Sorting through examples

An online friend, in response to a photo of my family, when I was a teen (me in the middle with stripes):

I'm looking at that pretty young girl and thinking "does she have any idea just how many lives she is going to touch for the better?"

I responded:

There are people in that photo who said and did things, before that, and after that, that became part of my motivation and direction. There were bad examples, and good examples. And not just them, but other relatives, friends, friends' parents, teachers, strangers, authors.

Everyone can, should, sort through the bad examples and good examples around them and move choice by choice toward whatever their own images of "better" might be.

That's all. 🙂

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On Facebook, for those with access, with explanations and commentary from ten years back, 2014

For those without facebook: SandraDodd.com/better

I don't know who took the photo; sorry.
We were in Roby, Texas, probably 1968.

How to help

About how to help kids follow their interests:

Sometimes help is just encouragement or acknowledgment, but sometimes it might need to be transportation or procurement or something physical.

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Megan Valnes (of Holly Dodd)

Learning by watching

Problem:
My son spends a lot of his time playing video games. I have accepted that this is his passion... and maybe very well play a part in his career path. but lately he's also been watching videos of other people playing video games on YouTube! Please help me see a reason that this is not just a waste of time... I know you'll have a good way to look at this latest passion.

An idea:
Musicians watch videos of other musicians. Athletes watch videos of other athletes. Chess players have even been known to watch other people play chess with something approaching awe and rapture. Woodworkers watch woodworking shows. Cooks watch cooking shows. Dancers watch better dancers and learn like crazy!

[and there was more, ending with...]
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/mha
photo by Sandra Dodd

Soothing touch and gaze

Once someone wrote that babies had no experience and no way to communicate except "frustrated cries, screams and babbling."

I responded:

There is touch. There is gaze. Have you never just looked into the eyes of your child, communicating? Have you not touched them soothingly, and felt them touch you back sometimes? They can tell the difference between an angry look and a gentle look.

SandraDodd.com/babytalk
photo by Destiny Dodd, I think

Will they learn...

QUESTION: But I wonder how we are preparing them for adulthood then?

Joyce Fetteroll's
ANSWER: How did you prepare your newborn to be a toddler? How did you prepare your toddler to be a 6 yo?

They learn what they need now. The nows just naturally keep coming along and the kids end up where they are today already knowing what they needed last year and acquiring what they need for today.

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I love Joyce's answers. My own to such questions has usually been "Does high school prepare people for adulthood? Does a university degree teach them everything they need to know?"

Will they learn all they need to know?
photo by Karen James
(of water on an artichoke)

Snakes and wild berries

When a science-minded kid loves to take the dog down by the river and look for wild berries and snakes, some parents say, "My kid just wants to play. He's not interested in learning. He'll never learn science just playing."

Each little experience, every idea, is helping your child build his internal model of the universe. He will not have the government-recommended blueprint for the internal model of the universe, which can look surprisingly like a school, and a political science class, a small flat map of the huge spherical world, a job with increasing vacations leading to retirement, and not a lot more.

SandraDodd.com/seeingit
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Another casual part of life

To call some food "junk" is an artificial division. When food is given the status of a religion (the place where sacrifices are made to ensure a positive outcome and long/eternal life), then there IS the necessity of a devil/Satan/"the dark side."

When food is just another casual part of life, kids will choose melons over biscuits/cookies and chocolate eggs sometimes.

When a child is loudly, ceremoniously and with a big happy-face NOT ALLOWED to be in the presence of the devil/sweets, then if and when he is lured by that satanic force, he will either resist out of fright instilled by his loving mother, or he will succumb, indulge, and be one giant step away from his mother—morally, emotionally and dietarily.

SandraDodd.com/eating/junk
photo by Tammy
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Curiosity and flow

In early 2008, sharing some interesting connections that had happened at our house, I wrote:

That all 'just happened,' but it happened because we've been building up to it with our whole lives and our whole style of communicating and living together in a constant state of open curiosity.
. . . . Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

SandraDodd.com/connections/example
Photo by Cátia Maciel
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Your child as a person

"Just a reminder: your kids are whole people. They're having experiences even when you're not there. They learn with you and without you."

—Holly Dodd

(I told Holly, "Say something I can quote in Just Add Light.")

SandraDodd.com/holly
photo by Julie D, of Holly and Adam
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Reading (parts of) everything

"What unschooling really is" can't easily be defined, because some people use it vaguely, admitting they don't understand.

Parents need to understand their own unschooling clearly enough to defend it. It might take a while, and discussions can help people see it better, but discussions are about information and resources, so read everything you can find, and hold every piece of info up to the light, overlay the ideas on your own family and beliefs, and adopt slowly and carefully, any changes you make.

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What's above was adapted from a recent facebook post. I was referencing that particular discussion, and by "read everything you can find," I meant the links left there, which are mostly from my site and from Joyce Fetteroll's.

Reading everying you can find would work well with Just Add Light and Stir. If you're reading e-mail on a phone, click under "You can read this post online." There will be a randomizer, at the bottom.

Better yet, open the blog from a computer and use the randomizer or the image tags. Tags will let you see many of whatever you've chosen—posts good enough to repeat or re-run; gates; waterfalls; paths; cats doing cool things; kids doing cool things; dads; playgrounds.... The tags are a beautiful and soothing randomizing feature.

My favorite definition of unschooling is:

Unschooling is creating and maintaining an atmosphere in which natural learning can flourish.

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SandraDodd.com/readalittle
photo by Cara Jones

Look directly; just look

Look directly at your child. Practice watching your child without expectations. Try to see what he is really doing, rather than seeing what he’s NOT doing. Just look.

SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
photo by Sarah Peshek

the Purpose of Cake

A mom once asked a long question, ending with:

The cleaning up of making a cake is just part of the whole process of cake making—isn't it? Am I making any sense?

Joyce Fetteroll responded:

Yes, your question makes perfect sense.

It might help you see it more clearly if you ask yourself what your goal is. Is the goal to have a clean kitchen or the experience of making a cake? If the goal is a clean kitchen, then it's better not to have children! 😉

There was more, and it's good. Sweet and messy.

SandraDodd.com/chores/cake
photo by Sandra Dodd, of little Devyn's cupcake art
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Happily and directly, see your children

This is the end of something about a collection of pessimistic statements by parents, about kids:

How many millions of times more than on my puny little collection have parents said those things to and about their kids as though saying it made it true?

But just hearing what we say can change us.

Hearing the negativity and the implied threat and the explicit insults can help us become softer, and more flexible and more thoughtful and original.

Speaking or writing without thinking is a little like driving a car with a blindfold. Others get hurt, we get hurt, the car gets wrecked.

Speaking or writing without thinking is like operating a relationship with a blindfold, with ear plugs, going "LA LA LA LA, I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO MYSELF!!" all the whole time.

How can one see her own child directly without hushing, pulling out the earplugs, and looking at him?

—Sandra, of
SandraDodd.com/ifilet

If I let him, he would never...
If I let him, he would always...
If I let him, he would do nothing but...
photo by Sandra Dodd

Learning let loose

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Don't worry if you don't know the answers. Anyone can look up the answers. Few can ask the questions.

As a real-life example, by watching Xena and reading Little Town on the Prairie, my daughter was exposed to three references to Julius Caesar, Brutus, and Marc Antony. She doesn't "know" Roman history now, but she's got a hook or point of reference to build from tomorrow, next week, three years from now: "You remember Julius Caesar. The guy Xena hates."

Unfortunately we learned in school that learning is locked up in books and reading is the only way to get to it. It's not. It's free. We're surrounded by it. We just need to relearn how to recognize it in its wild state.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Five Steps to Unschooling
https://sandradodd.com/joyce/steps
photo by Roya Dedeaux

King of the Monsters

Sandra Dodd to Deb Lewis:

If I could describe all your writing in just a few words, it might be "Peace, humor and scary monsters." Dylan's life has involved a lot of Godzilla and that ilk. Scooby Doo and Godzilla.

Deb Lewis:

Yes, a lot of Godzilla, beginning when he was very little. And then any movie with a monster, or any book about monsters. And then all kinds of horror and science fiction. Godzilla was the gateway monster, though, and it started with a movie marathon on television. I couldn’t have guessed then, when he was three years old, that he would find a lifetime of happiness in horror! And I didn’t know then that his love of monster movies would lead to learning to read and write, finding authors, making connections to other cultures, (and more movies and authors) and connections to music, theater, poetry, folklore, art, history... It turned out to be this rich and wonderful experience he might have missed, and I might never have understood if I’d said no to TV, or to Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

Before Dylan was reading or writing really well, he’d meticulously copy the titles and dates of movies he wanted, and request them from interlibrary loan. All that writing, and all the time spent watching movies with subtitles helped him read and write better. I remember the feeling of joy and wonder, mixed with some sadness and loss when he didn’t need me to read movie subtitles to him anymore. I learned so much about learning.

There's Even MORE at
Montana to Italy via Godzilla
(an interview with Deb Lewis)
photo by Deb Lewis

Let things flow

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

What's your favorite thing to do? Watch movies? Read a book? Garden? Go to Disneyland? Why don't you just do that all the time and nothing else? I mean — if it is your favorite, then doesn't it give you higher utility than anything else? Why do you ever stop doing it?

The answer is that as you do more and more of something, the marginal utility of doing even more of it, goes down. As its marginal utility goes down, other things start to look better and better.

When you restrict an activity, you keep the person at the point where the marginal utility is really high.

—Pam Sorooshian

Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children
(and it's not just about tv)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Guidance and options

Robyn Coburn wrote:

Intentions matter. Guidance offered from the place of partnership and trust has a different feeling, avoids rebellion, and is just plain less focused on the trivial. Guidance means optional acceptance instead of mandatory compliance. Guidance means parents being safety nets, not trap doors or examiners. Guidance facilitates mindfulness. Directives shut it down, and may even foster resentment instead.

The idea of Unschooling is for parents to be the facilitators of options, the openers of doors, the creators of environments of freedom, and the guardians of choice, not the installers of roadblocks and barriers. Unschoolers are making the huge and wonderful choice to renounce our legal entitlements to be the authoritarian controllers of our children's lives, and instead choose to be their partners.

—Robyn Coburn

SandraDodd.com/choicerobyn
photo by Tara Joe Farrell

An aha! moment

Sylvia Woodman wrote:

When I first started going to LLL (La Leche League) meetings there was one mom (not a leader) in the group who was very gung-ho about boycotting Nestle and other companies who were connected with evil formula companies.

And I remember so vividly the leader very gently saying something to the effect that she could never keep track of all the companies she was not supposed to support and she found it much simpler to just spend time every day supporting moms who wanted to breastfeed and that eventually that would have a greater and more positive effect on the world she lived in.

It was an aha! moment—don't focus on the negative or how awful the situation is—take small steps toward positive change. Denying my kids Nestle chocolate isn't going to bring the formula industry to its knees. But helping my neighbor who just had a new baby, bringing her a meal or unloading her dishwasher are small things that I can do that will make a huge difference for my neighbor.

—Sylvia Woodman

SandraDodd.com/factors
photo by Sandra Dodd

Even simpler

From some questions after a conference:

Q: When your child asks about something, for example "How do you write this letter?" do you focus on that until they are bored and let them bring it up again, or do you work on it over the course of days, weeks, months, until they are satisfied?

This was a written question, so I didn't get to ask whether by "letter" a piece of correspondence was meant, or a single figure. Same answer for both, though. I would just answer the question, sketching one example, and then see if the child wanted more information or not.

But if a single was meant, this morning (9/8/02) Holly asked me "What's the best way to make a 'q'?" I wrote four different ways, not knowing what she was asking. She was wanting the plainest printed "lower case" letter. So she picked the one that best matched the lettering she was doing, and she was happy. Total "lesson," fifteen seconds.

SandraDodd.com/questions
photo by Holly Dodd

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