Perspective

How you view a thing is affected by physical realities (height, vision, lighting), cognitive aspects (familiarity, spatial ability), emotional factors (attraction or revulsion), age, experience, biological states (hungry? sleepy? impatient?), etc. Anything adults and children see or do "together" is sure to be different for each.

See that as a good thing, as a feature of a rich life. They are not you. Shared experiences are still individually perceived.

SandraDodd.com/angles
(These words aren't there; others are.)
photo by Abby Davis

Precious energy

If you're worried about where your child falls on somebody else's bell curve, somebody else's chart, you are spending precious energy you could be spending loving that child. Each child will learn at his own pace no matter WHAT the surroundings are.

SandraDodd.com/chats/1995October.html
photo by Tara Joe Farrell

Climbing mountains and baking pies

In response to someone saying her child would rather take the easy route than try something tough, Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

It's human nature to avoid what we feel is a waste of time, energy and resources.
It's also human nature to pour energy into what we find fascinating.

If someone is made to climb a mountain, they'll find the easiest path, and perhaps even cheat.

If someone desires to climb a mountain, they may even make it more difficult—challenging—for themselves if the route doesn't light their fire.

If it were human nature to go the easy route, I wouldn't be sitting here writing out a response! No one would write a novel. No one would climb Mt. Everest. No one would bake a cherry pie from scratch. No one would have kids.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/pressure
Photo by Sandra Dodd, of Holly Dodd riding a steam train restored and largely operated by volunteers. The easy route would have been for them to stay home and read books and watch movies about trains.

Empty your cup

Sandy Lubert, from a presentation she gave:

As we deschool ourselves, we must empty our cups of all the preconceived ideas, concepts, expectations and methods that prevent us from embracing unschooling. This seems like a simple thing to do, but it can be quite difficult in practice. At first we think we have emptied our cups but as we drink, we often detect a residual, schooly taste. And sometimes, even a little residue can curdle the whole pot of tea. So, it’s important to have a "clean receptacle," as it were, in order to taste the true essence of unschooling life.

—Sandy Lubert

Sandy Lubert on Unschooling and deschooling, and changes...
photo by Sandra Dodd

Willingness to share

Rosie Moon's photo; Alex Arnott's words:

As I've sunk deeper into this awareness of what's actually there (replacing a mindset of abundance with my former belief about what was lacking), my kids "melt into me" more...what I mean is there is less edginess, less defensiveness, and more willingness to share their life with me. More willingness to join me in what I'm doing.

I'm sure that my acceptance has something to do with the peace that we are experiencing.

—Alex Arnott

Quote (slightly tweaked here) from Perspective
photo by Rosie Moon

Interest in things

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Get interested in things yourself. Not interested in your child getting educated, but in learning for yourself. Pursue an interest you've always wanted to but never had time for. Be curious about life around you. Look things up to satisfy your own curiosity. Or just ponder the wonder of it all. Ask questions you don't know the answers to. "Why are there beautiful colors beneath the green in leaves?" "Why did they build the bridge here rather than over there?" "Why is there suddenly more traffic on my road than there used to be?"

—Joyce Fetteroll

Most of the third of Five Steps to Unschooling
photo by Nina Haley

Tricks of the eye

Artists know for sure, and other people sometimes notice, that nearer looks bigger, and far seems small.

What we see depends on where we are and what we know.

Relatively close,     or     Here and there
photo by Sandra Dodd

What if a child says no?

This is my writing, in 2003, when my kids were 12, 14, 17 or so.

Sometimes one will say "I'm really not feeling good," as Holly did yesterday, and her need for juice, a blanket and some mom-comfort were real. She has a cold. So that was suddenly more important than her helping me get firewood, or whatever it was. I really don't remember anymore.

Nobody's ever said, "NO, I'm playing a video game, do it yourself." But they have said "When I get to a saving point."

The more we said yes to our children, the more willing they were to say yes to us. It worked like please and thank you did!

...on family life
photo by Holly Dodd

Becoming more open

Marta wrote:

What I'm starting to realize (by what I've been reading and learning, and by my own observations of my experience), is that we can most certainly choose alternatives that can lead us to more openness (like choosing more positive words to describe how we feel about something, or genuinely trying to relax and see what our children and partners see in something they like, etc.). And that if we do it often, we can probably rewire our brains, creating new neurological paths and becoming indeed more open.

—Marta Venturini Machado

SandraDodd.com/open
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Simply seeing

Look at things others might not see. See their shapes, their backgrounds. Light changes. Wind comes. Things were once younger, smaller, newer. They will be older, different, gone.

See what's around you.

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Live a Learning Life

"Child-led, 'wait til they ask'" isn't the way radical unschooling works. It's a way for unschooling to fail, if the parents are twiddling their thumbs waiting for the child to lead, or ask to learn something.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/marginal
photo by Karen James, of stained glass by Ethan James

Bigger and smaller

One of the easiest things is to try to keep something the same size all the time. It's easy to try, not easy to accomplish. People and their surroundings change. What was cozy can seem too small. The size of a problem, or a thought, a dish or a bathtub, can seem to change depending on circumstances, and on what you're thinking when you look at it. Children grown and change.

Still unschooling endures, and Zann Carter, who took this self-portrait, wrote "to me unschooling is as positive as unchaining, unbinding, unleashing, unfolding, unfurling, unlimiting...."

Zann's beautiful writing helped many people understand unschooling, when the ideas were newer.

Unfolding, unfurling
photo by Zann Carter

Laughter helps

Deb Lewis wrote:

Unschoolers sometimes talk about having tools in their toolbox. No, unschoolers are not all plumbers. They're referring to a store of good ideas to shop around in to help in this business of living. I have one tool I use more than any other. A pipe wrench! No, it's humor.. . . .Laughter has helped my own family through hard times. Sure we would have come through the hard times anyway, but we came through them with less stress, fewer lasting scars, and lots of great one-liners.

—Deb Lewis

Unschooler's Pipe Wrench, by Deb Lewis
photo by Jo Isaac
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Active participants

"Unschooling is not child-led or child-directed learning — that makes it sound like the parent should just be a 'follower.' Not so — parents are active participants and part of the job of an unschooling parent is to keep the child in mind and to fill his/her life with just the right amount of interesting new experience, chances to repeat experiences, down time, and so on."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/nest—Building an Unschooling Nest
photo by Nina Haley
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Looking, and finding

"I seek happiness each and every day. The best place I find it is in my children."

—Nina Haley

Waking up happy
photo by Meg Oh
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Curiosity and beauty

You can't see beauty without wanting to see some. Once you're looking through curiosity-tinted glasses, you will see a thousand interesting things.


(a little longer, on facebook)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Do it gradually, now.

There is a page in The Big Book of Unschooling called "Cautions" (page 8), about changing gradually, and a webpage linked below with lots of ideas to help with that.

There is another page on my site called "Do It," about not waiting too long.

Gradually move toward doing it right now.

Halfway between "very gradual" and "do it right now" is the place to be, while you're learning about unschooling.

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Gradual Change seems to contradict "Do It!", but you need both.

Here is another Just Add Light post with advice about how that works:
Shifting gears

photo by Amy Milstein
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Stretchy light and shadow

I like thinking about what something "IS"—as though ideas and things are as solid as elements. Well... solid elements, anyway.

I like this photo. It matches the idea that glass itself is a very slow moving liquid, rather than a solid.


Does the projection show what's in the jar? It's not sticky, or sweet, that color the sun made, in that shadow. We don't know for sure that what was in the jar was sticky or sweet, either, but I'm extrapolating. So much extrapolation, in our lives, about the past, and the present and the future. At least I hope it will light you up, sometimes, and you can cast a long, pretty shadow.

Practice acceptance
photo by Lisa J Haugen

The sky

"Look at those sticks poking out of the sky!!" —Gail Higgins the photographer What you see is what you think.

SandraDodd.com/perspective.html
photo by Gail Higgins

A new view

Deschooling means dismantling the overlay of school. Gradually (or just all of a sudden, if you have that ability) stop speaking and thinking in terms of grades, semesters, school-days, education, scores, tests, introductions, reviews, and performance, and replace those artificial strictures and measures with ideas like morning, hungry, happy, new, learning, interesting, playing, exploring and living.

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo by Cathy Koetsier