Questions to consider

If you've adopted a set of principles and priorities, it will make decisionmaking easier. And I don't mean to choose your five and write them down. I mean to consider what's important in a situation when you're making a decision. And those things can vary.

If it's 11:00 at night and a child wants to do something that's outside the house or noisy, the idea of quiet time and consideration for others who are sleeping should take precedence, for sure.

All other things being equal, for me I decided in favor of something new and different, over something same-old, when there was a draw about which thing to do or which way to go. I decided to take the "more learning" path...

It depends.

It's hard to explain unschooling, partly because the best answers are "it depends," followed by questions for the parents to consider while they're making their decisions.

It depends on time available, time of day, safety, resources, the effect on other people, need for food or rest, and other factors...

SandraDodd.com/depends
photo by Sarah S.

Beauty

"Choose to look at the beauty around you and to see life and people through loving eyes."

—Alex Polikowsky

Sandra's addition: "... to see life and people" and fancy chickens, cupcakes, frost, sleeping puppies and your favorite mug as beautiful.

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Helene McNeill

Sleeping in shifts

From a page with notes, links and thoughts about the history of human sleep and what might be natural, Sandra's words:

I like the sentinal theory. I’ve often thought that teenagers’ propensity to stay up late might have been very useful in “the old days” (caves, camps or castles) because they could keep watch while they talked to each other. And their sleeping in the daytime while others are awake is seen as sloth in modern days by too many people, but I think as long as they get sleep, it shouldn’t matter so much what time it is.

What about sleep? sleep in history and culture
SandraDodd.com/sleep/outside
photo by Sandra Dodd (and it's a link)

Learning by osmosis

A cranky person once wrote to me:

I do unschool but I obviously do not subscribe to your radical view of unschooling where children are expected to learn by osmosis and television shows.

To the Always Learning discussion list I wrote:

When the environment is rich, children learn by osmosis, if the membrane through which ideas pass is their perception of the world. What they see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think becomes a part of their experience, and they learn. And they learn from television shows, movies, paintings, books, plants, toys, games, movement, sports, dancing, singing, hearing music, drawing, sleeping.... as if by osmosis, they live and they learn.

"Osmosis and Television Shows"
photo by Janine Davies

Choices, priorities and locations

Laying "have to" on our kids, or on ourselves or on outsiders is less useful and healthy than looking at rights and choices and priorities and locations.

Can you jump on the bed?

Depends whose bed, which bed, where, when. Is someone sleeping? Is it an antique? Who owns this bed?


SandraDodd.com/etiquette
(original, in a discussion on facebook)
photo by some realtor, once,
in a house that's now Holly Dodd's

Experience and knowing

Once someone was going on about power, and giving children power over themselves, and the power to decide what to learn.

As we had been talking about natural learning, naturally I responded:

"The power to decide what to learn" makes a pretzel of the straight line between experience and knowing.

My children don't "decide what to learn, how to learn, and when to learn it."

They learn all the time. They learn from dreams, from eating, from walking, from singing, from conversations, from watching plants grow and storms roll.

They learn from movies, books, websites, and asking questions.

They eat when they're hungry (when possible or convenient; I'm making a lunch for Holly to take to work today as she's working in the flower shop for eight or nine hours, as Mother's Day is Sunday here).

They sleep when they're tired, unless there's something they'd rather do that's worth staying awake for. They don't always "decide" when to wake up. They wake up when they're through sleeping, or when the alarm goes off if they've chosen to get up early, or when I come and wake them up if they've left me a note.

the original is here
photo by Gail Higgins

RV, or home, or cabin...

Alex Arnott wrote:

Try to look at and accept them for being exactly who they are right now, not how you think they should be.

There is a whole world outside the RV AND a whole world inside their iPad. Whatever they choose, be there with them! It’s hard to truly be with another person when you’re wishing they were something else.

—Alex Arnott

on Unschooling Discussion 2020
"RV" stands for "recreational vehicle." They can be used for travel and for sleeping and living. In other places they might be called motorhomes, campervans or caravans. While I was looking, I found some new designs from India, and The Netherlands.

photo by Sarah S.
__

Over, under, in between

Where we are in relationship to others changes all the time, with physical realities of space, place, size and age, mood, waking and sleeping. We move; they move.

---

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

"Unschooling is more like a dance between partners who are so perfectly in synch with each other that it is hard to tell who is leading. The partners are sensitive to each others' little indications, little movements, slight shifts and they respond. Sometimes one leads and sometimes the other."

—Pam Sorooshian

Being your child's PARTNER, not his adversary
photo by Jo Isaac
__

Relax

Sleeping is natural and necessary. Help children feel good about sleeping.

Sleep When You're Tired
photo by Colleen Prieto

Impermanent beauty

The peaceful beauty of a sleeping child, a young woman, beautiful food, a flower, a building—nothing lasts forever. Beauty might only last a moment, a day, a year, and will change.

See what is lovely.

Love what is loveable, and remember to expect it to slip away.

photo by Karen James, of found art
and another, found by Lisa Jonick
(backup)

Now that I think of it, though, most photos are of found and fleeting art.
I'm grateful to all those who have let me share their photos here.

Ages and stages

Yesterday I bent over and picked an inch-tall tumbleweed sprout from a crack in a sidewalk. It was a tiny bit of community service.

The wind is blowing here, and all the big tumbleweeds will pass through chain link fences, or barbed wire, and scatter themselves into thousands of seeds. It happens every year.

A tiny baby hardly resembles adult forms, or the changes that take place in old folks. Where you are now is young compared to where you'll be later. Those changed old folks are always saying you will miss having those young children, and I found it to be true. It also irritated me for someone who was sleeping in a quiet, clean home to tell the baby-sticky, frazzled younger me that these were good days I would miss.

"Truth" is irritating, when we're sprouts, sprigs, teens, new parents, but just as the winds blow, people express the wisdom they gained as they aged and discovered that they missed having children in the house, as those other older older-folks had told them that they would.

"Results" (a half-random link)
tumbleweed photo by Holly Dodd
__

Luxury

It's a luxury to be able to sleep when you're tired.

Parents of young children might think that opportunity won't ever come back to them, but it will. Meanwhile, try to feel the benefit, and the gift you're offering when you let your children sleep how and where they want to, if and when you can.



SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Resting

Rests can be short or long.

Resting isn't always sleeping.

Sleeping doesn't always last long.

SandraDodd.com/sleep/outside
SandraDodd.com/peace/
photo by Cátia Maciel
__

Dreamy

Dreamy.

"Dreamy" can be attractive, or otherworldly.

Dreams only take a moment, some say. "Dream big," others say.

Let ideas float and flit, dreamlike, through your waking and sleeping. You don't need to catch them all.

SandraDodd.com/learnnothingday/2009
photo by Lydia Koltai
___

Falling asleep

For the first MANY years of their lives, our kids fell asleep being nursed, or being held or rocked by dad or mom, or in the car on the way home from something fun. They slept because they were sleepy, not because we told them to. So when they got older, they would fall asleep near us, happily.

We never minded putting them in the bed after they were asleep. It was rare they went to sleep in the bed. They would wake up there (or in our bed, or on the couch or on a floor bed) knowing only that they had been put there and covered up by someone who loved them.

Going to sleep wasn't about "going to bed."


Kirby, four, fell asleep while playing.

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Sandra Dodd, 1990

Detox, gradually

For a child, deschooling is just the time to relax and get used to being home and with Mom—a child who’s been to school. A child who hasn’t been to school has no deschooling to do. But for parents, deschooling is detoxification from a lifetime, and recovery from all of their schooling and whatever teaching they might have done. And it’s also the start of a gradual review of everything...

They don’t need to do it in advance, they don’t need to do it right at first. It’s so big, but it’s also gradual—it's just like living and breathing and eating and sleeping. Because every day a little more can come to the surface and be examined as it pops up.

Changes in Parents
The quote is from a recent podcast of Pam Laricchia interviewing me.
photo by Lisa Jonick

On a peaceful day...

Watching the news on TV, or following too many news sites, can harm the peace of an unschooling home. Some moms, especially when their children are young, have found more peace if they focus inward on their children than outward far away.

If someone WANTS to be afraid and pissed off, even on a fairly peaceful day, all it takes is to turn the news on and let it affect your entire nervous system, your digestive system, your adrenal glands and hormones, your chance of trusting your neighbors, or of sleeping peacefully.


SandraDodd.com/news
photo by Sandra Dodd, of someone else's puppet

Disorienteering

So sorry to have missed two days! There was travel, and sleeping, and time change, and I'm on another continent. They drive funny and speak differently, and I need to think faster, so I sleep more.

There are advantages to staying quietly and peacefully in familiar places sometimes.

Try not to let confusion scare you. Set a good example for others. Relax if you can.

SandraDodd.com/calm
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sleep when you're tired

It can help to encourage a child to sleep when he's tired. When children get older, parents can do it too, without feeling guilty, if it has been a policy for anyone without immediate responsibility to sleep when sleep comes.

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Nicole Kenyon
__

Flexibility and change

"Be prepared to be flexible and willing to change as your child gets older." —Emily Strength

SandraDodd.com/sleeping
photo by Janine