Parents can learn from children

Ren wrote:

As a child I was taught that fashion and all it entails was "wordly" and that Barbie stuff promoted low self esteem. Baloney! What promoted low self esteem was being told my interests weren't worthy.

—Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/renallen
photo by Jayn Coburn

Choose a point, any point.

Parents new to unschooling tend to worry that some activities are good preparation for life, but others are frivolous and should be forbidden or discouraged. Life and thought and learning, though, depend on connections being made. And the more points of information about anything at all being made inside an individual, the more points there will be to connect.


SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo by Sandra Dodd

Book worship

There was a time when the only way for a kid to get information from outside his home and neighborhood was books. (Think Abraham Lincoln, log cabin in the woods far from centers of learning.) Now books tend to be outdated, and google.com is better for information. If Abraham Lincoln had had full-color DVDs of the sights of other countries, of people speaking in their native accents and languages, and of history, he would have shoved those books aside and watched those videos.

When someone thinks books are the one crucial step to any further learning, then books and school have crippled that person's ability to think expansively, and to see what's unfolding in front of them in the real world.

SandraDodd.com/bookworship
photo by Holly Dodd with her Barbies enacting a movie

Light from the TV

It seems what will cause a kid to watch a show he doesn't want to watch is parental disapproval. If he's been told it's too scary, too adult, or forbidden, his natural curiosity might cause him to want to learn WHY. My kids, with the freedom to turn things on or off, turned LOTS of things off, or colored or did Lego or played with dolls or action figures during "the boring parts" (often happening to be the adult parts—what did they care?) and only looked back up when happy music or light or dogs or kids got their attention again.

What if little kids watch TV all day?
What can happen?
photo by Sandra Dodd