Emulation

The people I respect most have become little voices in my head, and I "consult" them when I'm making decisions in their specialty areas. I have friends who are more patient than I am, more generous with time, and I think of them clearly and try to emulate them when I am making choices in those areas. Some cook better and are more organized, and I think back to things they have said, or to things I have seen them do, or I try to induce in myself the presence and mood they have when they're cooking or straightening. I don't want to be them, but I want to be more like them in the ways they have that earned my respect.

—Sandra Dodd
from longer writing here

Future Grandparents
and/or
SandraDodd.com/voices
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Not the same choices

Happy, supported, trusted kids don't make the same choices as unhappy, controlled kids.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/eating/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd

Philosophy and principles

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

The core idea of the unschooling philosophy is that humans are born learners. That's what John Holt observed over and over. Children will learn best when allowed to learn what, when and how they want.

That doesn't, of course, tell anyone what to do. The philosophy helps you make choices. The principles -- such as peace, trust, respect, support, helpfulness -- help you stay on course when situations make it difficult to.

—Joyce Fetteroll

The unschooling philosophy
photo by Christine Elizabeth Milne

Expressing joy

Gratitude is good for the soul, for the spirit, for the mind, for the heart.

Negativity and discouragement spiral down a hole.

...When you hear or read something pure and joyful, maybe just bask in it, or add to it. Please try to think and make a choice, though, about whether to respond or to be quietly grateful that someone is courageous enough to express joy in a dangerously negative world.

Gratitude and choices
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Purposes, on purpose

When we talk about making decisions within unschooling discussions, it's not something like "I made the decision to be an unschooler." It's small decisions in the moment, right before each action or response, about what to have for lunch, where and how and why. Consciously making choices
Knowing WHY you want to make lunch can make all the rest of it a series of mindful choices. (Unless the "why" is a thoughtless sort of "because the clock hands pointed up".) Choices in Parenting, Unschooling and the rest of Life

SandraDodd.com/purpose
photo by Brie Jontry

Building an unschooling nest

"Building an unschooling nest" is a phrase that has come to mean maintaining a safe, rich, happy environment in which learning cannot help but happen.

What will help to create an environment in which unschooling can flourish? For children to learn from the world around them, the world around them should be merrily available, musically and colorfully accessible, it should feel good and taste good. They should have safety and choices and smiles and laughter.

There is some physicality to the "nest," but much of it is constructed and held together by love, attitudes and relationships. Shared memories and plans, family jokes, songs and stories shared and discussed, all those strengthen the nest.

Quote from The Big Book of Unschooling, page 125 (or 137)
photo by Sandra Dodd, out the front window, last year this time
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Sleep, choices, jobs

[A] common question is whether someone who grew up without a schedule and a bed time and could ever hold "a real job." The assumption, I think, is that "real jobs" require getting up very early and at the same time every day. Marty did that for over a year when he worked at the grocery store near us. He worked Monday through Friday at 6:30 a.m. He had no problem with that schedule.

Looking up through the list of jobs, I will give as many shift-starting-times as I can remember, and you might wonder if someone who had grown up with a bed time and a regular schedule could ever hold a job.

AM

6:30 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00

PM

1:00 3:00 4:30 5:00 6:00

---

Since this was written, the starting-times of jobs for my kids has gone around the clock, with Kirby starting sometimes at 11:00 at night (at Blizzard, like a hospital graveyard shift), and beginning at 5:00 a.m. (one of his computer support jobs when he moved back to Albuquerque). When Marty worked stocking shelves at Target, at Christmas season, he was there at 4:00 a.m. a time or two. Probably more.

SandraDodd.com/jobs/bigbook
photo by Janine Davies

"Permissive"?

Someone asked, once:

How do you feel about the word "permissive" to describe unschooling and the lifestyle surrounding it? (I'm hearing this word a lot when trying to explain unschooling to family and friends...)

My response was:

"Permissive" is a term of insult used by and among people who feel the right and duty to control.

It was used by aristocrats of other aristocrats who were not reigning in their servants to the point that was recommended to keep them in line.

It's used by strict teachers who demand silence and obedience in the classroom, of other teachers who actually engage in dialog with their students, and unscripted dialog at that, which could lead anywhere, instead of just leading to the correct answers in the book, and preparing people for the test.

Don't look as "permissiveness" as though it exists in nature. See it as the pejorative term it is, and see the beliefs of the only people who can use it: controlling people trying to make others be as controlling as they are.

---

There are some other ideas, too, at the link below, but I think the most valuable idea is to see choices rather than rules you're "permitting" people to ignore.

The original is here.
photo by Janine Davies

There was an improper word choice I've kept. A typo, more like. "Reigning" should've been "reining," but in the context in which I wrote it, long ago, I see why the error came and it makes some sense there. 🙂

Naturally sweet

Jo Isaac wrote:

[Benton] explores the evolutionary basis behind children's food choices—for example, babies and toddlers have an innate preference for sweet and salty flavours and avoid bitter and sour tastes. This is explained as reflecting an evolutionary background where sweetness predicts a source of energy, whereas bitterness predicts toxicity/poison.

He also discusses the evolutionary mechanisms that might explain why children avoid new foods (termed neophobia), particularly in toddlers. In our evolutionary past, avoiding new foods had survival value if it discouraged eating items that might have been poisonous, particularly at the stage when a child was beginning to walk. Benton stresses that "Parents need to understand that neophobia is normal."

—Jo Isaac
(PhD, Biology)

More here: SandraDodd.com/eating/research
photo by Cátia Maciel

Wisdom at its finest

Willow Lune wrote

The wisdom coming from these unschooled kids amazes (and surprises) me on a regular basis. The choices they make and the thoughtfulness they put into decisions. The in-depth discussions. Their take on the world. Their willingness to give feedback, knowing that their words matter. Wow—wisdom at its finest.

—Willow Lune

SandraDodd.com/surprise
photo by Rosie Moon

Choices and learning

Each child is an individual. If you let them choose from many foods, they won't eat things that make them sick, or make them feel bad.

If you tell them in advance what "will" make them feel better and what "will" make them feel bad, #1 you could be very wrong, and #2 they are NOT learning on their own about food. They're learning how to appease mom.

SandraDodd.com/food
photo by Kirby Dodd

Quote is from an online text chat on food and eating.

More

Alex Polikowsky wrote: Unschooling takes more, more presence, more guidance, more attention, more mindfulness, more connection, more thinking and questioning, more choices and better choices. —Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/misconceptions
photo by Sandra Dodd

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.

Choose and be and do

Don't worry about what kids choose to do. Make sure they have lots of choices, and don't discriminate between what you think might be career path and what might "only" be joyful activity and self-expression, or what might seem to be nothing more than relaxation or escapism. Let them choose and be and do.

SandraDodd.com/watching
photo by Sarah Peshek

Approach "better."

Incremental improvement
Approaching perfection, no. Perfection is subjective.
Approach "better." . . . .

The tool to use to move toward "better" is an awareness of choice.
And practice making choices.
Learning to make choices.
Choices

"Happiness Inside and Out"
photo by Brie Jontry

You don't "have to"

Every time "have to" comes up in writing, speech or thought, back up two words and see it as a choice, and not a have to.

You don't "have to" do that, but your ability to make choices and to live a life of abundant gratitude will be hampered if you don't.

SandraDodd.com/haveto
photo by Marty Dodd
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Experiences, not lessons

Experience is the only true teacher. Give your kids experiences, not lessons. Give them opportunities to follow their hearts until they exhaust their curiosity. The longer you do schoolish things, the longer it will take for them to find a path of their own because they will constantly be looking for approval for their choices from without instead of from within. Expose them to cool and interesting people whenever you can.
. . . .
Relax. Live life. Breathe. Enjoy. Find yourself. Love your children.

—Jennifer / Jen Fox
from the last comment, here

Jennifer was writing about deschooling, so... SandraDodd.com/deschooling
photo by Julie D

Purposes and choices in the moment

When someone questioned "purpose," I responded:

I didn't say "live your live with a purpose," though. Not a singular overriding goal that would cause any other outcome to be failure. That's what some people mean when they say "a purpose," but I didn't say "a purpose." It makes a world of difference.

I was talking about individual situations, projects, days, ways to decide. Not about a whole life.

People do that with decisions, too, sometimes. When we talk about making decisions within unschooling discussions, it's not something like "I made the decision to be an unschooler." It's small decisions in the moment, right before each action or response, about what to have for lunch, where and how and why.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Janine Davies, of a stile in England

But WHY?

Knowing WHY you want to make lunch can make all the rest of it a series of mindful choices. (Unless the "why" is a thoughtless sort of "because the clock hands pointed up".)

What and Why?
photo by Rosie Moon
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Sometime I go EEEEEk.

EEEEEk.
What gets me more than the casual acceptance and recommendation of arbitrary limitations is the characterization of allowing children choices as "plonking a 3, 4, 5, 10 year old in front of the television/google."

Can you imagine ANYone "plonking" a ten year old in front of google? And what? Demanding he look something up? But I have seen kids that young have a BLAST with google and other search functions, about games, or YouTube, or NetFlix.

If they can look up game hints at ten, they will be able to look up building codes or disease treatments or various translations of Bible passages on their own anytime thereafter, given resources. Practicing on something that might seem "loose, easy and unnecessary" can *BE* what is needed for them to be competent, functional workers when they're older. And I won't say "when they're grown," because my kids were competent functional workers when they were mid-teens, every single one of them.

So when people who haven't had a child who is mid-teens disparages my knowledge in light of their paranoid theories, sometimes I go EEEEEk.

Sandra
2011

Plonking a child down in front of the television
is where I found it, but the original is here:
on Always Learning,
wherein the rant is all one paragraph.

photo by Sandra Dodd, of a granddaughter playing a game, a husband reading the news, and the TV was playing "Pupstruction" for another grandchild not appearing in that photo