Adult decisions

When a young adult has been making real decisions for years, and what their parents want is to help them think clearly and to make careful decisions based on the preferences and beliefs of the young person himself, the same old world looks very different.

Young Adults: Partners
photo by Janine

Kind and safe

Parents get pretty good at noticing when a child is tired, hungry or frustrated. It's important to see those things in yourself. Keep your family safe from your more dangerous moods and states. If you're too hungry or too tired to be kind and safe, ask for help. Or admit you're feeling stressed, and be more careful. Don't use your mood as an excuse to be harsh or dangerous. Learn to do what you need to do to stay in a workable, safe zone.

SandraDodd.com/mentalhealth
photo by Destiny Dodd

More peaceful behavior

Amy Carpenter wrote:

Adrenaline is a big part of an anger reaction — the "fight or flight" reaction is a very difficult one to reason ourselves out of once it hits. In addition to giving us quick reactions and additional strength, adrenaline gives us "tunnel vision" — we are only able to think about, or even see, one or maybe two variables at a moment (as opposed to when our conscious minds function normally, and we can juggle 5-7 variables in a situation).

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm just philosophizing (in a non-helpful way) about anger. I have collected these tidbits about anger because it has played a big part in my own life. It is only in the past few years that I can consistently count on myself to act the way I want to, even when "driven to anger." Knowing these things about anger have helped my own self-awareness, which led to much more peaceful behavior on my part.

There is more: Understanding Anger
photo by Karen James

Discernment

Control implies one KNOWS the right answer and if he's not "out of control" or "lacking self control," there will be no choice; he will control himself.

Decision making requires lots of data and thought and freedom and discernment.

SandraDodd.com/control
photo by Holly Dodd

Evidence galore

Deb Lewis wrote:

All those questions about how a kid would learn if he didn't go to school and my answers were things like "I think people learn best when they learn on their own terms," "I trust," or "I believe."

Bah! If I'd only thought about it a little harder! There's evidence galore! There's evidence throughout human existence. There's evidence in the fossil record. Stone age evidence and Bronze Age evidence and evidence in every archaeological site in the world. Humans learn.

They learn what the other humans around them are doing. They learn by living.

And now there's the evidence of my own son's life. He is surrounded by the things that interest humans in the twenty-first century. He is surrounded by the whole of human history. He is a citizen of the world in a time when access to information has never been easier. He is learning all the time.

—Deb Lewis

The Evidence of Years—Deb Lewis
That boy later learned Italian, and visited Italy.
He let me use some of his photos.
photo by Dylan Lewis

Following interests

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

To unschool, you begin with your child's interests. If she's interested in birds, you read—or browse, toss aside, just look at the pictures in—books on birds, watch videos on birds, talk about birds, research and build (or buy) bird feeders and birdhouses, keep a journal on birds, record and ponder their behavior, search the web for items about birds, go to bird sanctuaries, draw birds, color a few pictures in the Dover Birds of Prey coloring book, play around with feathers, study Leonardo DaVinci's drawings of flying machines that he based on birds, watch Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."

But DON'T go whole hog on this. Gauge how much to do and when by your child's reactions. Let her say no thanks. Let her choose. Let her interest set the pace. If it takes years, let it take years. If it lasts an hour, let it last an hour.

—Joyce Fetteroll

The first of Five Steps to Unschooling
photo by Catherine Hassall

Right here, right now

"When you’re worrying about something that hasn’t even happened yet, when you’re worrying about the future, you’re not there in the present. What you’re thinking about might never even happen and you were wasting your time thinking about something that will never happen. So focus on right here, right now."

—Marta Venturini

Deschooling with Marta Venturini—interview by Pam Laricchia
Marta said she was paraphrasing me, but I like her wording.
photo by Sandra Dodd

Lighting up the darkness

BE light, don't block light.

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SandraDodd.com/light
photo by Sarah Dickinson

Rare and precious sharing

Families who share the ways in which unschooling has improved their families and their lives are practicing a kind of transparency that is rare and precious. They are letting others peek into their "private lives." Because they think something has made life better, they reveal things about themselves, to pass that benefit on to others who would like to make their own lives better.

Other Voices
photo by Brie Jontry

A little more interesting

Instead of feeling like you need to struggle, just stop and look at your son and think, "Right now what can I do to make his life a little more interesting?"

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/struggle
photo by Belinda Dutch
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Like fireworks

When Kirby was seven and eight, I used to see others his age who were pulled out of school already knowing how to read and write and think wistfully that maybe that would make everything easier. In the longrun, it didn't. Those kids have issues about that reading and writing that Kirby doesn't have. Their handwriting is prettier, but their spelling isn't always better, and their ideas aren't always better. But Kirby has a poise and a confidence that I think school would have immediately begun to dismantle and scatter. So it did take him longer to read, but in the meantime he was learning like crazy, like fireworks.

Teaching very little, maybe even nothing (last post there)
photo by Erika Davis-Pitre—not of Kirby, but of his daughter
(used once before, with different text)

A step toward joy

Some of the things that help people be confidently in the moment, feeling satisfied and content are:

• Breathing
  
• Gratitude
  
• Happy thoughts
  
• Fondness
  
• Acceptance

At first it might be relief and not joy, but as relief is a step away from fear, more relief will be progress toward joy.

The Big Book of Unschooling, page 275 (or 318)
photo by Ester Siroky
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Impermanence AGAIN!?

It's true; the subscription provider has changed. Feedburner is closing at the end of June, and another company offered to import five blogs for me, so if you want to add any of the others to your feed, they are Unschooling Site News, SandraDodd.com Sandra Dodd (personal blog) Homeschool News and Muse mainstream articles, but I might start using that for other things Wheelbarrows (Wheelbarrows interest me, and they are also a portal into people's history, lives, and gardens.) If you clicked through to the subscription service and saw "Publisher: aelflaed" that's me. When google mail came along, someone snagged my name (probably because it was her name), so I used my SCA/medieval-studies name. "Ælflæd" was like lots of names 1000 years ago, but now it's like Alfred and Elsie (surviving cousins). ANYway.... that's me, on google-owned sites. There are TWO ways to get to the blog from e-mail now—clicking the post's title, or "read more" at the bottom. A new option is to get a push notification on your phone, so for those who didn't like the e-mail's appearance on a phone, I hope this is way better. Changes do not thrill me, and I'm getting old. But Vlad Gurdiga is still young and enthusiastic. He helped with this move as he has helped with many other things involving my collections— moving thousands of photos from photobucket (which kept on changing and losing things and charging more money) to SandraDodd.com (which he moved from yahoo to another host company). Thank you Vlad, again.

photo by Holly Dodd

The easy way?

Q: Is unschooling the path of least resistance?

A: It depends what you're trying to resist.

Deschooling for Parents
photo by Sandra Dodd

The benefit of untangling

Any parent with unresolved childhood trauma might want to gradually start untangling those memories for the benefit of your children, of yourself, of your partner, of your family, and in order for unschooling to work well.

Untangling
photo by Alex Polikowsky

Present and open

Listen, feel, look. Something will be beautiful, even just for a moment, if you are present and open.

How much beauty would make a beautiful moment?

What could be set aside so that beauty could fill its place?

Turn your face toward beauty.
Turn your heart toward beauty.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sandra Dodd

Directly and clearly

Read some, do some. Think. Rest. Watch your child directly and as clearly as you can, without the filters and overlays you might be used to. If you think of any terms other than his name as you're looking, shake those off and think his name. Don't think "small, ADHD, rough, shy," or "girly, bright, verbal, musical." You might get back to some of those sometimes, but try to see "Holly, touching a leaf," or "Marty, eating soup." Sometimes the school-colored glasses can keep us from seeing anything but "is doing school work" or "is doing nothing." Unschoolers don't do school work, and "nothing" falls right off the radar.

from "Beginning to Unschool," page 36 or 39 of The Big Book of Unschooling

See also: Practice Watching elsewhere on Just Add Light and Stir
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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The possibility of restoration

So with radical unschooling it is possible for a family, even who skipped that part—even who didn’t have infant bonding—to, as much as possible, restore a relationship between the parents and the children, where the parents really do care about what the children think and want, more then they look in the book and see what a six-year-old should think or want.

This was inspired by Family Bonding, Amy Childs interviewing me,
and there is a transcript!
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Light, shadows, and thoughts

Which is better—a bridge, or a photo of a bridge?

It depends.

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Lots of little bridges to "It depends."
photo by Karen James

Where learning abounds

Unschooling should be rich, flowing and mindful living where learning abounds. Too many people see "living" as nothing more than the absence of death. Let's encourage sparkly, bubbly, warm and effusive lives.

SandraDodd.com/sparkly
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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