Toys and tools

There are machines, conveyances, tools, that are so beautiful that people make models of them, or working toys for children. Front-end loaders are that beautiful, to those who need or use or have watched them work.

Tractors can be that, or combines, or just the truck to pull other tools, plows, trailers.

If a child, or an adult, can get excited about a piece of equipment, try to take time to watch those machines in action, if you get a chance. Not too close; from a safe distance, or from inside your car, if you can. When you're out, find people digging, building, repairing—replacing signs with a crane, or going up in a cherry-picker to change streetlight bulbs—do it for your kids or for yourself.

Mom's Interests Enriching Kids' Lives
photo by Holly Dodd

It must be learned and lived

Unschooling is not something people can wind up and let loose. It has to be learned and lived. And it has to be learned on the job, as it goes, so you can't wait until you're great at it to start.

—Sandra Dodd
Too boring to unschool?
at Always Learning

Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch.
photo by Sandra Dodd, of museum robots

The same old story

On a remote farm, there was a nephew, an uncle, a beautiful too-closely-related strongwoman, a wrinkly little one with a stick who was more powerful than appearances suggested...

Little did they know the fate that would take them to a distant place.

I didn't do the art, but I like it. The storytelling is mine.

The juxtaposition of Jed Clampett and the Jedi is a good example of "comparison and contrast." Without using that phrase you can look for, or induce (if you can do it casually and for fun) situations in which your children are comparing one thing to another, looking for similarities and differences.

Just because something is silly doesn't mean high-level cognition isn't happening. If humor helps, find it. Make it. Appreciate it in your children.

...Thinking and Learning and Bears
photo art... shared on facebook, and I can't credit it

One easy step

Thinking of "better choices" instead of "RIGHT choices" is an easy step to a world of other easy steps.


Make the Better Choice
photo by Jen Keefe

Excitement, peace and humor

It's possible for a childless person or couple to live a long life without ever thinking about values. It's possible to go along with the crowd and get a nice place to live and a car and watch TV every night and pay the bills and not think about what might have been better or different.
        . . . .

What if a family wants to step off the path and look around on their own? What if a family wants to take a different path to the future that's quicker, or more dangerous, or more leisurely, or funnier? Will their values then involve excitement or peace or humor?

the quote is from a page called "Values" in The Big Book of Unschooling,
but it is linked to SandraDodd.com/priorities
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Change one thing.

Change a moment. Change one touch, one word, one reaction. If you try to change your entire self so that next year will be better, you might become overwhelmed and discouraged and distraught.

Change one thing. Smile one sweet smile. Say one kind thing.

If that felt good, do it again. Rest. Watch. Listen. You're a parent because of your child. Your child. You should be his parent, or her parent. Not a generic parent, or a hypothetical parent. Be your child's parent in each moment that you interact with her.

SandraDodd.com/peace/becoming
photo by Jennie Gomes

Limitless relaxation

"Gorging on what was forbidden or limited is very common. Once they're confident that they truly can have as much as they want for the rest of their lives, then they will slow down and be able to walk away, confident that if they return, they'll still be able to have some."

—Joyce Fetteroll

True Tale of Kids Turning Down Sweets matches,
but it applies to other things, too, such as Abundance
and the 2004 original is at the wayback machine, here

photo by Amber Ivey

Happily and richly

I've seen hands-off, hands-up parents use various justifications for not helping a child do better. I've seen them blame other things, other people. I don't like to see it recommended in discussions I've organized and invited people to.

What I intend to continue to do for people who want to be unschoolers in the way it's discussed here, is to encourage them to be each child's partner, to help him live peacefully and joyfully, and to learn in his own way as happily and as richly as they can arrange for it to happen.

---

from Getting angry at people who are helping, a discussion at Always Learning

Paragraphs above aren't in the same order they were at the longer original.

photo by Sandra Dodd
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Breathing

Breathing is under-rated and under-utilized. Breathing can be the difference between anger and kindness. Live is all about breathing. Have a BETTER life, just this easily.

Beauty and Breathing

If you know who made this animation, please help me document that.
All I know is https://imgur.com/n5jBp45

Responsible for, and to

You are responsible for the child, but also responsible to the child.

—Marina DeLuca-Howard

A teen boy out with his mom—what's "the secret"?
photo by Sarah Elizabeth

Resource Treasures

Written at "Always Learning," by Megan Valnes in August 2018:

"Mostly our unschooling journey is unfolding beautifully using the guiding principles I learned from this group. Just Add Light and Joyce’s unschooling cards are my daily resource treasures."

—Megan Valnes *

the Always Learning discussion has moved to groups.io
photo by Joyce Fetteroll

Intense learning

I was just telling a young (22) friend the other day that my kids were always the most exhausted not after a day of physical activity, but after a day of intense learning. If they saw things they had never seen, got to do something they’d never done, met new people and played and talked, they slept like rocks. But those days might not have looked like something to write a transcript about.

Sometimes the most intense learning of all looks like play. And that is central to what makes unschooling work.



Chat with Sandra Dodd on Mommy Chats, 4/25/07
photo by Kinsey Norris

Time out / Update

Thanks to Pam Laricchia and her son Michael, pages are all opening on my website again. I'm giddy and grateful for the code they wrote for me to add in the header of my 404 page. My husband, Keith, survived repeated cardiac arrest and over a month of hospitalization. This week he had his last of ten outpatient physical therapy sessions. He's graduated up through wheelchair and walker, to cane, to normal locomotion. I drive him to various appointments, and am glad to be with him. Thank you for reading, for sympathy and for support.

from April 8, about how long Keith was in the hospital, and his first day home
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a bucket and shovel, in our son Marty's back yard this week

Surprise!

Life is richer when you are open to appreciating surprises.


Surprises and discoveries
photo by Sandra Dodd
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New tools

Kristin Burton wrote:

I have for sure felt like unschooling has been like recovery. It hasn't come easy to me. Recovery from using guilt as a tool, using control as a tool. Letting go of expectations of what it means to be a parent and how children should be.

It's ongoing for me, it take lots of thoughtful pauses to remain on the path of unschooling life. But it's seeped in everywhere now, how I treat my husband, how I even treat myself. How I see relationships, food, world issues.

Recovery is about emptying your toolbox of the broken, ineffective tools that have helped you scrape by in life. For me to feel joy in my own self and want joy for others I had to empty that tool box and find new tools. It's been scary and I ve had to take lots of leaps of faith.

The other day my daughter said she needed a hug, and in that embrace she said, "Mom you are like my compass."

That is what recovery feels like for me.

—Kristin Burton

SandraDodd.com/recovery
photo by Sandra Dodd (of someone else's painting)

Explore. Connect.

On a scale from dull and dusty to bright and shiny, where is your life? How much of the happy outside world is flowing in? How much are you and your children interacting with the bright, shiny parts of the world outside?

Unschooling should and can be bigger and better than school.

If it's smaller and quieter than school, more should be done to make life sparkly.

Let one thing lead to another for you. Explore. Not the parent pressing the kid to explore, but the parent exploring and connecting.

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Swirling

"The top itself was not what caught Ethan's attention. For me, it was. For Ethan, it was the swirly lines that were the treasure he happened upon and wanted to explore more."

—Karen James, 2017

Strewing in Action
photo by Holly Dodd, 2009

Words about words

I like words. Much of my writing is about terminology, and concepts, and meaning, which is why it can be difficult (or worthless) to translate some of it, because it is of and about English, very often.

"For clarity of thought and for value of discussions about unschooling (or anything), it's important to use words intentionally and carefully. . . . [M]uddled thinking can't lead to clarity nor to better parenting." (My words, from SandraDodd.com/semantics.)

photo by Sandra Dodd
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The easy way

When someone wrote "I may be taking the easy way out by just waiting until my son is older...," I responded (in part):

TAKE THE EASY WAY!!!

Make people’s lives easy. Don’t think there’s virtue in allowing difficulties to continue.

Make his life easier, if you can do it in some simple way.

The world will provide obstacles and difficulties enough. Let it be your duty and joy to provide a haven.

SandraDodd.com/peace
photo by Abby Davis
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Just enough peace

Can there be too much peace? For learning, yes. Learning requires mental arousal. If an environment is so still and barren that one's curiosity isn't sparked, then people might be closer to a state of sleep than of excited curiosity. Life can be too dull and quiet for learning to spontaneously happen.

Can there be too little peace? Yes, and in many ways. There can be too much noise, stimulation and chaos. So finding the balance place and the comfort level is part of creating a peaceful home.

SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
photo by Andrea Justice
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