Questions

Why does...?            Because... Who will...?           I think... When did...?           Let's ask... Where are...?           We can look... What is...?           As far as I know... Do you...?           Sometimes. Can I...?           Yes.

Treasure your child's questions and offer loving answers.
Relationships are built of these things.
SandraDodd.com/conversation
photo by Zann Carter

Let go!

Joyce wrote:

Formal learning is being certain you can't let go of the side of the pool. Unschooling is paddling around in the deep end.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/nutshells
photo by Cátia Maciel

Guarantee

There are no guarantees, but we can always do a little better.

SandraDodd.com/guarantees
photo by Laurie Wolfrum

Ways to relax

Find ways to relax, rather than to struggle.

A nice outside metaphor for this is Devil's Snare, invented by J. K. Rowling for Harry Potter's world. It will grab people, and if they struggle, it grabs harder. Relax and it will relax. Shine light on it and it will shrink away.

Quotes from book and film: SandraDodd.com/struggle
photo by Marin Holmes

Real people

Even the nicest of words can be ruined if they're spoken in a condescending, treacly way. It's not bad for infants, and it's great for French poodles. It's that talking-to-a-French-poodle voice, and the thoughts that go with it, that should be avoided when parents are talking to their children.

Dan Vilter shared this story on the AlwaysLearning list in 2001:

At a park day, we were having a discussion about the usefulness of praise and sincerity. The unschoolers in the group were trying to point out the fallacy of over and insincere praise, and indirectly about treating your children as people first. After much talk getting nowhere, one of the other unschooling parents turned to me and in the French poodle voice started thanking me for all the things I had done for the group that day. Something like,"Oh Dan, thank you for bringing the stove for hot cocoa. You did such a good job setting it up and heating the water! You're so strong carrying that big jug of water all by yourself!" Everyone had a good laugh and the point was succinctly made.

—Dan Vilter

"Treating them as people first." That's it. See them as people, who hear you and are thinking, and treat that respectfully. In her book Whole Child/Whole Parent, Polly Berrien Berends, uses the term "Seeing Beings."

SandraDodd.com/tone
photo by Denaire Nixon

Stories, music, light and movement

a mom named Lisa wrote:

There is plenty of value in TV/movies. It's as much of a dream world for kids as books (if not more). I know it can be frustrating when it's all new to you... I can't tell you how many times I wondered if I wasn't doing something horrible by letting my children watch as much TV as they wanted. I was sure it would backfire and that it would make my kids passive.

They're still lovely and beautiful and full of life....driven from the inside instead of following my lead so much.

Relax and enjoy the wonder of your child. 🙂

—Lisa

That's the end of something sweet, and longer, at SandraDodd.com/t/whatif

photos by Rosie Moon (stained glass)
and Kelly Halldorson (wood stove)

I brought these pictures to a TV post for being older versions of moving-light images. They are associated with stories, and with music, too. Television and film are related, culturally and historically.

Light art (and spooky)

For young children, costumes and decorations can make them feel powerful, or beautiful, and a little afraid—in a fun way, if the adults and older kids help keep that fairly balanced.

I have candy to hand out when the time comes. We have some decorations. I have a lifetime of memories of trick-or-treating when I was little, seeing or being a little way into houses I might never be in again, getting candy and treats from strangers—some of them dressed up, too, and smiling at me.

I have memories of taking my own young children door-to-door, and of driving them to a special place or two beyond walking distance some years.

Young families will be welcome here this year, and older kids and teens, too.

Airy and bright
photo by Janine Davies

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

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

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