Playing with them

PLAY with your kids. Playing can be the single best way to really get to know your kids. Get down on the floor, follow their lead, and PLAY with them.

—Lyle Perry

How to NOT Screw Up Your Kids
photo by Kinsey Norris, "Rat Town"

Change one thing.

Change a moment. Change one touch, one word, one reaction. If you try to change your entire self so that next year will be better, you might become overwhelmed and discouraged and distraught.

Change one thing. Smile one sweet smile. Say one kind thing.

If that felt good, do it again. Rest. Watch. Listen. You're a parent because of your child. Your child. You should be his parent, or her parent. Not a generic parent, or a hypothetical parent. Be your child's parent in each moment that you interact with her.

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Jennie Gomes

Curiosity and learning

One of the highest points of any life is seeing, touching, and considering something new and different.

When considering what to do, where to go, what to bring into your home, think of things your children can experience directly, thoughtfully. Don't ask them to report, past conversational exchange. They might want to think about it privately and come to some of their own conclusions. They might think about it for the rest of their lives, if you let it be sweet, and their own.

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers ←the section on Five Senses
photo by Amber Ivey

Options and possibilities

Jennifer Wells wrote:

Sit with your child and notice what they love. Offer options and possibilities and help them do as much as they want of what they love. Let them explore, refuse, experiment, and leave aside—in that process they will learn and learn and learn!

—Jennifer Wells

SandraDodd.com/being
(a directory page about ways to be with, and for, children)

photo by Amber Ivey

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

Smiling about Smiling

Find something to smile about.

Beginners, aim for once per day—one extra smile.

More experienced unschoolers, raise that to several a day, and then once per hour.

Before long, you'll be smiling easily and more often than you could count.

You'll know you're significantly happier when just the thought of counting smiles will make you smile.

Sparkly Unschooling
photo by Karen James
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Service as a gift

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

It's amazing to see doing for others as a gift. It takes the whole angst about servitude away

There isn't any servitude in it when it's a gift.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/service
photo by Amber Ivey
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Invisible growth

You can't see what a child is learning. You can't know for sure what she knows. She probably doesn't know what she's learning either, but all the little pieces will be connected to new information as time passes. I don't usually know what I'm learning, until I look back and see how my thoughts and experiences crossed, connected and unfolded to bring me to today.

You can't see it all
photo by Elaine Santana

Playful lives

My three children grew up around adults who played, not just putting on feasts and tournaments and buildingmedieval-looking camps, but also playing strategy board games and mystery games, having costume parties when it wasn't even Halloween, and making up goofy song parodies on long car rides.

Maybe because I kept playing I had an advantage, but I don't think it is beyond more serious adults to regain their playfulness.


SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Changes in the parents

I think the most common changes parents have reported are that they are happier and calmer, and have become clearer in their thought processes. The "reports" I hear are often in online discussions, so that might explain the latter. When people help each other work through confusions in thinking, writing becomes clearer.

Slack and other rare and priceless things
photo by Elaine Santana

From the inside...

Debbie Regan wrote:

"From the outside, unschooling may look like no chores, no bedtimes, no education, no discipline, no structure, no limits, etc. But from the inside, it's about learning, relationships, living with real parameters, partnership, navigating turbulence, making connections, joy, curiosity, focus, enthusiasm, options, following trails, fun, growing understanding, opening doors..."

—Debbie Regan

the original
photo by Kathryn Robles
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Just play

I've decided it's not so much the "what" that we do, but the attitude in which we do it. The whole wide world is open, just play and enjoy it. —Jenny Cyphers

"What (if anything) should I be doing to help..."
photo by Linda Malcor

Finding a social spot

Humans are social animals, and learn in mixed-age groups, when they learn naturally. A family can create that natural learning environment, or can fail to create it. :-/ Being around other people, though, IF AND WHEN a child wants to learn and is encouraged by parents to learn how to be considerate and sociable, can be a good place to learn "manners"—ways to behave politely.

In school, children are still social animals with the need to identify who might help them, and what their role is within the social structure. The social structure being unnaturally 20+ kids the same age, they figure out who are the leaders and the "young" and they act in accordance with their instincts in an unnatural setting. More adults to—teens, and young adults, and middle-aged, and elderly, behaving in natural real-world ways. TV is better for that than school is. Ideally, a rich unschooled life *IN* the real world is better than either.



photo by Julie D

I can't find where I wrote that, up there, but three people shared it in 2012,
and I still think it's true. —Sandra

What does it take?

Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch. We cannot inject unschooling into anyone. Unschooling is not accomplished by joining an unschooling discussion. It takes time, gradual and increased understanding, effort, desire, attention, change.

SandraDodd.com/understanding
photo by Linda Malchor

Gradually, humorously and merrily

It's not good for a family that's had rules to drop them suddenly. It confuses the kids, and robs the mom of a hundred chances to go "Hmmm.... Sure! Why not?" and keeps the kids from those hundred joyous moments.

Better to move toward it somewhat gradually, humorously and merrily than to just say one day "Eat anything and everything, and never go to sleep." That's not comfortable.

The quote is from Principles of Unschooling?
but it's about Gradual Change.
photo by Kinsey Norris

Curiosity and beauty

You can't see beauty without wanting to see some. Once you're looking through curiosity-tinted glasses, you will see a thousand interesting things.


(a little longer, on facebook)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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What "is" isn't all.

Words, ideas, reality... it's fun to rearrange and examine what we see, and claim, and name. It's good, sometimes, when kids can do "real things"=—the things adults do. Useful things, maybe dangerous things. Historical things. Traditional methods, or modern high tech, or what was high tech in the industrial revolution. Science, history, language, technology, materials, mystery and manufacturing—revel in your knowledge and discoveries! Let life be exciting.

Most things are many things
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Share the glow

One of the best parts of unschooling (of deschooling, really) is reviewing childhood hurts and puzzlements, and NOT passing them on. By being kind to a child, we can feel that kindness for our own childhood selves, and share the glow.

Being your child's PARTNER, not his adversary
photo by Holly Dodd
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Now and then

Today I have seen two of my grown children. Keith saw all three, but not in the same place. We have three grandchildren. I saw two, today, but not at my house.

When your children are still young and with you, once in a while I hope you will look at them all, and maybe catch a photo. If you have one child who lives at home, breathe that in and know that it might not always be so.

Moving away or traveling, going to university, getting married, having children—those things are natural and fine. Time goes forward and people spread out. Today's reality is not what your younger self could have known. More waves of future will come along.

Find peace and appreciation and share it with your children.



Thoughts on growth
photo by Lydia Koltai

Avoiding problems

What else can be a problem with unschooling?
Trying to save time and money; skimping on attention.

I've done this, "Not now," or "please not today." But what do you tell yourself about that? If it's "Good, no problem," that's bad, and a problem.

Generosity begets generosity
photo by Roya Dedeaux