Happy and safe

With my kids, it was a posture I took, partly physical, partly mental, in which I accepted and recognized that I had the power to make them unhappy, and the easy ability to allow them to be in danger (from me, in part) if I wasn't really mindful and careful to focus on their safety, comfort and joy.

Some of the same relatives and friends who were greatly in favor of my partnership with Keith seemed critical of our kindness to our children. There is a wide stripe of anti-child tradition in the world. I didn't treat my child as a real person. I acknowledged from the beginning that he WAS a real person. I recognized and nurtured his wholeness and tried not to screw him up. I became his partner, rather than acting like his partner or "treating him" as a partner. It's not just semantics, though it is semantics. It's about the power of words to show, affect and clarify thought and belief.

An idea, expressed in words, changed my life. "Be your child's partner, not his adversary."

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Julie D

Semantics

The words people use will make or break their understanding.


SandraDodd.com/semantics
photo by Lisa J Haugen

Fear doesn't have a stick

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

Intentionally and carefully

For clarity of thought and for value of discussions about unschooling (or anything), it's important to use words intentionally and carefully. If a parent can't tell the difference between "consequences" and "punishment" and doesn't want to even try to, she'll probably keep punishing her children and telling herself it's not punishment, it's consequences. That muddled thinking can't lead to clarity nor to better parenting.

SandraDodd.com/semantics
Sandra and Kirby Dodd, under a sign at a barbecue place in Austin

Learning not to teach

For years I have recommended that new unschoolers stop using the word "teach" and replace all statements and thoughts with phrases using the word "learn" instead. I've gotten much flak back from people saying it doesn't matter, or that's "just semantics." What started as a theory with me became belief and then conviction. Unschoolers who cling to the idea of teaching will handicap their own understanding of how learning works.

SandraDodd.com/teaching
photo by Annie Regan

An important distinction

I remember being corrected on saying someone "taught themself" something and thinking it was bullshit semantics, needlessly picky, and a little snide. Now I understand that distinction so well and it's very important.

— Pamela C,
after a year or so
of unschooling

SandraDodd.com/teaching
photo by Cátia Maciel

Invisible weeds

Weeding out terminology we would prefer not to mean improves thinking.

A hundred times or more people have said "just semantics" and "stupid" about me saying "don't say teach," which I've been doing for years. Every time someone says "taught" or "teach" they can slip back into the whole school thing and be seeing the world through school-colored glasses. If they do what it takes, mentally and emotionally, to recast their reports and then their thoughts in terms of who *learned* something, then they can start to see the world in terms of learning.

SandraDodd.com/control
is where the quote came from
but the "Mindful of words" page
might be good to see.
photo by Sandra Dodd

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

Clarity of thought

For clarity of thought and for value of discussions about unschooling (or anything), it's important to use words intentionally and carefully. If a parent can't tell the difference between "consequences" and "punishment" and doesn't want to even try to, she'll probably keep punishing her children and telling herself it's not punishment, it's consequences. That muddled thinking can't lead to clarity nor to better parenting.

Untangling confusion with words often takes the use of other words, which is why people whose primary interests don't involve language can become very frustrated with others who say "But 'principle' is NOT just another word for 'rule'."

SandraDodd.com/semantics
photo by Tara Joe Farrell

The simplest details

Ren Allen, in part of a response to someone who was defending not wanting to be joyful all the time:

We have the ability to choose gratefulness in any situation. For me, this has been life changing, though I still have a long ways to go! And I have tried very hard to take the words 'have to' out of my vocabulary.


Some of you may feel it's just semantics, but it's empowering to see everything I do as a choice.

When I'm getting ready for work I have caught myself saying "I have to get to work now" and stopped myself, saying " I CHOOSE to go to work and I need to be there soon." Simple? Perhaps. But sometimes the simplest details lead to more mindful living. The richness of abundant living is in the details.

—Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo by Sandra Dodd

Learning not to teach

For years I have recommended that new unschoolers stop using the word "teach" and replace all statements and thoughts with phrases using the word "learn" instead. I've gotten much flak back from people saying it doesn't matter, or that's "just semantics." What started as a theory with me became belief and then conviction. Unschoolers who cling to the idea of teaching will handicap their own understanding of how learning works.

SandraDodd.com/teaching
photo by Annie Regan