Things started happening...

"Intellectually, I got unschooling all the way from the very beginning. The part that took more time was relationships and wholeness. When I got THAT, that is when things started happening in the direction that made unschooling work great!"

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Cally Brown

Roses and different directions

People need to start and go, but they don't have to race at breakneck speed or never look back. "Going" sometimes just means going one step and smelling the roses! Sometimes the most important steps are those where you're still standing in the very same place, but looking a different direction!

Sandra Dodd, July 2003 discussion
photo by Sandra Dodd

Relax into the next step

Leah Rose wrote:

I have come to see that it helps peace and learning to notice when we are clinging or tightening around an identity, an idea, or even a hope. I think that's why breathing and baby steps are such useful suggestions for new unschoolers. Both help us to stay in the moment, to relax right where we are rather than leaping ahead or getting mired in "shoulds." They help us cultivate soft, open ground upon which we can rest with joy, and know enough confidence to take the next step.

—Leah Rose

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Note from Sandra:
That quote is the bottom of longer writing by Leah, on how she moved from rules to "no rules" which wasn't the best direction, and found a better path in living by principles.

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Leah's writing is about the sixth quote down, at
SandraDodd.com/rules
photo by Karen James

Knowledge, real and useful

A mom posting as "Scooter," in 2001, wrote:

I personally believe that most knowledge, no matter how trivial or useless to anyone else, is just as important as what most people consider useful knowledge.

I responded:

This is dangerously radical thought and I agree with it wholeheartedly.

If one person builds muscle under the direction of a coach using gym equipment, and another builds muscle chopping wood and doing yardwork, which is better? Which muscles are more real? Which muscles are more useful? Which are more moral? What does the person need muscles for? Was the activity engaged in for the purpose of building visible, oilable muscles?

When schools teach to the test and drill kids on "useful" information, what happens inside and outside the school, the teacher, the student, the parent?

archived, about a dozen posts down there
(sorry I can't link more directly)
photos by Ester Siroky

Entryways

Entries are literally and figuratively everywhere, past and future and in a minute.

When you see a place, a path, or think of something you could look up on the internet, you don't know exactly what will happen next, or how far you'll go. It might be just the first touch or glimpse, and you're back out again.

An entry-point at your house could be a "not interesting" to one person and a days-long rabbit-hole adventure for another. See that and accept it. Entryways to other things, people and places are coming up soon.

SandraDodd.com/direction
photo by Sandra Dodd

Am I doing enough?

Karen James wrote:

I asked the same question a few years back. I got an excellent, but unexpected reply. I was told if I thought I wasn't doing enough, then to do more. Now, if our unschooling days start to feel a bit stale to me, I try to make them lively again by using what I know about my son to introduce something(s) fresh to our experience. Doing this has never lead me astray. It might take me in a completely different direction from what I had in mind, but, to me, that's a big part of the fun of this life.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/enough
photo of Holly Dodd, by someone with her camera, in 2008

Quietly, yourself

Unschooling takes a long time to learn. Rushing a child to understand something complicated while the parent isn’t even looking in the right direction to see unschooling is a problem that’s easily solved. Stop pressuring the child. Stop “communicating” the confusion. Quietly empty yourself of much of what you think you know.

SandraDodd.com/quiet
photo by Denaire Nixon

Take a step thoughtfully

People can ruin their lives with unschooling if they don't know where they're going. If they just intend to make a bunch of wild decisions and mill around, it won't work. Their kids will end up needing to go back to school, and being clueless kids in school. So it's almost that big a project. You will have to take hundreds of thousands of steps. And so it's better to take a step thoughtfully, knowing what direction you're going, than to thunder around yelling, "I'm an unschooler! I'm an unschooler!"

Extras with Sandra Dodd
I was speaking, not writing. You can listen (at 15:27), or read the transcript.
photo by Brie Jontry

Responsibility

Mainstream advice often reminds moms not to worry, that kids will be just fine. Kids are resilient. Kids won't remember.

For purposes of helping people see how unschooling can work, advice that seems (though perhaps it wasn't intended) to say that moms shouldn't worry or feel responsible seems headed the wrong direction.

SandraDodd.com/responsibility
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Which direction?

Each journey begins with a single step, they say, but steps in the wrong direction don't get you to a good place. Milling around for a thousand steps without regard to the intended goal isn't "a journey."

SandraDodd.com/direction
photo by Jihong Tang

Quietly quiet

Unschooling takes a long time to learn. Rushing a child to understand something complicated while the parent isn’t even looking in the right direction to see unschooling is a problem that’s easily solved. Stop pressuring the child. Stop “communicating” the confusion. Quietly empty yourself of much of what you think you know. If it were working, there would’ve been no reason to ask us for help.

With a mind open to change, then, go here: Read a little...

Children need time to heal. Quiet time is probably better than constant noise, no matter how much the noise is intended to express love and reassurance.

SandraDodd.com/quiet
photo by Hinano
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Head the right direction

There are paths that lead away from unschooling and paths that lead toward it. There are ways to do it better and ways to torpedo it irreparably.

Just because there's more than one way doesn't mean there's an infinite number of ways.

There's more than one way to get to Santa Fe from Albuquerque. There are four or five ways by road, one much better than any others; there's light rail; there's flight (impractical); there's walking (crazy). There are thousands of ways to leave Albuquerque and get to places far, far from Santa Fe.

Direction, and unschooling
photo by Cátia Maciel

A good direction

Parents can't be perfect, but they can aim in that direction.

"The right way"
photo by Roya's sister, Rose

Detours and side trips

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

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

Games...Rich Life
photo by Sarah S.

Step thoughtfully

If somebody said, "I want to walk to Santa Fe from Albuquerque," it matters which direction they go. It matters that they have water. It matters if they know how they're going to go. You can die between here and Santa Fe—it's a frickin' desert.

People can ruin their lives with unschooling if they don't know where they're going. If they just intend to make a bunch of wild decisions and mill around, it won't work. Their kids will end up needing to go back to school, and being clueless kids in school. So it's almost that big a project. You will have to take hundreds of thousands of steps. And so it's better to take a step thoughtfully, knowing what direction you're going, than to thunder around yelling, "I'm an unschooler! I'm an unschooler!" and not get anywhere.

So I think they need to understand the direction they're going, and why. And they can get there a lot faster and a lot more whole, and with a lot more peace and understanding, if they will Read a little, try a little, wait a while and watch.

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Extras with Sandra Dodd
I was speaking, not writing. You can listen (at 15:15), or read the transcript.

photo by Sandra Dodd, in Golden, New Mexico, March 2020
(the last time I left town)

Different route, same direction

Think of school like a train ride from New York to LA. It has specific stops at specific times and will last a scheduled amount of time.

Think of unschooling like crossing the country in an RV from NY to somewhere on the west coast. You won't be following the same route, won't be hitting the same cities. But you will be heading in the same general direction, following an interest-driven route.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Joyce Fetteroll on Unschooling and another thing or two
photo by Shawn Smythe Haunschild, of something interesting in Colorado
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A better direction

Is the cup half empty, half full, defective or overflowing?

One mindful step in a better direction can be joyous. You don't need to reach a destination to have joy.

The Big Book of Unschooling
page 318 (or 275, if it's yellow)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Your relationship with learning

You can't wait until you understand unschooling to begin. Much of your understanding will come from the changes you see in your child and in your own thinking, and in your relationship with and perception of learning itself. You can't read a touch and then go and unschool for a year and then come back and see what you did wrong; you could be a year in the wrong direction.


from "Beginning to Unschool," page 36 or 39 of The Big Book of Unschooling
(I changed "it" to "unschooling," in the first line above.)
photo by Janine
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A thousand or three choices

If there are a thousand choices, or even three choices, how do you choose? Some people like to live without choices, so they can say "I had no choice."

So how do you choose? You decide where you want to go before you decide to turn left or right, don't you?

Just like that.

The way to know the right direction is to identify the wrong direction.

How to Screw Up Unschooling

original, on Always Learning, April 2009
photo by Karen James
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Just right

This was originally written in 2010,
so "recently" and "new" are nine years old now.

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When I was little, I always liked the musicality of the story of The Three Bears, with its "too hot, too cold, just right" and "too hard, too soft, just right."

Recently I was interviewed and responded to a question about what can be a hurdle for new unschoolers, and what advice I would give to beginners:

"Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch." That's my new improved advice for anyone about anything. Some people think they can read their way to a change, or discuss themselves into unschooling.

It's important to find out what others have discovered and done, but nothing will change until the parents change the way they respond to the child. But if the parents change EVERYthing about the way they respond to the child, that creates chaos, and doesn't engender confidence. The child might just think the parents have gone crazy or don't love him anymore.

One solid step in the direction a parent intends to go is better than a wild dance back and forth. And if that solid step feels right, they can take another solid step.

the full interview, by Kim Houssenloge, of Feather and Nest
Photo by Linnea, with Holly's camera