One tricky moment

Deb wrote:

If we recognize a difficult moment as one tricky moment in a day of potential great moments we're more likely to have a better attitude all day long.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/mistakes
photo by Irene Adams

Don't make it weird.

For unschooling to work in that solid, twelve-or-twenty-year way, it should be about kids, and learning, and relationships and peace, not about being weird for the sake of weird, or being anti-government.

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Cass Kotrba

Nurturing growth

Each tree grows from a single seed, and when a tree is growing in your yard what is the best thing you can do for it? You can nurture it and protect it, but measuring it doesn't make it grow faster. Pulling it up to see how the roots are doing has never helped a tree a bit. What helps is keeping animals from eating it or scratching its bark, making sure it has water, good soil, shade when it needs it and sun when it needs it, and letting its own growth unfold peacefully. It takes years, and you can't rush it.

So it is with children. They need to be protected from physical and emotional harm. They need to have positive regard, food, shade and sun, things to see, hear, smell, taste and touch. They need someone to answer their questions and show them the world, which is as new to them as it was to us. Their growth can't be rushed, but it can be enriched.

SandraDodd.com/growth
photo by Brie Jontry

Broadening horizons

From responses to a charge that unschooling couldn't broaden a child's horizons:

As to broadening horizons, sitting at a table with an assigned book is less likely to do that than a life filled with going, doing, seeing, touching, tasting, hearing and communicating honestly from inside while learning. Children DO have questions when they're in the process of learning things. It doesn't broaden horizons for a book to tell them which ten questions were the RIGHT ones to have at the end of each chapter.

—Sandra Dodd, 2004

Related ideas: SandraDodd.com/connections/
photo by Irene Adams, from her front yard

Seasons

Calm yourself with the awareness of what's important.

Being Home
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Fun and interesting

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

My motivation for homeschooling was for learning to be fun and interesting whether first grade or twelfth grade.

As a learner I tend to absorb whatever runs by me whether it's from teachers droning or an engaging movie. That's why I did well in school. But it made no sense that school needed to be dull when outside of school was fascinating. I knew there had to be a better—funner—way to learn.

So that was my primary motivation for looking into homeschooling and ultimately choosing unschooling.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/hsc/interviews/joyce
photo by Cátia Maciel

Being available during "school hours"

Responses to concerns posted by nervous parents:

Not having a high school diploma didn't keep my always unschooled daughter out of college, AND she got her first paid job BECAUSE she was unschooled - her dance studio needed someone to cover the afternoon classes of a teacher going on maternity leave, none of the regular teachers were available for that time and the older assistants were in school. She's been employed by them ever since.

It's an interesting twist. 🙂

Deborah in Illinois

---

Marty has worked "during school hours" since he turned fifteen, and was offered a fulltime job just before turning 17. None of this keeps him from learning, from doing lots of things with other people, nor will it keep him from the option of college. He's working 6:30a.m. to 3:00 M-F. Kinda like school hours, for the first time in his life. 🙂

Sandra in New Mexico

Both those former teens are grown now. Marty's oldest child turns seven today.

SandraDodd.com/teens/
photo by Sandra Dodd

Generosity and appreciation

Holly drove me to a neighborhood near her house where she has seen peacocks, roaming. We spotted four, but this one was up high in the sunshine.

Schuyler Waynforth once drove me where she was pretty sure we would see kangaroos. There were many; I was in awe.

I have driven visitors to see prairie dogs, and to find tumbleweeds.

What is commonplace for one person might be a memorable moment of beauty for others.

SandraDodd.com/happiness
photo by Sandra Dodd

Pets

Many unschoolers have reported changed feelings about pets, and successes in extending newfound principles to animal friends and companions.

SandraDodd.com/pets
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a stile in England
for humans and dogs

(Officially, humans over and dogs through, though I'm sure young children love going through. This was not farmland.)

If mathematics is easy for a person...

Disclaimers: Unschooling doesn't ensure mathematical ability.

I wrote this before Marty got a degree in economics. They were 18 or older before taking any classes, and only needed to pay for the books.

---

My kids all caught up with formal math in a semester or two of community college. Marty did up to calculus. Kirby only took one class but makes use of math all the time in his work and play, and is good with money and loans and banking and all that practical life stuff.

Holly took three classes, I think. Maybe two. Liked it; it wasn't difficult. There were people in class with her bemoaning the difficulty, and they had been in school for twelve years or more, taking math classes.

---

That was written in 2014. Their paid employment and their hobbies, since then, have involved some or all of logistics, statistics, financial accounting, coding/programming, inventory and cash handling. What they learned in class was the notation used to communicate mathematical ideas "on paper" in our culture.

Some of their facility might have been inherited genetically from their mathish dad. That's fair, too.

SandraDodd.com/math/schoolmath
photo by Shawn Smythe Haunschild

Doing (not not-doing)

If a person's life is compartmentalized into learning and not learning, then they have a part of them that is "not-learning."

"Not learning"
photo by Karen James

Describing unschooling

Rippy wrote:

If parents of school children ask, I usually say our homeschooling is pretty eclectic. I may give certain examples such as visiting interesting places, doing experiments, playing 'learning' games, reading stories, having conversations of events that happened in the past, talking about famous people, making things, hanging out with friends, etc. Sometimes I share with them a detailed description of an interesting day that we've had, especially if it has impressive signs of learning that they will recognize.

—Rippy Dusseldorp

SandraDodd.com/response
photo by Kelvin Dodd

Penguins and Saturn

Deb Lewis wrote:

I love the internet! For a family like ours, who couldn’t afford to travel much, the internet is wondrous. It lets us see, hear, and learn about anything we want. We can watch a volcano erupting in Costa Rica, penguins doing penguin things in Antarctica, and see Earth from Saturn’s orbit all without leaving town, or navigating the asteroid belt. I’m a fan!

—Deb Lewis

from "Montana to Italy via Godzilla"
SandraDodd.com/hsc/interviews/deblewis
photo by Theresa Larson
of a sunrise in southern New Mexico

Different in the dark

Things look different in the dark. It's understandable for a kid to be afraid of the dark. A little explore might be fun, though, sometimes, with flashlights, or with a camera.

SandraDodd.com/dark
photo by Sandra Dodd

Natural forces

With the right set-up, wind or water or sun can create power. Natural things can cause big changes.

When unschooling is working well, questions, conversations, jokes or songs bring powerful thoughts and profound changes.

With the right set-up everyday life can create power.

SandraDodd.com/t/learning
photo by Shawn Smythe Haunschild

"Chair-o-planes"

Help children live playful lives by being a playful adult. Play with words, and ideas; play with shape, form, and color. Let children see you smile.

Steam Fair Sights and Sounds

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Sandra Dodd

Toys and tools

There are machines, conveyances, tools, that are so beautiful that people make models of them, or working toys for children. Front-end loaders are that beautiful, to those who need or use or have watched them work.

Tractors can be that, or combines, or just the truck to pull other tools, plows, trailers.

If a child, or an adult, can get excited about a piece of equipment, try to take time to watch those machines in action, if you get a chance. Not too close; from a safe distance, or from inside your car, if you can. When you're out, find people digging, building, repairing—replacing signs with a crane, or going up in a cherry-picker to change streetlight bulbs—do it for your kids or for yourself.

Mom's Interests Enriching Kids' Lives
photo by Holly Dodd

Options over rules

Probably some families make rules so that their kids will learn to follow rules. It's possible. Too much practice can kill the joy, though. Being forced to play an instrument can create an adult who doesn't even bother to own one of the instruments he knows how to play, because how he's out of school he doesn't "have to." If someone made me practice eating before every meal, I wouldn't be very hungry.

So here I have kids who can sleep as long as they want, who set their alarms and get up; who have all kinds of clothes and no rules, who dress well and appropriately to the situation; who don't have to come home but they DO come home.

Something important is happening.


SandraDodd.com/rules
photo by Karen James

Stepping away from rules

To a question about how to move from rules to principles and choices:

Gradually, without fanfare, be more positive and more supportive of her desires and requests.

Here is an antidote to your no-speed-limits fear. It's called "The Beautiful Park" by Robyn Coburn. It's about people getting off bicycles to walk. I think it could replace your fearful background with something gentle and peaceful.

Read about why, and what others have seen.

Try it a little.

Don't expect her not to think you're crazy at first; wait a while.

Watch her reaction. Feel your own thoughts. Lay your fears out to dry in the air and sunshine.

SandraDodd.com/gradualchange
photo by Cally Brown

Using tools

When I was a kid, humans used tools and that made us human, but that's no longer "the truth." Chimpanzees can use a leaf as a sponge to gather water out of a hole. They will lick a stick and put it down a hole to collect insects (termites? ants? I don't know what). They will move things to climb up on to get something they can't reach.

Marty says he thinks maybe elephants will pick up a stick to knock something down that's higher than their trunks. If they haven't, they should.

So what, these days, are "tools"? My computer? Google? Wikipedia? Blogger.com? My new glasses? That electric teakettle I'm about to go and heat water with?

We talk about parenting tools, and people adding to their toolboxes, and those are all in the realm of thought (and action proceeding from thought, but without physical tools).

"Tools" (on the Thinking Sticks blog)

Little Tools for an Epic Life
photo by Amy Milstein