Casually more attentive

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

You can casually be more attentive without forcing yourself on him. Do it in a thousand different ways by thinking of him throughout the day and doing some little thing for him. I just went to my daughter's room and got a pillow off her bed and put it under her head (she's on the couch nearby). She smiled sleepily at me and said, "I love you, Mommy." She's 18.

Maybe just take him a soda into his room - or a monkey platter of little things he likes. Show him by your little actions throughout the day that you love him.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Cátia Maciel

Learning, clearly

Sandra Dodd
16 February 2020

I'm cleaning up my computer desktop (a neverending task), and came across a note where I saved this:

"Getting mad about the difference between teach and learn is a waste of your life."

I've never been "mad" about the difference. 🙂 I've been thinking about it for longer than most people have been alive. I've read about it, I've written about it, I've helped others understand why it can matter, sometimes. It ALWAYS matters for those who want to unschool. Deschooling won't happen without stepping away from the idea of teaching, and without finding some occurrences of natural learning, picking them up and turning them over. Soon it will be easier to see and understand the kind of learning that happens lightly but deeply.

Someone must have been mad enough about my pointing out that there is a difference between teaching and learning (lots of differences; I could go on) to declare that my life was a waste.

I'm pretty sure my life has not been a waste. 🙂

What Teaching Never Can Be
Sandra Dodd, and others, on "Learning" vs. "Teaching"

The quote is here: SandraDodd.com/learningClearly
photo by Stacie Mahoe

Comments on a comet

Deb Lewis wrote more before and after this, but once when her son had a new telescope and there was a comet showing from Montana...

The comet was elusive, but the clouds were stunningly beautiful with the sun burning behind them. The moon hung on for us as the sky turned that powdery blue of early morning. When there was finally enough light to see down into the valley, we counted deer all around us in the fields. And as the morning brightened, we could see tiny frost crystals shimmering in the air like glittering confetti. We didn't see the comet, but as we drove home we didn't feel like we'd missed anything at all. We had gone to find one thing but found other things instead. The comet was there, shooting toward the sun whether our eyes saw it or not, and it turns out, that's ok.

I think unschooling is better when we can be surprised or inspired even when things aren't going exactly as we planned, when we can welcome what comes, even if it wasn't what we expected.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis/notevenclose
photo by Deb Lewis

Voices to save (or shush)

about the voices in your head:

It’s possible to (gradually) shush the old voices and find some new mental first-responders.

SandraDodd.com/voices
photo by Joshua Trujillo

Clarity and choices

Karen James wrote:

Freedom is a lovely word. It’s a huge concept. It has a very meaningful place in our society. It is important to a lot of people for very honourable and very real reasons.

Freedom is too big a focal point for unschooling though. It’s not that it can’t be celebrated and talked about. I believe it can. But if our aim is to have clarity in unschooling, our focus seems better directed at more succinct and relevant concepts to grasp and implement. Concrete ideas that can carry us forward through all of the stages, through any situation, and into a healthy, productive adulthood.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/choices/
photo of an airplane by Sandra Dodd
(click the image and zoom a bit if you can't see the plane)

Observe, recognize and know

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Be very observant of what your child is really doing - don't view him/her in a shallow superficial way. Recognize that there is a reason for a child's actions, that a child is "born to learn" and is always learning. Get to know your child's own special favored ways of learning

—Pam Sorooshian

#10 of a list of 11 pointers by Pam Sorooshian
from What is the role of the unschooling parent?
photo by Belinda Dutch

Changing, building, and understanding

JoyfullyRejoycing

SandraDodd.com/unschooling

Those sites exist so that people can explore unschooling, but reading those pages doesn't make anyone an unschooler. Only changing one's own thoughts and beliefs and actions and reactions, and building a relationship with one's children based on those understandings can make unschooling work in a family.

There is a "there there" tradition among women. I've referred to it as "teaparty" talk in the past, and then made a page to illustrate what I was talking about. It *sounds* like support, but it's really more like "let's all avoid real thought together!" Unschooling takes real thought, and a desire to change. Any desire to be supported in staying the same will be a problem.

SandraDodd.com/support

Less entertaining, but easier to read from a phone:
"Support" messages all in one list
photo by Jo Isaac
❖

Light and kindness

Light can come from you, today, in small ways. If you are gentle and patient when you help a child, that creates peace and comfort. If you smile at a stranger, give someone a seat, or hold a door, you have transformed a moment. The light you add to their day can warm your own soul, too.

Kindness lights up the world.

SandraDodd.com/inspiration
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Australia, in 2014
I wrote at the time "The water was SO GREEN—green like light, like light through green-tinted glass."

New chances, all day

Su Penn wrote:

A couple of months ago, my four-year-old and I had been wrangling all day—we just couldn't get into each other's groove. He was fussy, I was impatient, he was whiny, I was cranky. We were struggling and struggling. Finally, it was time to cook dinner, which he always likes to help with. I got out whatever ingredients I needed, and he pulled his stool over to the kitchen counter, and we started measuring and stirring and slicing. I was standing half behind him, and he suddenly leaned his head back against my chest and said, "We're having a good day, aren't we? I like cooking with you. We're having fun. We always have fun." It transformed the whole day for me to hear that he was experiencing it so differently—or that that moment of cooking together had redeemed the whole rotten thing.

You've talked before, Sandra, about this idea of thinking about moments instead of days and it has maybe not changed my life but it has changed a lot of my days. I used to decide by, say, 11 a.m. that we were having a "rough day." Anybody ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Now, no matter how rough the moment gets, I remind myself that the next moment is a whole new chance at something good. And it's amazing how often magic comes two minutes after I was thinking I was going to have to chuck the whole thing and go back to bed.

—Su Penn

SandraDodd.com/badmoment
photo by Shawn Smythe Haunschild

The sky stays up

This is from a discussion of speech therapy, once upon a time:

I think the hurry on the part of the therapist is based on school- based assumptions—that his age means being in a certain grade, and that not "catching up" fast means a life of failure and working bringing in the carts at WalMart. It's simple, in this culture, and common, for people to chart a course to a failed future on the basis of ditching school one day, or of a kid getting drunk and missing a football practice, or not studying for a math test one time, or of missing more than some number of days of school in one year because of illness.

The sky is ALWAYS falling for professionals associated with the schools. . . . .
The sky doesn't need to be falling on unschoolers.

---

SandraDodd.com/being

Original, on Always Learning
photo by Amy Milstein

The bright light of what you know

In response to "I guess I'll feel my way?"
I wrote:

In the dark? Feel your way blindly?
How will you know which way to go?

Probably it would be better to gather ideas that will help with decision-making and then make decisions in the bright light of everything you know, and the way you would like to be.

SandraDodd.com/just
photo by Janine Davies

Clear language, clear thoughts

Rhetoric and terminology can masquerade as thought or as progress. There are a few terms (and a very, very few) that have been used for many years in unschooling discussions, and they don't seem to have been harmful, nor to have had simple equivalents:‬ ‪SandraDodd.com/terminology

---

SandraDodd.com/clarity
photo by Denaire Nixon

Positive and beautiful

Alex Polikowsky wrote:

Fear of electromagnetic waves? What if I tell you they are everywhere and that even earth has it?? (hey I am a huge Aurora Borealis aficionado!!)

Living with all this fear is not fun and it is anxiety inducing. Anxiety is a terrible state for you or your child to live in. Learning thrives when there is peace and safety.

Feeling unsafe because your library has wifi and making life about the dangers around is a soul sucking way to live for your children and for yourself.

Surround yourself with all that is positive and beautiful including amazing wifi!

—Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/radiation
photo by my neighbor, Linda G., visiting Iceland

The world is new

Simple, pretty things should be valued. The world is new to every child.

Being directly with children can help parents see the newness in the world.

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Abby Davis

It's not about power

Once upon a time, a newer but enthusiastic unschooler came to a discussion explaining the "we" (all of us) should agree that unschooling was about power—power over oneself, and the power to decide what to learn and when (and more dramatic power-based rhetoric).

Some of my response is below, and near the photo credit is a link to the full post.

We don't talk about power here much, but we have given our children a life of choices. It's not "power," it's rational thinking, considering all sorts of factors and preferences. They don't need power over themselves. They need to BE themselves.
SandraDodd.com/being

"The power to decide what to learn" makes a pretzel of the straight line between experience and knowing.

My children don't "decide what to learn, how to learn, and when to learn it." They learn all the time. They learn from dreams, from eating, from walking, from singing, from conversations, from watching plants grow and storms roll. They learn from movies, books, websites, and asking questions.

Power over oneself, unschooling and "politics"
photo by Amy Milstein

Zoom

When you see something, or picture it in your mind, you might be examining a small detail of it, close up.

If it is shown at a distance with a big background, the details fade out. The object can be beautiful, in that context, though. A jewel.

Remember you can zoom.

Zoom out calmly. Zoom in curiously. Zoom thoughtfully.

SandraDodd.com/feedback/perspective
photo by Brie Jontry

Can't see everything

No matter how far you look or imagine, you can't see everything. Children are growing in a living world.

When you look ahead, as far as you can see, look for beauty.

When you look behind, as far as you can, remember the good things.

SandraDodd.com/abundance

photo by Stacie Mahoe

Winter picnic idea

Deb Lewis, as part of a long list of things to do in winter:

We've gone on picnics on the coldest of cold days. There is a big shelter, open at one end with a big fire pit that was built by the snow mobile club up at a campground near us. We've gone there on cold days with thermoses full of hot soup or stir fry, built a fire, had fun.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/strew/deblist
photo by Brie Jontry

Be more positive than I am

Once someone in a chat asked what I meant by "Positive." Quickly and bluntly, I wrote:

Positive is not being cynical and not being pessimistic and not taking pride in being dark and pissy.

Yesterday I added it to my newish page on Positivity. It is the least positive thing on that page. 🙂

SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo of Hadrian's Wall, by Jo Isaac

Positive, upbeat, hopeful, helpful

Parents who want unschooling to work should be positive, upbeat, hopeful, helpful.

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo by Gail Higgins