Showing posts with label vista. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vista. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

"Trying 'no limits'"

Someone wrote:
I see so many families trying 'no limits' and then…
I responded:
Two problems: "trying" and "no limits." If a kid knows the parent is only "trying" something, he will certainly take all he can get, desperately and in a frenzy.

"No limits" is not something any family should believe in, or promise their children The world has limits of all sorts. Parents don't need to add to that, but parents can't guarantee "no limits." They CAN give children lots of choices and options.

Gradual change would have helped.

Saying yes a thousand little times is better for everyone than one big confusing "Yes forever, don't care, OH WAIT! Take it back."

SandraDodd.com/cairns
photo by Sandra Dodd (in Albuquerque)

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Other possibilities

Being steeped in principles of peace, respect and strength has allowed me to learn that there are other possibilities. It's almost like recovering from addiction...addiction of the effects of control. Little by little, day by day, with a lot of (sometimes painful) awareness...slowly new peaceful joyful stuff replaces the old, sad stuff.
—Alex Arnott
(a.k.a. Alex Wildrising)

SandraDodd.com/recovery
photo by Brie Jontry

Saturday, November 4, 2023

Calm, happy, trusting

sandstone in Colorado
Someone commented that responses to her questions had hurt her feelings. I wrote:

When he is calm and happy and trusting, THEN you will feel better—not because of things we wrote, or didn't, but because you will BE better. You will see it in your son's eyes.

Don't make it about you. Make it about his range of exploration and his choices and his learning and his happiness. You can live on the interest, if you invest enough in him.

(at Radical Unschooling Info, on Facebook)
photo by Amy Milstein

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Human nature, people and relationships

Meredith Novak said:

In a way unschooling could be said to have a recipe or to use a recipe as a jumping off point. But it's not a recipe about unschooling, it's like a recipe about human nature, about people and relationships. Part of that recipe is knowing that people are curious and like to learn. Part of the recipe is knowing that people are social and we care about other people and we like to learn from other people. Part of the recipe is knowing there is a difference between the external world and the world of individual experience, or a difference between 'the self' and 'the other'. It's a complicated recipe.

Human nature is not a simple, straightforward thing. Unschooling jumps off from there. "Okay, this is what we know about being people."
—Meredith Novak

Transcript: What Learning Looks Like with Meredith Novak
On the recording, Pam asks a question at 1:01:00 and Meredith responds:
on YouTube or on Pam's site
photo by Cátia Maciel

Friday, August 11, 2023

Action (rather than REaction)

When a parent's choices are based on being the same or being the opposite of their own parents or of anyone else, they're reacting. Sometimes in a healing phase that can help. It can help to have role models. It can help to have bad examples, marked like crime scenes in our memories, to remind us. Let the reactions be part of a temporary healing phase, though. Let reactions be a stepping stone toward mindful actions.

SandraDodd.com/issues
photo by Shawn Smythe Haunschild
from an alleyway in Sweden

Monday, June 5, 2023

Aim high; be generous

I've given this advice to newlyweds, and to my oldest child the first time he had a roommate:
Don't aim for 50/50.

If 50% is right, then 49% is wrong, and 65% would be something get angry about.

If you both aim for more than half, you'll meet around the middle, around half the time. If you want the other person to stick around, "around" is the goal.
SandraDodd.com/50/50
photo by Dan Vilter

Friday, June 2, 2023

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

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Growing safely

Marta Venturini, in an interview in 2020:

I see deschooling much more than just that process of replacing school with no school. Because to me, radical unschooling is that lifestyle that you were talking about, is that spiritual practice, almost. Because radical unschooling is that to me, deschooling has been so much more. It’s been about personal growth. It’s been about healing.

And so, trying to give Conchinha this safe place, I ended up getting my own safe place, too, in the process.
—Marta


You can hear the recording here: SandraDodd.com/marta
and there is a link to the transcript
photo by Karen James

Friday, April 14, 2023

Smaller problems


Deb Lewis wrote:

The more you're aware of how good things are when they are good, the easier it will be to wade through the times when things are less good. If you're aware of how lucky you are, everyday problems by comparison can seem smaller, and more manageable."
SandraDodd.com/nature
photo by Cátia Maciel

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

The nature of things

Things do what they can do. Some things we affect, and others we can't.

Rivers are flowing whether people are looking or not.

Children play, and ask questions, and examine new things, and ideas.

Children will learn whether people are looking or not, but for unschooling to work well, parents should be involved in providing an environment of safe, soft, interesting materials and experiences. They should be new and different sometimes and comfortingly familiar sometimes. Not the same all the time.

When relationships are comfortable and adults are attentive, learning will flow even when you're not looking.

In Full Flow
photo by Karen James

Thursday, February 9, 2023

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

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Gratitude, hope, love

Breathe in a happy memory.

Breathe out gratitude.

Breathe in hope.

Breathe out love.

Breathe in a Happy Memory
photo by Brie Jontry

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Amazed and joyful

"That kind of happiness, of being amazed and joyful about everyday little things occurring around us, has made me a much happier person in all aspects of my life."
—Katherine (Queen Jane 555)

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Brie Jontry

Thursday, July 7, 2022

Following the herd?

Sometimes people follow a group, they "follow the herd."

Can't that be a legitimate decision to make?

It's good to know where they're going, and why, and what the alternatives might be.

Finding choices and options for yourself and your children is good when it's possible.


Making the Better Choice: SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
photo by Ester Siroky

Friday, May 13, 2022

Comfortably oneself

Karen James wrote:

I've been reflecting on the idea of potential...

I think, six years ago, I was thinking of the potential to be anything. Now, six years later, as I watch my son navigate his teen years, and as I come to understand him and myself better, I think the potential to be comfortable enough in one's own skin, to be fully and unapologetically oneself, is what is so great.
—Karen James, 2018

Growth and Potential
photo by Sarah S.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Quoting "science"

"Scientists" say whatever they want to say. Scientists say the Grand Canyon was created suddenly by a flood. Scientists say the world is only 6,000 years old. Scientists say body fat is not bad. Scientists say it's terribly deadly. Scientists say a species is extinct, and then scientists say they were wrong.

Facts change.

SandraDodd.com/facts
photo by Cass Kotrba



The text aboved was part of a rant. Sometimes when I rant, it's fun to read later, but the context was (as usual) unschooling, within the world of homeschooling.

Sunday, March 6, 2022

Building a rich life

"What it takes to build a rich life is you — your time, energy, imagination, openness, passion, and optimism."
—Claire Horsley
on Always Learning
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Friday, January 28, 2022

Fear doesn't have a stick

hikingTrailEsterSiroky
June 2018, a mom wrote for a public group that fear was assaulting her. In a conversation on the side, she used the term again: "sometimes fear assaults me."

I responded:

Fear doesn't hit you with a stick in a dark alley.
Don't use the word "assaults."
It's too dramatic and it makes you a victim.
An additional problem, though, is that it also treats "fear" as something outside herself, that comes toward her and assaults her when she least expects it.

Maybe ALL the negative words are doing that—personifying, or anthropomorphizing, an emotion as an external enemy. So some would say "it's just semantics," but it's a map of one's emotions that ranges outside the body and builds bad guys, I'm thinking.

"Just semantics" is a big problem


SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Ester Siroky

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Step thoughtfully

If somebody said, "I want to walk to Santa Fe from Albuquerque," it matters which direction they go. It matters that they have water. It matters if they know how they're going to go. You can die between here and Santa Fe—it's a frickin' desert.

People can ruin their lives with unschooling if they don't know where they're going. If they just intend to make a bunch of wild decisions and mill around, it won't work. Their kids will end up needing to go back to school, and being clueless kids in school. So it's almost that big a project. You will have to take hundreds of thousands of steps. And so it's better to take a step thoughtfully, knowing what direction you're going, than to thunder around yelling, "I'm an unschooler! I'm an unschooler!" and not get anywhere.

So I think they need to understand the direction they're going, and why. And they can get there a lot faster and a lot more whole, and with a lot more peace and understanding, if they will Read a little, try a little, wait a while and watch.



Extras with Sandra Dodd
I was speaking, not writing. You can listen (at 15:15), or read the transcript.

photo by Sandra Dodd, in Golden, New Mexico, March 2020
(the last time I left town)

Sunday, December 12, 2021

Looking near and far

If you look too far and try to see everything, you might miss something exciting and very near. Keep the little things in mind, and in focus.

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Brett Goodman, lizard expert and unschooling dad