Service and nurturing

Service and nurturing can make parents better humans.

Not being served, or being nurtured, but being of service and being nurturing to others.

SandraDodd.com/service
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Nurturing

Whether from playing, helping, stories or examples, children begin to learn about nurturance very young.

With a generous heart, nurturing nurtures the nurturer.

Nurturing, in all directions
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Nurturing our spirit

"[W]e are drawn to exploring ourselves, to finding that depth of engagement in life, with all its twists and turns and ups and downs. For maybe the first time we really see the value in nurturing our spirit. It stuns us. We marvel that the journey we started to fully and deeply support our children and their learning has turned so completely around and we are learning so much from them about being alive and fully engaged with life."

—Pam Laricchia at Unschooling Grows Far Beyond “Not School"

SandraDodd.com/spirituality
photo by Colleen Prieto

More positive, more nurturing

Commentary on it being bad advice for a stranger to say "follow your heart":

Making a "feeling" decision can not only bring down the family and bring down the child's opportunities, but it doesn't help the parent to lay out their own wounds to dry.

Logic is good.

So if a parent knows that she wants to be kinder, gentler, more positive, more nurturing, there are things that she can do—little changes she can make and decisions she can make that lead her toward that. And "follow your heart" is not a good one.

Unschooling Support: Extras with Sandra Dodd (recording and transcript)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Honest enthusiasm

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Think in terms of nurturing your own enthusiasm about life rather than nurturing their enthusiasm. Don't jump up and down about George Washington if he puts you to sleep. Be honest in your pursuit of what interests you. Let them see that you think something is really cool. Not to get them interested in something you think would be good for them but an honest "Wow! I love this stuff!" And ask questions about life. Be curious. Because it's the questions that are important. Anyone can look up the answers but not everyone can ask the questions.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/talk
(includes a link to a French translation)
photo by Marin Holmes

Nurturing bonds

Lots of people, when they first hear of homeschooling or unschooling say (almost before they take a breath) "I couldn't be with my child all the time." School (and even daycare) can break the bond between parent and child.There are, and have been in the past, various culturally approved bonds-breaking practices, so one thing we're doing with unschooling is purposefully nurturing bonds, and these relationships. Lots of parents discover that *if* they can relax into that relationship building, that they can't believe they weren't with their children 24/7 before, and they make up for lost time, and it gets easier and easier.

SandraDodd.com/obstacles
photo by Claire Horsley

Ask questions about life

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Think in terms of nurturing your own enthusiasm about life rather than nurturing their enthusiasm. Don't jump up and down about George Washington if he puts you to sleep. Be honest in your pursuit of what interests you. Let them see that you think something is really cool. Not to get them interested in something you think would be good for them but an honest "Wow! I love this stuff!" And ask questions about life. Be curious. Because it's the questions that are important. Anyone can look up the answers but not everyone can ask the questions.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/talk
(includes a link to a new French translation)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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The Full Plate Club

The food section of my website is called "The Full Plate Club." Its intro says:

"The empty plate club," referring to kids who successfully clean their plates, sounds so sad.

"Full plate" sounds much more nurturing.

On questions of whether a cup is half full or half empty, consider a plate. If a child has a feeling of abundance he will stop eating when he's had enough and be healthier and happier than if anyone presses him to take one more bite.


SandraDodd.com/food
photo by Sandra Dodd

Acts of caring

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

There are times in life that you won't feel like you can take care of others around you as well as you'd like. You need nurturing yourself and other people's neediness starts to be draining on you.

I've felt that, too.

But I've also found that if I focus more on "seeing" my kids with loving-eyes focus, consciously choose to pay attention to what I love about them, then I actually begin to feel more nourished and strengthened by them, and by the very acts of caring for them.

—Pam Sorooshian
(original)

Beauty
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

The full plate club!

"The empty plate club," referring to kids who successfully clean their plates, sounds so sad.

"Full plate" sounds much more nurturing.

SandraDodd.com/eating/grapes
the image is a painting by Pierre Mignard in the 1640s

Any child would flourish...

"I think any child would flourish in a loving, supportive, interesting, fun, resource-rich, nurturing, stimulating environment."

—Amy Childs

Who can unschool?
(from Amy's podcast series on unschooling)
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Nourished and strengthened

Pam Sorooshian, on a way to step up peace and focus:

There are times in life that you won't feel like you can take care of others around you as well as you'd like. You need nurturing yourself and other people's neediness starts to be draining on you.

I've felt that, too.

But I've also found that if I focus more on "seeing" my kids with loving-eyes focus, consciously choose to pay attention to what I love about them, then I actually begin to feel more nourished and strengthened by them, and by the very acts of caring for them.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/breathing.html
(photo by a realtor in Scotland)
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Nurturing optimism

Pam Sorooshian, on her plans for a late-December presentation:

The one thing I've been thinking about this week is that unschooling is a profoundly optimistic decision and that it involves a huge commitment to living a very optimistic life. I'm going to talk more about what I mean by that and what happens when children grow up that way—kind of amazing.

I think it is possible that THE most significant thing unschooling does is nurture optimism.

—Pam Sorooshian

Always Learning Live Unschooling Symposium blog
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Mindfulness in Unschooling

Once upon a time on the unschooling discussion list, someone seemed unhappy with the way I used "mindful." For years, some of the regular writers here tried to find a good word for what we were trying to convey—a kind of mothering that involved making infinitesimal decisions all the time, day and night, and basing those decisions on our evolving beliefs about living respectfully with our children, and giving THEM room to make their own decisions of the moment.

We finally settled on "mindful," in the sense of being fully in the moment. Though "mindfulness" is used as a term in western Buddhism, the word they chose when they were translating from Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, Vietnamese and whatever all hodgepodge of ideas were eventually described in English, "mindfulness," is an English word over 800 years old. It's a simple English compound, and has to do with the state of one's mind while performing an action. It creates a state of "if/then" in one. And IF a parent intends to be a good unschooling parent, a generous freedom-nurturing parent, a parent providing a peaceful nest, a parent wanting to be her child's partner, then the best way she can live in that goal and come ever closer to her ideals is to make all her decisions in that light. The more mindful she is of where she intends to go, the easier her decisions are.

SandraDodd.com/mindfulness
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Heroics

Protect your child from bad guys. Anyone who wants to break up your team or bring your relationship into question is a bad guy. Be your child's protector and defender. Be a hero.

When your child does sweet and tender things for you, don't brush her aside. Pay attention to nurturing gestures. Acknowledge them. Let your child be your hero sometimes, too.

From page 67 (or 72) of The Big book of Unschooling
but a good online match is SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd

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P.S. Do not make the other parent your bad guy. That harms your child.

Nurturing confidence

We can nurture confidence in kids by becoming confident ourselves.

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The quote is from an online chat on January 31, 2011 (lost, except for that quote).
More on confidence
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Minnesota in 2007

The flow of words

Words are like all the oceans and rivers in the world, like the rain and snow. They are insubstantial in a way; they can become solid, as these on this page are, or they can be flowing, as in a song or rhyme, or they can dissolve into the air. They can come crashing against you or knock you down. They can erode trust and love, as water can erode a cliff. They can soothe and heal and cleanse.

There are always more words to choose from and rearrange as you wish, and you can produce more and more new combinations until you're too old to remember how to do it, if you live that long.

Make choices when you use words. . . . Speak from your heart and your thoughts, not from your hurts or your fears. Use your words for good, for nurturing. Use your words to protect the peace of your home. Keep your words to yourself sometimes, but other times be so courageous that you put some words out there as a warning and a fence between you and those who wish to harm you with their own outflow of dangerous words.

Don't waste your words.

Build gifts from words.

from "Words" in The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Jessica Sexton, of Gioia Cerullo and Kirby Dodd,
in San Diego, September 2011
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Kinder, gentler ways

If a parent knows that she wants to be kinder, gentler, more positive, more nurturing, there are things that she can do—little changes she can make and decisions she can make—that lead her toward that, and "follow your heart" is not a good one.


When people say "Well, I just followed my heart," sometimes that didn't go to a really good place because they didn't have a picture of their child's feelings. Coming up with a plan to logically step, step, step-by-step away from the dark confusion of people's childhood memories, hidden ideas, frustrations, fears—stepping away from that into the light is a better thing to do. And eventually they may get so good at this 'being more positive' that it seems like they're following their heart. But it needs to be their new, improved, mindful heart.

SandraDodd.com/interviews/extras
photo by Vlad Gurdiga
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Trees and Plants

Here is another change in my life, from years of unschooling:

I even garden differently than I used to. I certainly didn't expect that. I have let trees grow their own way without frustration on my part, and appealed to my husband not to prune so much. I have found things for vines to grow on that aren't fancy or store-bought. The vines are going to cover it up anyway. I've let native plants go ahead and grow, if they don't have stickers. Some of them are really pretty, and they want to grow there. If I destroy them and put in some foreign plants, will the neighbors be impressed?

Considering what is natural in my children, and what I can't control and shouldn't even try to control, has made it easier for me to look for what's "natural" in nature. That seems pretty obvious, written down that way, but many people want to control trees, and grass, and flowers. I don't mind influencing them and encouraging them, and nurturing them, but "to control" them? I don't even "control" tumbleweeds. I pull up any I find and put their little carcasses in the compost pile. That's tumbleweed euthanasia, maybe, but not "control."

The quote is from page 278 (or 321) of The Big Book of Unschooling,
and you might want to look at some tumbleweeds I've touched.
photo by Sandra Dodd, and it's a link
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In the moment

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

There are times in life that you won't feel like you can take care of others around you as well as you'd like. You need nurturing yourself and other people's neediness starts to be draining on you.

I've felt that, too.

But I've also found that if I focus more on "seeing" my kids with loving-eyes focus, consciously choose to pay attention to what I love about them, then I actually begin to feel more nourished and strengthened by them, and by the very acts of caring for them.

Partly what is so draining is that your mind is on other things while your kids want your attentiveness on them. So you feel pulled and that is stressful. If you can, try to stop thinking about the other stuff and focus on the little details of what you're doing at the moment. If your child wants pasta at midnight (just happened here), then you go put the water in the pot and put it on the stove. While you're doing that, concentrate on feeling the coldness of the water, the heaviness of the pot as it fills with water. Hear the sound of the water running.

It is late and I'm not being as articulate as I'd like—but what I'm saying is to practice being totally "in the moment" by noticing every sensation—sound, touch, smell, etc. Especially do this in regard to your children—touch them, smell them, listen to the sound of their voices, and so on.

Even if you only manage to get into this heightened state of mind for a minute or two at a time, do it as often as you think of it throughout your day. Each minute will be refreshing—it is a form of meditation that you can do while you're going about your daily activities.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/breathing
photo by Janice Casamina Ancheta