Building a rich life

"What it takes to build a rich life is you — your time, energy, imagination, openness, passion, and optimism." —Claire Horsley

on Always Learning
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

A big, calm place

Focusing too narrowly on danger doesn't make the world a big scary place. It makes it a small, terrifying place. You don't need to do that.

Overcoming Fear
photo by Ester Siroky

Better, for your future children

If parents become complacent and don’t think that they need to do better and could do better, then they can’t do better, and they won’t do better. And if they’re ever going to get to be the unschooling parents that their future children need—their bigger, older children with bigger questions and problems—they need to keep getting better.

Changes in Parents
photo by Holly Dodd
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Balance

Words and image by Pati Nagle, a longtime friend, former housemate, author.
Shared on facebook 9 August 2021.

Time and space

When you find ways to offer your partner space and time to be alone, it will eventually benefit the whole family.

SandraDodd.com/betterpartner
photo by Shawn Smythe Haunschild
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Promote calm

In the smallest of decisions and actions, if you can choose what will promote calm and avoid tears, you will be moving toward a more peaceful way of being.

Maybe
photo by Theresa Larson

Experiments and experiences

Keith and I have enjoyed our children and the success of our experiments and experiences has been a joint project at which we were very successful. The effect of sharing something difficult, like parenting in a way that’s not universally acclaimed and supported, can be strengthening to a relationship.

We had always worked at being courteous to each other. We always said please and thank you about any “pass the salt” or “could I have a Kleenex.” It was easy, then, to model that for our children and for them to see the valuable effect of it.


Source:  20 Unschooling Questions: Sandra Dodd from NM, USA

Related:  Becoming a Better Partner
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Actual paths, and other choices

I love the potential in this photo. There is too much to explore, but the options are up, down, through, around. It reminds me that we live in the moment that connects the past and the future.

The world is too big for anyone to see everything. History will never all be discovered or known. The best we can do for ourselves and our children is to view their surroundings with wonder and curiosity. We can help them experience small things and large, old things and new.

SandraDodd.com/decisions
photo by Sukayna
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Be where you are

Parents complain about children living in fantasy worlds sometimes, and not growing up and facing reality. I think probably in every single one of those cases, it was the parental fantasy of what the child ought to be doing that was really the problem.

Make each moment the best moment it can be. Be where you are with your body, mind and soul. It's the only place you can be, anyway. The rest is fantasy.

Walk where you are

The quote above is from The Big Book of Unschooling
pages 79 and 80 (72 and 72 of the first edition)
photo by Cass Kotrba

An intellectual process

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

This whole unschooling journey was very very much an intellectual process for me—a process of developing deeper and deeper understanding by reading and listening to others, thinking hard about what I'd read and heard, applying what made sense, paying attention to how things were going, waiting a little, trying out other ideas that seemed to make sense, and continuing that process for all the years I had children—taking in input of others ideas and experiences, considering and analyzing, acting on my own conclusions, observing my own family dynamics—all at the same time.

—Pam Sorooshian

Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch

The quote lives at Understanding Unschooling
photo by Pushpa Ramachandran
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Frosty

Life produces some fragile, fleeting things.

Cass Kotrba photographed frost so beautifully that you can see the individual ice crystals that formed on the grass, in northern Colorado.

Some people live where this doesn't happen.

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You can click it for a larger image you can zoom in on better.
some other fleeting things
photo by Cass Kotrba
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Good morning!

At your house it will be morning again within 24 hours, but it could be morning in your heart any second.

When people begin homeschooling, that's a big bright morning, but you can have as many mornings as you need. If you want to change the way you're being or thinking, just do it. Don't wait for another year, another month, another day.

Good morning!

SandraDodd.com/morning
photo by Gail Higgins
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Request for help

There are over 3,000 posts here now! A few good ones are linked below. If we were all in one place, I would put a jar by the door, or pass the hat. Perhaps there would be cake.

Please help me with expenses....
[that collection is finished now, so I took the links down]

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photo (a link) by Holly Dodd

Natural Learning flows
Growth is good.
Changes

"Can you explain calm?"

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.

That and some discussion of how to be calmer
photo by Heather Booth

Ought to "have to"

The phrases "ought to" and "supposed to" are so old, and have been recited for so many years (hundreds of years) without conscious thought that people don't even think about what they literally mean. "Supposed to" is kind of easy; you can deconstruct it, and it loses a lot of power. "Ought" is related to owing and debt. Obligation. No choice except dishonor.

"We're supposed to..."

"We ought to..."

"We have to..."

Use those with care, and thought.

SandraDodd.com/haveto

SandraDodd.com/mindfulofwords
photo by Ester Siroky
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Learning not to teach

For years I have recommended that new unschoolers stop using the word "teach" and replace all statements and thoughts with phrases using the word "learn" instead. I've gotten much flak back from people saying it doesn't matter, or that's "just semantics." What started as a theory with me became belief and then conviction. Unschoolers who cling to the idea of teaching will handicap their own understanding of how learning works.

SandraDodd.com/teaching
photo by Annie Regan

A small, beautiful thing

Beauty can be found in small things.

Inside, outside
photo by Orion Larson
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Something old, something new...

Something old, something new; Something borrowed, something blue. That's traditional advice for a bride, to create good luck by what she wears to the wedding. For those in places where that little verse is foreign, then it's history, and cultural trivia. As an unschooling tool it could be a checklist of things to look for, when you go for a walk, or see a video, or a painting, or while folding the laundry.

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Corrales, New Mexico;
Sandia Mountains in the distance, with clouds

Which came first...

Which came first, curiosity or learning? Exploration or knowledge?

If you're lucky, and open to it, they will tumble and leapfrog over one another in all the best times of your life.

Exploring
photo by Gail Higgins
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You can't see it all

No matter how far you look, you can't see it all.

No matter how hard you squint, you won't understand everything.

Rejoice in what you see and know.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Gail Higgins