Don't make it weird.

For unschooling to work in that solid, twelve-or-twenty-year way, it should be about kids, and learning, and relationships and peace, not about being weird for the sake of weird, or being anti-government.

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Cass Kotrba

Simple fun

We just had our 33rd wedding anniversary last week. Someone wished me well on my page and said she hoped we did something fun. I said we had transplanted mint and pulled some weeds (or something), and she said (nicely, joking) she meant MORE fun. But maybe the way to stay happily married for many years is to have fun transplanting mint...

—Sandra Dodd
(married over 41 years now
and that mint is still happy)

SandraDodd.com/laundry
photo by Sandra Dodd
of some of that mint, off season

It's fall, today. In early summer, that mint is thick and happy. We planted it around three or four rocks. Over the years Keith has added more cool rocks.

Invaluable confidence

Karen James wrote:

Being able to understand and talk about unschooling well, with anyone, is invaluable. That kind of confidence helps in families, at doctor's offices, at the dentist...nearly anywhere and everywhere one might find oneself being asked about homeschooling. It helps one's own family, but it also helps make things a bit easier for future unschooling families by hopefully easing some of the skepticism and prejudice about learning naturally.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/confidence
photo by Karen James

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

More peaceful, with practice

"With practice, the moments of panic and fear become fewer and farther between."

—Diana Jenner
2008

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Jihong Tang

Windows

Windows can frame surprises!

Part of being able to balance yourself in the world is to be ready to appreciate the unexpected, and also to be grateful for a same-old, uneventful view.

Sometimes, leave your curtains open and your soul prepared for anything.


Not My Windows
photo (wild turkey out the window) by Colleen Prieto, in New Hampshire

Is this obvious?

I like the words "obvious" and "oblivious." They're not really related, but they seem and sound similar, which can be fun and funny.

To some people the presence of a lizard would be obvious. They would see it, right in their path.

I am often oblivious to lizards. I don't remember that they exist, if one hasn't just run up the wall.

Are we obvious to lizards? If one runs, he probably saw me moving toward him. They come to our compost bin to eat bugs. I bring new scraps from the kitchen. Out in my yard, sometimes lizards can seem to be oblivious to people, or to cats, or to roadrunners.

As the parenting of children goes, it is good to lean toward what is obvious, and to avoid being oblivious.

SandraDodd.com/words
photo by Karen James

Inside choices

Someone wrote, of a six-year-old, once:

She's currently refusing to go outside.

I responded:

She can't refuse if no one is pressuring or demanding.

SandraDodd.com/rebellion
photo by Deb Lewis

Your individual self

There is a hanging lamp at our house, in the entryway. It reminds me of restaurant furnishings of the southwestern U.S. in the late 1960s and '70s. It's iron, with sheets of colored glass, in blue and amber. It makes it easy for me to remember that the house was built in the early 1970s.

The associations I have with this lamp won't match those of my children, who have seen it most of their lives. Even my husband, also from New Mexico, probably has other thoughts and connections. Visitors, depending on their ages and experiences, will see it and images or words might come to them.

It's good to know that the pictures in your head are your own, and the connections that go with them. Your children's experiences and views of the world are their individual own selves'.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sensational days

Sensational / Sensation / Senses

Color, texture, scent. Sound. Taste.

Let your days be sensational.

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Janine Davies

Perspective and patterns

The patterns you and your children see are worth exploring and expanding. The connections you make are your model of the moment, and ultimately part of your model of the universe—past, present, future, imagined, revised, spooky and sweet.

SandraDodd.com/perspective
photo by Annie Regan

Happier, healthier

If small changes of attitude can make more happy moments than before, that benefits everyone involved.

No one can have perfect happiness, but *more* happiness is easy to come by. It doesn't cost any more than less happiness, but it's much healthier and better for the whole family and the neighbors and relatives.

SandraDodd.com/happy
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Lisbon, 2013
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You can't see everything

You can't see everything.

You can't be everything.

Limitations are real, and some limitations are time, patience, focus, knowledge, weather, health...

Knowing you can't be perfect, be better than you would have been if you were not aiming to be a better parent, better partner, and better person.

You can't see everything, but you can slow down and try to see more.

Thoughts about doing better
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Be light

Whether it's warm outside or cold, the sun through the window is the same.

Be light.
SandraDodd.com/mindfulness

words originally at Sunshine, November 2016
photo by Amber Ivey

Calmer is healthier

Biochemically/emotionally, calmer is healthier. I don't know of any physical condition that is made better by freaking out or crying hard or losing sleep or reciting fears. I know LOTS of things that are made better—entire lives, and lives of grandchildren not yet born—by thoughtful, mindful clarity.

Calming and contagious
photo by Ester Siroky

What helps?

I think one thing that helps is having a house. A detached house. . . . . It's not a requirement, but it seems to help. Then kids have dirt to dig in. I know some apartments have dirt and some houses don't. But still. Dirt. Bugs. Plants.

There is more of that, and more about what else helps, in a chat transcript:
SandraDodd.com/chats/whathelps
photo by Lydia Koltai

Wellbeing, learning and balance

When I stopped seeing my daughter as adversarial it changed the world for us.
. . . .We have developed a sweet and trusting bond where the focus is on wellbeing and learning and finding balance.

—Joanna Murphy, 2008

SandraDodd.com/change.html
photo by Holly Dodd
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Detox, gradually

For a child, deschooling is just the time to relax and get used to being home and with Mom—a child who’s been to school. A child who hasn’t been to school has no deschooling to do.

But for parents, deschooling is detoxification from a lifetime, and recovery from all of their schooling and whatever teaching they might have done. And it’s also the start of a gradual review of everything...

They don’t need to do it in advance, they don’t need to do it right at first. It’s so big, but it’s also gradual—it's just like living and breathing and eating and sleeping. Because every day a little more can come to the surface and be examined as it pops up.

Changes in Parents
The quote is from a recent podcast of Pam Laricchia interviewing me.
photo by Lisa Jonick

Trivia

A huge amount of learning is taking place, and the child's internal model of the universe is starting to form up. You can help!

SandraDodd.com/trivia, in a quote that links to SandraDodd.com/piaget
photo by Colleen Prieto

Soft

Sometimes children are soft, in soft surroundings, and a mother's heart is soft.

Sometimes they're loud, sticky, and stinky. Sometimes moms are frazzled.

Remember the quieter times will be there, too. Help to soften their lives.

SandraDodd.com/calm
photo by Lydia Koltai
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