Kindness and lightness and joy

It's very easy to control food when you have a home of young children. Most young children aren't going to question the choices you make regarding food, they will eat what they like of what you've offered. The really big challenge is when kids start asking for other things and how you choose to respond to those things.

This is a biggie and it applies to EVERYthing, not just food. Are you going to be a mom that reacts big and opinionated to these questions and inquiries and curiosities? Or are you going to be a mom who helps her kids explore their questions and inquiries and curiosities? This is the very basis on which parents build the foundation of unschooling, if that is indeed the goal.

In each moment of questioning, or inquiry, or curiosity, you get to choose how you respond. You can respond in such a way that a child's question, their learning, is honored, with kindness and lightness and joy, or you can shut that down with your own opinions and ideas. The more a parent can honor a child's curiosity, the more that child will genuinely listen to their parent's ideas about the world. It's the only way that I've seen that kids really truly are influenced by their parents. All other attempts are seen and felt as control, manipulation, coercion, unless of course you have a child that is VERY easy going. But trust me, there will come a time when even that child will challenge you, and the more easy going you've been about their ideas from the beginning, the more influence you will have when that time comes. . . . . Emotional health and emotional well-being are as important, if not more so, as physical health (from food, etc.).

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/eating/control
photo by Sarah S.

Something so profound...

Just as the topic of food can be a hurdle or a brick wall to some trying to get unschooling, it can also be the source of the epiphany that sheds light on all other principles involved in natural learning and parenting peacefully. Consider a child who has been told what and how much to eat, and told how his body feels by someone trying to manipulate or control him. That is not about learning or choices. If a parent understands that a child can learn about food by trying it, by eating it or not, by sensing how his own body feels, the parent understands something so profound that all their lives will change.

SandraDodd.com/food
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Trusting and close

The urge to control anything, whether it's food or learning or exactly how people sit or exactly what people wear, is bad for the relationship between the parent and the child. Anything that is bad for the relationship is bad for learning, because unschooling is built very largely on a trusting relationship and a close relationship.

Transcribed and saved by Amber Ivey, from UnschoolingSupport's podcast on Food
photo by Hinano
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When life is easier...

Meredith wrote on Radical Unschooling Info:

Learning depends on the perspectives and experiences of the individual. That's the heart of unschooling—that learning isn't something you can control from the outside.

What you can do "from the outside" is to work to improve another person's experience. You can be kinder and sweeter and more helpful. You can make his or her life easier. When life is easier, learning is bigger, broader, more expansive. There's no magic to that! When you aren't focused on meeting basic needs, you can explore more complex needs. When you aren't hungry, you can focus on things more interesting than hunger. When you aren't arguing with someone about what you "should" eat, you can explore the far more interesting questions of what appeals to you and why, and in what combinations.

—Meredith Novak

SandraDodd.com/maslow
photo by Sandra Dodd (of party food
not so easily made, by Teresa and Laurie for a reception)

Learning to listen

Kids can't figure out anything if there's someone hovering and saying "Ooooh, good!" and "yuck, horrible."

If they're not allowed to decide which foods appeal to them, and what then those foods do to their body, then those children don't learn to listen to their own bodies. And it's likely that at some point they will learn NOT to listen to their moms. Then they will be eating things the mom disapproves of, and those might be things they never would even have chosen if their mom hadn't been sorting food into sin and virtue, poison and health, in extreme and sometimes arbitrary, faddish or political ways.

Though I left a few phrases out, the original is here:
food control (problems with that)
photo by Gail Higgins
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Learning not to control

One wouldn't have to look much past a google search on bulimia, anorexia and overeaters anonymous to find stories of eating disorders.... We can see how controlling food is related to controlling education, sleep, playtime and other areas of our childrens' lives. We can mess them up early (which our culture applauds) or we can learn to let them grow whole and healthy and strong and free, not crippled in mind and spirit.

Longterm Effects of Food Controls (or the lack of controls)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Trusting and close

The urge to control anything, whether it's food or learning or exactly how people sit or exactly what people wear, is bad for the relationship between the parent and the child. Anything that is bad for the relationship is bad for learning, because unschooling is built very largely on a trusting relationship and a close relationship.

Transcribed and saved by Amber Ivey, from UnschoolingSupport's podcast on Food
words by Sandra Dodd (thank you, Amber)
photo by Hinano (thank you, Hinano)
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Be open to learning

When something someone heard from a friend or read on a blog is stated adamantly as TRUTH, rational thought has been batted away. Some people have the fervor of conversion upon them, having heard that there is an easy way to SAVE their families from disease and death, to make their children smarter, and better behaved; to make themselves strong and beautiful into old age. It is partially fountain-of-youth stuff. It is partly an attractive excuse for controlling children (and spouses, sometimes).

The quote is from a page about food as a religion, but it's really about control
(being too easily influenced, and then trying to pass it on)
photo by Amy Milstein
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Make it plentiful

Once someone tried allowing her children to choose their own foods, and after a month she was ready to give up.

It's only been a month. It might take more than that for them to get as much candy as they feel they've missed in five or seven years. You scarcified it and made it valuable. Let them gorge. They'll get over it. If you don't let them have it now, they will continue to crave it, sneak it, and pack it in. Make it plentiful, and that will make it less desireable.

Please read all of this: http://sandradodd.com/t/economics. It's by Pam Sorooshian, and is "Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children." It will apply to food too.

SandraDodd.com/eating/control
photo by Sandra Dodd, at someone else's house

Make it plentiful

Once someone tried allowing her children to choose their own foods, and after a month she was ready to give up. Part of my response is below.

It's only been a month. It might take more than that for them to get as much candy as they feel they've missed in five or seven years. You scarcified it and made it valuable. Let them gorge. They'll get over it. If you don't let them have it now, they will continue to crave it, sneak it, and pack it in. Make it plentiful, and that will make it less desireable.

Please read all of "Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children" by Pam Sorooshian. It will apply to food too.

SandraDodd.com/eating/control
photo by Sandra Dodd, at someone else's house

Emotional well-being

Emotional health and emotional well-being are as important, if not more so, as physical health.

—Jenny Cyphers

Moving Toward Less Control, Concerning Food
photo by Janine Davies
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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)

One more?

This is about love, and abundance, and trust-building. What would you pay, if you could buy love, abundance and trust?

If your kids ask for another one (potato, cookie, peanut butter sandwich) I think it's helpful if you just say "Sure!" and make another one, even if you don't think they'll finish it, even if you think they'll be too full or whatever. As long as they're not eating someone else's share (and even so, if the other person agrees), it's not a big deal. If they don't finish, save the leftover for someone else. If they do finish and they're "too full" that's how they'll learn their capacity (which will change anyway as they get older).


Moving Toward Less Control, Concerning Food
photo by Rachel Cooley Green
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Emotional well-being

Emotional health and emotional well-being are as important, if not more so, as physical health.

—Jenny Cyphers

Moving Toward Less Control, Concerning Food
photo by Janine Davies
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You can have more.

"You can have more."

"I wish we had more; I'll get some next time I go to the store."

"Sure, you can have another one."

Those statements lead a person toward actually wondering whether he's still hungry or needy, and toward a feeling of contentment, of protection and provision, and of abundance. If someone has enough, neediness isn't likely to consume him.


The passage is from page 164 (or 184) of The Big Book of Unschooling
which is associated with Moving Toward Less Control, Concerning Food
photo by Sandra Dodd