Slowly and solidly

Unschooling is difficult. It's a luxury. It's not a guarantee, it's not a right, it's not a product anyone can sell you, it's not a religion you can join, it's not a club you can join and then "be one." It's something to learn slowly and solidly and something to create and maintain within a family, within the home.

SandraDodd.com/cautions
photo by Karen James

Things are connected

Jen Keefe wrote:

I’ve found it fascinating (I don’t use that word lightly) how many different things are connecting for me, as an adult, through learning to unschool well. I didn’t understand how things connected from school. Wars, geography, fractions, the Russian language... it was all individual stuff. I moved dutifully from one stand alone period to the next trying to do the bare minimum work not because I was lazy or stupid but because none of it *made sense*.

Now, daily almost, I’ll watch or read or hear or be talking about something and I’ll think "oh my gosh! That’s connected!" Or, "That’s why that happened there."

—Jen Keefe

SandraDodd.com/jenkeefe
photo by Kristin Cleague

Thought, emotion, awareness

from a discussion on eye contact:

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.
. . . .
I think being side by side with someone is a good way to focus attention away from eyes yet still on them, so they can speak without the intimidation and confusion of your face right in front of them.

Leaning on a Truck is an article about communicating with children in that way.

SandraDodd.com/eyecontact
photo by Wesli Dykstra
in North America

but it's a lot like yesterday's photo which was taken
two hemispheres away

Sensible and sensitive

Exploring the world (including food) needs to be done in a supported and supportive way, in an open and non-fearful way, in a sensible and sensitive way.

SandraDodd.com/foodreligion
photo by Sandra Dodd

Carefully-thought-out ideas

It's easy for people to "yeah, but..." themselves way off track. It's harder to relax into considering that maybe those who did successfully deschool, and who unschooled well for years, are offering carefully-thought-out ideas for very good reasons.

SandraDodd.com/stages/materials
photo by Karen James

Lessons and pressure won't help.

Each person who learns to read learns almost suddenly, at some point. It happens whether he's in school or not. Before that point, the words are scribbles. After that point, he sees a word and knows what it means, without sounding it out, without looking it up. The scribbles turn to words. . . . .
Before a child can read, He Cannot Read. Lessons and pressure won't help. It's not making sense yet. One day the marks become words, IF he has not been pressured and shamed, rushed and blamed.

Some Thoughts About Later Reading
photo by Andrea Quenneville

The heart and mind of the parent

Robin Bentley wrote:

Radical unschooling (and the "radical" means "from the root") is all about mindset and changing beliefs and relationships for the better. Some people approach it from letting go of "academics" first, trying to see learning in everything. But if beliefs about learning and kids and partnership are changed first, then unschooling will proceed more smoothly. The real work is done in the heart and mind of the parent.

—Robin Bentley

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Fresh breeze of new thoughts

De wrote:

OH! Brainstorming ideas, treating your children like you would your spouse or friends, *OH!!*

I knew that. Now I *know* that. Or maybe I understand it with more depth. It still amazes me how a few words on a page—sometimes entirely (seemingly) unrelated—can trigger a massive door that I didn't know was there to open in my brain. It lets in the light and the fresh breeze of new thoughts.

—De

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd

Help your children glow.

Fireworks, candles and seasonal decorations create glowing moments marking the passing of time. None of them will last, but your memories might.

Help your children glow. See the light in them. Time is passing. Childhood won't last, but your memories might.

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd,
of Devyn's first jack-o-lantern, 2015

Dancing in the light

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

I once described the difference between teaching and learning as where you shine the spotlight. In teaching, the spotlight is on the teacher. There may or may not be a learner taking in what the teacher is doing.

With learning, the spotlight is on the learner. The source is unimportant. There might be a teacher. There might be a set of blocks. There might just be the learner's thoughts.

If that's called "teaching" then it pulls the spotlight away from the learner. The light shines on the source as if it were the actor in the process.

I think parents like to feel like a child's learning is their project. If the teacher isn't in the spotlight, then something they aren't in control of or directing is happening.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/teaching
photo by Sandra Dodd (click it)

Action (rather than REaction)

When a parent's choices are based on being the same or being the opposite of their own parents or of anyone else, they're reacting. Sometimes in a healing phase that can help. It can help to have role models. It can help to have bad examples, marked like crime scenes in our memories, to remind us. Let the reactions be part of a temporary healing phase, though. Let reactions be a stepping stone toward mindful actions.

SandraDodd.com/issues
photo by Shawn Smythe Haunschild
from an alleyway in Sweden

Brief and memorable

Sometimes an experience is brief, but memorable. Rather than big lessons, think of small moments that spark thoughts.

Playing with a sparkler is like stirring light into darkness. I like that.

SandraDodd.com/sparklers
photo by Erika Davis-Pitre

One step away

Stop struggling.
SandraDodd.com/struggle

What's better?

Breathing.

Clarity.

Peace.

Positivity.

Thoughts about doing better.

Links to all those things are at SandraDodd.com/struggle

Gratitude and Abundance would help, too.

One way to look things up on my site is to append something you think is in there, to SandraDodd.com/

SandraDodd.com/food

SandraDodd.com/joy

SandraDodd.com/gratitude

SandraDodd.com/abundance

(like that)

If it doesn't take you directly to your chosen topic, you'll get to a search box.

(original, on facebook)

SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by Cátia Maciel

Power and worth

"What creates power and worth is taking single, conscious steps toward being the kind of person one would like to be. Making better choices."

Marta Venturini quoted me, on Facebook, in June 2011, and I can't find the quote elsewhere, to link to. It might've been on a recording or in a chat that was never published, maybe.

What's most interesting to me is that yesterday's post here was me (in 2009) discouraging someone from a focus on "power" (It's not about power), and the day before that was about things being "worthwhile." (Is it worthwhile?)

Here and there, over the years, I have reminded parents to avoid situations in which a child feels powerless. Life has realities, and we don't always have choices. Parents should avoid casual neglect of providing options for unschooled kids at home. You probably have the power to do that.


Thoughtful and sweet
photo by Cátia Maciel

Like a zombie?

Me, in response to a(nother) question, once, about kids who become so involved in something that they are like zombies, don't hear people, don't stop to eat...

If something is REALLY fascinating, extremely engaging, those things might happen. A brand-new video game at an exciting point. A book as good as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, first time through. A news item on the death of a favorite person.

Those things can happen to me, still, as an adult—that I am mesmerized, engaged, involved in something, and it can be a program (I've been watching some great Korean dramas lately), or a book, or an interesting or difficult bit of sewing. It can take me a few seconds to come to myself and respond to another person.
. . . .

It would be unfortunate if someone's unschooled child loved a game or story so much that he seemed to be a zombie, and the parents started to limit his life because of it. It would be an unfortunate lack of appreciation and relationship and awareness on the part of the parents.

SandraDodd.com/zombies
photo by Destiny Dodd

Big things happen

Something BIG happens when a person turns away from selfishness to service.

Something HUGE happens when a person can care about another person more than about himself.

SandraDodd.com/divorce
photo by Nicole Kenyon

Keep your world warm

The faith he has in you is growing or waning at every moment.

You're either building your relationship or you're eroding it.

Every laugh at his expense, every promise you can't keep... erosion. Getting cold, not getting warm.

The quote is from a chat on breathing, but this link is better:
SandraDodd.com/gettingwarm
photo by Karen James

Saying "Yes" Again

A mom named Sara came back after lapsing toward "no," and wrote:

I'm a huge believer in fresh starts, and I decided to just hit my personal reset button and start fresh. .... I have begun with something very simple, which is saying yes instead of no. . . . .

I took a deep breath and started over, with YES. I kept a little list of all the things the kids asked for (they didn't see me doing this). Can we have some jellybeans? Yes.

Can we watch a movie? Yes

Could you get me a pickle and a napkin in a bowl, and can I eat it on the couch? Yes. (Shushing the mom-voice in my head that wanted to say we NEVER eat on the couch, you know that. I just said 'sure' and got the pickle, and then another when she asked for a second one.)

Can we play a computer game? Yes.

Later I was looking at my list and I thought, wow, I'd have loved to have a day like that when I was a kid. Jellybeans and a movie and pickles and computer games.

—Sara, 2007

SandraDodd.com/yesagain
photo by Sandra Dodd

Small part of a big deal

Your own dwelling place is a small part of the whole universe. The things you have collected, and that you use, are all part of the universe.

From the point of view of your family (especially the younger members), where you live is HUGE, and detailed, and familiar, but the outside world starts off vague and hardly real.

All these perspectives make sense, depending on the moment and the context. Go with what is sweet and peaceful and feels safe and good.

SandraDodd.com/perspective
photo by Monica Molinar

The memories parents have

Deschooling is not just the child recovering from school damage. It's also the parents exploring their own school and childhood damage and proactively changing their thinking until the paradigm shift happens.

—Robyn Coburn

Robyn Coburn on Unschooling
photo by Cátia Maciel