Optimistic happy people

Alex Polikowsky wrote:

Surround yourself with optimistic happy people. Do not engage in conversation when people are complaining about their children or husbands. If a friend comes to complain about her kids I try to turn around and point out to them how that characteristic could be good or some other great thing about their children. Or I change the subject.

Look at what you have, not what you do not have. If all you focus is in negative things that is all you will see. If you always look for the positive slowly you will, more and more, see the positive and the beauty around you and that will become who you are.

—Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Safer thinking

When a rules-based environment causes rule-breaking, and failure, or balking and resistance, those things are not safe—not physically nor emotionally.

Be expansive in thinking about safety. That's safer.

SandraDodd.com/safe
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Learning feels good.

Learning feels good. It is satisfying and intrinsically rewarding. Irrelevant rewards can have unintended side effects that do not support learning.

Principles of Unschooling, by Pam Sorooshian
photo by Dan Vilter (who originally preserved Pam's writing)

Simple and beautiful

"I think unschooling has done as much for me as it has and will have for my son. When you get down to it it's just so simple and so beautiful. It's helped me to reconnect with my older kids too and make amends for all the times that I made mistakes. So many things that you don't even know will be changed when you start living that different kind of way."

—Jessica Sutton

Unforeseen Benefits of Unschooling
photo by Karen James
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Big world, and full

"When we can we should always do more, offer more, think more, and make our bit of the world as big and full as we can for our kids. Our kid's lives get bigger and better when our thinking gets bigger and better." —Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/quotes/
photo by Jo Isaac

Out of this world?

School has become so much a part of life in the past few decades that it seems to some that taking their children out of school is like leaving the planet altogether. You will be relieved, then, to discover that school takes kids out of the world but unschooling gives it back. I know it can sound wrong and crazy. Keep reading. Keep watching your kids. Listen to your memories of childhood.

SandraDodd.com/deschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd
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