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

Blanketing time and space

Any subjects leads to every other subject, and every other connection of any sort. Rather than sorting things out with your children, try to keep blending and mixing.

Religion leads to history, to geography, to clothing, to fashion, to business and imports to transportation to law. Law leads to ethics to medicine to religion. Any of those "leads to" points could lead to a dozen OTHER destinations, so even with a list that short, it starts to blanket time and space. Don't resist those weird tangents; jump on them and ride.

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Silly old things

Find the funny, fun parts of life.
SandraDodd.com/humor
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Kids blossom

Kids blossom and get bigger from doing adult things because they want to, instead of kid-things they have to do because they're small.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Colleen Prieto
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Your present moment

Embrace your present moment instead of yearning for what you don't have. I love the saying 'the grass is always greener where you water it.'

—Clare Kirkpatrick

SandraDodd.com/metime
photo by Sandra Dodd
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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

Learning to see why

People who learn to see their options and choices will live with an increasingly healthy awareness of why they are choosing their actions, words and thoughts.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Sandra Dodd

Mysteries

There are amusing mysteries, spooky mysteries, beautiful mysteries and sacred mysteries.

Sometimes a thing is just a thing, and sometimes it's a mystery.

Other mysteries here: SandraDodd.com/mystery
photo by Sandra Dodd
(another one)

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

Yes, they learn.

I will say this: Any questions you have about unschooling have been answered before. If it didn’t work, no one would do it. Yes, children learn math, music, to spell, to wake up on time, to finish projects and to follow rules.

SandraDodd.com/sustainable
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Courageous, selfless and honest

The world doesn't always give people opportunities to be courageous, selfless and honest, but being an unschooling parent does it every day. Choosing relationship-supporting options over expedient or fear-based options is part of "goodness," in parenting, and marriage, and friendship, isn't it?

"Peaceful Parenting" (page, recording, partial transcript) has ideas about how, in practical terms, to come to make better choices. And "better" requires a compass, a moral compass. And "better" requires discernment.

Parenting Peacefully
photo by Sandra Dodd

Commitment to unschooling

In response to a question about commitment...

My best recommendation is to create and maintain such a rich and joyful unschooling life that the child won't want to go to school. That's the direction "commitment to unschooling" should take.

SandraDodd.com/interviews/naturalparenting2010
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Labels as walls

A label will put a wall of words and fears and filters between a parent and a child.

from "Seeing your child, rather than a label,"
page 70, The Big Book of Unschooling

Photo by Sandra Dodd, of the corner of a WWII bunker (or pillbox) at The Brooklands Museum in Surrey, in England. Full view was used on this blog September 29. Because it's near the Concorde, it's not much noticed. And it's not a display; it was there for the defense of the aircraft factory. **