midnight to another, from New Zealand through Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, India, Kuwait, Moldova, South Africa, western Europe... a little lull across the Atlantic to Brazil, while the others wake up and see how well they can do at not learning for just one day. A holiday. Un-"School break."



New Art from Rotterdam, 2018
new photos underlaid by Saskia Ruder
click to enlarge
Dear reader:
If you are near the areas listed above and I left you out, let me know.

Hundreds and thousands

Say "yes" hundreds of happy, surprising-to-the-kids times, about whether they can stay up a little later, or have another cookie, or visit the neighbors, or jump off the porch. Hearing "YES!" is a huge thrill to kids who have been told "no" thousands of times.


That advice is about how parent can move gradually toward unschooling,
rather than jump too quickly.
SandraDodd.com/gradualchange
photo by Chelsea Thurman Artisan
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Conversations—have good ones!

Conversations with a parent are natural learning fodder. Natural learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum or in isolation. Those things aren’t so natural. 😊

In my experience, unschooling parents are more likely to say too much than not enough.

Written in a discussion, as a follow-up to a post called "Moonrise"
photo by Kirby Dodd
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Diligently and happily and well

By unschooling diligently and happily and well for a long time, families and people have sometimes been changed.

SandraDodd.com/change/
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Elevation

Learning to live better with children makes one a better person. Being patient with a child creates more patience. Being kind to a child makes one a kinder person.


Simply put...
photo by Chrissy Florence

Monstrous fun

Dress-up and make-believe help children learn. Assisting children in their dress-up gives parents opportunities to be skillful and chillful.

Relax and play!

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Roya Dedeaux
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