photo by Janine Davies
Showing posts with label pattern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pattern. Show all posts
Monday, April 28, 2025
Exciting, or same old home
photo by Janine Davies
Friday, April 25, 2025
Understanding it, not acting it
It usually takes a long time before people new to unschooling stop looking for new rules to replace old ones. The more people are discouraged from skimming a surface understanding of unschooling, discouraged from relying on meaningless reassurances that going through the motions of unschooling with crossed fingers and assurances everything will be fine, the better for their kids.
Unschooling is a paradigm shift for most everyone. That shift doesn't happen by acting like other unschoolers. It comes slowly, bit by bit, as understanding of what unschooling is grows.
—Joyce Fetteroll
(original)
(original)
photo by Karen James
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Rational perspective (cool!)
My mom was a kind person, but she was a negative person. Something was always wrong, something was always going to bring about the next big war, the end of the world, the destruction of human kind. As she saw it, we were all about to be thrown into chaos every day I can remember from my childhood. It wasn't good for me. I can tell you that it hurt my relationship with my mom, and made me resent, and mistrust her. Don't do that.
Even though you know there are worrying things in the world, even if you're sure you're right, every time you laser focus your attention on whatever those problems are, you're super heating your worry, and chances are you're losing rational perspective in all that steam.
—Deb Lewis
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Things are connected
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
photo by Kristin Cleague
Saturday, March 9, 2024
Wonderful and unexpected

"It's wonderful how parenting this way heals parts of our own past unexpectedly."
—Jen Keefe
photo by Jo Isaac
Monday, November 6, 2023
One quiet, loving thought
1. A glass of water, to someone who is working, or playing, or just got home, or just woke up. A favorite glass, or a pretty one, or a special one, maybe. Perhaps with ice, or a slice of lemon. Present it with a smile or a kind word.
2. A gentle touch, for a child or partner. Fingertips on an arm, or brushed down the back, or a hand held for a second longer than you might have otherwise. Sit close and lean softly for a couple of seconds. Think one quiet, loving thought while you touch this important person.
photo by Karen James
Sunday, September 24, 2023
The value of input
I value input, information and learning. I've seen immeasurable learning in my kids and others from things they have seen in movies, on TV, in online videos, heard on the radio, read in magazines, picked up in conversations with others, heard in public presentations or from tour guides or from books. To eliminate some part of that input out of fear would have made my children's world smaller.
photo by Karen James
Monday, September 4, 2023
Swirly world
photo by Sandra Dodd
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
More or less
I've been thinking about that saying "All things in moderation." Next time someone says it to me, I think I might just ask them: "Do you mean we should have joy in moderation? Should we have peace in moderation? Kindness in moderation? Patience in moderation? Forgiveness? Compassion? Humility?"
Honestly, I used to think it sounded like a very wise and balanced philosophy. Now, the more I think about it the less sense it makes.
—Leah Rose
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Monday, May 1, 2023
Everything changes
"Eating decisions"?
I picked it up and set it down just a little way from there with this response:
Choices. If ALL of that is changed to a model in which there is food, and people make choices—lots of small choices, not big "decisions"—a hundred hard problems disappear.
In one small moment, if a child can pick up a food or not; smell it or not; taste it or not; keep that bite and chew and swallow, or spit it out; take another bite or not; dip it in something or not; put another food with it or not—EVERYTHING changes.
photo by Sarah S
Monday, February 20, 2023
Meeting in the moment
Unschooling works the same way for any child, regardless of his particulars. Each child is met in the moment by a partner interested in making his day safe and interesting and in helping him do things he might like to do. If one wants to spin around for half an hour while another wants to take a radio apart and put it back together, that's not a problem.
Seeing Children Without Labels
photo by Cátia Maciel
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Thursday, October 6, 2022
More peaceful, more connected
A mom named Hannah wrote:
Unschooling has definitely changed my life for the better. Our family life is more peaceful and happy. I've stopped trying to control my husband (I had the best intentions at heart) and our marriage is more satisfying, we are much more connected and understanding of each other. I just let him be him and he lets me be me and we both work together for the good of the family.
—Hannah Brewin
photo by Kelly Halldorson
Thursday, September 29, 2022
Playing, hanging out, listening
Schuyler Waynforth wrote:
You start by learning about your children. You start by playing with them. By hanging out and listening to them. By starting with them. The more you know about them, the more you know about what interests them, the more you see them and hang out with them, the easier it will be for you to find things that interest them. Don't start by looking at the wider world and trying to force it upon your children. Start with them.
—Schuyler Waynforth
photo by Cátia Maciel
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Sunday, July 31, 2022
More and more moments
If something is good for a moment, it doesn't take a bunch of planning, and it doesn't need to be reported or documented. It can just be a good moment.
And when people get more and more practice doing what it takes to create or accept or recognize those moments, they can have more and more of them.
photo by Sandra Dodd,
candid moment of Much Green
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Recognizing learning
Start noticing the learning available all around you.
There's oodles of science in cooking. Why does heat make the white of an egg turn from clear liquid to solid white? What process turns liquid cake into poofy air-filled solid cake? Don't worry if you don't know the answers. Anyone can look up the answers. Few can ask the questions.
. . . .
Unfortunately we learned in school that learning is locked up in books and reading is the only way to get to it. It's not. It's free. We're surrounded by it. We just need to relearn how to recognize it in its wild state.
Highlights of the fourth of Five Steps to Unschooling
photo by Vlad Gurdiga
. . . .
Unfortunately we learned in school that learning is locked up in books and reading is the only way to get to it. It's not. It's free. We're surrounded by it. We just need to relearn how to recognize it in its wild state.
—Joyce Fetteroll
photo by Vlad Gurdiga
Friday, October 1, 2021
Rare and precious sharing
photo by Brie Jontry
Something looks like this:
light,
pattern,
projection
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
More than one thing
I always like the idea that most things are many things. Language is both too big and too small, sometimes.
If a chart is made of food or food can by played with; if a house is a home and a brownstone and a townhouse; if music is noise, and a pet is a dog and a stray and a mutt, it's even more impressive that kids can learn English (or whatever native language they find themselves born or brought into).
A sweet shortcut to more peace at your house is to allow things, and people, to have many facets and designations. I'm a mom, a wife, a sister, a writer, a mender, a joker, and sometimes I sing. Not so long ago, I became a grandmother. I maintain a webpage, and this blog. You, too, and each person you know, is more than one thing. Let your imagination and calmness extend that to chairs, tables, and blankets.
This post might be soothing or irritating, helpful or long. Same with lunch, or the next story someone tells me.
Find ways to be happy through all those words and thoughts.
Peace
photo by Cátia Maciel
__
A sweet shortcut to more peace at your house is to allow things, and people, to have many facets and designations. I'm a mom, a wife, a sister, a writer, a mender, a joker, and sometimes I sing. Not so long ago, I became a grandmother. I maintain a webpage, and this blog. You, too, and each person you know, is more than one thing. Let your imagination and calmness extend that to chairs, tables, and blankets.
This post might be soothing or irritating, helpful or long. Same with lunch, or the next story someone tells me.
Find ways to be happy through all those words and thoughts.
photo by Cátia Maciel
__
Thursday, October 1, 2020
In their own natural ways

Pam Sorooshian wrote:
It is natural for people to learn—each in their own way. It is natural for children to want to understand the world around them. They also want to join the adult world and become competent and capable adults themselves. They'll strive for this in their own natural ways. Unschooling parents work on creating a home environment that supports their children's natural desire to learn and grow.
Each child is unique and experiences the world in a different way than any other person and expresses themselves in ways that are different from every other person.
—Pam Sorooshian
photo by Colleen Prieto
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Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Three little things
Today, three times, do something a little bit better.
Are you cutting an apple? Slow down and do something unexpected, something artsy. There might be an animal outside (or inside) you could offer the scraps to.
If you're asked to help someone, add a sweet gesture or a kinder word.
If you succeed and it helps, do it again tomorrow.
Uplift
photo by Amber Ivey
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Are you cutting an apple? Slow down and do something unexpected, something artsy. There might be an animal outside (or inside) you could offer the scraps to.
If you're asked to help someone, add a sweet gesture or a kinder word.
If you succeed and it helps, do it again tomorrow.
photo by Amber Ivey
__
Monday, February 24, 2020
Too hard; too soft; just right
If you don't do it, they might sneak into the homes of bears. (Maybe that's not what that story means; it's hard to say.)
photo by Pushpa Ramachandran
of stored, unused bricks, slightly softened
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