Improved mood and joy

Trying a little and waiting and watching will give you a chance to see the effects of these ideas. Don't just read until you're sold. Let your child's improved mood and joy be where you see progress.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Cátia Maciel

Calm and happy priorities

Deb Lewis wrote:

If you take care of your house happily, even if you don't ever make any real progress or feel it's getting really clean, if you look after things calmly and happily your kids will be more likely to participate in the process. If you're grumping around growling about things being out of control, how are they ever supposed to feel they could manage it? If you can't handle it, how could they?

My son doesn't have any chores but he helps if I ask for help and he does some things on his own just because his life is more convenient if he does so. I get up earlier than he does so I clean then. If he's busy with things and doesn't need me I do a little more then. In the evening if he's playing with his dad or watching TV and there is still something I didn't get to, I try to do it. Cleaning never comes before fun though, so lots of things wait until the next day.

—Deb Lewis
when her son was young

SandraDodd.com/chores/joy
photo by Tara Joe Farrell

Clear language, clear thoughts

Rhetoric and terminology can masquerade as thought or as progress. There are a few terms (and a very, very few) that have been used for many years in unschooling discussions, and they don't seem to have been harmful, nor to have had simple equivalents:‬ ‪SandraDodd.com/terminology

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SandraDodd.com/clarity
photo by Denaire Nixon

They are whole people

Your children are not works in progress. They are whole people, now and from the day they were born. If you can try to see that, rather than think people are not finished until they're finished, it might help you.

SandraDodd.com/appletree
photo by Cátia Maciel

more context, Always Learning, January 2012

Progress

It's not about "success," it's about progress, and living in the moment as well as possible.

SandraDodd.com/proof
photo by Sabine Mellinger
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Many tiny leaps?

Progress toward respectful parenting doesn't come all in one great leap from anywhere to peace all day and all night. It's a step at a time toward "better."

(Original; the quote is the best part.)
photo by Jihong Tang

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

The quote was in a passing discussion, but you might like this:
Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
photo by Julie D

Absent witnesses

In a discussion about mothers of young children imagining their actions are being witnessed, I wrote:

I did that early on with my favorite La Leche League leaders. I invited them early, into my super-ego, to talk to me when they weren't there. 🙂 Trying to keep their voices in my head made me remember that I wouldn't want to do things that would keep them from feeling good about my progress and their assistance.

I think it's the purpose of saints (imagery in the house or worn on the body) or amulets or other religious or superstitious objects. I mean I think it's natural and ancient, among people, to have absent witnesses. The feeling that ancestors can see what we're doing is common in some cultures (and, honestly, ours—it came up at my house on Tuesday at a memorial for a dead friend, even though most there were atheists; it can be soothing, and inspiring).

SandraDodd.com/witness
photo by Jihong Tang

Experiencing progress

In a longer description of her family's change from organized homeschooling to unschooling, a mom named Julie wrote:

I got angry about something and I yelled at one of the kids. I shocked myself!! It sounded so horrible, not to mention unnecessary. And weird. I realized it sounded weird because it isn't something I do very often and although I felt bad for yelling, it felt good to know that it was the first time in a long time.

—Julie

Enjoying My Kids
photo by Gail Higgins

Live as a learner

Set the example of living as a learner.

Parents Change
photo by Karen James, of her work in progress

Small choices

If you decide how you want your home to be, and then make choices that get you nearer to that, things will get gradually better.

If you don't decide, or if you don't think of it many times a day when you make small choices, and decide how to act and react, then things won't get better.

Not every step will be forward, but if most of them are, then you'll make progress.

SandraDodd.com/progress
photo by Janine Davies

Take a break (not yet; soon)

Here's a way to gauge your unschooling progress: Can you stop learning, at your house? Can you put the pause on unschooling?

Once a year, lots of people do that, as well as they can. Just one day. It's coming up next month, July 24.

I thought you might need some time to plan.


I used to own a full-sized poster of that art, but now it's in a better place—with an unschooling family in Utah.

Learn Nothing Day, in here, over the years

A step toward joy

Some of the things that help people be confidently in the moment, feeling satisfied and content are:

• Breathing
  
• Gratitude
  
• Happy thoughts
  
• Fondness
  
• Acceptance

At first it might be relief and not joy, but as relief is a step away from fear, more relief will be progress toward joy.

The Big Book of Unschooling, page 275 (or 318)
photo by Ester Siroky
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Questioning and learning

Pam Laricchia said:

I recall when I was beginning unschooling, my days were typically a mix of learning about how natural learning works and starting to question a lot of the conventional wisdom I’d absorbed growing up. There are many ways that preconceived ideas and prejudices can limit people’s thinking and get in the way of moving to unschooling...

—Pam Laricchia

Changes in Parents with Sandra Dodd
photo by Karen James, of her own art (process and progress)
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Do it; be it

Some unschooling parents talk too much to their children about unschooling. Just DO it, don't talk it. Be it.
Just Do it. ●  Don't talk it. ●  Be it.

Deschooling
photo by Sarah Dickinson, of a Kitty Letter game in progress

Learning without lessons

I wrote this in 1997; I added the ages in 2019

My kids have learned to read on their own. Kirby (11) is fluent and uses reading for all kinds of things. Marty (8) is irritatingly phonetic, but will become fluid with more practice.

First of all, Pam Sorooshian and such folk would probably be able to point out or draw out dozens of things I did with/to/for my kids that helped them learn to read, but I didn't "teach" them to read, any more than I taught them to play Nintendo (although I did buy them a Nintendo, let them rent games, and bought some game guides and magazines).

I didn't teach them to do tricks on the swing set, but we did put the swing set up and maintain it and keep it clean and available. I didn't teach them to ride bikes, but I did make sure they had bikes and opportunities to ride places other than just right in front of the house. I didn't teach them to sing, but I did sing to and with them a lot, take them places to hear others sing, play videos and recordings of different kinds of singing, etc.

They read.
They know that something as hard as reading can be learned without formal lessons.

That's a heck of a thing for kids their age to know.
There are adults who don't know it.

Life in progress
photo (fuzzy, but Marty) by Sandra Dodd

Wholly cosmic

Polly Berrien Berends refers to infants as "seeing beings," and that changed
my life, when I read Whole Child/Whole Parent, when Kirby was a baby. To
realize so profoundly that his whole, real life was fully in progress changed MY
whole, real life. And that's the purpose of her book, and the meaning of the
title. When we help our child to be whole, or rather when we acknowledge
and honor his wholeness, seeing him as the seeing being he is, then we know that
we too are, and always were, "seeing beings." We are as much a part of that
child's world as he is of ours, and we are both part of the same wholeness.

Kinda cosmic. 🙂 WHOLLY cosmic.


Children are people
photo by/of Holly Dodd

Choose to have fun!

"Choose to have fun! Fear will hold you back. Guilt and shame will set in to cloud thinking and stunt progress. Having the courage to have fun in whatever pursuit thrills you most will most likely lead you to places you never expected to go." —Karen James

SandraDodd.com/videogames/seriously
photo by Lisa Jonick

Start thinking about stopping.

Here's a way to gauge your unschooling progress: Can you stop learning, at your house? Can you put the pause on unschooling?

Once a year, lots of people do that, as well as they can. Just one day. It's coming up next month, July 24.

I thought you might need some time to plan.




Learn Nothing Day, in here, over the years

All of the days

Q: How will you know if they're learning?

A: Teachers need to measure and document because they need to show progress so they can get paid, and keep their jobs. They test and measure because they don't always know each child well.

Parents know a child is learning because they're seeing and discussing and doing things together every day. Not five days a week, or most of the year, but all of the days of their whole lives.


SandraDodd.com/faq
photo by Sarah Lawson
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