Learning by leaps and bounds

From a learning standpoint, when babies are carried they see more, they hear and smell more. If they are given things to touch and taste besides just a few baby toys left in the corner of a crib or playpen, they will learn by leaps and bounds. They will spend less time crying and more time being in the real world.

The parents will know the child better, and the child will know the parents better. They will be building a partnership based on trust.

SandraDodd.com/attachment
photo by Sandra Dodd, at a fabric store

Relationships, living and learning

Coming to unschooling from a rules-based point of view -- as most parents do -- it's natural to try to shape what's being written into rules.

But unschooling is:

Great relationships
Joyful living and learning

Some of the principles that support that are:

Trust
Respect
Kindness
Compassion
Helpfulness

Having someone help you get what you want is joyful. Even for adults. 🙂

—Joyce Fetteroll
2010 original topic
(Joyce wrote more, halfway down.)

Five Steps to Unschooling
photo by Alex Polikowsky

Trust and faith

A mom trying to persuade another mom to let kids have choices wrote:

But children don't die from eating too many Oreos or spending a whole day watching Kipper videos. They might get sick, or feel headachy, or be grumpy, but it's not life-threatening.

I responded:

They're entirely UNlikely to be sick, headachy or grumpy from those things. They are very likely to feel smaller, and worse, from parental restrictions and from hearing "no," though. And if the mom's dire warnings of doom turn out not to have been true, then trust and faith fall and are hard to restore.

Trust and faith are the most powerful tools parents of teens have. Too many parents squander those trying to control toddlers and young children.

SandraDodd.com/choice
photo by Sandra Dodd

Understanding

Joyce Fetteroll wrote, twelve years ago:

Natural learning is easy to understand. It's not so easy to feel confident that natural learning is as good as (let alone better) than institutional learning. Natural learning *shouldn't* test as well as school learning. It isn't geared to passing tests. It's geared to understanding. And understanding is hard to test for!

If natural learning were easy to trust Sandra could have put up on her website:

Create a rich environment. Support and feed their interests. Connect with them.

And none of us would still be sitting here nearly 20 years later, still explaining that it does work. 😉

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/simple
photo by Christine Milne

Confidence and reason

Pam Sorooshian, in a discussion in June 2011:

I didn't get to observe radically unschooled kids before coming to the conclusions I did about how children learn. I'm sure it helps build confidence to see grown unschooled kids—that's why my kids and I make ourselves available. But it isn't necessary. For me, it required confidence in my own logical thinking ability. I reasoned things out and did what made sense to me. I gathered ideas from a lot of people, including you (Joyce) and Sandra (but all of us still had young kids back then, so there was no evidence of older kids or young adults yet).

My willingness to think for myself—to analyze, critique, to be open-minded, and to trust my own conclusions—that was how I came to understand unschooling. Well, that and actual trying things out in our own family and paying attention to what happened and, again, thinking for myself. This whole unschooling journey was very very much an intellectual process for me—a process of developing deeper and deeper understanding by reading and listening to others, thinking hard about what I'd read and heard, applying what made sense, paying attention to how things were going, waiting a little, trying out other ideas that seemed to make sense, and continuing that process for all the years I had children—taking in input of others ideas and experiences, considering and analyzing, acting on my own conclusions, observing my own family dynamics—all at the same time.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/understanding
photo by Karen James
of Ethan's early art

Two days until Learn Nothing Day

Trust the process

Tina Bragdon wrote:

We attachment parented, but in terms of unschooling I at first thought of it in terms of a non coercive "natural" way of getting academics. Now, I can really see how extending the philosophy to relationships and your family atmosphere sets such an important underlying backdrop to learning, and unschooling running smoothly. I can see all that now looking in retrospect. Same thing with just growing in trust in the whole process.... I see so many homeschooling aquaintances fretting about how their kids are going to learn to read, how to "motivate" them to "do schoolwork", and everything about this seems to come from such a place of fear and stress and molding your kids into an end product.

—Tina Bragdon

SandraDodd.com/surprise
photo by Stacie Mahoe

Life and learning

"I trust she is living a happy life and learning just happens if we step out of the way."

—Tamara MacDonald

A day and a bit in my daughter's "world learning" life
photo by Lydia Koltai

Find things she CAN cut

Sometimes parents think unschooling means kids do anything they want anytime, anywhere, to anything and anybody, and the parent doesn’t have the right to an opinion. That makes no sense.

Be your child’s partner. Don’t let your team be a bad team.

Fitted sheets are expensive. Your team cut a sheet. You, the older, smarter, ranking team member, screwed up.

She had scissors around a sheet. Problem.

IF when she cut the sheet you “tried to talk to her about why it was not okay” instead of expressing honest surprise and frustration, you will lost trust by being dishonest.

How will she learn the difference between expensive sheets and clothes, and scrap crap, if the mom uses a sweetie-pop poodle voice both times?

The original is on Always Learning
where I had linked to the page about tone of voice:
SandraDodd.com/tone
photo by Sandra Dodd
(here, on facebook)

I had no photo of a young child cutting things she shouldn't but remembered a photo of a clean fitted sheet.

Fear of media, and of newness

Yesterday I sent an extra post by accident. The one about TV wasn't ready, but it still works. I had planned to make a webpage with photos of more poster boards with people's notes about what they had learned from different shows. When I've done that, someday, I'll post it again.

It's hard for people to conceive of how fearful people were of television viewing, or of video games, just two or three decades ago. I myself missed out on the days when reading novels had been considered a trashy activity. I knew, somewhat, about adults' fear of comic books, when I was a kid; teachers would confiscate comics and not give them back, sometimes.

Time has passed and these days the scary edge of unfamiliar technology is AI, such as Chat GPT and Claude. Alexa is getting in there more. Google's AI has recently started having longer exchanges if you ask questions. I hope Google AI will get better; that one I don't trust as much.

My experience with Chat GPT is that if you ask a philosophical question, or tell a story, or start a conversation, you might have a lot of fun. Start with something you know and care about.

If you use one of these links, it will open at the end of the exchange. Scroll up if you want the beginning. Some of the questions I've asked have been

• why does freeze frame sound like the Ramones or Devo (I kept my original question format—not really formatted...)
  
  
• Was "Encino Man" a direct take-off on "ET the Extraterrestrial"?
  
  
• What rock or pop singers have voices that could have performed in a 19th century music hall without amplification?

Mostly I like to explore musical topics, but I asked about why my front-yard apple tree has so many apples though it didn't last year; cooking questions and ideas; which kinds of intelligences are best served by exchanges with AI; mysteries about a new medication I'm taking that's to be mixed with juice—about which juices weren't working well, one way or another (settled on tangerine juice); various details about the UK series "Shetland"; taxidermy and the series "Vera"... I've gotten feedback and ideas on traditional ballads (I used to collect and sing them in my teens and 20s), and fairytales/archetypes/psychology of identity. It's a way for me to bounce ideas around and get input on trivial topics, usually, and the discussions are fun.

If the thought of that scares or offends you, think about why. Consider asking Chat GPT or Claude why. Google's AI probably doesn't know.

It's a tool and a toy and you'll still be safe at home. Be brave, about learning.

If you wonder something, and you don't have friends who know, or who would let you roll the question around until you were tired of it, consider AI like a Magic 8 Ball, or a Ouija Board, if those are less scary. It's way better than either.

Fear itself
photo by Catherine Forest
of Watersprite Lake

Dark corners, lit up

"Don't let fear and worry drive your decisions and interactions with your kids, though. If you focus on joy and partnership, dark corners won't seem dark. You and your kids will be able to illuminate them together through open dialogue and trust."

—Jo Isaac

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Erika Ellis

Your own certain knowledge

Vague interest can turn to trust in others' accounts of learning and of parenting successes. Trust in those stories can give us courage to experiment, and from that we can discover our own proofs and truths to share with newer unschoolers, who might find courage from that to try these things themselves. Faith in others can only take us a little way, though, and then our own children's learning will carry us onward.

Some ideas become theories. A few theories might turn to convictions. Some early thoughts will be abandoned; others will gain substance. After much thought and use, what is left will be what you believe because you have lived it.

SandraDodd.com/knowledge
photo by Cátia Maciel

Even more relaxed

Ren wrote:

The part that is missing with the relaxed/eclectic approach is still trust. It's just being more creative with how you get information into children, that's all. Better....but not quite the complete trust that unschoolers have in the human ability to learn.

We may still raise butterflies or garden or go to museums, so to an outsider we're doing some of the same activities. The difference is my kids can show zero interest and that is just fine. The difference is that I'm not trying to check of some subject box or define their learning experiences for them. The difference is that we do these things to have fun and trust that learning happens when we're alive and breathing. 🙂

—Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/unschool/vsRelaxedHomeschooling
photo by Nicole Kenyon

Trusting and seeing

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Unschooling is trusting in a child's natural curiosity to teach them what they need to know. The parent is there to answer questions, talk, infect the kids by their own curiosity about life! (though curious about what you're interested rather in what you think would be good for the kids to be interested in!), bring in cool resources (that the kids can feel free to ignore if it just isn't the right moment for their interest to ignite).

The hard parts are:

trusting natural curiosity to draw your child to what they need to learn when. (Math is fascinating. Kids only get turned off to it by the boring way school approaches it.)

trusting a child's natural schedule rather than the school imposed one (eg, that the child will read eventually even if they aren't doing so at 7 because reading is always a pleasurable activity not an imposed tedious one, they will multiply even if they aren't doing it at 9)

trusting that it's okay for kids to learn things out of order! It doesn't bother kids at all to pick up interesting tidbits about Thomas Jefferson, knightly armor, Egyptian mummies, WW2 combat planes. They make their own connections as they get more and more things in place. (Later, an orderly approach will be fascinating to them as they can make even more connections.)

seeing real learning that is right there all around you, for example, the things that need sorted, the cookies to divide, the planning for a party that are all real live math. And it's especially tough to trust that those few minutes of real engaged figuring are worth 20 pages of worksheet practice.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/unschool/moredefinitions
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Liverpool

---

Joyce and I got to visit Liverpool in 2013, thanks to Julie and Adam Daniel.

The turning point of unschooling

Recovering from school is only part of a parent's deschooling process. Trust is involved, but it's an evolving trust. First one might read about or even meet some older unschooled kids and see that they're doing well. But it seems they can distance their own families a bit by thinking "Well that's fine for her kids—but mine might not be as [insert one:
    special
      bright
         gifted
            open
               calm
                  creative
                     sociable] as hers are."

The turning point comes when one sees the natural learning start to shine from her own child. Then she goes beyond trusting other unschoolers, and starts trusting natural learning.

"Of your own certain knowledge…"
or
Seeing the light with your own eyes

photo by Erika Ellis

Facilitator and companion

I’ve been credited with the description below, but it was written by Joyce Fetteroll and tweaked by Pam Sorooshian and me before it was published at the UnschoolingDiscussion site, on googlegroups:

Although unschooling is often described as a homeschooling style, it is, in fact, much more than just another homeschool teaching method. Unschooling is both a philosophy of natural learning and the lifestyle that results from living according to the principles of that philosophy.

The most basic principle of unschooling is that children are born with an intrinsic urge to explore — for a moment or a lifetime – what intrigues them, as they seek to join the adult world in a personally satisfying way. Because of that urge, an unschooling child is free to choose the what, when, where and how of his/her own learning from mud puddles to video games and SpongeBob Squarepants to Shakespeare! And an unschooling parent sees his/her role, not as a teacher, but as a facilitator and companion in a child’s exploration of the world.

Unschooling is a mindful lifestyle which encompasses, at its core, an atmosphere of trust, freedom, joy and deep respect for who the child is. This cannot be lived on a part-time basis. Unschooling sometimes seems so intuitive that people feel they’ve been doing it all along, not realizing it has a name. Unschooling sometimes seems so counterintuitive that people struggle to understand it, and it can take years to fully accept its worth.

—Joyce Fetteroll, aided by
Pam Sorooshian
and Sandra Dodd

SandraDodd.com/unschooling
photo by Clare Kirkpatrick

Normal reactions

It turns out that much of what is considered "normal teen behavior" is a normal reaction to many years of school, and to being controlled and treated as children and school kids and students rather than as full, thoughtful human beings.

---

I wrote that, but the source is missing.
I also wrote what's below, and its parent page is linked.

---

I didn’t know that our relationships could stay so good even when they were teenagers.

My original expectation was that when they were teens they would be frustrated and rebellious and wild, because I thought that was hormonally inevitable.

A side benefit of having been partners rather than adversaries was that the “normal teen behavior” turned out not to have been “natural,” and in contrast to what I was seeing in unschooled teens, it started to look like very sensible reactions to a barrage of arbitrary rules and limitations. The communications and trust continued to build within our family, rather than to erode over the years.

Unexpected Benefits of Unschooling
SandraDodd.com/unexpectedarticle
photo by Sandra Dodd
of Marty, Holly and Kirby
when they were still at home

Stop, breathe, and change

Caren Knox wrote:

Trust is a vital foundation to building an unschooling home. If kids can't trust that what their parents are saying is true, their foundation is shaky, perilous. That affects their ability to learn, and harms the relationship they have with the world (and their parents).

Why bring a negative force into the home?

If you're used to sarcasm and other lying, it might take practice to learn to speak honestly. It can feel vulnerable and risky. It is worth it. You'll soon be able to feel if what you are about to say is true — really true — and you'll develop the ability to stop, breathe, and change what you're saying if needed.

—Caren Knox

Deposit the good stuff.
photo by Cathy Koetsier

The gentle way

Sue Elvis wrote:

Gradually I was discovering what was really important. And bit by bit, I rejected anything that led us away from that close and happy relationship that I knew was the most important thing in the world. I realised that a lot of what was causing our conflict was other people’s expectations and timetables: My children had to do this, that, and the other, not because it fulfilled their needs, but because someone (not very important) expected them to achieve this or that. Worse, sometimes this or that had to be achieved by a particular age. And sometimes I brought trouble upon myself: I simply wanted my children to do certain things to impress certain (not very important) people. . . . .
Eventually, I let go of all those expectations imposed on us from outside. I learnt to listen to my children. And trust. Now we are homeschooling the gentle way, the unschooling way. Our children are learning but not at the expense of our family relationships.

—Sue Elvis

Time to Unschool
You can hear Sue read the longer version aloud,
near the end here: Our Unschooling Story
Photo... maybe by Sandra Dodd, but I didn't note that.
(by me or someone I was with)
The art is in Old Town, Albuquerque, near San Felipe church.

Partner and friend

Janine Davies wrote, in the midst of a longer account:
For me, that all begins and ends with being a good mum in the eyes and minds of my children, and going forward being remembered as a kind respectful and happy mum—someone they could trust implicitly, and who was their partner and friend.

Hopefully they will then carry that forward to how they treat their children, regardless of what the current trend is, or fears they have, or the current scaremongering circulating. Even if they don't have children of their own, my hope is that they treat and speak to all children that they come in contact with throughout their lives with the same respect and kindness that they afford their partners and friends, and that they treat them like the people they are.

—Janine Davies
(read the rest)

Being a Happy Mom
photo by Sandra Dodd

Far-reaching effects

Dede wrote:

I finally let go of my control issue around TV and video. In its place I found trust which created a deepening of love and respect in my relationship with my son and my family and everything else in my life. It is amazing how far reaching the effect was. Just wanted to share this.

—Dede

Unschooling: Getting It
SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Megan Valnes