Sleepy feels good

When there are options, feeling sleepy and choosing to go to bed can be warm, wonderful feelings. How sweet, to have a clean bed waiting, and to want to get into it.

On one small bit of gratitude, one can step up and see another one, and another.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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Full, real lives

I see my children living full, real lives today, right now. I don't see them as students in preparation for life, who after a number of years and lessons might be considered "completed" or "graduated." It was a long way to come, and I never even had to move. I just had to look at what I considered to be real.

SandraDodd.com/fullofyourself
photo by Melissa DeLong
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Together every day

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.

Os pais sabem que a criança está a aprender porque eles estão a ver e a discutir e a fazer coisas juntos todos os dias. Não é cinco dias por semana, ou a maior parte do ano, mas todos os dias das suas vidas inteiras.

SandraDodd.com/faq

SandraDodd.com/portuguese/faq
(Sandra Dodd, traduções em Português por Marta Venturini Machado)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Stronger, and calm

As you understand unschooling better and have stories of your own child's learning, you will be stronger, and bigger, and relatives will start to love those stories of natural learning, too. It takes a while. It will always take a while.

When the stories are about YOUR children, and not just other people's children, you'll be in a more stable, calm place.

SandraDodd.com/knowledge
photo by Sandra Dodd
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So many paths

I love the potential in this photo. There is too much to explore, but the options are up, down, through, around. It reminds me that we live in the moment that connects the past and the future.

The world is too big for anyone to see everything. History will never all be discovered or known. The best we can do for ourselves and our children is to view their surroundings with wonder and curiosity. We can help them experience small things and large, old things and new.

SandraDodd.com/decisions
photo by Sukayna
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Calm acceptance

Sometimes the smallest thing can make child extremely happy. Sometimes parents can find joy in relaxing around fears and pressures. Without dress codes and early-morning school bells, or other kids to ask "Why are you wearing that?!", there can be leisurely days of choices and creativity, while parents practice saying "yes" and children play without worries.

Jenny Cyphers once wrote:

"The big upside of unschooling, in my opinion, was that it also created an unexpected peacefulness, fulfillment, and happiness for all of us."

SandraDodd.com/unexpected
photo by Julie Markovitz
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Own your own

If parents retain ownership of their children's learning, the children cannot learn on their own.

SandraDodd.com/parentalauthority
photo by Sandra Dodd

Looking at our real kids

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

For unschooling to flourish it means taking out our fears and examining them. It means looking at unschooled children to find out what really happens rather than what seems like would happen (from knowledge of schooled, controlled kids). It means shutting off the expert voices that tell parents what they should be seeing and looking at our real kids."

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/fears
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Help them navigate the world

Marta Pires wrote:

I could've easily been one of those moms who thought that saying anything to my child would be limiting her, and who could've been afraid of her daughter's sensitivity. I can see clearly now that they don't learn how to handle these situations simply from seeing us do things one way or another (although it's important, of course), but we need to give them information and find out the best way to do it, having our own child in mind. That's not damaging them or limiting them at all, quite the contrary—I think it's helping them navigate the world and become respectful, considerate, polite adults.

—Marta Pires

SandraDodd.com/coaching
photo by Sandra Dodd

Explore close by

There might be something near you that's interesting, pretty, different, unusual, that's worth a little visit. Don't wait to be tourists in distant lands to have a look around!

Strewing in Action
photo by Colleen Prieto

Listening and safety

"When kids know their parents are on their sides, when parents help them find safe ways to do what they want to do, then kids do listen when we help them be safe."

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd

Good to have

WHAT UNSCHOOLING PARENTS NEED patience enthusiasm joy curiosity ability to follow disjoint ideas and conversations willingness to come back to a topic willingness to let a topic drop

SandraDodd.com/beginning
photo by Sandra Dodd

Don't use up all your tickets!

Sometimes I've advised people to pretend they only have three hundred "no's"—they have a little ticket they have to spend every time they say no. And they better save some because some people use them up before the kid’s three. What if your child grows up and you still have 150 tickets left that you can chuck in the trash? That’s pretty cool.

Improving Unschooling (radio interview, recording and transcript)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Approach perfection

Approach perfection, don't aim and fail. Be the best in the moment, but don't expect that to be "The BEST."


("Better" is a preferable goal. The quote above made sense in the chat, though.)

SandraDodd.com/better
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Holly, in Sausalito
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How different...

"It's funny how different the world can look, when you're not so restricted in your thoughts."

—Kristen

SandraDodd.com/alwayslearning (new, at the bottom)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Words, pictures and music

My mother did the best she could, I suppose. I need to do the best I can do. So I tell my children everything they want to know. I show them the world in words and pictures and music. While they're becoming better, wiser people, I am too. I wish I had learned these things before they were born, but I didn't have my teachers yet. I have tried to pass on to other moms the best of what works well for us, and to put little warning beacons near pitfalls.

Knowing Everything
photo by Karen James, in Japan
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Means, encouragement, time and space

If the child is allowed to sit with mom or walk across the room, read or not read without pressure or fanfare, walk or not walk as he wishes, if his environment is kept comfortable (taking his personality, fears, needs into account when arranging his comfort) and if he has the means and encouragement and time and space to explore his ever-expanding world, he will learn.

SandraDodd.com/labels
photo by Sandra Dodd, at a tile museum in Lisbon
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Be that way

Be the way you want your children to be, and they will want to be like you.

Look here or at SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Bruno Machado
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Exploring

"The idea of unguided discovery in a school setting isn't anything like the kind of discoveries unschooling kids make. There is a difference between a teacher handing a kid a pulley and telling him to discover what it does and write a paper about it and a kid finding an interesting object and messing with it because it sparked his curiosity. A lot of what my son has learned he's learned in a way that might be called unguided discovery, but it didn't look much like the model in the article, and it didn't happen in a vacuum."

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis/discovery
photo by Sandra Dodd

Gradually, climb

Gradually, without fanfare, be more positive and more supportive.

SandraDodd.com/gradualchange has some bits about baby steps,
and about not leaping too far too fast.
photo by Sandra Dodd
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