Learning Patience

Karen James wrote:

When we are consistently patient with a child, in time the child will learn patience. The child will come to understand the relationship of patience to him/herself by experiencing and witnessing what patience feels and looks like. When we are consistently impatient with our children, we make it nearly impossible for the child to learn patience *from us*. They learn impatience. That's the relationship. We can't talk it into being something different. We can't will it into another form.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/patience
photo by Debra Heller Bures

Be prepared to seem patient.

Planning for snacks and having them handy can seem like patience. Planning for clothing and having extra with you can seem like patience. Having a map and directions and having the phone charged up and a flashlight and an umbrella can seem like patience. Impatience is often the beacon of unpreparedness and the resulting embarrassment. Be prepared!

The quote is from the section called "Patience" in The Big Book of Unschooling
but this link has some other ideas: SandraDodd.com/patience
photo by Sandra Dodd

Compassion and Understanding

The patience that parents need is more like compassion and understanding. To be "impatient" with a person is a cocktail of frustration and resentment, often involving bad planning on the part of the impatient person.

What will look like patience will probably involve learning about your own child's needs and preferences and finding ways to meet and consider those, along with gaining the decision-making skills to be consciously breathing and considering your best options for a few seconds. That will appear to be, and will eventually become, patience.

SandraDodd.com/patience
but the quote is from page page 272 or 315 of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Roya Dedeaux
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Comfort, patience

When it's easy to be calm and patient, anyone can do it.

The special service to a child, and the evidence of growth in a parent, is learning to be more calm, for the child's sake. The real patience is finding a way to quiet one's hurry, to slow down to a child's pace, for a while.




SandraDodd.com/patience
photo by Elaine Santana

Calm and patience

Jenny Cyphers wrote, in 2014:

It's such a big part of our culture to get it done now, fix it all now, make it happen now, do, do, do, do. Sometimes what life really requires is calm and patience. A very valuable thing to learn in life is to how to take care of ourselves and others during times of stress and times that aren't ideal and wonderful.

—Jenny Cyphers

Moments: Living in moments instead of by whole days
photo by Kinsey Norris
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Supplies for parents

Unschooling doesn't work out for every family, for various reasons. In a conversation, an unschooling mom said some families don't have the time, money and benevolent patience it takes to unschool. I thought it was a good checklist of needs: Time, money and benevolent patience.

What it takes
photo by Sandra, of Alex Polikowsky's son and a snowman as big as he was

More patience

I didn’t expect unschooling to make things so sweet between me and Keith.
Partly Keith's just a nice guy, but principles that applied to the kids applied to the adults, too, and we all experienced and shared more patience and understanding.

The more I got to know Marty, the more ways I saw him like Keith, and because I was sympathetic to those traits in Marty which had bothered me in Keith, I became more sympathetic to and understanding of Keith.

SandraDodd.com/spouses
photo at Marty's wedding
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With patience and with gratitude

We can't change what happens to people, life is unsure, and we're all getting older. Please continue to help encourage others to use unschooling's peaceful principles to make life sweet and good while we have it. We can't live as we are forever, but we can try to live with fewer regrets, and with patience, and with gratitude.

Be as good as you can be as often as you can be.

Like real life
photo by Cátia Maciel

Patience and understanding

I didn’t expect unschooling to make things so sweet between me and Keith.
Partly Keith's just a nice guy, but principles that applied to the kids applied to the adults, too, and we all experienced and shared more patience and understanding.

The more I got to know Marty, the more ways I saw him like Keith, and because I was sympathetic to those traits in Marty which had bothered me in Keith, I became more sympathetic to and understanding of Keith.

SandraDodd.com/spouses
photo at Marty's wedding, in 2014
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Gentle peace and patience

Struggling is harmful. Don't struggle. Relax. And don't "just" relax, relaxing blindly, but relax into new knowledge of the value of gentle peace and patience.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Cathy Koetsier

A safer, softer parent

There's something about patience that's biochemical. Some people are more naturally patient than others. When an impatient person has a child, though, and especially if that impatient person wants to be an unschooler, it's good to look at ways to become a safer, softer parent. It's win-win, if stress is minimized and life is smoother.

SandraDodd.com/patience
photo by Marji Zintz (click to enlarge)

Last-minute gifts

Something people need for Christmas is patience, sweetness and a little more attention than you think you have time for. Slow down just enough to look more closely at each person in your house, or in your video feed, or who sent you a card or note. If you can't give them more of yourself directly, think kindly of them. Maybe do something helpful for someone else, in their honor. Many people are not where they would like to be this week, and those who see each other might not hug and kiss. If you can make things better and not worse, that is a profound gift.

Give patience for Christmas.
photo by Sandra Dodd, from last year

Action, patience and observation

Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch.

Reading does nothing without action. Action does nothing without patience and observation. When you know a little, more of the readings will make sense.

SandraDodd.com/readalittle
photo by Tessa Onderwater

A kinder person

Learning to live better with children makes one a better person. Being patient with a child creates more patience. Being kind to a child makes one a kinder person.

Simply put...
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Elevation

Learning to live better with children makes one a better person. Being patient with a child creates more patience. Being kind to a child makes one a kinder person.


Simply put...
photo by Chrissy Florence

Little Tools for an Epic Life

If you want to unschool, there's no curriculum to buy and you and your children will be discovering the secret passages and magical destinations without a schedule or a map.

To help you prepare for or strengthen your own heroic adventure, there are three tools you need, and a checklist of seven nest-building items for you to collect and protect.

Equip yourself with:

confidence
experience
good examples

Build your nest with

food
patience
shelter
enthusiasm
love
curiosity
joy

That's the extracted end of a pro-conference article from the June 2012 issue of California HomeSchooler. The text of the full article is here: SandraDodd.com/hsc/littletools
photo by Sandra Dodd

Advice for a newlywed

To have a more peaceful, loving relationship that has the potential to last for a lifetime, don't count and don't measure.

Don't divide anything "fifty/fifty." Forget that concept. Give what you have. Do all you can do. Give/do 80% when you can, but only measure it vaguely, at a squint, and then forget about it. If you aim for half, there will be resentments. If you aim for 100%, small failures will seem larger than they need to be, so don't do that. You can succeed at "lots" without measuring.

If each of you gives as much as you can, your shared needs will be fulfilled more quickly, more easily, and more often.

Be generous with your patience. Life is long. People change, and more than once.
I wrote that for a young friend getting married, and I quoted it here:
Becoming a Better Partner
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

Every leaf is for real

"Practice" is the actual doing of a thing. Some people practice patience, therapy, medicine, or Buddhism.

Sometimes a person will use the word "practice" when it would be better to use "experiment" or "drill" or "train." In that "experiment" or "work until it's right" way, trees never "practice" making leaves. Every leaf is for real.

And so it is with learning. "The practice of learning" is actually doing it.

Each bit of learning is real learning.



Holly Dodd photo

Practice

"Practice" is the actual doing of a thing. Some people practice patience, therapy, medicine, or Buddhism.

Sometimes a person will use the word "practice" when it would be better to use "experiment" or "drill" or "train." In that "experiment" or "work until it's right" way, trees never "practice" making leaves. Every leaf is for real.

And so it is with learning. "The practice of learning" is actually doing it.

Each bit of learning is real learning.



Holly Dodd photo

Who you Are

How do you apportion your patience, attention, courtesy, time, money, material help, respect?

Those sorts of decisions make you who you are.

SandraDodd.com/eyecontact
photo by Sandra Dodd
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