Exploring largely

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

If you're not already an interesting person with interesting information to share with your children, then you'll have to make an effort to be more interesting. The way to do that is to develop your own sense of curiosity, wonder, fascination, and enthusiasm.

It might have to seem a little artificial, for a while, if it isn't natural to a parent to just "be" this way.

— Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/curiosity
photo by Rosie Moon

Plain old or all dressed up

Sometimes a table might be formally set for a special meal, or decked out with a birthday cake, and other times it has a week's worth of mail and a forgotten art project.

People will doll up with formal clothes and the best of hair and make-up, or be set head-to-toe for a sport, performance, or a cosplay event.

A house, or neighborhood, might be decorated for a festival, and a week later have too much sunshine, and trash blowing down the street.

This happens with learning, with relationships, and in families, too. A special movie night isn't the same as whatever's on and helping fold the laundry so there's space on the couch. What looks like a quiet, boring afternoon might have a lot of learning under the surface.

A Typical Unschooling Day Described two ways
photo by Janine Davies

Special-occasion food

You can play with your food and eat it too.

Related for food images to
How Unschooled Kids Watch TV
and maybe to Easy Food Art
photo by Sarah S.

"What do you mean?"

Concerning the "socialization" question...

It might be useful to ask conversationally, "What do you mean?" It's very likely they don't know what they mean. It's a question asked out of very vague fear. If they have an answer, say "Can you give me an example?" It probably won't take much to lead them to see that they haven't really thought much about the topic.

Some home educating families feel that they're on trial, or at least being tested. If someone asks you something like "What about his social growth?" it's not an oral exam. You're not required to recite.

You could say "We're not worried about it" and smile, until you develop particular stories about your own child. It's easier as your children get older and you're sharing what you *know* rather than what you've read or heard.

SandraDodd.com/socialization
(listen there about socializing vs. socialization)
photo by Nina Haley

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

The heart of unschooling

a mom named Tracey wrote:

"I am finding that it is when I can most fully let go of what 'should be' and most fully embrace 'what is' that I glimpse the joy and connection which is the heart of unschooling."

SandraDodd.com/spirituality
photo by Janine Davies
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Circles

Today I have a game for you to play with your family, or friends, or me online somewhere. Think of circular things, like a wreath, like a wedding ring, a crown or a halo. Think of them in art, architecture, cooking, machinery (ancient or modern), sewing, astronomy, games, baskets, botany, hats, Venn diagrams. Look around with the eyes of a child, of a spy, a painter or an anthropologist. Think of their symbolism, realities, of naturally-forming circles, and do it today, but don't stop doing it when today is over.
SandraDodd.com/connections
wreath and photo by Janine Davies
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Simple joys

If you practice noticing and experiencing joy, if you take a second out of each hour to find joy, your life improves with each remembrance of your new primary goal. You don't need someone else to give you permission, or to decide whether or not what you thought gave you joy was an acceptable source of enjoyment.

SandraDodd.com/joy
photo by Kirby Dodd
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Get witnesses

One suggestion for moving toward more peaceful parenting:

Get witnesses.That's one reason people join support groups and confess to their friends what they're doing, because you've told somebody what your intention is. You've told them what your problem is and what your intention is and now you have witnesses and for some people that helps. Sometimes it needs to be an imaginary witness, sometimes it needs to be a real witness. But maybe, if it will help you, imagine that the friend that you most want to impress is there and would you do it if they were there.

SandraDodd.com/parentingpeacefully
photo by Sandra Dodd
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For now

In response to questions about what unschoolers can say to doubters and critics right in that crucial moment, I wrote:

Some things I've said:

"This is working for now. If it stops working, we'll do something else."

"Thanks. I'll think about that." (Or you could say "We thought about that," or "I think about that all the time.")

Mostly people want to know you heard what they said, and that you have thought about what they're suggesting. It doesn't hurt to say that you have, or that you will.

SandraDodd.com/school/say
photo by Sandra Dodd of one of the Diamond Jubilee beacons
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The other things flow in around it.

(Below is most of my response to a complicated question about the balance of power and relationships, citing Bruno Bettelheim about A.S. Neill, and the assumption that unschoolers were libertarians:)

I've unschooled for over twenty years, and am not a "libertarian," and the unschooling ideals I've aimed for involved learning. They had little to do with Neill or Bettleheim (though I did like reading Bettleheim on fairy tales), but had to do with John Holt, attachment parenting, and observation of other families doing similar things.

Being a child's partner rather than his adversary makes the balance of knowledge unimportant. Nowadays my children drive me around, help me out, read small print and get things off high shelves. For many years, I did those things for them.

SandraDodd.com/partners

SandraDodd.com/balance

Learning first, and partnership and being present close after, and all the other things flow in around it.

photo by Sandra Dodd, of a well dressing in the village of Tissington
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Being a safe place

Make yourself your child's safest place in the world, and many of your old concerns will just disappear.

Instead of requiring that my kids had to hold my hand in a parking lot, I would park near a cart and put some kids in right away, or tell them to hold on to the cart (a.k.a. "help me push", so a kid can be between me and the cart). And they didn't have to hold a hand. There weren't enough hands. I'd say "Hold on to something," and it might be my jacket, or the strap of the sling, or the backpack, or something.

I've seen other people's children run away from them in parking lots, and the parents yell and threaten. At that moment, going back to the mom seems the most dangerous option.

Make yourself your child's safest place in the world, and many of your old concerns will just disappear.


The Big Book of Unschooling
page 67 (71, second edition)
photo by Sandra, on Diwali, in Bangalore
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