photo by Roya Dedeaux
Showing posts sorted by date for query /becoming. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query /becoming. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Sunday, September 14, 2025
Ultimately...
photo by Roya Dedeaux
Friday, August 29, 2025
Unexpectedly...
Gail Higgins, an unschooling mom, wrote of this photo: "Opossum staredown. Surprise photo op 😀"

It reminds me of those unexpected moments that pop up in any parent's life. Unexpectedly, someone is looking at you expectantly. It could be one of your children, your partner, a relative, a neighbor, a friend or a stranger.
Confidence in unschooling principles will make those moments increasingly easy to deal with. After becoming an unschooler, one can respond as an unschooler. It does take a while.
As Gail's confidence in her photographic skills increases, she can respond as a photographer, when surprises come along.
SandraDodd.com/becoming
photo by Gail Higgins
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It reminds me of those unexpected moments that pop up in any parent's life. Unexpectedly, someone is looking at you expectantly. It could be one of your children, your partner, a relative, a neighbor, a friend or a stranger.
Confidence in unschooling principles will make those moments increasingly easy to deal with. After becoming an unschooler, one can respond as an unschooler. It does take a while.
As Gail's confidence in her photographic skills increases, she can respond as a photographer, when surprises come along.
photo by Gail Higgins
__
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Sounding off
It seems to me that "phonics" essentially serves the purpose of "teaching" a child to read before he's ready and fully grasps context and meaning. I know that I can read Spanish, which is a much more consistently phonetic language than English, complete with accent and everything, and literally not understand one bit of what I'm saying.I remember being tested separately for "reading" and reading comprehension. If one can't understand the words and phrases, then isn't it just decoding with an internalized phonics decoder ring?
Turning script to sound is one trick, but the reading that people want will turn marks to meaning. The same way that musical notation (and a musician who can decipher and play or sing it) can bring music into the air, so can the written word becoming lively language again.
Patti discovered, as many unschooling parents have, that while some children appreciate phonics hints, or figure phonics out on their own, others learn to read in their own other ways.
SandraDodd.com/r/patti
photo by Sandra Dodd
The photo was taken of the insde of a church door in Durham, in England. "The draught is dreadful" cannot be read easily with American phonics (or sight reading, or look-say). But it's cute, and it's alliterative, which is an ancient tradition in the English language, and in the naming of the alter-egos of comic-book super heroes.
Saturday, June 7, 2025
What could be better?
photo by Karen James
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Good reasons to be positive
When I reject something from my life, it closes doors, in my head, and in my soul. I can't make connections there anymore. I have eliminated it from active play. It's not good for unschoolers.
Everyone has the freedom to be negative. Not everyone has thought of good reasons to be more positive.
photo by Gigi Polikowsky
Thursday, August 15, 2024
Not so extreme, please
photo by Sandra Dodd
___
Something looks like this:
puzzle,
repeat,
wheelbarrow
Sunday, August 4, 2024
Improved selves
Parents, in order to have their children trust them, should become trustworthy.
photo by Janine Davies
Saturday, January 6, 2024
Next week, next year, next century

People DO think of next week. They think of last week. But they're doing their thinking from inside their present selves.
Balance depends on the fulcrum. Be solid. Be grounded.
Be whole, and be here.
photo by Sandra Dodd
Monday, October 23, 2023
Slowly becoming wise
Becoming a better parent is becoming a better person.
photo by Colleen Prieto
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Being a good parent
Being a good parent is not martyrdom. It's this: Being (in essence, in life, in thought, in action) a good (not bad, not average, but quality/careful/positive) parent.
Becoming the Parent You Want to Be is a fair match.
photo by Belinda Dutch
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Sunday, August 6, 2023
Enthusiasm and clarity
photo by Shan Burton
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
Step up; step up again...
If you think “Ok, I’m either going to whack him or I’m going to yell at him,” yell at him—that was the best choice you had at that moment. And the next time, start with “yell at him." “Ok, I'm either going to do what I did the last time or something better. I'm going to yell at him or I’m going to go in the other room for a second." Go in the other room.
And the next time, maybe your choice could be either “go in the other room” or “I’m going to take a deep breath and make a joke about it.” Make a joke.
And gradually and incrementally you come closer to the place where you want to be. Beause I don’t think anybody can just jump from a lifetime of responses and expectations and behaviors and just pick some other person and just become that person. You can’t do that.
(I write better than I speak.)
photo by Rosie Moon
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Good things swirl

Debbie Regan wrote:
Children prosper when parents are able to provide enough sense of safety, calmness and support, that feelings of peace and joy are close at hand. From there the business of childhood—exploring and learning about the world can progress unimpeded by stress. Stress is a distraction from the natural flow of curiosity, focus, joy, excitement, engagement, creativity, emotional awareness, learning...
The more peace and mindfulness I bring in my home, the more all those good things swirl around.
—Debbie Regan
Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
photo by Julie D
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Becoming an unschooler
We have long experience with people new to unschooling, and we know that it is very important to take time to process the new ideas.
Please take time for reflection. Take time for your mind to be calm and quiet. Take time to be open to input, not busy creating output. Don't respond, think. Take the ideas and let them "be" in your mind and go spend lots of time with your children and consider and observe how the ideas might play out in your own home with your own kids.
—Pam Sorooshian
photo by Cátia Maciel
Monday, January 30, 2023
Little actions
—Pam Sorooshian
photo by Sarah Dickinson
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Learning is subtle
—Karen James
(that quote in a larger context)
(that quote in a larger context)
photo by Sandra Dodd
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
Healing and therapeutic
photo by Laurie Wolfrum
Something looks like this:
moon,
reflection,
structures,
sunrise,
water
Monday, July 25, 2022
Learning and joy
photo by Nicole Kenyon
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Detours and side trips
Unschooling is sort of "messy" in that there isn't a "plan" and kids can often go in one direction for a while and then seem to come to a dead end and turn around and go off in another direction. It isn't like a kid who studies certain high school subjects—a couple of years of science, four years of English, a year of American History, and so on—and then goes on to sort of do that same thing in college—follow a predetermined path. Unschooled kids often "meander" in their lives. They proceed in fits and starts. They detour. But those side trips can turn into their main life's journey when you least expect it. 🙂 And they all add up to make the child into the person they are becoming.
—Pam Sorooshian
photo by Sarah S.
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Healing for parents
It can be healing for parents to think back to their own sorrows and then to their own children's freedom from those experiences. Look at what a change you have made in the world by not passing those things on! And how comforting for my own soul that my children could be helpful and funny without being pointed at and laughed at and becoming the butt of a joke.
SandraDodd.com/freedom/from
photo by Vlad Gurdiga
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