Showing posts with label repeat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label repeat. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Your child as a person


"Just a reminder: your kids are whole people. They're having experiences even when you're not there. They learn with you and without you."
—Holly Dodd

(I told Holly, "Say something I can quote in Just Add Light.")

SandraDodd.com/holly
photo by Julie D, of Holly and Adam
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Sunday, March 2, 2025

Privacy and dignity



This regards the way I helped make peace between kids when they argued:

The reason I used the method of speaking to each child separately, and ME going back and forth, rather than summoning them to where I was is that I was trying to comfort them and help them be safe and to be better people—people they would be glad to be. They don't like it when they're all frustrated. If I could tweak sibling behavior and comfort the aggrieved child, and then go to the other one with comfort and ideas, each was better prepared, in private, without a witness knowing what he was "supposed to do" the next time. That was important to me, to give them some privacy and some dignity, and some time to think without other people looking at them or praising my suggestion, or criticizing them further.

SandraDodd.com/peace/fighting
There's more on the topic on Joyce's site: Siblings Fighting
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Monday, February 17, 2025

A changing environment

Many parents want to change the child, instead of changing the child's environment by (in large part) changing themselves.

dad and daughter walking on fallen leaves on sidewalk

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Improving the flow


One of the nicest thing I do for my husband is to withhold criticism. I could (and used to, when we were younger) say too much, comment too much. Letting things go by lets peace and love flow in.

P.S. It works with children, too.

SandraDodd.com/betterpartner
or the same article in German: Bessere Partner werden
(though the quote is from a discussion)
photo by Sandra Dodd (it's a link)
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Thursday, January 23, 2025

Native habitats


Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

It's important to observe radically unschooled kids rather than kids in general because kids in general are shaped by the relationship they have with their parents and their freedom to explore. Kids who are controlled behave very differently from kids who are supported in their explorations. They are as different as zoo animals kept in cages are different from animals who grow up in their native habitats.
—Joyce Fetteroll

Understanding Unschooling
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp
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Wednesday, January 1, 2025

Radical Unschooling Is...


"Radical Unschooling" is unschooling fully, from the roots, from the principles, extended into all of one's life and being.


This was inspired by Family Bonding, Amy Childs interviewing me
about the benefits of radical unschooling.
(and there's a good transcript there)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Saturday, November 23, 2024

Food, shelter, pizzazz

Seasons change, and creatures look for a place to be, near something to eat.

If you're providing food and shelter for your children, good job! If you can look cool while doing it, with a bit of style and pizzazz, bonus for everyone.

Fill your shelter with peace and patience.

Building an Unschooling Nest
photo by Karen James

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Here and now


Don't have so much of past and future in your head that you can't live now.

SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Sandra Dodd

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

All or nothing or...

Should people live in the water in the middle of the ocean, or should they live on land as far as possible away from an ocean?

Quickly! What's your answer?


This was a trick question just designed to make you think. But people really do ask the same kinds of questions of themselves sometimes. In some people's heads, "Don't believe everything you read" turns into "Don't believe anything you read."

In the middle are things like "Believe things that make sense and seem to work after you've thought about them and tried them out," and "Don't believe something just because you read it, but wait for it to be confirmed by other more trusted sources, or by your own research or observance."

By thinking in extremes, "There is more than one truth" becomes "All things are equally truthful." Just because there are many truths doesn't mean there's no such thing as nonsense.

SandraDodd.com/balance
The last bit was a paraphrase, to be courteous,
of the original statement from a few years before which was
"Just because there's more than one truth
doesn't mean there's no such thing as bullshit."


photo by Sandra Dodd

Thursday, September 26, 2024

Better ways to be

This is post #5004!
#5003, yesterday's, had links that didn't work, so I'm back with a thank you for reading, an apology for yesterday's problem (my fault completely), and a repeat, with working links (I HOPE!).

If you usually read from e-mail or on a phone, maybe visit from a computer or iPad so you can play with the randomizer and "Themes in the Images" (tags of photo elements). I'm not sure how it shows from other tablets, but the iPad works.

Thank you for reading!

(I had intended to make a big deal of the 5,000th post, but it came in the midst of me keeping grandkids for five days while their parents were out of state, so this is a small deal, about #5004.)


"Being there for and with the family" seems so simple and yet many parents miss out on it without even leaving the house. Maybe it's because of English. Maybe we think we're "being there with our family" just because we can hear them in the other room. There is a special kind of "being" and a thoughtful kind of "with" that are necessary for unschooling and mindful parenting to work.

Being an unschooling parent

Being flexible and creative and patient

Being a mindful parent

Being supportive

Being at peace

Being with...

Being aware

Being fun

Being as

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Sandra Dodd

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Look around

a hawk, perched near a house

You might be able to see a lot without moving.


SandraDodd.com/look
photo by Deb Lewis

Sunday, August 25, 2024

Human beings

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Most parenting approaches either treat kids like they're alien beings or like they're fellow adults.

Radical unschooling supports treating kids like human beings while taking into account their differences.
—Joyce Fetteroll



SandraDodd.com/joyce
photo by Karen James

Thursday, August 15, 2024

Not so extreme, please

If the old rules were that school is vital and "an education" (defined as the curriculum of an ideal school) is necessary, will the new rules be that school is not important and an education is not necessary? We don't make school disappear by turning the other way. It's still there. Our kids might want to go to school someday, in some form. We don't deny that knowledge is important by becoming unschoolers, but many come to prefer the idea of "learning" with its vast possibilities over the narrower "education."

SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Thursday, August 8, 2024

Where are you going?

If you don't know where you're going, it's hard to begin to get there. If where you want to go is a fantasy, then it's impossible to get there.
from page 25 of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Keith Dodd, of the Chama River,
near Abiquiu, New Mexico

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Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Natural instinct and sensible logic

Allow children to reject food they don’t like, or that doesn’t smell like something they should eat, or doesn’t look good to them. Don’t extinguish a child’s instincts because you-the-parent seem sure that you know more, know facts, know rules.
. . . .
Instead of looking for exceptions to knock my ideas away with, read a little (of this or anything else), try a little (try not forcing food OR “knowledge” into children), wait a while (and while you’re waiting, ponder the nature of “fact”) and watch for the effects of the read/try/wait process, on your own thinking, or on the child’s reactions and responses, or on the relationship.



Reading science; food, and instinct
information on a situation in which
Twinkies are better food than alfalfa sprouts,
and when lettuce might be very dangerous


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


Photo by Sandra Dodd of bell peppers (which I don't much like) stuffed with things lots of other people don't like or can't eat. I didn't do it on purpose, the recipe was just all beef, onion, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, pine nuts...

Saturday, July 13, 2024

Imagine supporting and accepting


Jenny Cyphers wrote:

I really can't imagine villifying anything in their lives that they might find very exciting. Well, I can imagine it, so I guess that's why I don't do it.
—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/negativity
photo by Susanna Waters
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Thursday, July 4, 2024

Twenty days of learning

Ghoj pagh jaj (Klingon, maybe, for "Learn Nothing Day") is in one score of days.

O le aso e leai se mea afia
第一国际无会日
O Dia de Nao Aprender Nada
Leer Niets Dag
El Dia de No Aprender Nada
Oggi non si impara
Erster Internationaler Welt-nichtslerntag
La Journée Sans Rien Apprendre

Learn now, because it's going to end on July 24.


Score! and counting sheep in prehistoric languages
(with some good comments, there)

photos by Sandra Dodd, with continuing gratitude to Ester Siroky for taking me and Joyce to see some Highland cattle in 2013
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Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Scenery is where you see it.


We seek out interesting “scenic routes” in real and figurative ways.


SandraDodd.com/why
photo by Marty Dodd, in rural Nevada, thinking "Fallout"
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Friday, May 31, 2024

Accommodations


The more that parents can accommodate children's simple desires, the calmer and happier those children will be.

Nice, and patient
photo by Destiny Dodd

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

If everything counts...



So what IS trivia, then? For school kids, trivia is (by definition) a waste of time. It’s something that will not be on the test. It’s “extra” stuff. For unschoolers, though, in the wide new world in which EVERYTHING counts, there can be no trivia in that sense.

SandraDodd.com/trivia

The quote is from
Textbooks for Unschoolers
or
Triviality


photo by Sandra Dodd