Principles, rules, and coaching

Sandra Dodd:

Principles produce all kinds of answers where rules fail.

Alex Polikowsky:

Some people come to unschooling and in the beginning of their journey they ditch rules but try to replace them with unschooling "rules". Replace them with principles.

When you do, most of your questions and doubts will no longer be there.

Michele James-Parham:

Another common "unschooling rule" or frame of mind due to misinterpretation: We're unschoolers and don't have rules, so we don't have to follow your rules (in-laws, restaurant, museum, etc.).

Just because you allow jumping on your couch at home, doesn't mean that Grandma has to allow jumping on her couch or that the museum has to allow jumping on its couch in the lobby.

SandraDodd.com/coaching
photo by Belinda Dutch

When to say no

Sandra Dodd, response in 2000 to: Can anyone explain to me "unschooling"?

It's like "just say no."

Just say no to school years and school schedules and school expectations, school habits and fears and terminology. Just say no to separating the world into important and unimportant things, into separating knowledge into math, science, history and language arts, with music, art and "PE" set in their less important little places.

Most of unschooling has to happen inside the parents. They need to spend some time sorting out what is real from what is construct, and what occurs in nature from what only occurs in school (and then in the minds of those who were told school was real life, school was a kid's fulltime job, school was more important than anything, school would keep them from being ignorant, school would make them happy and rich and right).

It's what happens after all that school stuff is banished from your life.

Several Definitions of Unschooling
photo by Rosie Moon

A bond of inquiry

A mom named Sandy:

To most children or people it is apparent and that is only one of MANY examples of simple things that he questions.

A mom named Sandra:

If it wasn't apparent to him, so what? He asked you a question that had a simple answer. If you expect him to be other than who he is, or if you withhold simple answers, he'll learn to stop asking you. Not good.

Questions are gloriously good for unschooling. And it's possible that he understands some situations better than you do and his questions are deeper than you think they are. Try asking him a question in return. Give a simple answer and then ask a question to help him clarify what he really wants to know. It will help both of you learn to think analytically, and create a bond of inquiry and shared experience between you.

Same old link as yesterday
a good, short discussion in which the original poster untangles and rethinks
photo by Nicole Kenyon

Calm and calming

Sandra Dodd:

If there is more resentment and negativity than there is love and sweetness, that family is not succeeding at unschooling, in my opinion. It's not about "always" or "never." It's about preponderance.

Laura Zurro:

Sandra, can you explain what you mean by calm?

Sandra Dodd:

Calm is calm. Not frantic, not excited, not frightened or frightening. Calm, like water that is neither frozen nor choppy.

Calm is possessing the ability to think, to consider a situation without panic.

Calm is not perpetually on the edge of flipping out.

Alex Polikowsky:

Laura, I think it is when parents can remain calm under stress. I had to work on that sometimes. My oldest used to have huge tantrums and I would lose my calm. When I learned to remain calm I was much more helpful to him.

quote from Who Can Unschool?

More calming ideas
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Webs, nets, connections

The terms "web" and "net" have both been commandeered by the internet. The idea of a grid or web or matrix to represent the connections involved in learning and memory is a good one, though—of many "dots" connected in all directions.

The photo here is of the two-dimensional web—very flat—of a garden spider, outside my house this week. Black widow spiders make a web that's three-dimensional, but has no pattern. We have those in our yard, too.

The webs on which our own mental models of the universe are based are more complex—with past and future, emotion and theory, alternative stories and secondary theories. We have sounds and songs, scents and tastes to remember, and can sort things by temperature or texture, in our minds and imaginations.

Rejoice in the random!

SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Going all in

Jen Keefe wrote:

I fought motherhood for a long time. What helped me settle in and fall in love with this life and in practical love with my kids was going all in.

—Jen Keefe

SandraDodd.com/being/allin
photo by Rosie Moon

Science: incidental and everywhere

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

[A relative once said] that he thought science was one of those things that must be taught in school. He felt it needed to be taught by those people who have been trained to teach it, that it requires chemistry sets and microscopes and formulae and hypotheses and paper and pencils and workbooks and textbooks. To him science doesn’t seem to be something incidental. But science is incidental; it is everywhere. And it is less about the tools available and more about your approach, your ability to question and explore the workings of the world in which you live.

School is exceptional at taking science away from the individual and placing it, carefully, in a locked box and putting it up on a pedestal with the label: a systematically derived body of knowledge. Among the many problems with such treatment is that science isn’t a body of knowledge. It is a body of systematically derived theories and hypotheses that are tested and testable and changeable....

—Schuyler Waynforth

School Blinded Me to Science
(there's more there!)

photo by Annie Regan
Click it for more detail!

Reflections and shadows

This is a photo of a concrete pad at our house, between a wall and a car. It won't look like that now, but one day it did, from reflections and shadows, from lights and surfaces interacting.

The effects of different factors on lives and situations can change appearances and perceptions. Life keeps moving, and we can miss things by not looking, not noticing.

Days and moments can flow too quickly, too loudly, exhaustingly, for parents, and for growing kids. Try to appreciate the lights and shadows and patterns.

SandraDodd.com/wonderor SandraDodd.com/factors
photo by Sandra Dodd
The swirls are reflections from the car windows. Stripes are light through a slat gate. Row of spots is sun through the decorative top row of the cinderblock wall.

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
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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
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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