Being mindful

Try to be a good unschooling parent, a generous freedom-nurturing parent, a parent providing a peaceful nest, a parent wanting to be each child's partner. Try to make your decisions in that light.

SandraDodd.com/mindfulness
The text above paraphrases something I wrote there.
photo by Brigita Usman (click to enlarge)

Better, without regrets

Do your best to do your best.

You won't regret making more positive choices.

---

SandraDodd.com/better on my site
and
"Better" on Just Add Light and Stir
photo by Renee Cabatic

Clearer and easier

If a person wants to live in the light of his goals and intentions, then the "better choices" need to be made in that light. The clearer you are about where you intend to go, the easier your decisions are.

SandraDodd.com/clarity
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Epiphanies

Ah-HA!

I recently saw how far I've come.

I knew that. Now I *know* that.

I am pretty sure I understand now!

Those quotes are from a collection of just a few of the unschooling epiphanies reported over the years. Not one of them is anything akin to "Yeah, I read that, but..." They're not about reading at all. They're about seeing, about realizing, about having acted in a new way after months or years of the percolation of ideas through a mind and heart open to learning.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd

Your part

Make the world more peaceful by being a peaceful part of the world.

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Eva Witsel

Games

Games can be family history, and art. Games can be culture and togetherness.

It's okay if games are old and made of wood, and seeds or stones. Some use cards, dice, markers. Don't worry about it if they involve computers, or smart phones and long walks.

SandraDodd.com/games
photo by Pushpa Ramachandran

A warm welcome

Deb Lewis wrote:

If you could not have both or if it was rare to have both, consider which would be more important, having your daughter’s help with housework or having a warm and loving relationship with her. Which will serve her better? Children who do not have a loving connection with parents *will* look for one elsewhere. They may find it with people who don’t have their best interest at heart.

—Deb Lewis

French translation

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

Generosity

As my kids get older...I'm seeing more vividly the results of parenting choices, not just in them, but in their more conventionally parented peers, as well. Generosity begets generosity.

—Caren Knox

SandraDodd.com/generosity
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Who thinks what?

[For unschooling to work...]
The parents need to be truly interested in their children as people, not just as symbols or irritants or mistakes or property. They need to care more what their children think than what other adults think, and that is very rare in the world.

I don't know where I wrote it, but Tiffani M. shared it on Facebook in 2012.
I'm glad she saved it.
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Parents know...because

Q: How will you know if they're learning?

A: Teachers need to measure and document because they need to show progress so they can get paid, and keep their jobs. They test and measure because they don't always know each child well.

Parents know a child is learning because they're seeing and discussing and doing things together every day. Not five days a week, or most of the year, but all of the days of their whole lives.

SandraDodd.com/faq
photo by Sarah Lawson

Less methodical

If there is a method to unschooling it's certainly not a simple one. It involves changing one's stance and viewpoint on just about everything concerning children and learning. That's not "a method." That's a life change.

The first time I used this quote, in 2011,
Karen James responded:

It really is a life change, that keeps changing and evolving. Actually, I find, the less methodical I am, the more fluent the learning and living become.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/definition
photo of "the rock house", from Sandia Tram, by Sandra Dodd
(The rock layers really are at that angle,
at the top of the Sandia Mountains.)

Tricked by "knowledge"

Meredith Novak wrote:

A great deal of parenting "wisdom" is made up of things "everyone knows" because everyone repeats them back and forth, over and over. Like "you have to go to school to learn" and "children need rules". Some of the things "everyone knows" are completely wrong, but because "everyone knows" them, it's very, very difficult for people to change their attitudes even in the presence of evidence to the contrary.

It was really shocking for me to discover just how much of what I "knew" was a result of that repetition. I accounted myself an intelligent, thoughtful person, with strong "alternative" viewpoints, but most of what I thought I knew about parenting was based in a kind of cultural conditioning. The ideas in my head weren't my own. That's humbling.

—Meredith

SandraDodd.com/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd

Unexpectedly...

Gail Higgins, an unschooling mom, wrote of this photo: "Opossum staredown. Surprise photo op 😀"


It reminds me of those unexpected moments that pop up in any parent's life. Unexpectedly, someone is looking at you expectantly. It could be one of your children, your partner, a relative, a neighbor, a friend or a stranger.

Confidence in unschooling principles will make those moments increasingly easy to deal with. After becoming an unschooler, one can respond as an unschooler. It does take a while.

As Gail's confidence in her photographic skills increases, she can respond as a photographer, when surprises come along.

SandraDodd.com/becoming
photo by Gail Higgins

No shoving, please

Set it out, don't try to shove it in.

That line is from small talk I gave once, to dads only. I was talking about logic—to draw it in, not to hit people with it. But "Set it out, don't try to shove it in" can apply to many things—food, interesting things, ideas, and to unschooling itself.

photo by Sandra Dodd

Be the safest place

Instead of requiring that my kids had to hold my hand in a parking lot, I would park near a cart and put some kids in right away, or tell them to hold on to the cart (a.k.a. "help me push", so a kid can be between me and the cart). And they didn't have to hold a hand. There weren't enough hands. I'd say "Hold on to something," and it might be my jacket, or the strap of the sling, or the backpack, or something.

I've seen other people's children run away from them in parking lots, and the parents yell and threaten. At that moment, going back to the mom seems the most dangerous option.

Make yourself your child's safest place in the world, and many of your old concerns will just disappear.

SandraDodd.com/safe
photo by Sandra Dodd

Responding directly

If we wait to see where a child's gaze falls, and wait a while for a question or comment to form, our observation and readiness to assist if needed, or to converse casually will be better than any pre-scripted lesson could ever be.

It will be personal, and real, and at exactly the right moment.

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Chrissy Florence

---

The post was used six years ago, too, but here is a new link to go with it:
SandraDodd.com/conversation

Various doorways

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Learning is defined not just as sucking in information about something the child is interested in. Learning is also figuring out the big picture and how things connect. Figuring out how stuff works, figuring out how people work, making connections, seeing patterns. This is a mechanical, biological process. It's how humans—all learning animals really—naturally learn, how kids are born learning.

Natural learning is like a doorway. We can't change the doorway but we can change the outside world so kids can more easily reach what intrigues them.

—Joyce Fetteroll
(original)

SandraDodd.com/joycefetteroll
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Pérouges, France

Purely learning

Facebook Memories showed me that someone on another continent had quoted me, years ago:

Learning does not teach us, but from learning we learn.

I still haven't found her source, but in looking I found its "wordier" cousin posted here in 2011:

Mastering ideas about learning

As some of my articles are being translated (now into Japanese, French and Italian) I see how much of my writing and thinking is about language itself, and so some of these ideas won't translate. But sometimes, that fact is very good. Some of our confusion about teaching and students and study and learning, in English, has to do with the words we use, and if the problems don't exist in other languages, that's wonderful for them.

In Romance language (Italian, French, Spanish and so on) our "teacher" translates to something along the lines of "maestro," a word we have too in regards to music direction. And we have the English cognate "master" which is more currently left in "master of arts" and other college-degree titles. Once that meant a person was qualified to teach at the university level. That meaning is gone in the U.S., pretty much.

Considering the word family from which "maestro" comes (and not knowing all its connotations in other languages), the English verb "to master" means to learn. It means to become accomplished in the doing of something. Whether mastering horseback riding or blacksmithing or knowing and controlling one's own emotions, it's not something someone else does to you or for you.

So for any translators or bilinguals reading here, have sympathy for English speakers who can't get to natural learning without disentangling all the graspy words and ideas about teaching and education and their implications that learning is passive and teaching must be done to a person.

SandraDodd.com/wordswordsother
photo by Sandra Dodd

Thinking and maybe rethinking

"Thoughts and opinions that don't match reality should be rethought."

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/tvchoice
photo by Sandra Dodd

Be very engaged

"I made my marriage very important to me. I chose to be very engaged in my marriage as a part of raising children."

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/spouses
photo by Sandra Dodd